[vrprabhu]

Originally Posted by acurafan

Elon Musk concentrated on 1st world problems such as Space Travel, Efficient Money Transfer, Extended range electric cars, High Speed Public Transportation etc. None of them were unique or I will call innovation, but he took the concept and worked on it to make it as good as it can be under the present technological constraint.

Just an update on the recent SpaceX launch.....

An unmanned rocket by Elon Musk's SpaceX on a resupply mission to the International Space Station exploded Sunday just minutes after launch.

It wasn't clear what caused the rocket, named Dragon, to fail. SpaceX will conduct an investigation overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration.

It was the third resupply mission to fail in recent months. The three astronauts on the space station have about four months worth of supplies, according to NASA.

Sunday's flight was carrying more than 2 tons of goods, including 1,500 pounds of food and provisions for the crew.

The next SpaceX flight is scheduled for September.

SpaceX -- which is headed by Musk -- has made seven trips to the ISS under a contract the company has with NASA, the latest of which was completed on May 21. It is the first company to complete a return trip to the space station, a feat previously achieved by only governments.

Dragon was also meant to bring back nearly 1,400 pounds of cargo, including hardware and trash, in its return trip.

The spaceship was scheduled to land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja, California, in about five weeks.

Sunday's launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, in addition to resupplying the space station, was supposed to be the third attempt by SpaceX to recover the rocket that launches its spacecraft.

Typically, the expensive rockets that give spaceships their initial lift are discarded into the ocean after takeoff. In an attempt to recover and reuse those rockets, SpaceX developed a floating platform for the ejected rocket to land on.

SpaceX has made two previous attempts to land the first stage of its rocket -- once in January and again in April. Both attempts at landing failed.

The ability to recover launch rockets is expected to move space travel further toward a future in which people, satellites and other items can be inexpensively launched into orbit.

SpaceX plans to launch its first rocket with humans on board in 2017.

NASA's Gerstenmair said the failure of Sunday's mission does not necessarily affect that timeline.

[Samurai]

Here is an Indian who may be on to his way to be Indian Elon Musk. Yes, he is doing it in USA where the regulatory environment is right for innovation.

http://billionstrailer.com/watch-film.php

[TheTeacher]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Here is an Indian who may be on to his way to be Indian Elon Musk.

Interesting guy. I had read about him earlier; he had at one time wanted to be a monk and spent several years in an ashram in the Himalayan foothills. I hope his projects bear fruit; we sorely need innovative ideas to tackle the problems he's trying to solve.

[volkman10]

Elon Musk is not only into electric cars- a look at his 18 ventures!

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has launched rockets, spaceships and electric cars, and after his stint on CBS's "The Big Bang Theory" last night, he can add TV sitcom to his epic list of achievements.

http://auto.economictimes.indiatimes...tures/49887251

[Samurai]

Remember how I keep saying government regulatory environment is the single biggest reason why Elon Musk phenomena can't happen in India? Here is more proof.

Are you enjoying all the GPS enabled app and gadgets? It may all come to an end because the Indian government wants to control it all now.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facto...62826050617193

http://thewire.in/2016/05/07/geospat...rmation-34505/

[shankar.balan]

Isn't Chetan Maini in some sense India's Elon Musk?

And why the heck do we need our own "Indian" Mark Zuck or Elon Musk or anyone.

We have our own super-people (maybe not direct corollaries of Elon and Zuck etc, but super-people all the same )- for example the man who created a complete forest out of a desert, as a labour of love. The man who built his own road through a mountain because the blighters in government wouldn't do their job. The small village in Rajasthan and UP who built their own bridge because the blasted government wouldn't....

Etc etc...

We also have super-criminals if it comes to that - Nisham in Kerala and every single politico that you care to name!

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by shankar.balan

We have our own super-people (maybe not direct corollaries of Elon and Zuck etc, but super-people all the same )- for example the man who created a complete forest out of a desert, as a labour of love. The man who built his own road through a mountain because the blighters in government wouldn't do their job. The small village in Rajasthan and UP who built their own bridge because the blasted government wouldn't....

This point was clarified earlier in the thread, and the OP concurred.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shift...ml#post3719444 (Why doesn't India have an Elon Musk?)

[cooolsunny]

I haven't read the full thread, but just to answer OP's question. I think we had guys like Verghese Kurien, who created Amul brand and in the process empowered lots of families. and I think Narayan murthy, Azim Premji all these guys are in the same league and they must have solved more complicated problems than Elen during their journey to success.
I think its about the social structure, our nation is different from western countries. Mahindras are also one such name.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by cooolsunny

I haven't read the full thread

Well, you should.

Originally Posted by cooolsunny

I think we had guys like Verghese Kurien, who created Amul brand and in the process empowered lots of families. and I think Narayan murthy, Azim Premji all these guys are in the same league and they must have solved more complicated problems than Elen during their journey to success... Mahindras are also one such name.

