iBlog: Nishit Shah

RED HERRING 100 ASIA

Red Herring Magazine have announced their list of 200 finalists for the “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2007. The Red Herring’s editorial team comes up with Red Herring 100 lists which recognize promising startups that will lead the next wave of innovation. I was surprised to see around 40 odd Indian companies in the list of finalist. Which I believe is quite impressive, only next to China which had around 80. Thanks to the broadband connectivity at home and some spare time, I had the liberty to browse through all of the Indian companies websites. I couldn’t do the same for companies based in China, as most of them were in Chinese and heck I can’t read it !
I found one very interesting thing while browsing through the About Us section of these sites. Most of the Indian companies were founded by IIT / IIM alumni. It was a pretty common trend that atleast one of the Board Member / Founder / Director had something to do with the elite clan of India. I am pretty impressed with many web 2.0 Indian companies.

I am excited by the fact that a business unit of the place where I work is among the 200 finalists. The Top 100 award winners will be announced at the Red Herring 100 Asia Award Ceremony on August 29th.

One thing you can sure of in this uncertain world is that when Pixar makes a movie, it has to be awesome. I am a hardcore fan of animation movies especially from the Pixar stable. I saw the very first show of this movie and straight after watching it, I am blogging about it. I was extremely disappointed to see just 5 people in the entire theater. Pixar succeeds again with Ratatouille, a stunningly animated film with fast pacing, memorable characters, and overall good humor.

Its been exactly 1 year since I joined Directi and what a great journey it has been. I had never imagined that working for any organization would be fun. The work environment is just awesome. The kinda knowledge and experience that I have gained in just 1 year over here carves me to go back to work even on my weekly offs. Hats off to Bhavin and Divyank for creating such wonderful work environment. Its rightly said on that page by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.Find a job you like and you add five days to every week. Proud to be a Directian

What started off in 1998 by Bhavin with some Rs. 25,000 ($500) is now a $ 300+ million enterprise. Directi has come a long way since this. _MUST_READ_
Directi businesses have been ranked in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list consecutively for the last 2 years. And the surprising part is that these guys are not even IITians, just normal commerce grads with a vision, enthusiasm and a firm determination and belief in technology. I am not boasting anything about the place where I work, its just TRUE.

Wanna find out if there is any Pizza Hut / Subway / McDonalds or for that matter any other restaurant chain near your house ? or its Sunday and you have misplaced the number of the restaurant from where you normally have your food delivered.. Just log on to the net and use localized search thanks to Just Dial and Guruji

Click on the images above and you will understand what I mean. I have been using the services of Just Dial for few years now (As far as I remember since I was in school, I used to dial 888 88 88 for help) and am truly impressed with the kind of services they have started offering to the end user. One of the features that I like is the Send to Mobile/Email. Its really cool.

I was surprised to find information of most of restaurants that are near my house!! It really saved me a trip while ordering food as somehow I had misplaced all the “Home Delivery Menu” of the restaurants near my place.

No matter how many times I see it, I can’t get enough of it. It is one of the best movies I have ever ever seen. Infact I can go to that extent and say that, there are two types of people in this world - Those who have seen City of God (Cidade de Deus) and those who haven’t. Then there are those like me who have seen it many times !!

Being a hardcore movie buff, I have always been attracted to award winning foreign movies, even though I don’t understand the language they speak. Over the years I have learnt to survive on subtitles

The movie is based on true story and its in Portuguese, the language what Brazilians speak. Its called Cidade de Deus in Portuguese. Thanks to the subtitles I was able to understand this movie and believe me its class apart. The direction, screenplay, dialogue, acting, the plot ….everything is a class apart and so beautifully executed. Something, which I am sure any mainstream Bollywood movie can’t even dream of achieving.

I don’t want to write anything about the movie, I guess the number of awards it has been nominated and won speaks for itself. Also, the very fact that its ranked 18th among the IMDB TOP 250 movies of all time.

The main character in Cidade de Deus is not a person. It is a place. Cidade de Deus is a poor housing project started in the 60’s that became one of the most dangerous places in Rio de Janeiro by the beginning of the 80’s. In order to tell the story of the place the film tells us the stories of many characters. But all is seen through the eyes of the narrator: Busca-Pé, a poor black kid too frail and scared to become an outlaw but also to smart to be content with na underpaid job. He grows up in a very violent environment. The odds are all against him. But he discovers he can see the reality with a different eye: the eye of an artist. Eventually he becomes a professional photographer. That is his redemption..
Buscapé is not the real protagonist of the film. He is not the one who makes the story moves on. He is not the one who makes the decisions that will determine the main chain of events. Nevertheless, not only his life is attached to what happens in the story but it is also through his perspective of life that we understand the humanity of a world apparently condemned to endless violence.

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found is a narrative nonfiction book by Suketu Mehta. This book is extremely fascinating and its a must read for anyone who likes Bombay and wants to understand it in a much better way

BOMBAY is a claustrophobe’s nightmare. Over 18 million inhabitants are crammed into its 169 square miles, and in parts of the city the population density exceeds a million per square mile. Soon Bombay (now renamed Mumbai) will have more people than all of Australia. Mehta wandered its streets, with his ‘laptop in a green backpack,’ and pursued everything that, he writes, had made him ‘curious as a child’: ‘cops, gangsters, painted women, movie stars, people who give up the world.’

Its about Bombay what Suketu Mehta’s has seen. I have spent most part of my life living on this Island but never knew so much about it as described in this book. Its about Bombay that we have never seen or dealt with, the Bombay underworld, the 1993 Bombay blasts, Bollywood ( skipped this part on Bollywood. Not Interested !!), Bal Thackrey and of course Vadapav.

Undoubtedly one of the most important books ever written on Bombay. It is brave and insightful, one man’s love affair with a ruined city. In these pages, densely packed with facts, observations, vignettes and insights, he brings the city alive with love, longing and sadness in a way never accomplished.

To sum it up I can say that this book it kind of a remarkable documentary of life in India’s largest city.

Its amusing for me that I have read most part of this book out of Bombay while traveling !

Again, a must read for every Bombayite ..eeks I still don’t like calling it Mumbai.

Finally the renovation of my room is complete and now I can boast of a neat little bookshelf for my precious books. I had earlier written about my Online Book Shelf at anobii.com. Now I have an actual image of it. My books are one thing that I am extremely proud of. I have always been a voracious reader all my life and perhaps my small little tiny library is the most precious materialistic thing I posses.