Jaman and lucarative world video segment

Om malik provides an introduction to jaman, which I was curious about (It is Informatica’s founder’s new company) . From the article:

“Everyone is focusing on that one square mile are in Hollywood,” says Dhillon — when there is a whole wide world whose content is in demand but is never distributed in the US. From French films to Bollywood potboilers, to the Kung Fu flicks from Hong Kong, the only place to buy (or rent) this content was ethnic grocery stores or small specialist video rental shops.

That is true, it is really an interesting market, south asians are affluent, who are also great fans of the movies coming from the Indian subcontinent. It is not just the hindi movies that are popular here, but other regional language movies from India like Telugu and Tamil also very popular. In SF bay area, those small video rental shops do good business renting these movies.

So, in theory it sounds like a great idea, but I have my doubts on it’s practice. For one, those who throng these DVD corner shops, they want their movies NOW! It does not matter if it is a pirated copy or bootlegged one, it is just that they need to watch it that day. So, all these corner shops thrive because they “cater” to their customer’s need. That’s why even with the advent of NetFlix like sites, it is not very popular among the south east asians (living in metro areas like SF bay area), because legally speaking new movies cannot be made available on these sites. More over, technology still has not advanced to a stage where in you just sit in front of the TV and order a movie from jaman. So, instant gratification is a big part of movie renting. (see the InfoWeek Survey results)

I do see good potential with niche markets that are not properly served today, e.g: a desi doctor living in a rural region of US wants to watch a movie, he might find this kind of distribution very interesting. But, then again, he is not techi :-(. Also, there are some regional languages that are not well served by these “Desi DVD” shops, e.g: I would like to watch Kannada movies, which are not distributed by these shops. So, can I hope of getting it through these online distribution channel? Not sure, because Kannada movies are doomed because the producers and distributors of those movies are overly worried about piracy that they dont allow reproduction into DVD for good year or so. That kills the interest, you’d have forgotten and there is no buzz about it. So, can Jaman cut deal with these producers from niche market (who are not usually well organized and little arrogant serving niche markets)? Thats a big question, IMO.

Majority of south asians are penny pinchers, dont get me wrong. It is just that most of us came into this country not much in our pockets, so we are always looking at the cost of each service we use, if the desi dvd store gives for $1 a day rental, we are more than happy to get it from him rather than go through the ordeal of going online and downloading the software (and it’s associated bugs ) and the movie. Of course, as people start earning more, they do loosen up a bit, start thinking about quality and legality, but for a online market place to succeed, it needs the mass market.

At the end of the day, no new technology or methods are accepted readily, nay sayers like me are plenty and I will be happy to eat crow when Jaman becomes success. Because, I will be happy to watch a good quality movie that is hard to find in the corner dvd stores.

Good luck to Gaurav and his team.

(Over) Dependency on technology and gadgets

Michael Parekh writes on the assumptions about gadgets or technology and why it may not necessarily help all the time. He writes:

I’ll admit that in recent years, I’ve become probably overly dependent on GPS technologies while driving and blindly trust the “shortest route” offered.

That brings up one thing which I always wonder, i.e: As technology becomes more handy and affordable, we tend to forget the older ways of doing things. Today, when someone offers us the directions we say that we feel that why take the hassel of writing it down, instead we just take the address and say we’ll google it up or Yahoo! it. We are right in a way because, we think that it is convenient for both.

My friend who had come from India for short duration had rented a car that had GPS, since that was his first exposure to US driving, for him only way to reach his destination was through GPS, if some one gave directions, he insisted that he wanted the “address” only not directions. In essense, he could not really translate the directions people give into driving. Once it lead to a funny moment when the other person who was trying to give him directions told him that he’d rather just accompany him rather than search and give him address (because he did not know the exact address and the destination they were looking for was just couple of blocks away) .

While I was growing up in India, no one used maps, if you are going to some place in rural area, all you knew was the village name, some fork points (e.g: left after “15″th mile/km stone or right just before a some temple etc). Then you depended on cowherds, who are always try to be helpful (whether they know or not, they’ll suggest you something ;-). It was also true that you’d have to open up conversation with those cowherds or person who is giving the direction on whom you are visiting and what purpose. It looks very offending now, but it is pretty normal for people to ask where and why kind of questions. Also, they’d give out some information about the person you are visiting, which may be useful for you

When I came to US in 1992, I had hard time understanding the directions someone gives (stay to your left on the exit ramp, take the left in the exit fork, go north of some road etc), first of all I was new to the accent and also to Highway system, secondly north/south is strange because some stretch of the highway that says north and south actually was running east to west. But slowly I got used to the directions, then came web, where just provide address for point a and b, voila, you got the direction. Now, the GPS, where in you are relived of even looking up in the web. What I really wonder is for the next generation… will it be that they’d (majority) forget the basics of map reading? Hope I am wrong !!

Investments

I look out for investments on the “value” side (who doesn’t). However, when you look at huge success like Google. You feel that sometimes you need to take risk and bet on companies that can have huge growth potential. I usually try to stick to companies that I understand the best, so most of my investment is in technology (mostly software related).

One stock that I am tracking now is Altair Nano technologies , I think interesting thing about this stock is it provides a new way to store energy (or that’s what I have understood about it). I still haven’t pulled the trigger because the p/s seems so high and not sure if the technology is robust enough to succeed in the long run. I will keep tracking this stock, when it gets more press or traction. I will jump in!

About me

Well… thats the question that bothered me while creating the blog. Should it be a full disclosure or hide under some screen name? I preferred the latter because it allows me to say what I like without really thinking about it’s repercussions. I am still nobody in this world, wanting to become somebody, but I don’t believe that I have the writing skills to get recognized through what I write in blog. So, till that time I will remain anonymous