N Madhavan

What Sachin Bansal and Kunal Bahl can learn from Narendra Modi

Within the venture-funding community, there is shadow boxing over what these companies are really worth. In this business, talking down a rival is one way of talking down a valuation.

Birthday list: Five things Twitter users could do with

Twitter is hit by abusers, trolls, gatecrashers and wannabes. It needs new tricks but remains humanity’s best-known single platform for politics and public affairs. It could do with cool new features -- and some way to keep out hate-mongers

Time to doff a hat to the deep end of Internet

Companies like Juniper help giants like Facebook and Google manage heavy duty data centres

Why Twitter’s gambles to turn cool are worth the risk

The competition is uneven but the opportunity is for Twitter to lose.

No place for brand arrogance: Lessons from Yahoo, BB and Nokia

The lessons from Yahoo, BlackBerry and Nokia companies is clear: A brand cannot survive in a position of leadership unless it changes the product underneath.

Expect Facebook to partner with Indian TV channels soon

Mark Zuckerberg got richer by nearly $5 billion (or R 34,000 crore) overnight. Facebook’s shares surged 15.5% last Thursday, overtaking Amazon in market valuation. At $308.6 billion, Facebook was ahead of Amazon’s $296 billion. Apple is worth $519 billion and Google’s parent Alphabet Inc $500 billion.

From prime time to prime view: Smart TVs gain traction in India

The increased bundling of apps like Netflix as part of smart TVs would make it even more attractive from the content side for people to go for them.

It is time for India to demystify and define startups

For India, where money-laundering, corruption and shell companies are part of the folklore, it is important that startups are defined properly.

Crazy gizmos will shape the market in coming years

Technology is pushing itself in manners where the smartphone boom may be past its prime. Crazy gizmos are the ones that will shape the market in the coming years.

Will Reliance Jio shake Net Neutrality?

Young CEOs show daring in the year of the Unicorn

Looking back at 2015, I should think the high points for me this year were meeting with the young entrepreneurs who are shaking up the way business is done in India. So I may like to call this the Year of the Unicorn. But don’t drink your New Year’s toast to that yet. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip as these companies are yet to go pub

Google vs FB: What FreeBasics fervour and Pichai’s India visit means

FreeBasics is to Facebook what Android is to Google. Both of them want advertising dollars buzzing in from smartphones. Google is betting on search. Facebook is betting on data analytics linked to user information.

A toast to philanthrocapitalism: Zuckerberg’s charity and profit

Despite searching questions being raised on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to give away 99% of his $45 billion wealth to charity, there is ground to celebrate the culture of giving that it boosts.

Chennai flood aid shows the power of tagging and social graph

As floods ravaged Chennai last week, throwing the city of 4.9 million into turmoil, communications were among the worst hit.

Our policy needs to break from the past to build jobs for the future

If India wants its abilities to dovetail with the needs of the market, it will have to mould itself in line with the dynamic present, not the static past.

India’s government employees need a real HR department

Government servants are facing increasing public scrutiny – through everything from public interest litigation (PIL) and right to information (RTI) to supervision by parliamentary panels and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (not to speak of rabid TV news channels).

Paris attacks show the good, bad and ugly of social media

Two faces of technology came to the surface on Saturday after Friday night’s bloody terrorist attacks in the French capital.

Social media, growth, electricity: More to Nitish win than caste math

Nitish Kumar’s Twitter handle was being handled by the AAP team guided by Prashant Kishor, who was a key brain behind Modi’s campaign in 2014 before jumping ship.

In Polaris sale, some national pride gets eroded

When US-based, Nasdaq-listed Virtusa Corp said last week that it would acquire a controlling 53% stake in Chennai-based Polaris Consulting & Services in a deal valued at around $350 million.

Why RBI’s move to allow NRIs in pension scheme is a smart idea

The Reserve Bank of India recently allowed non-resident Indians (NRIs) to subscribe to the National Pension Scheme (NPS) governed by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority.

Is Facebook trying to be India’s social OS?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg charmed India last week, seeming to do and say all the right things.

Why Bollywood and democracy are vital for India’s African safari

As leaders from as many as 54 African countries descend on New Delhi this week for the India-Africa Forum Summit, it is time to recall an old Hindi film song that lingers on Indian minds: “Woh tere pyar ka gham/Ik bahana tha sanam”.

Lessons to be learnt from Yahoo’s geek tragedy

Last week Yahoo, the original Internet portal, announced a search advertising deal with Google’s new parent, Alphabet Inc, building on an existing search partnership with Microsoft. It reported a fourth quarter revenue well below analyst estimates, raising questions on the performance of Marissa Mayer, who was poached from Google as a savior. The previous CEO, Carol Bartz, was unceremoniously fired by a phone call in 2011.

Two cheers for India’s startup boom, not three

India has emerged as the fastest growing startup hub worldwide, and is among the top five in the world with 4,200 startups estimated by end of 2015, up 40% over the previous year. As many as 80,000 jobs have been created in startups. As much as 72% of the founders are less than 35 years of age writes N Madhavan

Why we need to be kind to Uber and Ola

On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court ruled that it cannot allow taxis to operate in the national capital if they did not run on compressed natural gas (CNG).

Triple disruption: Infosys results show shake-up beyond numbers

The only way the company can stand out in a tough atmosphere is innovation.

India’s IT sector beats pessimists yet again

Was it not Mark Twain, who famously quipped: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”? I am reminded of that every time some pessimism surfaces on India’s information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) industry, which now employs close to 3.5 million people, and is India’s largest private sector employer.

Gandhi vs Gandhi: Why Swachh Bharat needs scavenger robots

In 1993 India passed a law that wanted demolition of all dry toilets. The law also banned manual scavenging. However, nearly 800,000 toilets in India were still cleaned manually, according to the 2011 census.We can now offer a 21st Century answer: robots.

Entrepreneur first, employee later: App startups may reverse rules

Time was when employees with years of experience founded startups and got rich selling stakes in IPOs or buyouts.

Volkswagen effect: Tough to end cyber patrols, encryption checks

The Indian government last week hastily withdrew the draft of a proposed encryption law that would have made citizens keep records of their encrypted messages for 90 days. But there is every indication that the quick response to privacy-loving activists on the Internet may just be a temporary reprieve .