YoBykes Yo Speed Buying Experience

Disclousre: I got a discount on the product discussed in this post. Read on, you can too.
Couple of weeks back, I bought a electric 2-wheeler YoBykes’s YO Speed. It was an impulse purchase spanning 2-years. I bought it from the only YoBykes dealer in Chennai, Bue Smart Associates. They are at Chinna Malai( Little Mount), Sidapet on the small traffic-free road that connects the Chinna Malai Junction and the Velacheri Road.

Yo Speed Image from Vicky.in

There were two models available viz., YO Smart and YO Speed at the showroom. The Yo Smart is a 250Watt 25Kmph max speed suitable only for single person ride. Whereas Yo Speed is 750W, 45Kmph max speed with a max payload of 130Kg, suitable of 2 person rides. Choosing between them was easy: You cannot just explain at length, the electirc technology, wattage, and payload limitations when someone needing a urgent ride asks ‘Can you drop me at XYZ’. So my decision to go for the higher watt Yo Speed was straight forward.

There is not much rational to why I did not purchase 2 years back but ended up purchasing the electric bike this week. Here are some of the objections and rationalizations see-saw in the background of the purchase:

Objection: The unsealed lead acid-battery powering the electric bike is not sophisticated or hi-tech. The manufacturer need to put in more innovation/effort in making it light and pack more power.
Rationalization: The lead-acid battery is ubiquitous. I can find a service shop/dealer who knows the in-and-out of the battery very easily. In fact I can find 3 shops within 2-km of my house. Key components, skills being commodity is good thing! It takes a few generations of electric vehicle adopters to make sophisticated battery technologies ubiquitous. Let me do my bit to advance that evolution!

Objection: What if the dealer folds the business close the shop? What if the manufacturer stops production?
Rationalization: I’ve seen the dealer in operation for couple of years. I’ve even seen a few YOs at my neighborhood. If the dealer/manufacturer is in business for couple of years, they might as well be in business for couple of more year! The manufacturer is part of Electrotherm – a stable company with long cycle time business expereince.

Objection: Speed of 45Kmph max is too low.
Rationalization: I think I became older! I cant believe I’m accepting such speed limits.
Well, my usage is limited. And a just a few years back me riding a scooter rather than a Motorcyle was unthinkable. Times change, attitudes change.

Rationalization: I purchase laptop, electronic gadget of equal spend without much consideration, deliberation. Why not extend it for a bike too. After all it is also electirc? [ This was I think the prime reason for my impulse purchase this time around!, LOL ]
Objection: Electronic products pack more featurs by the year and slash prices dramatically. The YoByke product has not changed over the past couple of years.

Discount
When it came for price negotiation, I asked for a blogger discount. I was anyway planning to log the ownership experience for the benefit of the undecided. I was just checking if asking for blogger discount works!. It was promptly met with a ‘Ah, What?’ and a quizzical stare. Yet, the fine young lady(it was the same person – Ms Mebela over the 2-year period – Good to have a stable sales team!) at the showroom connected me up to the area manager, who in turn linked me up to the YoBykes/Electrotherm’s Marketing team.
After some back and forth, I explained(to Electrotherm Marketing team) the importance of social-engagement for products like Electric Bike especially when the incumbent product is deeply entrenched. The marketing team was open to the suggestion, but were very wary of the discount idea. I clarified that offering concrete financial reward is one way to signal seriousness and commitment( towards social media engagement). During the course of the discussion we settled for a small discount( 3% – the Electrotherm team insisted that auto industry margins are low – discounts are big no no!). What is interesting about the discount is it is applicable for all bloggers – social media sharing about your Yo Experience is not compulsory – but encouraged. After all, it is social engagement proposed by me – and I want the initiative to succeed!

Chennai buyers can get a Rs 3% off on their purchase by mentioning LABSJI Blog when they purchase a Yo at

Bue Smart Assoicates( Attn Mr A Robert),
#65 Velachery Road, Little Mount,
Saidapet,
Chennai 600015

Ph: 6450 5355
+91 9790734314

Please, share your electric vehicle ownership experience as comments.

Skyclad, Universe and Everything: Idea from TED

Can nudity be an Idea Worth Spreading?
Ever wondered how the dress we wear becomes an integral part of ourself? Can this simple experiential reality be used for our spiritual elevation? Why is Dressing-up an important aspect of the Super Hero culture like Super Man, Spider Man, Batman etc?
Questions Questions Questions!

