Only 15.13 million Internet connections in India are faster than 256 Kbps

While India may not have the fastest Internet speeds in the world, the number of broadband subscribers has been increasing at a steady clip. So despite the pathetic Internet speeds in many parts of the country, India has the third most Internet subscribers in the world.

According to TRAI, the total broadband subscriber base in India has increased from 15.09 million at the end of April 2013 to 15.13 million at the end of May 2013. That’s a monthly growth of 0.23 percent, but in comparison to the same period in 2012, this represents an annual growth of 5.75 percent. It must be noted that according to the government, broadband speed is 256 Kbps and above. So in essence, only 15.13 million Indians have a 256 Kbps or higher connection. The figures for the period ending May 2013 were released earlier this month by TRAI.

While the government is supposed to amend its benchmark for broadband speeds to 2 Mbps in the next couple of years, it is hoped that in the meanwhile, the national broadband plan is in the advanced stage of deployment. However, at present, the numbers do not make a good reading for a country, which Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said could miss out on the Internet revolution.

Bandwidth jam

Besides the increase in number of broadband subscribers, TRAI also said the number of telecom subscribers in India shot up to 900 million in May 2013. The wireless subscriber base increased from 867.2 million to 870.2 million. In urban areas, wireless subscriber base increased to 522.01 million, while the rural base rose to 348.19 million.

The latest report also says there are 161 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country providing broadband services. The top 5 in terms of market share are public telecom provider BSNL (9.96 million), Bharti Airtel (1.40 million), state-backed MTNL (1.09 million), Hathway (0.36 million) and You Broadband (0.31 million).

Airtel, with 21.79 percent share of the market, remained the largest mobile service provider, trailed by Vodafone with nearly 18 percent of the market and Reliance with a share of 14.35 percent.

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Startup EmployeeSocial brings gamification to workplaces in India

Employees are rewarded for their contribution to the organisation with pay hikes and bonuses, which happen once a year. The visibility of such rewards is limited to a shorter period and smaller group of people such as the immediate team or department. To keep the ball rolling throughout the year, several companies in the US have started adding a layer of gamification by including points, badges and leaderboards to make their websites interactive and engaging, and also to reward employees for their contributions. EmployeeSocial, an Indian startup, has launched a similar gamification model for Indian companies. It is a relatively newer space in India and some of its desi competitors will be TriggerO, MyPerks and BenefitsPlus. On the global front, it will face competition from Globoforce, Level 11, BI Worldwide and Accentiv. EmployeeSocial is managed by an enthusiastic trio – Bhavik Rathod, University of Illinois; Anuraj Jain, IIM Lucknow and the young-gun Taranath Jawaher who has completed B.E. in Industrial Engineering.

A platform for rewards and recognition

EmployeeSocial builds cost-effective portals for organisations, which it claims are easy to administer. The portal is highly customisable and the startup ensures that it looks and feels just like an extension of the organisation’s intranet. It is completely managed by the EmployeeSocial team on the cloud. It has been designed in such a way that employees can recognise colleagues for their contributions with badges that reflect the organisation's values. Recipients of these recognitions get awards in the form of gift vouchers, everyday products and innovative experiences. By teaming up with various brands and retail stores such as Westside, Croma, Dominos, Café Coffee Day, Tanishq etc., it has designed an Employee Redemption store that offers more than 100 gift vouchers that can be redeemed by employees using the reward points they earn. It offers a full-featured enterprise social network that increases employee engagement and collaboration within the organisation.

EmployeeSocial charges organisations on a monthly basis depending upon the employee strength. Though there are no setup charges for the product, an additional fee is charged if its clients need customisation of the product. It also earns a small margin from vendors on the items redeemed through their store. Each time an employee redeems the points for a voucher, the startup receives a small margin as commission, which ranges from 3 to 10 percent depending on the brand of the voucher.  The starting price is Rs 15 per employee per month (for a minimum of 1000 employees).

Store to redeem points

Working in two different nations definitely calls in for a lot of comparison and EmployeeSocial is an outcome of one such conversation between its co-founders. Bhavik (while working for E&Y in New York) discussed measures used by some of the organisations in US to engage with employees and Anuraj (worked for HCL, India) immediately saw a potential for it in India. Co-founder Bhavik tells us that it is a completely built and tested platform. So, currently the team is only focusing on acquiring clients, while new platform developments have been kept on hold. EmployeeSocial was a part of the first batch of the GSF Accelerator Program in October 2012. They’ve also received a funding of $30,000 (approximately 18.9 lakhs).

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