Author: Rahul

Several startups want to bring higher education into the Internet age. First, make courseware for higher education available online. Then, provide the supporting infrastructure that a physical university provides: teachers, peers, evaluation of competency and, finally, accreditation.

Today, we’ve gone from scarcity of knowledge to unimaginable abundance. It’s only natural that these new, rapidly evolving information technologies would convene new communities of scholars, both inside and outside existing institutions. The string-quartet model of education is no longer sustainable. The university of the future can’t be far away.

My first exposure to such efforts was a few years ago when MIT began to make a lot of its educational material online through its OpenCourseWare program. I attempted to take a course or two, but without firm targets, guidance and the pressure of evaluation, it only resulted in a few weeks of desultory study. Clearly, students need something more.

It seems (from the article at least) that each startup seems to favour tackling one particular aspect of this problem – one focuses on aggregating educational content, another on providing “social inrfastructure”, a third on accreditation.

BusinessWeek interviews Nokia’s CEO on his India strategy:

How important are the emerging markets for Nokia’s growth today?

They are very important. But it’s key to understand here that India is quite a versatile market when it comes to a mobile device. The Nokia N-series and E-series generate 25% of our sales in India, and those are the mid-tier and high-end devices. So you can’t say that it’s an entry market where just low-end phones are sold.

Penetration is important in India, where you get the first-time mobile-phone user. But at the same time, there’s a big replacement and upgrading market moving toward more sophisticated phones. When it comes to software, it depends on what kind of phones are sold here. It’s a different entry market where software is important—for example, Internet browsing through mobile phones. India is an advanced market in many ways, and I can’t classify it as an entry market or an emerging market.

The answer, I think, lies in understanding the differing motivations of young risk seekers in India and in the west. In my experience, young entrepreneurs in India don’t start companies to get rich – the financial motivation is very much secondary to the desire to work for oneself. This means stock options – the primary means of motivating people at startups – are almost worthless to the would-be Indian startup employee. If I have to work for someone else, the reasoning goes, I might as well continue working at Infosys.

BusinessWeek’s latest issue tries to comprehend the conundrum that India is.

Basab Pradhan on why tech entrepreneurs in India who target the US market have problems getting funding from US-based VCs:

“VCs like to keep the management of their investee companies as close as possible to where they are. Sequoia, I believe, doesn’t invest in companies that aren’t in or won’t move to the Bay Area. What this means is that entrepreneurs in India don’t have access to VCs in the US. They will typically have to go to VCs in India. However, out of these Indian VCs, only some will have the experience in developed markets that is necessary to evaluate an investment opportunity. And those few that do, because they just moved into India, will be ill placed to help their investee companies – no networks in India and too far away from the US to actively help in making connections there.”

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a Korean.

The Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency is an Egyptian.

The next head of the International Energy Agency will be Japanese.

The Director-General-elect of the World Health Organization is Chinese.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development is Thai.

International Policy, Energy, Trade and Health. All headed by Asians. Asian Century indeed.

Gautam Chikermane argues for better financial literacy among India’s students. Thought-provoking, when you consider the implication this has for our next generation. Some snippets:

But the next generation in schools will not have any such false nets to fall on. It is for them that we need to make this investment in financial literacy — today. An investment in teachers, who first need to understand their own finances and then transmit this knowledge and confidence to deal with money to their students.

When they graduate with degrees in engineering, management or philosophy, join the workforce as entrepreneurs, professionals or civil servants, our children will be better able to understand and work with money. They will be more comfortable with equity risk, for instance, and generate more wealth to finance their retirements. They will possibly not fall into the credit trap that students in the West are so prone to — most of them graduate with huge debts.

It is basically an understanding of:
… Spending and debt as we increasingly take on debt to finance education, cars, houses; understanding credit as a financial tool, using mortgages and reverse mortgages….. ‘Situations’ — divorce, disabilities, job loss, inheritance… Transferring wealth to the next generation.