At the awesome TEDxChennai sidelines I encountered Christian Fabre – CEO of Christian Fabre Private Limited a very successful apparel exporter of solid repute.
Christian is a French citizen settled in south India for nearly four decades. One very interesting thing about him: He is a Sannyasi Known as Swami Pranavananda Brahmendra Avadhuta.
You might think: Wait a minute – A renouncer(Sannyasi) who runs a profitable business? Is it not paradoxical? at least I was thinking.
Again Questions!

And ‘Questions!‘ is how he summed up the Big Question and further remarked that the Answer is Simple. Someone in the group( @adropofwisdom? ) remarked its is Simple, Yet it is difficult( for Us to grasp). I did my confused Half-agreeing-half-disagreeing (TED Mysore) style head shake, exchanged pleasantries, chatted about Virtual World and moved on with rest of the TEDxChennai show.

Latter I learned that, even-though Christian is into Apparel business, when he assumes the Swami role, he choose to be Digambara( or skyclad) – a simple, yet difficult form or renunciation.

I was intrigued. I promptly dismissed it with a ‘Oh Yeah!’ and moved on with my usual preoccupations.

Then by chance I came across Adi Shankaracharya’s Nagendra Haraya – Shiva Panchaksham in which Sri Shankara praises Lord Shiva as Dig-Ambaraya – The one who wears the directions(sky) as raiment!

It was a light-bulb moment for me to realize that in the Indian Yogic tradition, nudity is not just a symbol of renunciation, but also a active state of ‘wearing the entire universe as your dress’ and making the whole existence an integral part of yourself!

Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev in his TED Mysore talk shared about extending the sensory boundaries and inclusion. The epiphany for me was while viewing( again) Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED video – in which the neurologist shares about her state of Inclusion/Union when the logical part of the brain takes a back seat.

As illustrated by the Dig-ambara(skyclad) Swami –

Nothing = Everything!

Very Simple Indeed!

Now, How do I apply this epiphany in my life? Again Questions, Questions, Questions!

Thanks TED and TEDxChennai for leading me down the Q, Q Q path, someday( hopefully sooner than latter) there will be the Answer. [No it is not 42! or is it? See I told you Q Q Q!]

Bonus Link:

Swami Pranavananda’s feedback email on TEDxChennai

AWS Billing and Value Added Reseller Opportunities

Close to the remarkable Spot pricing model announcement, AWS silently started offering Consolidated Billing. For typical AWS user, Consolidated Billing is not a big deal except of the convenience and some cost saving. Consolidated billing dramatically reduces friction for enterprise AWS adoption via., centralized payment, sharing of capital intensive reserved instances etc. In short it is centralization of AWS finance(read beanie) aspect at the same time decentralization of technical( read geek) aspects. More interestingly, AWS Consolidated billing opens up value added reseller opportunities.

Consolidated Billing centralizes the payment, decentralizes the geek!

What makes value added reseller opportunities possible is the flexible attachment and detachment of the AWS account to any Payment account( the Payment a/c will have to authorize the attachment – of course!). Paving the way for the reseller to leverage the volume discounts from the consolidation:

Usage of multiple buyers can be consolidated by reseller to realize profits

The dynamic nature of the spot pricing also create opportunity for optimizations – the real ‘value added’ part of the reseller story! Going by the current trend spot prices are at least 50% cheaper on an average!

The arbitrage due to cost saving will not be too high to sustain a profitable business. But the nature of AWS itself – being building blocks rather than complete solutions – lends itself very well to value addition and profitability.
Indian software service providers especially the smaller ones will find these opportunities very attractive. Thus they can get a firm foot hold in the cloud/SaaS space.
The very dynamic and emergent nature of AWS, your valuable value added service being obsoleted by a native AWS offering are some of the risks in the opportunity. On the other hand the simplification and cost saving are compelling reasons enough for the customer to stay with the value added reseller and build lasting relationship.

Thanks for the heads up @guyro
Bonus Links:
AWS: the new Chicago Edison by Nicholas Carr

Ideas Worth Spreading – TEDxChennai

Like Location, Location, Location for Business, People, People, People is for Events. TED – Technology Entertainment Design: Ideas Worth Spreading over the past quarter century has evolved into a Mind/Brain Spa. An assembly where passionate people from different walks of life come together and immerse themselves in exchange of ideas/ideals and go back to pursue their passion totally transformed and rejuvenated.