Nope, this is not what OP meant. This point has been clarified, read this post.

[humyum]

Originally Posted by cooolsunny

I think its about the social structure, our nation is different from western countries. Mahindras are also one such name.

Mahindra's will never take you up for a job if you can think out of the box, atleast that has been my experience from whatever interviews I have attended with them, secondly their product line up proves my point of they living their life 'In the box'

On the topic, I believe out of the box thinking is not encouraged in our society as well as companies most of the time, people here want people to work as 'ordered' without using their head, as using your head is considered more like an interference. I am glad I work in a company now where the organisation structure is almost flat and everyone's opinion matters.

[cooolsunny]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Well, you should.

Nope, this is not what OP meant. This point has been clarified, read this post.

Kids growing up in US/europe think i will go to the mars (obviously not all some came to india in search of enlightenment) and kids growing in india/china/pakistan think i will go to the America, so what do you think who is going to design the rocket and who is going to be the part of the team which build that rocket.
May be 10 years down the line we will many musks emerging from china and in 20 years from india. and I still think the names that I wrote are equally innovative as musk (and i am not talking about arintham Chaudhary, ambani sons) . their field of work/areas of life affected may be different from musk but they also achieved some thing unthinkable before them. and they achieved all this in democracy, not in china like environment where land were taken from farmers without consent and given to entrepreneurs owning polluting factories.
musk has created products that works well and people feel happy after using it. but none of that is life changing for his countrymen. i would rate google maps above tesla car(both were lauched nearly same time) if we have to rate them on the basis of their value addition to society.

Originally Posted by humyum

Mahindra's will never take you up for a job if you can think out of the box, atleast that has been my experience from whatever interviews I have attended with them, secondly their product line up proves my point of they living their life 'In the box'
.

well sir you may be right but i have to believe what i see, and i see that M&M are the only indigenous car makers with consistently performing models. they are able to make a car that killed one whole segment of cars in india (XUV 500, d segment). they even get the automatic right. and they are using second grade indian engineers because all the best ones are in america working for tesla and google.
i think other companies also want to make such vehicles but they must not be able to achieve the combination of value and usability. M&M have bought reva and i hope they will lauch a practicle(somewhat) family EV in india in next 2 years.
most important they did not have any foreign technology partner like suzuki in early days( i know they have used services of foreign compaies in designing their vehicles and engines). so for me mahindras represent indian innovation/adaptation very well.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Samurai

We have the perfect recipe for stopping any Elon Musk from being produced. Instead, our system is engineered such that only wheelers and dealers who know how to grease the government wheels would see any success. Meanwhile innovators and researchers are either filling customs forms or moving to countries where they can operate freely.

What I said two years ago, Rajiv Bajaj said recently.

If your innovation in the country depends on the Government approval or the judicial process, it will not be a case of 'Made in India', but 'Mad in India'.

When I last posted on this thread, my company was co-developing a hardware controller (we supplied the firmware) with another firm, for a government customer. While the hardware cost and the software development cost was not much, the bureaucracy and the delay caused by government alone cost us two times the invoice price. We decided to discontinue the product after successful delivery. We can't afford to develop hardware solutions in India. We lost many months just while moving the components around the country. The only reason why the Software is viable in India is because it can be delivered over Internet and can't be held hostage at every state border or even district border.

But not all software, not if that software brings competition to entrenched big players, who can influence government policy.

Some of you may be familiar with WebRTC, which allows modern browsers to act like IP phones, without any additional plugins. Corporate websites, instead of listing a phone number, they can list an phone URL. Click on it and you will be talking to that company using voice, except it skips all the PSTN infrastructure. Since this is PC-to-PC voip, it is legal in India.

Similarly, WebRTC can open up numerous new applications that were unheard of before.

We were wondering about providing that as a cloud service in India. But knowing Indian bureaucracy, I decided to check on what kind of barriers have been raised. I was truly astounded.

This has been categorized under access services, since it is considered a voice service. That means it can take business away from PSTN. Just like email took business away from post office, voip or WebRTC can take business away from PSTN channels like landline and mobile connections. Never mind it uses data connections from the ISPs, government doesn't want the gentle giant Telcos to lose business at any cost.

What it takes to offer cloud access service in USA:
1) Buy a server and setup the software.
2) Get Internet/VOIP-trunk connection from any Telco.
3) Start providing services to the customers in anywhere in the world.
4) Pay corporate taxes if you make any profits. There is no other license involved.

