Ecommerce
10th March 1999
Jayanta @in.ibm.com
future is Supply chain management, e-business and back to Main Frame
technology.......serious I indeed am!!!!!!!
Have a Good Day
Jayanta (IBM India)
Ph: (022) 820 0463/4/6, 0454/6/7(O), (079) 6742325 (R), (Mobile): 98201
01165, e-mail : [email protected]
"...some men see things as they are and ask "WHY" ; I dream things that
never were and ask "WHY NOT"
11th March 1999
Nikunj Mittal @email.com
Dear Members,
I am in total agreement that Ecommerce is going to be the "IN" thing in the
very near future. As small and medium scale companies would not have the
kind of budget required to setup the infrastructure to support Ecommerce
transactions, a very good business opportunity should arise of providing
this solution to the corporates.
However, companies which are already into web page designing / hosting have
an advantage over new comers into the Ecommerce field as they alreqdy have
a listof clients who will get back to them if they want their sites to be
ecommerce - enabled.
As many of you will be knowing, the National Task Force on IT has already
framed Cyberlaws for conducting commercial transactions over the net in
India and it is expected to be tabled and passed very soon in the
parliament. Once this happens, this field should really open up. I am
myself contemplating launching myself into business by setting up a company
for Ecommerce and for this reason I have been conducting research on this
for the last 2-3 months now.
Kindly offer your views and let us put up a lively discussion on this topic
which, as per estimates, will completely revolutionize the way in which
businesses conduct themselves.
Nikunj
12th March 1999
Devang Shah @giasbm01.vsnl.net.in
Why back to mainframe?
Devang
12th March 1999
Jayanta @in.ibm.com
Hello all concerned,
if my interpretation is not incorrect.....friend Nikunj, while agreeing to
the fact that e-commerce is the "IN" thing but he seems to have already
given some bonus points to the Web Page designers.... well with all due
respect to that indispensible segment of the IT industry, I would like to
opine that e - business is not just Web Page Designing but encompass a lot,
lot more..... to ellucidate a few such items that my limited repository
hold :
- ever superior Fire Wall Technology
- better and better authentication tools (one e.g. is for Credit Card
usage and prevent misusages)
- supply chain management on the Web
- anti - piracy and licencing tools ( with the emergence of
books/music/movies on the net )
- robust machines having one of the many features being 60sec x 60
min x 24 hrs x 356 days x infinite uptime ( I mean machine
that will never go down .... in other words Redundent Systems) i.e. ' 0 '
downtime.
Hope here too the Indian S/W industry shows the same fleetfootedness,
efficiency and originality in offering solutions to the above mentioned
segments .... as has been the case in the recent past and as is the case
today. And the USP of " cheap technical manpower " will not meet the
criteria.
What we will need are the traits found in Vinod Dham ( sound knowledge in
chip design and architecture ), Bill Gates ( for the shrewd business
accumen ), Watson Jr. ( for sheer dedication, sincerity and forthsight/
premonitions) and Louis Gerstner ( guts, audacity, self confidence
and energy)
Please be informed that the opinions expressed are my own and need not be
accepted/appreciated by one/all........
Regards and Good Day
Jayanta Deb
Ph: (022) 820 0463/4/6, 0454/6/7(O), (Mobile): 98201 01165, e-mail :
[email protected]
"........... WHY BUY A PRODUCT WHEN IT TAKES FIVE HUNDRED
FLUSHES TO GET RID OF IT ?????............"
13th March 1999
Vikram Bhalchandra @ril.com
Dear jayanta,
Would like to get some basic funda's on e-commerce in terms of what are
the banking , monetary etc arrangements that we can actually have in India
and does anyone here operate an e-commerce web site commercially.
Would appreciate if you send in some more details as our company is planing
some forays in this area
Thanks
14h March 1999
Nikunj Mittal @email.com
Dear Mr. Jayanta,
I am in complete agreement with you on the fact that developing and
delivering quality ecommerce solutions require a lot of other inputs than
just efficient web designing. However, if you would kindly refer back to my
mail, I had stated it just gives the web designing companies an extra march
not that they are the only ones who can do it.
However, when I wanted to start a business of my own in this particular
sector, I was informed about some barriers to entry, atleast here in the
East (Calcutta) with Satyam, Global Telesystems, IBM (in tie - up with Web
Development Company) and Vedika Software have already approached and
secured the contracts of many companies just awaiting for the cyber laws to
be passed.
