INTRODUCTION
Silicon India is a semi-technical semi-business oriented magazine that aims to provide information, news, analysis and opinion on business and technology for Indian and US based IT professionals. It is aimed to provide a forum for Indian professionals to interact, exchange information, develop business relations and share industry expertise to inculcate the entrepreneurial skills.
Started at the tail end of 20th century, Silicon India slowly captured the imagination of Indian Professionals in US with its informative and interesting articles. The claim to fame was the “American Dream” stories of Sabeer Bhatia(Hotmail), KB Chandrasekhar of Exodus, Rakesh Mathur/Anand of Junglee.com/Amazon etc. This magazine is an excellent resource for the latest technical breakthrough’s happening in the silicon valley as well as the Indian IT Industry.
MY ASSOCIATION
When Silicon India was started, I happened to get a copy of it from a local Indian stores in US where it was available for free. It also had a form for free 1-year subscription. I happened to fill-in a form and bingo, I was a free subscriber to this good magazine. Like the marketing ploy followed by many good magazine, they offered their magazine for free to prove their worth. I got my subscription renewed for 2 years and all the while I got a free subscription. Every month the number of subscribers grew and it was reaching new heights each month.
After it gained good visibility, they pulled the plug on free subscription and started to charge the subscribers. This can be attributed to loss of advertising revenue due to the attrition of the lots of dotcoms that advertised during the dotcom boom. However, this magazine is still worth the $20 for the 15 issues. You can get one/two/three books (Such as Ignited minds by APJ Abdul Kalam, In Pursuit Of Excellence, India 2020, Idols etc) for 28/40/lifetime subscription.
The good thing about SI is that it has a lot of well-known Indian stalwarts such as
=> Ashok Trivedi, Co-founder & President, Mastech Corp
=> Desh Deshpande, Founder & CEO, Sycamore Networks
=> Jayshree Ullal, VP, Enterprise Line of Business Cisco
=> K B Chandrashekar, Chairman, Exodus Communications
=> Kanwal Rekhi, President, TiE, private investor
=> Mohanbir Sawhney, Asst. Prof. of Mrkting, Northwestern U.
=> N R Narayana Murthy, Founder & CEO, Infosys Technologies
=> Radha Basu, Former GM, Hewlett-Packard
=> Ramesh Jain, Prof., UC, San Diego; founder Virage and Praja
=> Sabeer Bhatia, Co-founder & CEO, Arzoo Corp.
=> Vijay Vashee, General Manager, Microsoft Corp,
=> Vinod Dham, CEO, Silicon Spice Inc.
=> Vinod Khosla, General Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
=> Yogesh Gupta, SVP, Product Strategy, Computer Associates
In its editorial board
CONTENTS
SI Comes with following features namely,
=>Cover Story/Feature – This makes up the Story/Feature mentioned in the cover of the SI Magazine. It normally covers a success story of a company/individual. It includes most of the success stories of the Indian Entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley as well as in India. Most of the time the US NRI successes out shadow the ones by their Indian counterparts.
=>Business Features – This includes business stream articles pertaining to IT industry. These articles are very informative and are written by the guest writers who are well-known names in the IT Industry. Most of the Business/Technology streams are written by the guest writers that add to the value of SI altogether.
=>Technology Features – This is the technology counterpart. Written in a sophisticated manner by those who either contributed much or invented the same. This is something I look forward to.
=>VC Chakra – This is about the Venture Capital scenario in US/India and advisories. Highly informative section
=>In Focus – This is mostly about the information concerning the Global Indians alike. This can be socio/political/economic scenarios. This also focuses on various scenarios affecting/impacting the IT Scenarios.
=>Career – Career advise to the IT professionals. Highly helpful feature. It also provides a lot of job opportunities advertised by some top companies. The career tips and Q&A is very helpful and insightful.
=>Columns – There are some good columns written by guest writers such as Sam Pitroda and all.
=>Personal finance – Highly helpful personal finance tips
Apart from these, SI has innovatively created SI Tech 100 index as well as SI Tech 20 indices, which are for the Indian Tech company indexes that tells you how good Indian IT industries, are doing in this economy.
SILICON INDIA – WEB SITE
Due to its popularity and demands of the customers, SI started a portal, which is also of good use to its subscribers and general users alike. The website is located at https://siliconindia.com and houses the magazine archives also. You can also subscribe to an online version of the SI magazine. If you want to purchase an article alone, you may do that for a premium. This site is relatively good and publishes a nice daily/weekly newsletter covering latest happenings for an IT professional
BOTTOMLINE
As a user of online edition and a subscriber of the print edition, the prime plus points of this magazine are
=> The glossiness and the design
=> The usefulness of the content
=> Number of articles by industry stalwarts
=> Insight for latest technology
=> SI100/SI20 index
=> Career advice.
Some of the features I feel lacking are
=> Lack of in-depth analysis of a technology, due to the fact that it is from a guest author
=> No Global outreach on technology for being highly India focused
=> Venture Capital articles are not up-to the par like Red Herring and all
=> Number of articles are less
Apart from the mentioned pros and cons, I sincerely feel that Silicon India is a very useful magazine for Indian IT professional.
I have seen it blossom from its debut to its status today as the number-1 magazine for Indian IT professional. The way it promotes the entrepreneurship in Indian NRI/IT professional via its helpful articles is highly commendable.
Silicon India is very good and highly of use. Go for it
I hope the review was helpful. Please shower in your comments.
Kalil
