Month: June 2013

e-Tax & e-Cash Disbursement – An Insight into Progress

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etax and eCash Disbursement IndiaThis is the Final Part of the Three Part Article on e-Initiatives in India. Read Part 1 – e-Governance & Digital Offices Part 2 covered – e-Records and Rights for Citizens, Judicial Systems and other e-Citizen projects. Today we’ll cover the electronic tax bases initiatives and electronic / mobile money disbursement.

The digitization of direct and indirect tax functions has simplified the filing of records, maintaining compliance and getting tax refunds. Electronic filings also make it easier to track noncompliance and tax evasion by mixing and matching various databases. As information and money get digitized, it is becoming easier to tax the two non-digital entities: (1) people (individuals or companies) and (2) goods and services. Earlier (1) the activities of economic actors, (2) their tax returns and (3) their money were paper-based. This made it difficult to match the economic activities with the money trail.

Indians now primarily file their taxes

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2G Data Tariff Cut, A Gimmick by Airtel, Vodafone and Tata DoCoMo + Data Potential

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Mobile Data Tariff Cuts in IndiaIn recent days, Airtel, IDEA, Vodafone and Tata DoCoMo, have cut their “pay-as-you-go” data tariffs by 80-90%. The headlines look catchy, but it applies to only certain plans or when the customer exceeds the existing allowances. Yet again, everyone is following each other, which again shows that trying to differentiate in India is difficult.

For 2G data, Airtel’s data pricing is down to 1p/10 KB, while peers have reduced the price to 2p/ 10 KB from 1-2p per KB – this amounts to 80-90% reduction on the “pay-as-you-go” tariffs. In most of the cases, 2G data price cuts have been done in circles where these telcos didn’t win 3G licenses.

The current data bundles are priced at around 20p/MB or US0.4c/MB, which is cheaper than these ‘pay-as-you-go’ plans. But the ‘pay-asyou- go’ plans could act as a hook to attract new customers (given its convenience) and can also help with churn reduction. Moreover, data penetration rates are currently sub-10% and data revenue contribution is 7-9%. So at this stage, we don’t think these price cuts alone will have a

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e-Records in India – Citizens Rights, Judicial System etc

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e-Records for Indian CitizensIn continuation of your Three Part Post on e-Governance in India [Read First Part – Digital offices in India] Today we’ll see which Citizen Services have gone digital in India.

The first aspect of digitization is the coming online of the Indian identity. The most visible face of this is the Unique Identity (UID) Aadhar Card that is being rolled out across India. As we will note in the next chapter, most Indians are expected to have their IDs online and bio-metrically recorded by the end of FY2014. However, even before the UID came into existence, Indians have looked up to their Government to provide them with documents of identity. UID can and will eventually provide the link to the various identities that Indians carry. If the databases of various departments speak with each other, they can create a comprehensive profile of every Indian.

In many states, the local state government provides basic infrastructure facilities like water and electricity and hence records of such bills indicate not just

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Samsung Pushing Galaxy Mega 5.8 Flopped Mobile in India with Reliance 3G Freebies

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samsung galaxy mega-5-8 IndiaFlopped and Outdated SmartPhone – Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is being pushed in India by offering 3G freebies from Reliance Communications. Samsung Galaxy Mega is a Dual Core Phone with features similar to galaxy Grand but Priced a whopping Rs 5,000 higher. Angry Indian Consumers have given a thumbs down to Samsung Mega with just 2.4/5.0 on the rating scale.

Samsung Executives went ahead and have struck a deal with Reliance Communications by offering a cut on the handset and the Telco has to rollout the following benefits in return so that Samsung can sell-off all its handsets

2GB of 3G data for 3 Months [Worth Rs 1,200]
Unlimited movies for 3 Months from BigFlix [Data Usage not to be Counted] [Worth Rs 747]
Unlimited Whatspp, Twitter and

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Aircel Free Unlimited 3G in Tanjavur, Tamilnadu

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Aircel IndiaNew Entrant, Aircel with a stronghold in Tamilnadu is struggling to gain 3G Subscriber Traction.