I would like to thank you for your views as they have certainly gone a long
way in helping me understand Ecommerce better.
Nikunj
14th March 1999
Manish @del2.vsnl.net.in
Hi,
>I am in total agreement that Ecommerce is going to be the "IN" thing in
>the
yes, but in India, many companies are still taking time to adopt it. can
anyone give examples of companies who have significantly benefited from
it?
>As many of you will be knowing, the National Task Force on IT has already
>framed Cyberlaws for conducting commercial transactions over the net in
not everyone is waiting for this. a few companies in India have already
implemented their plans i.e. www.rediff.com
If you look around the net, you will find many site offering e-commerce
solutions for a fee or free. e-commerce has a broad definition and here
is one of them:
"In short, the electronic commerce revolution is in its effects on
processes. Process-oriented definition of electronic commerce offers a
broader view of what electronic commerce is. Within-business processes
(e.g. manufacturing, inventorying, corporate financial management,
operation), and business-to-business processes (e.g. supply-chain
management, bidding) are affected by the same technology and network as
are business-to-consumer processes. Even government functions, education,
social and political processes undergo changes."
Regards
Manish
16th March 1999
Jayanta @in.ibm.com
Cause friends from Intel/Microsoft never had and nor do I foresee inthe
next 5 years to comeout with such systems. Online banking, online
ticketing, online audio/video download, e-business, video on demand and the
mamoth database systems can be managed by such machines only. At least my
Win98 crashes/hangs when I open more tthan two applications (lets not
confine ourselves to word processor/ spreadsheet and accounting software
only, please), forget them handling 300,000,000,000,000 hits in a month
just on one popular Websites. Is Bill listening. (please note that I mean
no offence towards him. He is a very good and shrewd business man, and I
respect him for that)
Please remember, BSE, NSDL, the MNC Banks, some private Banks, Airline
Booking, Corrier Companies, etc are providing you online service round
the clock because of the ever faithful and fail proof highend systems
(S/390, highend As/400 (both from IBM) and highend HP systems, etc)
based not on Wintel combo but our faithful UNIX/RISC combo. And with
e-commerce having already become a habit in the West, where is the
alternative. That is why is said " Mainframes"
Regards and Good Day
Ph: (022) 820 0463/4/6, 0454/6/7(O), (079) 6742325 (R), (Mobile): 98201
01165, e-mail : [email protected]
"........... WHY BUY A PRODUCT WHEN IT TAKES FIVE HUNDRED
FLUSHES TO GET RID OF IT ?????............"
22nd March 1999
Srinath Srinivasa" @usa.net
Adding more to the e-commerce thread...
Somebody had pointed out many factors which affect e-commerce over and
above web page design.
Here's one more factor. If you observe conventional commerce between India
and the first world-- one factor stands out strikingly-- infrastructure.
The same holds true in ecommerce also. Telephones, emails and the internet
usage is still to achieve any observable dent among the Indian population.
One possible avenue for really picking on ecommerce is to somehow increase
these infrastructures. In US as in Europe, most infrastructural projects
have been undertaken by large companies or coalitions of companies.
Probably the same could be carried out in India too.
Also, a thumb rule when confronted with inadequate resources is that of
sharing of resources. In this context, the "info kiosk" idea portrayed by
the information technology task force may be extremely useful. Actually,
this provides us another opportunity to try out better paradigms for
managing transactions via ecommerce. One simple way I can think of is to
introduce smart-cards like the telephone cards in use in most European and
US cities to pay for public telephones. In our case this can be used to
make a vareity of payments online from the info kiosks. This is much more
flexible and secure than credit card transactions. For instance, one could
just buy a smart card for a specified price and go on using it until it
exhausts its value. So you are not worried about revealing confedential
information over the net, nor are you worried about undue liabilities.
I don't know how it is presently, but can infrastructures for ecommerce--
like cables, vsats, microwaves,etc., be setup by private companies? Or is
it still in the purview of the government to set these up?
I sometimes envisage a large intranet style network for a city being setup
by a group of companies, which could open up a virtual marketplace within
the city. A number of servers could serve this intranet and a number of
clients including info kiosks, PCs, set-top boxes(?), etc can connect to
these servers for various kinds of transactions. And some of the servers in
this intranet would be gateways to the internet. Essentially the above
achieves the following objectives--
* Firstly it would take away unnecessary traffic from being transmitted to
the internet and would serve in distributing the load (dynamically) on the
internet gateways.