While TED conference are massive jamboree in terms of organization, with stringent invitation criteria for attendance, a novel format of Independently Organized TED called TEDX is being experimented. TEDxChennai is one such pioneer event.

The element of entertainment sandwiched between two very serious things( Technology, Design) is one aspect that makes TED magic work. I’m looking forward how it is going to actually play out at the TEDxChennai event. Stay tuned for more updates!

AWS Cloud Worshop, Chennai Event

November is rainy season in Chennai, despite it we at Amazon Web Services Enthusiasts and Users Group Chennai decided to host a AWS Cloud Workshop on Nov 10. While the Chennai infrastructure got clogged due to rains, (web)Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) was discussed in-depth at the Workshop and Unconf.
The event had a record, runaway registration(170+), we had to change the venue just couple of weeks before the event to accommodate the overwhelming interest. Despite heavy downpour and traffic-congession, 100+ AWS Users attended the session. Here is audience in rapt attention absorbing the tech-gork rain:

The workshop was led by Jinesh Varia based out of Seattle from the Amazon Web Services Developer Relationship Team.

Here is an excellent summary of Jinesh’s session by Veerabahu ( @veechand)

We had a vibrant unconference session was led by Kiruba. Here is @Kiruba doing the slap-thy-neighbor unconf ritual.

The AWS user community came alive during the unconference to tell their story in lightning talk format:

The first session was by Bhasker V Kode of Hover.in. Here are the slides from Bhasker’s session:

View this document on Scribd

Followed by Hiran of MarketSimplified.com. They are the finalists of Blackberry Challenge and they leveraged AWS to overcome the mobile device limitations – a very good use case for cloud!

The Anantara team made a short talk on their elastic monitoring and management console.
Murthy and Sam from CSS Labs presented on Enterprise Cloud = Private Cloud + Public Cloud. Tools and Techniques. Eucalyptus and AWS EC2 are mixed and matched to make use of the internal as well as public infrastructure. Earlier in the forenoon session, Ezhil head CSS Labs made a presentation on taming the API with GUI featuring CloudBuddy platform.

Senthil Nayagam(@senthilnayagam) of RailsFactory’s talk was a welcome break from the AWS Kool-Aid.
There were impromptu talks by Harish Ganesan, CTO 8KMiles outlining their biz model and Balamurugan, Excelsoft explaining their use-case.

Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan, President, Vembu.com gave a crisp overview of their online backup consumer offering. The unconference ended with Lux playing the video of their viral video CloudCloud Maybe and a short talk on ‘Making of Cloud Cloud Maybe’ LOLZ.

Here is me doing impromptu compeering ( Kiruba was not able to attend the morning session – so the mantle fell on my shoulders!)

Overall the event is a huge success in many count, except for the WiFi glitch due to equipment failure there were no major shortcomings. Yet there is enormous scope for improvement.

I’d like to thank the CSS team the excellent co-operation and Anantara for TIDEL venue coordination.

Hat tip to Gayathri for coming all the way from Bangalore and helping in coordinating the event.

Bonus Links:
CSS Labs Blog post on the event.
Twitter Hastag.

Amazon Web Services Worshop and Unconference 10 Nov Chennai

AWSChennai.in

Got Wi-Fi at Home? Register WiFi or Face DOT Action

Do you enjoy a Wi-Fi connection at home or your small office? Like the the ones that connects your laptop magically on to the Internet? If yes, there is some little paper-work you need to do to comply with Department of Telecommunication’s new regulation that mandates registration of every Wi-Fi usage point.

DoT wants Internet service providers to register all Wi-Fi users

Move aimed at preventing unauthorised usage.

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New guidelinesConsumers who do not register themselves will get disconnected by their ISPs

No new connections will be activated before the subscriber’s details are registered by the ISP

Existing customers have been given time till June 23 to comply with the requirements

The intended purpose of the regulation is to prevent unauthorized usage of the powerful internet medium a tool for terrorist and public hoax activities.

Securing your Wi-Fi is always a good idea, more so with the uprise in terrorist and naxal activities. It is fairly simple process to setup. Added incentive is it can save you money too. If you leave your wifi open, perhaps the next door kid is watching youtube using it while you foot the hefty internet bills!