What it takes to offer cloud access service in India:
1) The company should have ₹2.5C minimum equity.
2) The company should have ₹2.5C minimum networth.
3) Pay ₹1C to the government as entry fee.
4) Provide Performance Bank Guarantee (PBG) of ₹10C to the government, which they will confiscate if they find any violation in license compliance.
5) Provide Financial Bank Guarantee (FBG) of ₹2.5C to the government, which they will confiscate if they find any violation in license compliance.
6) The application processing fee is ₹50K.
7) All the above fee are for one metro area or telecom circle. If you want to provide service in Mumbai, pay the above fees. But if you want to cover whole of MH, pay it again. Repeat it for every state, since each state is a different telecom circle.
8) Finally, buy a server and set it up in that service area. Do this for each service area.
9) Get a good Internet/VOIP-trunk connection from any Telco by showing the license. Repeat this in every service area.
10) Start providing services to the customers only in the service areas you have licensed for.
11) Give 8% of the total revenue to the government, this is before tax.
12) Pay corporate taxes if your company is still making any profit due to divine miracle.

With modern technology one can provide cloud services anywhere in the world from a single location. The concept of service area of an Internet based technology is meaningless. And here we have an incredibly greedy government ensuring that only deep pocketed companies can do business and small companies like ours are kept out. The margin in cloud telephony has become so thin, this kind of license fees are simply out of the question.

I sometimes wonder, what if Indian government had developed the Internet, instead of US government?

Answer: There would have been an extra layer between datalink layer and network layer. They would call it license layer. If the packets leave the local network, they will encounter this license layer, before they can reach the network layer. The packets will stay in the license layer until the local government is satisfied that the sender than paid license fees. This layer will be implemented by the local government at every state.

If you want to send anything over Internet, you need to buy routers that has local implementation of license layer. There would TCP/IP/LP implementation for every state. If you want to send packets beyond India, you need the central TCP/IP/LP stack too. There will be huge cottage in India building these native stacks for India. The vision of Make in India will become reality.

I also thought about a corruption layer, but then discarded idea. That will never work because it infers cashless.

[Sawyer]

Good question, this thread. I suggest that having/not having one is the tip of an iceberg. You want a different tip, you have to change the iceberg. Just one part of our iceberg is how we are schooled. Over 50 students in a class room, and even a good teacher can do little more than force feed us like geese, and stifle any critical questioning of what is being fed if the class is to run at all. From an early age, we are not allowed to think for ourselves, and to learn how to learn. It makes us good at doing things where the directions have been set for us by someone else.

The other similar question and iceberg related to it is how we struggle to get even one Olympic Gold medal - I am not sure that shooting medals prove anything.

[extreme_torque]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Here is an Indian who may be on to his way to be Indian Elon Musk. Yes, he is doing it in USA where the regulatory environment is right for innovation.

http://billionstrailer.com/watch-film.php

Have gone through the whole thread and absolutely agree with you. But Manoj Bhargava is as much Indian as Elon Musk is South African. If a Sundar Pichai gets his higher education in USA and ends up becoming the CEO of an American company and holds an American passport, he is not an Indian anymore. Do you think he can put the profits of his parent company at stake even if he wants to do something for India?

One thing that I absolutely detest is to call all successful immigrants in American holding American passports as Indian and call their success as our own. To me each successful Indian outside India is a lost opportunity.

There is no excuse for us because we have the population, the drive and most importantly the brains to get things done. Almost a decade of near double digit growth and what have we achieved in technology, infrastructure or the general well being of our population? All this economic growth has done is to create crony capitalist billionaires which were earlier millionaires and some incredibly rich politician families. We still havent learnt though and I dont think we ever will.

[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by Samurai

When I last posted on this thread, my company was co-developing a hardware controller (we supplied the firmware) with another firm, for a government customer. While the hardware cost and the software development cost was not much, the bureaucracy and the delay caused by government alone cost us two times the invoice price. We decided to discontinue the product after successful delivery. We can't afford to develop hardware solutions in India. We lost many months just while moving the components around the country. The only reason why the Software is viable in India is because it can be delivered over Internet and can't be held hostage at every state border or even district border.

But not all software, not if that software brings competition to entrenched big players, who can influence government policy.

Let mer narrate my own experience. I was approached by a Railway body through IITK to do something about their obsolescent track fatigue machine (think from the East Germans) . The main issue was an ancient PDP computer. We took on the job and well within the agreed deadline, came up with a successful replacement based on the LabVIEW platform. It was tested and then put into use. I have sure that the old unit could be used by just swapping a cable. At the end I advised them to outsource the maintenance, esp of the software. They could not do so, since I hear, some jokers will quote a totally absurd low price for maintaining the software. It seems they used it successfully for over five years, and then had a breakdown.

I understand from my technician that it was definitely hardware. Five years of at least 12 hours a day, may lead to that. They were too scared to call me. Now due to the failure of giving out an AMC and lack of competence in the area the whole thing would have to be junked. Given some support they could easily have replaced the entire set of PXI-SCXI hardware, or just the module which went bust. We did it for less than 10-15% of the price quoted to them, and they got the entire software and hardware. But in our 'sarkari system' who is bothered. I hear that the R is being taken out of the RDSO!