* Secondly it would encourage local businesses-- like local (and more
sophisticated) search engines, directories, encouragement of the use of
local languages, ...
* Thirdly the entire ecommerce can be managed like a company although, no
one company would have complete control of this marketplace
comments welcome,
srinath
28th March 1999
Vani Murarka @manaskriti.com
There is an article in the Business World issue of 22nd Feb - 6th March
- where it is reported that something like this is actually being tried
out by the government in Warana Nagar (a cluster of 70 villages) in
Maharashtra - and it seems promising at least for now - it has been
implemented in 40 villages right now.
Unfortuately, Business World does not have an online edition - or else
I could hunt out the URL for the article if it was there. Its a great
article by Vanita Kohli, with explanations also, as to why Warana was
chosen for this pilot project to try out the idea in the Information
Task Force.
A small excerpt from the article -
....... Each of the 70 information kiosks - equipped with uninterrupted
power systems - costs Rs. 50,000. There is also the cost of manning,
housing and maintaining the network. The Pune office of the National
Informatics Centre (NIC), the government's arm for bringing information
technologu to the public sector undertakings and ministries, is doing
the rest. It developed the software in Marathi, picked the hardware and
trained the 100 people who will man the 70 kiosks and the six business
IT centres. Since only 40 of the booths have been operational for the
last three months, "the real effect is yet to be felt," says Rajesh
Kale, business coordinator for the group.
But what's there has already made a difference to people's lives.
Consider, for instance, the radical effect it has had on Dhonduram Dadu
Kadam, 66-year-old sugarcane farmer and milk producer in Bohirewadi
village. Kadam sells cane to the sugar factory. It used to be a long
proces. He first had to take a sample of the cane to the factory. After
a couple of days he had to return there to find out when the factory
would send labourers to his field to cut and cart away the sugarcane.
He had to make another visit to find out the weight of the cane and yet
another trip to get the money.
Now, says Kadam: "All I have to do is come here and give my account
numbner and this man here can tell me when my cane is due for cutting."
After the cane is taken away, he can find out from the Internet kiosk
in his village itself (it is several miles away from the factory) the
weight of his cane, what he is being paid for it and so on. And he need
not go to the bank to find out if his money will be credited to his
account; he can find out that too from the kiosk itself.
When we visited the booth, Kadam had just received a printout that
showed that he had earned Rs 22,153 by selling 45 tonnes of cane, out
of which Rs 6,000 was deducted as cost of the fertilisers and seeds he
had taken from the sugar society. Another Rs 16,000 or so was debited
to Bank of Baroda, being repayment for a loan to buy a tractor last
year.
Though the printout shows zero credit against his name, Kadam is not
unduly worried. If he was, he would have used the grievance redressal
software. All he has to do is tell the booth operator that he wants to
file a complaint. The operator keys in the complaint and it goes
directly to the managing director or departmental heads of the
cooperative society. The complaints are answered through email and
received at the village kiosk. That incidentall fulfills the second aim
of the project: transparency. The first, efficiency, has already been
fulfilled; Dhonduram can keep tabs on the movement of milk and sugar
prices and make sure that a collection centre is not taking him for a
ride. Through the kiosks he also gets weather forecasts, veterinary
advice and his land records from the tehsil office........
Vani
_____________________________________________________________
Vani Murarka
Manaskriti Software Solutions http://www.manaskriti.com
Calcutta, India Ph: 91-33-4746625 / 4754838
- Customised Software Development -
- Website Development, Web Programming -
- Lyris List Hosting, Reselling & Consultancy -
_____________________________________________________________
29th March 1999
Srinath Srinivasa @usa.net
It is really great to hear that e-commerce is being addressed at more
fundamental levels. I don't have access to Business World from here, but
I'll try to ask my family in India to post the copy for me.
I have been asking questions about whether information age paradigms can
be used to address the copius lack of infrastructure in Indian cities.
Le me know what you think of this idea of a "meta" company called
"Citinet".
Citinet is a "meta" company-- meaning it is a company of companies.
Citinet is characterized by the following--
1. Citinet "centers" which are large physical buildings with office
space and trading centers where other companies or traders can setup
their offices or trading centers. Citinet centers are distributed
throughout the city in a planned strategic way.