This regulation like any other regulation involving the Techies, Geeks and pseudo-intellectuals is expected create a huge fuss about freedom of speech, big-brother watching, ‘while I comply with every damn law, the powerful and underground are happy flouting every law possible – and the terrorist find a way around anyway!’ rants. Look at it this way, when you are leaving home, you are locking your home without any prompting or prodding by anyone. Same way just comply for Wi-Fi too!

For startup and geek techie types that want to rant/complain, look at the opportunity this opens up! Every bit of regulation mandating compliance by the masses creates opportunity for creating products and services around the compliance. For any compliance is a mild pain at best. And mild pain relievers are always in demand!

Remember the hugely successful Software product Tally’s reason for existence is compliance!

Update: Here is the DoT letter notifying the regulation:

View this document on Scribd

Ada Lovelace Day 09

Much of technology we use daily has some element of software driving it. If not anything, there will be a software that meters usage and calculates the bills due. Programming is defining and most important aspect of software and software engineering. And today being Ada Lovelace Day 09, it is good time to blog about the first programmer. Instead of just nostalgia, it is also good time to celebrate the present day women in technology. The idea is to highlight the role models such that more get inspired and take up technology roles. But I can hear you say, ‘Hey, what is in it for me?’. Here you go: It is said that adding women to software engineering team makes the team more grounded and rounded and makes the business more focused. There is anecdotal evidence shared even in on of the earlier blog post. To put it more directly, celebrating women in technology could even extricate every one from global economic recession faster, cheaper, easier.

Instead of blogging about just one person, I think it is a good idea to blog about as many of them. So here is the list in no particular order( mostly influenced by my twitter timeline, duh):

• @aDeSe Uninhibited sharing! Leveraging Technology to build a huge contact network. On the verge of spinning her own consulting practice.
  
• @eve11 Mixing technology and telepathy at ease. Using one to bridge people on other side.[ Yes you can take it with a pinch of salt!]
• @dina Not just using technology for making friends, and for social causes, puting it to work and making money!
• @dstrawberrygirl Co-founder Reaction Grid – increasingly popular opensource virtual world. Self proclaimed coding Ninja!
  
• @missrogue Wuffies, co-founder BarCamp movement, tech to the masses.
  
• @Netra (Tech, entrepreneurship) Event coordinator, people connector, Power of 140 illustrator during Mumbai terrorist attack.
  
• @PriyaRaju Passionate self-proclaimed geek balancing tech startup, writing, parenting, etc.
• just_reva Outspoken. At home in Chennai away from home(Singapore) using technology for everything from day-to-day to one-of-a-kind.
• Sanjukta Non-techie, finding expression via technology that makes expression faster, cheaper, smarter. At home with geeks. Passionate about collective action as well as individuality.
  
• @torridluna Ace virtual world scripter, tech early adpter. At the intersection of Art, coding/scripting, system integration, and sharing.
  
• @vintfalken Runs a blog that is by-word for Virtual World related developments. Apart from Breaking VW news, breaking new grounds, and pushing the limits of virtual world photography. [Example of defining a new category by practicing the work/art]
  

That is enough to make up a cricket team. I can go on and on. Well, you get the idea. Just look around and celebrate. You will be surprised and inspired!

Service Innovation – A workshop by Crafitti Consulting and Elephantversity

You like it or not, Indian Tech Industry is deeply entrenched in Service. With the global economic slowdown, service based biz are under severe pressure if not under threat. Indian tech industry players face the choice of reinventing themselves as product businesses or re-invent their service itself. Both requires a lot choices and design. And there is help available in the form of workshop. Karthikeyan Iyer of Crafitti writes:

As we experience unprecedented change in our business environment, the need for innovation has become more acute, more urgent.

In this context, Crafitti Consulting and Elephantversity Institute of Innovation are offering a focused workshop on Service Innovation, as a means to assist business stakeholders to unlock hidden bandwidth and create new growth opportunities.  Please find details of the workshop below.

We look forward to seeing you at the workshop! Also requesting you to forward this invite on to your colleagues and friends!

(The workshop brochure pdf can be downloaded from http://documents.scribd.com/docs/1lv6gdihoy8pdgndqzcg.pdf).

