I have been a bit pre-occupied, with lots happening in my life over the last fortnight, and hence very short intros/ comments on this week's stories.

I will try and get back to my posts soon:

1. Yesterday was the day - The Times of India launches its Chennai edition.Sans Serif blog discusses the upcoming battle of giants in Chennai - The Hindu versus The Times of India. These media wars are always fun for the readers; for the participants however, it's rush of adrenaline and ruthless games. Is The Hindu cut for what it takes? Indian Express is getting ready for it too.
   
   Also, the question whether "conservative Chennai" is going to accept Times, is redundant. If Times has chosen to go there, it ain't that conservative, anymore, is my assessment. Times does its research well. For those of you to who it matters, I started my media career with TOI- that was nearly 14 years ago - but read HT and Mint as my daily staples now :).

   
   Read the piece here.

2. Raising money is relatively easy for Indian entrepreneurs today, but getting the 'right investor' and advisory board on board can be the difference between success and failure - it may not, however, be the easiest.

   Read these posts: Hand-picking your board by Vijay Anand; Entrepreneurs : Do a quality check on VCs before you hire them by Ashish.

3. I fell in love with the Sumo Grande the moment I saw it at the Auto Expo, earlier this year. The problem however is... when you try to be something to everyone, you sometimes end up pleasing no one. The post sums up the story beautifully so I won't even attempt going there just now, but I can't resist the comment on the "girl in sport car trying maneuvers to cross paths with good looking guy driving the Sumo Grande ad". Sigh, the storyline is stale, the child popping up at the end sure makes the family guy point but the 'disgust' in the woman's eye couldn't have been the desired emotion. Or, am I the only one who interpreted it as 'disgust'. There are, am sure better ways to sell it to the family guy. Want me to tell you how??? These days, I don't give advice unless we've been paid by the brand in question to do so ;)

   Having said all this, I would still buy Sumo Grande.
   
   Read this brilliant piece here.

4. I like how Jinal Shah's mind works. Here, she beautifully classifies online information into neat categories : organised and chaotic and wonders if there is a way to make gainful use of all this formation that is available to us.

   Read the piece here.

Please do comment on the respective blogs and of course share your thoughts here.

Other blogs where you can find this series posted are: Gautam Ghosh - Management Consultant; Gaurav - Gauravonomics; Palin - IndiaPRBlog; Kiruba - Kiruba.com;Ranjan - Ranjan 2.01

I missed posting 'Edition 2' last week due to family commitments, the series continues.

Before that, however, I must mention that I had NOTHING to do with 2 posts that the group has selected and can be linked back to me - one was written by me on this blog (Repositioning Bacteria) the other one, written by Kamla Bhatt, quotes me a few places. It's a little awkward for me to do this.

This week's stories from Indian business blogs, sans my own:

1. Drawing parallels between driving environment on Indian/ Overseas roads, Vijay Anand of Proto.in highlights different circumstances that an Indian entrepreneur likely faces vis-a-vis global peers and urges them to "Think in Systems".

   
   "...a good Indian driver not only needs to follow his own rules, he also needs to understand that when the rules of the system around him changes,
   he needs to adapt and often within a blink of an eye. It is that kind of thinking that is required when you build a product, a team, a company and look into your markets." he says.

   It was partly based on readings like this and my own experiences, looking at Indian start-ups that I shared this morning's business proposal for start-ups.

   Read the piece here.

2. Rising inflation in food prices is suddenly making everyone sit up and take note of what's being said for a bit now: everything is not hunky dory with the bio fuel story. Here is a piece by Atunu Day that explains the Dot-Corn Bubble. How easy is it going to be undo the damage? How much time before we see change? Crop patterns take time to change. We are far luckier in India, but not untouched by global economy.

   
   Read the piece here.

3. Sudhakar Ram, Managing Director, Mastek presents the case/ face of the Indian IT industry, going forward in his piece "Wave 3 of Indian Outsourcing". With India reaching the peak of Wave 2 on the classic S curve, the need is to go after Wave 3 work - strategic, value added, non-linear.

   Smaller organisations sometimes prove to be more nimble in identifying market shifts and go after the piece sooner. What do you think?
   
   Read the piece here.