2. Citinet centers are all connected with high bandwidth data links.
3. Each Citinet center forms a gateway for a local network consisting of
info-kiosks, home PCs, set-top boxes, mobile clients,...
4. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Citinet centers are also linked with a bus/shuttle
network for physical transportation of people and materials with
specific timings and schedules.
Citinet users can be of two types:
Individual users-- connect onto citinet through their home, info kiosk
or any other manner. They can use services provided by entrepreneurs on
citinet. If ever their transaction requires physical transportation of
some material, all they have to do is to go to the nearest citinet
center. Service providers can use the citinet shuttle service to obtain
their wares. And setting up of a new service on the citinet would be
much easier, because one does not have to worry about connectivity and
transportation. A service provider also would need to only approach
his/her nearest citinet center and create a mailbox to receive physical
wares for his/her service through the citinet network.
Corporate users-- can use citinet to distribute their offices and
coordinate among their branches. This would be especially useful for
service sector corporations like banks and insurance agents who have
branches distributed all over the city. Since a Citinet center is a
physical entity consisting of different companies in it, it would be
very beneficial for trading among the companies. Also the shuttle
service combined with the large bandwidth data links can also foster
many kinds of trading paradigms.
What do you think? :)
Say, I was just looking at the iinn posts that I had saved for one
reason or the other. Without doubt, iinn is one of the best mailing
lists I have ever been on! So many informative ideas and so friendly and
constructive discussions... Go IINN!
cheers!
srinath
1st April 1999
Vani Murarka @manaskriti.com
> Citinet is a "meta" company-- meaning it is a company of companies.
> Citinet is characterized by the following--
.
.
>
> What do you think? :)
>
As far as the idea of a city-wide data network / intranet is concerned -
that sure makes sense to me - which saves one from going onto the
internet bandwidth and brings the city together, improves the
availabity of local content, goods and services - but I am not too sure
that your corresponding large physical city centers / trading centers
is a good idea - why I feel that way I am not sitting to analyse right
now though - doesn't sound efficient and flexible. :)
France's Minitel did (does?) very much this did it not - I remember
hearing that after years of success they are now shelving this and
going for the internet - any details on this like - Are they (or have
they already) totally shelving Minitel or is there some co-existence
solution arrived at? What were the pros and cons of Minitel? etc.
Vani
_____________________________________________________________
Vani Murarka
Manaskriti Software Solutions http://www.manaskriti.com
Calcutta, India Ph: 91-33-4746625 / 4754838
- Customised Software Development -
- Website Development, Web Programming -
- Lyris List Hosting, Reselling & Consultancy -
_____________________________________________________________
1st April 1999
Satish Hulyalkar @vsnl.com
> As far as the idea of a city-wide data network / intranet is concerned -
> that sure makes sense to me - which saves one from going onto the
> internet bandwidth and brings the city together, improves the
> availability of local content, goods and services - but I am not too sure
> that your corresponding large physical city centers / trading centers
> is a good idea - why I feel that way I am not sitting to analyse right
> now though - doesn't sound efficient and flexible. :)
Every system has pluses and minus. The Internet has shown that one need not
limit to city or country boundaries. The range of products and services
available were limited by physical distribution and information also in non
internet days. With internet the information content component has changed.
Changing physical content to the level of info content may look impossible
for many but that's the challenge of e-commerce and management to see that
the physical content portion also attains the same efficiency of information
content. Man once thought that flying is impossible - look what's situation
today...
>
> France's Minitel did (does?) very much this did it not - I remember
> hearing that after years of success they are now shelving this and
> going for the internet - any details on this like - Are they (or have
> they already) totally shelving Minitel or is there some co-existence
> solution arrived at? What were the pros and cons of Minitel? etc.
Minitel is perfect model of e-commerce - only they did not coined the word.
Minitel might dye because it is closed network and Internet has done many
more things than what minitel has done.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Satish Hulyalkar
Consultant
Pune/India
Ph: +91-20-374343
Fx: +91-20-356297
mailto: [email protected]
2nd April 1999
Srinath Srinivasa @usa.net
> As far as the idea of a city-wide data network / intranet is concerned -
> that sure makes sense to me - which saves one from going onto the
> internet bandwidth and brings the city together, improves the
> availabity of local content, goods and services - but I am not too sure
> that your corresponding large physical city centers / trading centers is
> a good idea - why I feel that way I am not sitting to analyse right now
> though - doesn't sound efficient and flexible. :)
Well, a citinet "center" is actually a hypothetical entity. It only
represents a hub which encapsulates businesses within a physical
proximity; and connects with other hubs with e- and mass transport links.