I’m sure the course will be useful. I can vouch for the quality of the organizers(Both Crafitti and Elephant Design).  Feel free to visit my earlier post(Ashwini Deshpande, Elephant Design) for some evidence.
The course is on 09 Apr 09 9am-5pm at Pune. Contact: Karthikeyan Iyer karthikeyan.iyer Shift2 crafitti doot com

Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance: The Good, Bad and the Ugly

Amazon Web Services announced the Amazon Reserved Instance and tweaked the pricing accordingly.

It has all the awesomeness, technology advancement, and business innovativeness, that everyone has come to expect from Amazon these days. Yet in my opinion, Reserved Instance is a retrograde step.

There are few things rolled into one at play here. They are to be segregated first to explain my point of view:

1. The technical concept of Reserved Instance – a mechanism to assure availability of an instance of specified type at the behest of an API call.
2. The Reserved Instance pricing, or rather, the shift in the charging philosophy,  from post-pay to pre-pay model.
3. Reserved Instance related API – the mechanism of interacting with the reservation system.

#1 is the Good part, #3 is at best Bad, and #2 is the Ugly!.

Distributed computing is always about uncertainty and  any kind of assurance  is a welcome simplification  for the system design. Thus #1(Reserved Instance the technical concept) is a  winner advancement. It is not easy to assure and that too assure with confidence  that something will work under all conditions, Amazon deserves a standing ovation( with Hats off !) daring this.

#3 – API mechanism to reserve instances. Is Bad.  Now, if I take the API for a spin – just for the heck of it, it will turn me back by upto $4000. I will not touch this API by a 10-foot pole. This wins the most un-imaginative API design by AWS! I think they got this done by outsourcing this to a financial services BPO sweat shop in India.

#2( the Reserved Instance pricing) is ugly if you dwell a bit deep into it. On the surface, it is just a logical tweaking of the pricing model to reflect the usage pattern in practice. For example startups need to run at least one instance on a Always-On basis, so they can reserve an instance and get a ~50% discount when they commit for 3-years. Applicability/attractiveness of this pricing plan in the Enterprise IT context is obvious. Indeed, it is re-adaption of a IT budget spread sheet masquerading as a cloudservice pricing schedule. [This pricing plan has one advantage though, a fairly dumb CIO/VP IT of an enterprise need not smarten up much or build a major case for cloud adoption. The financial spreadsheets are going to look very similar to what it was all these years. Smooth transition to the cloud assured! ] Considered from the geek/system designer point of view, the Reserved Instance pricing has not reduced the per instance pricing. It has suddenly made the On-Demand Instances costlier. A system design that does not take the various costs into consideration is not a good design. The Reserved Instance pricing has just increased the (system design)complexity without any balancing advantages.

The 50% cost saving over a 3-year period is not a big saving at all. If you have more than 17% return on your working-capital, Reserved Instance pricing is outright unattractive. So startups – are you just aiming for less than 20% returns? Naw!

On the other hand, the Reserved Instance pricing has shifted the model from the post-paid billing to pre-pay. M. David Peterson mentioned that Reserved Instance as a game changer. Well, Amazon just changed the game to the good old rules of pre-pay and multi-year commitment. Amazon changed the game and now trying to change the game back, possibly to its advantage.

Well, that is enough of a rant! Do I have any constructive suggestion to offer? And alternative pricing model for example? Well, I cannot do the work of Amazon’s financial analysts. Here is my 2-cents on the principle to adopt while pricing Reserved Instance: The present pricing encourages upfront provisioning and payment for it. It is does not care if the usage is as per the provisioning. Indeed, if the usage is not as per the provisioning Amazon makes a nice profit. An alternative pricing could be based on penalizing the deviation from the reservation. This penalty for non-usage is already in practice with the Elastic IP( Where, a IP reserved  and not used is charged nominal and fairly high price) But this pricing will not help Amazon recoup the capital expenses involved in setting up a data center.

Let me close the post with a bonus rant: The Reserved Instance pricing requires reservation for each instance type. This takes the elastic out of the ec2!

Bonus bonus rant: The pricing slightly disturbs my Sim-OnDemand pricing calculator. So I’m annoyed! LOL. [ Ha ha, I somehow promoted my devpay gig!]

Flames, comments, Kool-aid, and alternative points of view welcome!