Media

A couple of weeks ago my friends at Human After All launched a Kickstarter campaign for a book about their work for Little White Lies and Huck magazines. ‘Curious Iconic Craft’ will document the art direction and design Paul Willoughby and Rob Longworth, respectively, have done over 85 issues of the magazines across the past eight years or so, as they step away from the projects to take on new challenges. As well as recording the creative work itself, the 100pp book promises real insight into the magazine-making process. As ever with Kickstarter, there are different levels of rewards for different backing; they’re looking for £13k to produce the book and at the time of posting are already halfway to there with 12 days left. The latest reward update is of particular interest to me as it involves one of my favourite examples of Rob and Willo’s work. At the end of 2009 they combined the cover designs of Little White Lies and Huck with a single illustration based on the movie version of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. A new limited-edition risograph of that image (by Geoff McFetridge, work-in-progress above) is available to anyone who commits £50 or more to the Kickstarter campaign (along with a copy of the book and e-book and a pack of wallpapers and fonts). This is a must-have addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in magazine design. You can read more about the project here, along with further detail of the various rewards available. Closing date for the fundraising campaign is Sunday 30 June.

A new code of ethics for the media proposed by the Sri Lankan government could have a chilling effect on free speech, according to the organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW).The code, put forward two days ago (17 June) by the country's ministry of mass media and information, comes at a time when the Colombo government has clamped down on Sri Lanka's once vibrant media.Ominously, the minister, Keheliya Rambukwella, said that the code was intended to create a "salutary media culture" because the actions of unnamed media outlets had "led to many problems."The code prohibits the publication of 13 types of substantive speech including content that vaguely "offends against expectations of the public, morality of the country, or tend to lower the standards of public taste and morality." It also includes any content that "contains material against the integrity of the executive, judiciary, and legislative", which could be interpreted as barring criticism of the government. The code further restricts content that "contains criticism affecting foreign relations," which could lead to sanctions for reporting on international criticism of Sri Lankan government actions.Brad Adams, HRW's Asia director, said: "The government's proposed media code is part of a sustained campaign to control the media and curtail dissent."Sri Lankan journalists are already under enormous pressure not to be critical of the government, and the vagueness of this code will likely lead to greater self-censorship to avoid government retaliation."It is unclear when the code will be presented to parliament, what legal effect it will have if passed, or what sanctions would be imposed for non-compliance.The Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka already has drafted code of practice that has been endorsed by the International Federation of Journalists and its affiliates in Sri Lanka.The Sri Lankan media has faced various threats in recent years. On 3 April, masked armed men set fire to the office of Uthayan, a leading Tamil opposition newspaper whose journalists have previously been assaulted. In June 2012, the police raided the offices of the Sri Lanka Mirror, a news website, and the opposition Sri Lanka X News website, confiscating computers and documents and arresting nine people. Last year, at least five news websites critical of the government were closed by the authorities. And violence remains a real fear for journalists, which is only heightened by impunity for perpetrators. There have been no significant developments in the 2010 disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda, a contributor to Lanka E-news, nor in the murder of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was shot dead near a police station in 2009.Source: Human Rights WatchPress freedomSri LankaJournalist safetyHuman rightsRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

In this column I address the third major consumer economic trend, moving from an ownership to a rental society. As with the prior two, this trend will first be prevalent primarily in the developed world and then spread globally in a decade or so.