Practically speaking, I would envisage a city to be divided into
different clusters based on commercial activity and a citinet center to be
located ergonomically inside every cluster. These centers cater to local
networking needs and connect to other centers with high speed data and
reliable physical transport links.
As you can see, the idea portrayed here is not e-commerce as an end in
itself. Rather, to use e-commerce to augment existing commerce. We have no
doubt seen many statements about the lack of mass transport
infrastructures in cities. (I think in the IfI database there are atleast
four ideas which portray the need for mass transport systems). But then,
our demands on the transport infrastructure is growing rapidly and in a
chaotic manner. Given that infrastructural projects (Prof Krishna Palepu
of Harvard calls them "institutional context") are massive ones, we cannot
hope for them to keep up with the demands. If we add more busses to a city
for example, we might only end up clogging the streets further.
Citinet's idea is to address the problem at the very source of most of the
dynamics of an entity like a city-- its commerce. Here there is not only
an infrastructure aspect (data and transport network), but also a
structural attractor for its usage.
One more point I wanted to make is that, infrastructure or institutional
context are "meta" entities-- usually in the purview of the state.
"Usually" because, it doesn't necessarily have to be. While I am at it,
let me also address the related issue of pollution and whether we should
"protest" against it-- since even that is a meta entity.
Look at these deductions--
1. We have weak institutional context
2. Institutional context is usually in the purview of state
3. When we protest against pollution for example, we hence are demanding
for *more* governmental interference, when free systems with minimal
interference have shown to be more agile and adaptive to totalitarian
systems.
Here's the paradox-- we seem to be demanding for more and less
governmental interference at the same time! The only way I see out of this
paradox is of collaboration.
While competition is glorified as something which increases quality, a
free system does not consist of only competition. There is a lot of
collaboration that goes on-- which essentially sets the ground for
competition.
Recently when I was in Bangalore, one of my friends was telling how his
company introduced bus service for its employees, but which have also
effectively imposed a timings on the office, from the flexible timings
which they had earlier. I asked him why the company would not collaborate
with other similar companies and create a bus "network" for the combined
set of its employees, which can be made much more agile than a single bus
running at a specific time. He replied that the other companies were
"competitors" and there is a lot of potential for leakage if employees of
many companies travel together.
It was preposterous, I felt. Won't employees of different companies ever
meet outside? Won't employees have friends in other companies?
At another time, when I was studying for my masters, Mr Narayana Murthy of
Infosys had addressed the students. He was talking about how difficult it
is to create a brand equity on Wall St (which I heard recently that they
were successful at). Later there was a question from the audience as to
why Indian companies are not collaborating among themselves to create a
joint equity and jointly compete in the global market. His reply was
straightforward-- we don't have confidence among ourselves. Later some of
us were musing on how we have complete confidence in collaborating with a
foreign company which we have barely heard of, but close to nothing when
it comes to collaborating among ourselves.
Our main void is institutional context-- something which evolved in a
natural way in the first world during the industrial revolution. The
evolution that we see in India is not a natural one driven by demand and
supply. It is more like paradigms and artifacts from elsewhere being tried
out for size on India without recourse to ground realities. And hence I
feel that whatever efforts, be it e-commerce, or cars, or education or
whatever, would function in a severly hampered fashion-- if not completely
fail-- if their introduction is not backed by adequate research regarding
ground realities. I had put some similar thoughts about the Indian
"context"-- a systemic skew which hopefully can bring a large number of
disparities and conflicts that we see today under a single umbrella. I
think it should still be present here--
http://www.indiapolicy.org/ifi/ideas/indcon.htm
>
> France's Minitel did (does?) very much this did it not - I remember
> hearing that after years of success they are now shelving this and going
> for the internet - any details on this like - Are they (or have they
> already) totally shelving Minitel or is there some co-existence solution
> arrived at? What were the pros and cons of Minitel? etc.
I had read about Minitel way back in 1986. Recently, after internet's
onset, I had come across an ad which said that Minitel had all the
features of the internet and more much earlier. But I don't know what the
current status of Minitel is.
Best,
Srinath
--
Send in your ideas to address challenges of Indian life:
http://www.indiapolicy.org/ifi