4. Kamla Bhatt, who hosts the very popular Kamla Bhatt Show, and is a researcher and technology trend watcher by profession, says "A different blogosphere in India" and wondering about the laggard ways of corporate blogging in India asks a pertinent question "Could it be that the profile and demographics of the Indian workplace requires a different approach?" I agree with her and believe that social media needs of a brand and a corporate differ from each other anyway and then of course each brand and organisation needs a solution specific to THEIR need.

   
   Read the piece here.

Go on, please do comment on the respective blogs and of course share your thoughts here.

Other blogs where you can find this series posted are: Gautam Ghosh - Management Consultant; Gaurav - Gauravonomics; Palin - IndiaPRBlog; Kiruba - Kiruba.com;Ranjan - Ranjan 2.01

However, when Gaurav Mishra reached out with a suggestions on a weekly digest of best business blog posts from India, I decided to go along. I was clear that I didn't want this to become a link exchange programme, that there should be rigor put into what goes here, so it doesn't become a 'weakly list' instead of a weekly list.

We discussed my suggestion of all contributors (five at the moment - read ahead) aggregating links over the week and then choosing 3-5 of our respective favourites and sharing them with readers of our blogs. Finally I have decided to go with the suggestion that all of us will agree on 3-5 select links for the week and share those, with our unique take and perspective on each.

Why the same? There is just one convincing answer = 360 degrees. With our respective force behind a limited number of blogs, we should be able to make some favourable difference towards the traffic - and rankings? - of those we pick.

Like I mentioned earlier, there are (updated) 6 contributors at the moment (including me). Alphabetically:

1. Gautam Ghosh: Is a human resources (HR) professional and a veteran business blogger. You can find him here.
2. Gaurav Mishra : Who describes himself as the guy who sells cars for a living and blogs about marketing, technology and social media otherwise. You can find him on Gauravonomics."
3. Palin Ningthoujam : Public Relations professional and publisher of the ever-popular IndiaPR Blog and Social Media Munching.
4. Ranjan Varma: Happy to make your acquaintance Ranjan. He writes Personal Finance 2.01 - a weekly and has published an eBook.
5. Veer Chand Bothra: Is VP with NetCore Solutions and writes Mobile Pundit.

I hope this becomes a successful experiment.

Coming to the real story. Here are the 5 stories from Indian business blogs that we picked:

1. Rashmi Bansal of Youth Curry interviews the four entrepreneurs behind CMYK Health Boutique: Very interesting name - for the uninitiated, C=cyan,M=magenta,Y=yellow and K=black. In print technology, all colours are derived from a combination of these 4 colours. Their product has an equally interesting name - Four Fountains Spa.

   Entrepreneurial culture has taken roots in the country, and relatively younger people are quitting cushy jobs to start their own ventures. This is one such story, only it isn't another dot com or web 2.0 virtual business - this one's inspired by Ayush and others (psst - hope you have looked at Kaya Skin Clinic too. They know what they are doing). What catches my attention about many start-ups is that they aren't focused on their communication that well.

2. Why start-ups need workaholics: Was that a question? It's a Sunday and I have worked most day - I knew I would be writing this post later ;) - A client of ours, big business in start-up mode, replies to mails at 1.23 a.m. Either your are driven by what you want to do, or you are best placed in a job. Not that you don't have to slog there either :). Anyway, read these posts that came as reactions to Jason Calacanis' (Mahalo.com)original post - how to save money running a start-up.

   Here we go: Venturewoods; Pluggd.in; Start Up Dunia; Aditya Mishra

3. Namrata Balwani's post on the new look AlooTechie on what ails online advertising in India - main kuch nahin kahunga - I do that all the time. It's interesting that no one still talks engagement, or conversations, the focus is till on demographics and psychographics and not on 'tribes by choice' Go read!
4. Ajay Shah's post on 'waiver of mass debt (WMD)': India has for forever had a controversial agriculture policy and its recent waiver of Rs. 60,000 crores is no different, with many claiming it was the only way to give the sector another opportunity OR alternately, like this one does, claiming it be designed to benefit the large commercial farmers. What do you think?
5. Manoj Dawane, Mauj Mobile, talks about the future of Indian mobile VAS industry, also on AlooTechie. Did I every tell you that I was writing concepts for IVR based services, as early as 1997 and even conceived a 'dial a song' back then.

Comments are now open. Go ahead, make my day!