Meraki, a Silicon Valley wireless Internet startup co-founded by a desi entrepreneur Sanjit Biswas, seems to be on a tear these days but we are skeptical that this Formula car will ever reach its destination.

The two-year-old Mountain View, California start-up offers networking widgetry that promises to make setting up wireless Internet access a snap.

Meraki’s Mini routers and an online dashboard tool to monitor and manage networks are supposed to let even non-technical folks set up a wireless network.

In a company backgrounder, the Meraki folks write:

Plugging a Meraki Mini router into a DSL line instantly creates a gateway. As more Minis are added nearby, the signals stream back and forth to build a web of wireless connections. Known as a mesh, this fabric of signals makes it possible to use just one DSL line to create a cooperative wireless Internet network, bringing access to more people than ever before. 

The fledgling claims it’s taking a bottoms-up approach that lets people affordably and cooperatively build a wireless network in contrast to the top-down approach that has mostly failed so far in the U.S. at least.

It’s true that municipal WiFi experiments - free or otherwise - in the U.S. have mostly turned out to be still-born. Come on, no one with sense would have picked Philadelphia, the headquarter of Comcast, the largest U.S. broadband Internet access provider, for a municipal WiFi project. It’s like trying to peddle oil-alternatives in Saudi Arabia.

In any case, we remain skeptical about Meraki’s prospects for multiple reasons.

The company may have tasted some success with Continue Reading…

Struggling with its Internet misadventures in the face of the relentless Google onslaught, a desperate Microsoft is investing $240 million in social networking web site Facebook Inc.

Google, which was also keen on a deal with Facebook, has a social networking web site Orkut that’s popular in India and Brazil but has yet to catch on in the U.S..

Microsoft’s investment - which gives it a tiny 1.6% stake in the social networking web site - is set to happen in Facebook ’s next round of funding and values the profitless start-up at an astronomical $15 billion.

The two companies have an existing relationship under which Microsoft is the exclusive provider of banner ads on Facebook in the U.S. 

Under the expanded alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the U.S.

Facebook will also sell ads on its own through a new ad network that it expects to debut shortly.

Writing on the Microsoft-Facebook deal, the Wall Street Journal said (subscription required):

The deal is rooted in an online-advertising boom that has turned Facebook into the newest Internet darling. In recent years, advertisers large and small that once focused their spending on television, newspapers and other traditional media have started shifting their spending to a host of Web sites. Google has built its fortunes on that shift and others including Microsoft are rushing in.

Founded in February 2004 by Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has received funding of $40.7 million from a bunch of marquee investors including Founders Fund, Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.

Facebook claims it’s got 50 million active users and that 200,000 new users are registering every day.

Microsoft has been one of the biggest failures and laggards on the Internet side of the computer industry.

The software giant’s biggest failure is on the search front where Google has walked away with the glory and all the money.

Despite pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars, Microsoft’s MSN search engine is on a downward death-spiral in the face of a far superior service from Google.

Microsoft head honcho Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer have failed to make headway with their online initiatives. As the WSJ story says:

Winning Facebook’s hand could help lift morale at Microsoft’s struggling online business. Over the past four years the software giant has invested heavily into building its own Internet search and online advertising services but has failed to keep pace with the growing online ad market and its leader Google.

The folks at WSJ report that Facebook will break even this year on a cash flow basis on revenues of $150 million.

The folks at local search engine AskLaila have snagged $10 million in a Series B round of funding, according to VC Circle.

Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round in AskLaila’s parent Bangalore-based Four Interactive.

Silicon Valley Bank and return investor Matrix Partners India also participated in the latest round.

Matrix invested $2 million in the startup seven months back.

We did a quick check of AskLaila’s service and found it still has ways to go. The service is currently restricted to Bangalore but the company plans to extend it to the other major Indian cities.

AskLaila’s peers include JustDial and the 800-pound gorilla Google. JustDial did better than AskLaila in our quick search of restaurants in Bangalore.

The big question is how all these Indian local search fledglings plan on making decent money at the end of the day. After all, as the dot com boom in the U.S. proved any idiot can start a company. Few can sustain it and fewer still make decent money off it.

AskLaila is the brainchild of Kiran Konduri and Shriram Adukoorie.

Media house Times Group’s new YoList classifieds web site has debuted, adding to the clutter in this online advertising segment. 

YoList has been launched in beta (trial version) and currently all ads posted on the web site are free.

Registered users of Times Group’ portal IndiaTimes.com can use their existing user id and password to access the services of YoList.

There are a total of 24 categories that users can choose from to post or view a listing on YoList. Categories include the usual popular ones like Books, Computers, Jewellery, Matrimonial, Music, Sales & Bargains, Travel and Vehicles.

With the debut of YoList, you begin to wonder how many classifieds web sites do Indians need?

Besides the foreign players like Craigslist and Continue Reading…

Social networking start-up Masala Inc. has snagged $4.5 million in Series A funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners, according to a regulatory filing cited by PEHub.

Amra Tareen, a former partner at venture capital firm Sevin Rosen Funds, is behind San Francisco-based Masala Inc.

Social networking consultant Erik Sundelof is also involved in the new venture.

Amra’s background is in telecom, having worked previously at Lucent and Ascend Communications.

Originally from Pakistan, Tareen holds a BS in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and an MBA from Harvard.

The goal of developing easy-to-manage desktop computers and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) has been the cherished dream of several Silicon Valley entrepreneurs for more than a decade. 

Oracle’s Larry Ellison tried and failed in the late 1990s with his network computers (remember the famous NCs?). Ellison’s buddy Scott McNealy of Sun failed to make much headway too. As did many others in Silicon Valley because for all their promise thin clients or network computing devices offered a lot less than desktop computers.

Now comes a start-up called Pano Logic that swears it’s conjured up a new way of making desktops easy to manage for IT managers through the combination of an all hardware, no software device and server virtualization.

Pano also claims its architecture will slash the TCO of desktops by 70%.

The privately held start-up Pano says its palm-sized hardware device will Continue Reading…

Reliance – Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group’s BigFlicks.com entertainment web site has gone live (albeit in alpha mode i.e. a kind of test version).

BigFlicks’ selection of Indian entertainment content is supposed to include Bollywood and Indian regional movies, TV programs, movie songs and music videos. Currently, the content is mostly a sparse selection of Hindi, Telugu and Marathi movies.

There’s also an Adult Movie selection - with five movies currently - that can be viewed anywhere except in India.

BigFlicks’ target market seems to be primarily the NRI crowd in the U.S., UK, Canada, Middle East, South East Asia, Europe and Australia, given the high broadband penetration in these countries and the presumed craze of desis abroad for Indian content.

Users can stream the BigFlicks content for free or buy or rent the video content via download, which can take from 30 minutes to three hours.

Movies cost from $4.49 to $19.99 to buy. For instance, last year’s Hindi hit movie Rang De Basanti costs $14.99 while the Telugu movie Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana is $4.49.

But does the BigFlicks launch matter from a $$$$ perspective? 

While we suspect the free option will prove popular, we seriously doubt that NRIs will Continue Reading…