This post was originally meant to illustrate, using placeholder data, the returns made by each investor in Redbus. Then hell broke loose. After all, I am was insider and I am not supposed to analyse information even if it is available in public records. In addition, some of the readers felt that  I am doing a disservice  to the ecosystem by saying that it was not a big win. I think $100M plus is a great exit for any founding team in India, its a rare achievement, and to do it in such a short time is even more  rare. No compliments will be enough for Phani and team at Redbus. Redbus aggregated a large fragmented market, was capital efficient, profitable, and became a household name.The question I raised was whether the VC industry, and the LPs who invest in the industry, will be happy with the outcome. Given purchasing power parity, such exits are great for founders in India. But the ‘startup’ funds in India are as big as those everywhere else, and that is the point of discussion. One reason is that  LPs almost thrust large amounts of money at VCs. A very good study on this is here : Kauffman Foundation: The venture capital model is ‘broken. If you are still interested in the math for Redbus, find the cap table from the Registrar of Companies and multiply for yourself. Or you could count the number of parties involved – 3 investors and 1 founding team to guess how much each party made. Either way, one conclusion is clear- a $100M exit does not move the needle for a $200M fund, especially when there are 3 or  more investors involved. Since companies like Redbus are rare, a dozen exits like Redbus for EACH $200M+ fund are near impossible. This is just to return the principle amount!!  So what will work? Perhaps a $500M exit. But thats a NASDAQ or India IPO. Read MMT or Justdial. So the conclusion is that if you are a large fund, you need to have at least 1 company in your portfolio which goes to an IPO. Some funds in India have a strategy of going solo in their investments in the first round, and sitting on large stakes, even majority stakes, till the company reaches an IPO stage in 6-8 years.  The qualities here are courage (for going solo), stamina, energy reserves, patience.Some funds are trying another strategy of having a string of quick exits, especially from Silicon valley tech plays with an India base. Some funds have remained small strategically, but even their fund size is now creeping upwards slowly. Some funds that have grown big have decided to play at both ends- at Series A stage and at a late stage where you have stable companies with clearer path to IPO.And some funds have a simple strategy of chasing headline news making companies and impressing investors and raising larger and larger funds. They usually do this in hordes, to reduce risk. This phenomenon was demonstrated most aptly by a portal selling Fashion, and you know who I am talking about. Afterall, if you thought that your stock options (its called ‘carry’, a more exclusive term) are not worth much, you will definitely go for a higher take home.I am sure every VC has a strategy. As an entrepreneur, you need to know what is the strategy of your investor, and what does he have in mind for you. Do some research, and do some math.VC performance data is always private and perhaps rightly so. But it will be healthy for the ecosystem if there was debate. There is plenty of money wanting to come to Indian startups, and we need to discuss the strategy, execution and performance of the intermediaries. We all enjoy discussing how various startups, their founders, senior management are performing, in public forums. But looks like in ‘Secular’ India, we cannot discuss Minorities and VCs!This post originally appeared here. About the Author: Anand Lunia is the founder of IndiaQuotient, a super angel fund that believes that ‘Entrepreneur is the King’. Earlier, Lunia was ED at Seedfund, led investments in tech, internet, educat

Taking cues from Tencent’s messaging app WeChat, Hike has added Push-to-talk (PTT) and other features to its instant messaging app (hat tip Anupam Saxena). The feature is currently available on Hike’s iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 apps. It’s not clear whether the company has also rolled it out to its Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and Symbian apps. Besides PTT feature, it has also added support for  four new languages including Spanish, French, Russian, and Portuguese, ability to share last seen only to your circle of friends, and added two new free sticker packs – Snuggles the Dog and Miley the Cat. When we checked on our Android handset, the PTT feature is insanely easier to use, however, what irks me is to send an voice message I have to go through two clicks. Comparatively, WeChat handles it much better with just one click to send voice message. However, WeChat is pushing its PTT feature more than text messaging and it takes more number of clicks to send a text message in WeChat than in other instant messaging apps. Check out the layout of Hike on the left and WeChat on the right.   It has also added a new feature to share when a user was last online only with Circle of Friends. However, we feel the feature is counterintuitive, as this feature is actually used by close friends to question why you aren’t replying. Besides this, Hike has also added support for Spanish, French, Russian, and Portuguese. Note that Hike already supports German. However, we found it rather difficult to enable new language on Android handset. Hike team informs us that it can be done from Android settings, however it didn’t appear for us in Android settings. In April 2013, Hike had announced that it had crossed 5 million users since its global launch in December 2012. Hike had also informed MediaNama that 60% of its user base is from India and the rest global led by Middle East and Europe. Around 20 percent of its overall messaging traffic comes from its Hike2sms feature. In the same month, Hike had also raised $7 million in funding from Bharti SoftBank and had revamped its mobile apps bringing in new features like status update with moods, circle of friends and mute notifications among others.

