Category — Telecommunications

Fellow IIT Alumnus and friend, Dr. “Desh” Deshpande, was just appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke.  The secretary said that the Council will support President Obama’s innovation strategy by helping to develop policies that foster entrepreneurship and identifying new ways to take great ideas from the lab to the marketplace to drive economic growth and create jobs.

In America since the Industrial Revolution, basic research in public and private sector research labs has spawned new technologies and inventions that led to new businesses. And those entrepreneurial businesses have been important drivers of job creation. Firms less than five years old have accounted for nearly all net new jobs in America over the last 30 years. Yet, as a share of gross domestic product, American federal investment in the physical sciences and engineering research has dropped by half since 1970.

Readers of this blog, know of my commitment to global innovation and my firm’s support of accelerating innovation by any means necessary. I was tickled to realize that I have personally met several member of the National Council in the last 11 years (see bolded names below).

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever met. He sold one of his early companies for over $2 billion and it eventually was absorbed by Lucent Technologies. I bought shares of his next public company, Sycamore Networks which had a spectacular IPO and great rise before it got caught in the telecom downturn in the early 2000′s .  Desh chairs  a charity that feeds 1.2  million schoolkids everyday in India. He’s been Chair of TiE Global in which role I saw him in my native town of Kanpur India, exhorting entrepreneurs. He is on the board of MIT and I saw him with President Susan Hockfeld on another trip to India. Desh is a member of the Pan IIT Leadership Circle, where he lends his vision to my colleagues.

Innovation in the U.S. today is carried forward not by Americans alone but also by visionary internationals like Dr. Deshpande.

Domestic cellular operators bid over $15 billion in a windfall to the Indian goverment’s auction of 3G spectrum. Analysts had only expected about $7 billion but the intense competition among Reliance Telecom, Bharti Airtel, and Aircell caused the license price to go up in a manner reminiscent of the European and American 3G auction in years past.  The two carriers owned by the Indian government Two government-owned carriers, BSNL and MTNL, which launched 3G services last year, are required to  pay the same amount as the highest private bid in the regions where they were awarded licenses.

Big players such as  Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia should see “moderate” benefits from the Indian 3G roll out, programmable logic suppliers like Altera and Xilinx should also be positioned well to benefit from incremental regional equipment spending, according to Nishna Biyani, research analyst at Prabhudas Lilladher quoted in the EE Times.

India 3g map by carrier, from telecomtalk.info

A couple of years ago, I funded a short movie helmed by noted Hollywood director and my friend, Paul Maslak.  Paul has directed such stars as Kiefer Sutherland and Rebecca deMornay; and he was the ideal choice to demonstrate the verbal and non-verbal challenges for Americans doing business in India.

We have now made the movie available in two segments on YouTube. Make sure you watch both segments in sequence.

Segment 1:

Segment 2:

Telecom equipment maker ZTE, one of the bigger players in the global 3G space, with $9 billion in global sales, is ready to invest $100 million into its Indian subsidiary, ZTE India.

The funds are expected to come to ZTE’s Value Added Services Software Development Center in Bangalore which houses 140 technical staff and is integrated with ZTE’s global R&D network. ZTE employs 3,500 in India, distributed across Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata.

Zain(ZAIN.KW) and India’s Bharti Airtel (BRTI.BO) are expected to sign a letter of intent for the $9 billion African assets.

Bharti, India’s largest wireless carrier,  is in exclusive talks until March 25 to buy Zain’s African business, excluding Morocco and Sudan. It is the Indian firm’s third attempt at gaining a foothold in a continent that offers a last opportunity for major subscriber growth.

Bharti had said it will have clarity by next week on funding its offer for Zain’s operations in 15 African countries. The two firms have agreed on an enterprise value of $10.7 billion for the assets, including $1.7 billion of debt on Zain Africa’s books.