What Can Orkut Do For Your Love Life?

When I was India in January 2007, my friend Akshay Chikodi asked me if was on Orkut. Frankly, he said, if you’re not on Orkut you don’t exist! So I created a profile on Orkut.

Couple things I don’t get about Orkut:

• What is it trying to be - a social networking tool? dating site? First thing you create a profile, you see this message - Next steps: Are you single? Tell everyone what you are looking for to get orkut working for you!
• It looks like a developer’s prototype when compared to Facebook.

But obviously, it is definitely doing a few things right. Read Gautam’s post here, Alexa ranks Orkut second in India followed by Yahoo. Orkut on last count had over 57.4M users, 15% = 8.6M Indians on Orkut. Even though it seems a bit on the higher side, it nevertheless is a great tool for people search. People search online is catching on and I don’t think there exists a better database of Indians in India and abroad - profiles with real names, pictures, bios & interests, life/event updates and a listing of every other friend on Orkut.

Some Orkut demographics from here:

• Over 15% of Orkut profiles are Indians (Brazil on top with 55%, followed by US with 19% users).

• 70% users are between ages 18-30.

• less than 20% are either married or committed (42% no answer, 36% single)

• 65% are on Orkut for friends, 18% for dating

The last bit of info is very interesting. Given that a majority of users are between ages 18-30 and single, is Orkut big enough to challenge the hugely successful martrimonial and dating websites? Same for Facebook, can it be the end of Match.com and the likes? Why pay a premium for meeting other singles if you can “poke” or “send teasers” for no charge? Or is that too creepy for some users?

Orkut’s help section on “What can Orkut do for your love life?” here. If you’re on Orkut, I’d love to hear from you.

Majority of NYC sewer manhole covers “Made in India”

For all those proud New Yorkers that claim to know every bit about the city history, I can almost guarantee a good bar conversation. Here’s how it usually goes:

Q: How many years have you lived in the city?

A: Over 5 years

Q: How many miles do you walk each day?

A: About a mile or two

Q: Did you know a majority of NYC sewer manhole covers are imported from India?

A: No way! You’ve gotta be kidding me! Did this just happen?

Most of New York City’s 600,000 manhole covers and the many hundreds of thousands all over the US come from India. And foundries in and around Kolkata claim a big chunk of that business. Indian companies began supplying manhole and sewer access covers to the US almost four decades ago. But in recent times their business has gone up manifold as they charge only a third of what US makers demand for the same work.

Read more here and here.

How much can you hate?

I watched Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday a couple months back, and I’ve been wanting to write about it. Kudos to Anurag for making this gutsy movie. The movie has been reviewed by many, so I really have nothing to add in that space. But I’ll say this - if you watched the movie and didn’t feel a sense of renewed patriotism and a rush of adrenaline, there’s something wrong with you!

I couldn’t but wonder if there’s anything I could personally do to bring justice to Mumbai bomb blast victims. If nothing else, create an online site with a “hate meter” that encourages users to vote for the most hated person. And take it a step further and attach a utility to that hatred, e.g. I’d say Dawood Ibrahim in jail is worth a $1000 to me personally. A few thousand participants and now you’re talking. I even found a site that asks its users “How much do you hate this Tory”?

So why didn’t I work on the idea? A couple days later, the rush of adrenaline was gone. That kind of hatred is impulsive and short-lived, not sustainable. If it were sustainable, I’d be one of those people blowing buildings and market places.

Imagine India: Macy’s brings Lord Ganesha to SFO

Walking around Union Square in San Francisco, I was surprised to see a huge Lord Ganesha sitting on top of the Macy’s sign. Apparently, the SFO Union Square Macy’s has a flower show every year. The theme for their 61st annual Flower show was “Imagine India”.

They got it mostly right - 20 feet Ganesha in front, windows decorated, lots of silk and Indian cotton apparels in the store, and of course the Indian tricolor fluttering on top of the store. You wonder what’s the business incentive - it wasn’t additional foot traffic. Cultural capital, maybe?

India Unleashed 2007

Notes from the The South Asian Business Association (SABA) conference at Columbia University:

India shining:

• 50% of India’s population is under 30 years old
• India #1 in milk production and #2 in fruit & veg production
• Hindalco - World’s #1 Aluminium producer
• Mittal - World’s #1 Steel producer
• Reliance invests 22M in Chevron, Dow Chemicals and few other US based companies

Challenges facing India:

• Bringing 600M non-urban population into the mainstream
• Building infrastructure - 350B dollars invested
• Power Crisis - the culture of “free power” has to go
• Water shortage
• 50% illiteracy in Bihar & UP
• 5.7M HIV infected (projected: 50M deaths/year by 2050)
• Education & Health - address social infrastructure problems
• Agricultural productivity and inefficient supply chain - new retail chains like Reliance Fresh & Bharati-Walmart should help eliminate inefficiencies in raw produce procurement from farmers
• Nuclear threat and inflammation a huge threat (India’s nuclear weapons capability annual expenses = 0.5% of GDP - Amartya Sen in The Argumentative Indian)

Arun Shourie, former Disinvestment Minister and former editor of Indian Express, emphasized that every Indian is a reflection of India; non-Indians look at us and develop an impression of India and Indians. On a lighter note (joked Shashi Tharoor), don’t be alarmed if an American walks up to you with a broken laptop at the airport.

• Economy steadily growing 9% YOY
• Exports growing 23% every year
• Forex Reserves touch 200B
• Remittances into India 24M/year
• 6M new mobile subscribers/month

But then…

• 98% of parliamentarians voted on minority vote
• 60% voted into parliament by less than 40% voter turnout

Shourie’s Quote of the Day: While India is not the land of snake charmers anymore, we also can charm snakes.

Shashi Tharoor stressed upon the significance of nation’s “soft power” - the ability to influence or persuade other nations without military power. Soft power could be derived from spreading culture and awareness (Bollywood and tourism), political values (biggest democracy and secular governing body) and foreign policy (credibility).

Move over “melting pots” and “salad bowl”, the thali is here.  Tharoor used the thali as an analogy for Indian diversity - assorted platter, yet each its own.