Vodafone India has reduced their 2G data rates from 10p/10KB to 2p/10KB for all pre-paid and post-paid customers using 2G network on ‘pay as you go’ services in select circles.  It is worth noting that that monthly data customers would be charged 10p/10KB after their data plans expire. Since these price changes are only for ‘pay as you go’ data customers, heavy data users would find it best to stick to monthly data plans. These rates are currently applicable in Karnataka, UP West and Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh circles and the company intends to roll out this change nationally in a phased manner. It is interesting to see that Vodafone has not introduced these new rates in the  metros cities including Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata and has instead launched it in other parts of the country. In January 2013, we had reported the increase in 2G data tariffs by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea have hiked up 2G data tariffs by almost 30 percent to cover costs and improve margins. It is not quiet clear why Vodafone, 5months later has reduced its 2G rates. However, we believe that these lowering of prices may be related to DoT’s rejection of the company’s application for license extension in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata circles. It seems that by offering these new prices, the company may be trying to increase its customer base and data usage in other service areas to make up for the loss, in case the licenses are not renewed. Earnings from data services: It is also worth noting that Vodafone India had recorded 34 million 2G customers for quarter ending March 2013, up 3.4 million from 30.6 million 2G customers in the previous quarter. The company had also recorded a total data revenues of Rs 3,175 billion for the financial year ending March 31, 2013 (FY13), registering a 19.9% growth from Rs 2,640 billion data revenues in FY12. Data now contributes to 7% of the company’s total service revenues in FY13. The new price slash could also be an offshoot of the increase in their data revenue.

(By Apurva Chaudhary & Vikas SN) National Payments Corporation of India‘s (NPCI) payment network RuPay has now started accepting e-commerce payments, reports NextBigWhat. The network was previously limited to ATMs, prepaid cards and point of sale (PoS) terminals. Its currently not clear as to when NPCI enabled this service, since there is no mention of this on the website, however several websites like Coke2home, JustRechargeIt and FutureBazaar have started accepting RuPay payments as a payment option, as indicated by the report. Payment gateway company CCAvenue* also told the publication that it is one among the NPCI authorized companies to process RuPay debit cards. Last month, NPCI Managing Director and Chief Executive A P Hota had told PTI (via The Economic Times) that RuPay network will be e-commerce ready by May 25, following which RuPay will be available on the entire e-payments space. Hota had claimed that it has issued 3 million RuPay debit cards as of March end, up from 200,000 in March 2012 and hopes to cross the the 10 million mark by the end of current fiscal (FY 2014). He also claimed that these cards are now accepted at 1.12 lakh ATMs and around 1.8 lakh merchant terminals in the country. Launched in March 2012, RuPay competes with international payment product facilitators like MasterCard and Visa. At launch, Four public sector banks, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, and Union Bank of India, had launched debit cards based on the platform and six banks had signed MoUs to launch cards on the the RuPay platform. This seems to have increased to nine banks now including public sector banks like Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Punjab & Sind Bank and private bank like Federal Bank, as indicated by the ET report. RuPay charges about 0.01% transaction fee and claims that it will allow Indian banks to save on foreign currency as the fees to international payment companies will be paid in rupees instead of dollars, as indicated by Livemint report. NPCI has also partnered (pdf) with Discover Financial Services in March 2012, to expand its services globally. Earlier this month, Punjab government initiated a special project to make online payment to the Artiyas through ‘RuPay Debit Card’ within 48 hours of the procurement. RuPay Roadmap: As per NPCI’s website, it plans to roll out RuPay in five different phases – ATM, Debit Cards, Prepaid cards & PoS terminals, e-commerce and virtual cards, EMV and contact less cards and Credit cards. Of this, the organization has now completed e-commerce rollout with virtual cards, contact less cards and credit cards pending. While, the website hasn’t disclosed any specific timeline on this roadmap, remember that RBI has mandated all banks to convert the existing magstripe cards to EMV cards all customers who have used their cards internationally at least once, by June 30, 2013. *Disclosure: CCAvenue is an advertiser with Medianama Download: Structuring Of Investments In eCommerce Businesses In India – A MediaNama and Arkay & Arkay

Officials ask Google how it intends to use the information collected by the high-tech specs, which could seemingly videotape or photograph others without their knowledge.

Heilemann, interface director at Squarespace, takes the new design to task in a few short, punchy and very incisive posts. The first one calls Apple on the fact that iOS 7’s lock screen is not just a usability faux pas, but a huge problem in that it is the gateway to the world’s most popular mobile computing experience. The second article cites an example of the OS’s poor attention to detail. And the third talks about the difficulty of understanding whether the OS is signalling a button or a state. Well worth reading. Update: Wait, there’s a fourth article too. Also well worth reading. To follow me on Twitter click here.

The photographer David Bledsoe found a graveyard of now obsolete pay phone stands underneath Manhattan’s West Side Hideway. To follow me on Twitter click here.