Aircel has announced it will provide to citizens of Tanjavur, Tamilnadu FREE UNLIMITED 3G between 6.00AM to 9.00AM for 30 days if subscribers sign-up for its 3G Offerings.

How to Activate Free Unlimited 3G from Aircel 3G Morning Plan ?
Just dial *122*456# from your cell and it should be activated in few minutes and then start browsing.

Aircel 3G Morning should in fact

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eGovernance & Digital Offices of Indian Government – Progressing Slowly

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eGovernance in IndiaThe Indian Government is increasingly coming closer to its citizens and businesses. Power brokers who would work their way through the Government system are giving way to professionals who help the masses to connect with their Government through a digital system. Three big digitization programs are taking place: (1) identity of Indians, (2) interaction portals of Government agencies and (3) money transactions (cash and property). The changes are transforming the way Indians and its Government interact.

We’ll explain these initiatives beginning with 1) G2B and G2C interactions, 2) Citizens e-Records & Rights 3) e-Tax and e-Cash.

G2B and G2C – Govt to Business / Govt to Citizens
India, which has emerged as the global hub of the IT industry, has been late in leveraging IT for local governance. A virtual world where both interaction and money are digitized makes the task of making the government accountable much easier. Government services in general – is progressively being made easier as

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How to use Airtel Free Zone Mobile Internet for Accessing Google, Gmail, Google+

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Here is a Step By Step Illustration on How to use Airtel Free Zone Mobile Internet for Accessing Google, Gmail, Google+

Point your phone’s browser to airtel.in/freezone ; click “Enter Free Zone” to access Google’s search engine, billions of Web
sites, Gmail and Google+ without paying for data as shown below.Airtel Google FreeZone

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China Mobile Invites Suppliers for $4Bn 4G-LTE Network Gear

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China Mobile 4G TenderAccording to a purchase announcement released on China Mobile’s website on 21 June, China Mobile had officially started its 4G-LTE base station bidding process, including 207k base stations and 550k carrier sectors. Bids must be submitted by 15 July, and results will be announced in August. We expect the bidding process will shed-light on the price for different types of base stations (upgrade vs. New and 1.9GHz vs. 2.6GHz). Given the tight schedule to finish the deployment within 2013, we also expect the majority of the deployment will be upgrades, which will mainly benefit local equipment suppliers.

The bidding amount could be as high as CNY25bn (~USD4bn), making it the largest telecom equipment bid in China this year.

A host of major telecom equipment vendors,

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Peek Into Infoedge Investee Companies – Zomato, MeritNation, MyDala

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Meritnation - Infoedge CompanyInfoedge has invested a total of Rs2.8 bn, in nine Internet start-ups since listing in 2007. Of these, detailed financials for two companies, namely Zomato and Meritnation. Management views these as high risk-high return investments. It believes the benefits derived from even one success story could completely outweigh the losses on others. Further, it believes these are necessary to keep attracting people with new ideas and to stay ahead of the competition.

The largest investee companies, namely Zomato and Meritnation, appear well-funded for now. Both of these are tiny compared to international comparable. They are seeing strong

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Microsoft Building a Smaller Surface Tablet on Windows 8 – Will Users BUY ?

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Microsoft Windows Surface Tablet 8 InchesThe lack of compelling form factors at attractive price points has been a major weakness of the Windows 8 ecosystem. However, with the upcoming release of Haswell, Intel’s next generation chip, and Windows 8.1 there is some hope that cheaper and more innovative form factors are on the way. Microsoft highlighted some of these devices earlier this month at Computex, but there was still only one “small screen” tablet announced (Acer’s Iconia W3), which shows to us that there is still a long way to go.

Nick Parker, the head of Microsoft’s OEM Confirmed at Computex that Microsoft is considering to reduce the cost of Windows 8/RT licenses for OEMs building devices smaller than 10.1 inches. The magnitude of

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