Archive for October, 2010



After 3 Years In Stealth And $20 Million Raised, Aro Mobile Shows Some Skin — Some Android Skin. And We Have Invites.

Wednesday 27 October 2010 @ 4:18 pm

Yesterday, both the New York Times and Robert Scoble unveiled publicly for the first time what a company called Kiha Software has been working on for about three years in stealth now: a piece of software called Aro Mobile. With $20 million in backing from the likes of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, they’re obviously getting a lot of buzz. And that should continue when they fully show the system off in a few weeks at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. But for now we have a video sneak peak of it in action, and 1,000 exclusive beta invites for TechCrunch readers to try out the software themselves.

So what is Aro? Currently, it’s a piece of software that runs on top of Google’s mobile Android OS. But it’s not just another layer like some of those awful skins that OEMs design for Android. Instead, it weaves itself into the OS and uses AI and machine intelligence to make sense of what you’re doing with your phone. It natively ties into your email, phone, calendar, address book, and browser to make them potentially much more useful to you when you’re on the go.

Maybe someone sent you an email mentioning an address, the Aro system can recognize that and with the click of a button give you all kinds of actions you can do with it. The same is true with names — of both people and companies. And dozens of other things.

But it really is one of those things that’s better when you see it in action. So watch the videos below. And if you’re interested in signing up to test it out, use this link. The first 1,000 people who do will get priority access to the beta program (though it is still rolling out in waves as they ramp up).






Forbes India profile of Rupa Publications

Wednesday 27 October 2010 @ 1:34 am
From the http://business.in.com/article/work-in-progress/rupa-the-paper-tiger/17642/1">profile of India's largest publisher of English books, which releases over 250 titles a year.But it was in 2004 that Rupa really hit it big with Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone. The book rewrote the rules of the publishing industry in India. An English book was considered a bestseller if it sold 10,000



AZB & Partners, Ernst & Young Continue to Top 2010 League Tables

Thursday 21 October 2010 @ 11:57 pm

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Business Standard Interview with Renuka Ramnath

Wednesday 20 October 2010 @ 4:01 am
As part of its "Lunch with BS" series, Business Standard has an interview with Renuka Ramnath of Multiples Alternate Asset Management....ICICI Venture was also a trendsetter under Ramnath who invested in emerging sectors such as retail, biotech, media and aviation much ahead of others and pushed the firm from just venture funding to late-stage investing and even buyouts. She was also credited



M&A activity increases 72% during the 9 months ended Sep 2010

Thursday 7 October 2010 @ 2:58 am
During the nine months ended September 2010, Indian companies were involved in a total of 474 M&A deals, up 72% from the same period in 2009, according to a study by Venture Intelligence (http://www.ventureintelligence.in), a research service focused on Private Equity and M&A transaction activity in India. The median deal value during the first nine months of 2010 (for the 206 deals which had