INSIDE OUT
TEAM IN
FOCUS
AMAZON IN NEWS
Amazon is India’s fastest growing market in mobile traffic & sales
the
INCREDIBLE AMAZONIAN match the leadership principle
GUESS
YOUR LEADER
KCLT
MY PASSION FUN at amazon Chennai
ignite the amazon bash
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
tEam iN
fOcuS The Digital Content Platform (DCP) is a pipeline of collaborating services that enable digital content providers to ingest/publish content, enable Amazon to provide offers for content, provide competitive intelligence, handle content provider payments/accounting and delivery of digital content to devices. Most of these services were originally designed for Kindle books and are being platformized to enable rich functionalities for all digital content (Kindle Books, Android Apps, Amazon Instant Video, Amazon MP3, Kindle Periodicals, Audible, Digital Software & Video Games) The following Digital Content Platform teams in Chennai are ‘Pre-Transaction’ services that provide platform services as part of content publishing and offer publishing for digital content.
The Content Processing Service (CPS) envisions to provide a platform to host content processing pipelines across all digital content content processing pipelines. This team currently owns Kindle Books conversion pipeline and has been developing a conversion platform - codenamed Legos - which can host any content conversion pipeline. Legos cleanly abstracts the role of the management role of a content conversion platform and the actual libraries/services that perform conversion of digital content. This simplifies workflow creation and management and enables engineers to focus on core platform features such as reliability, monitorability and auto-scaling. Legos is extensible and will be extended to handle any business process that needs service orchestration as a scripting platform for SWF.
The Digital Publishing Platform (DPP) provides the infrastructure for our customers and stakeholders (eg. digital content providers, VMs, TAMs) to host their master catalog data and interface with other DCP pre-transaction systems (DIPS, CPS, Ingestion) to publish the different pieces of information (eg. images, metadata, prices, internal reviews etc.) that constitute the detail page to the appropriate targets (eg. marketplace catalogs, Media Services etc.) and hence offer them for sale to Amazon customers. Accurately and efficiently routing and transforming metadata are the fundamental tenets of the team. The team has focused on improving the performance of the pipeline in 2013. In 2014, the major focus would be in rebuilding the platform to provide a highly configurable and transparent platform.
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
Digital International Pricing Service (DIPS) owns providing the best prices for digital content on Amazon store, across 250+ countries. DIPS provides a rule interpretation engine that can compute prices based on rules specific in a domain specific language based on various inputs such as list price from content providers, competitor prices from SPARK, physical equivalent prices from Retail Pricing, promotional price inputs and various other price determining inputs such as popularity, vendor pricing model, etc. In addition - DIPS handles workflows/notifications for price approvals, contractual checks and monitoring violations. DIPS currently owns pricing for eBooks (4.5M+) and Apps (500K+), and is working on onboarding other digital content such AIV and MP3 (25M+) getting onboarded by Q1 2014. DIPS is now extending to learning based pricing to predict the best prices for digital content to our customers. The SPARK (Selection & Price Analytics Reporting for Kindle) team’s charter is to minimize the probability of a customer viewing a higher price in Amazon and minimize the probability of a customer not finding an item in Amazon as compared to competitors. SPARK provides competitor prices to automated pricing system (DIPS) and to pricing managers and provides competitor selection/selection gap (items that are unavailable with Amazon) to content acquisition/vendor management teams. The SPARK team focuses on building a scalable, reliable competitive intelligence platform that is a key part of Amazon's competitive advantage. SPARK has expanded its charter to matching of digital content between Amazon and competitors - expanding our technology expertise in the area of machine learning based matching systems and image matching.
SPARK operations team handles multiple high impact processes like mapping, pricing audits, selection gap audits etc. These processes help the digital Pricing and Content Acquisition teams to offer best price and widest selection, which are Amazon's key tenets, for digital products. The team continuously focusses on improving operational efficiency by simplifying/ automating processes, leveraging on matching technologies from the engineering team, building new tools etc. and focusses on improving quality by auditing relentlessly and implementing better process controls. Digital Content Platform QA team ensures high quality for all of these services. The team is focused on testing our services as platforms and also providing a testing platform to various digital content groups that build on top of our services.
Digital Content Platform QA team ensures high quality for all of these services. The team is focused on testing our services as platforms and also providing a testing platform to various digital content groups that build on top of our services. In addition - we are also working on building a new team for Digital Promotions. The vision of this group is to improve the value and increase the types and number of digital content promotions offered to Amazon customers. In order to meet and exceed our customer and content provider expectations we must develop a scalable, reliable and user friendly solution to create and manage digital promotions while simultaneously ensuring a consistent and delightful experience to customers for all digital products and marketplaces.
The DCP Chennai team is a fast growing group and a true epitome of Amazon’s “Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History” mantra.
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
I have been asked many a times in past whether it’s the journey that counts or whether what really
counts
is
the
final
destination. I always tell people that while it’s an interesting topic to debate at social gatherings, neither of them really count. It’s all about the stop overs. What you do (and how you do it) at a specific
stop
over
decides
whether you are already at your destination, or whether it is an interim stop on the way
to
your
intended
destination!
Stop Over #1: After getting my Bachelor in Electrical Engineering, I left India for US to get Master’s degree in Communications and Software Engineering. Soon after joining university, I started first startup to enable cost effective animation using off-the-shelf component based parallel computing system (Incidentally, it also formed the basis of my master’s thesis). I failed in my first startup as I had no clear idea about target customer, to whom to sell what we were developing (Pixar animation studio proved that idea indeed had merit after a few years!).
WHO IS SAMIR MEHTA? “I believe that an individual is defined by the experiences one gains at the stop overs, as he/she embarks on the journey towards the intended destination. I have had following key stop overs during more than 20 years of my professional journey, which have played significant role in shaping who I am (and where I am) today.”
Stop Over #2: After a few years, when I had joined a startup called Installishield in Chicago, I started another company (with the same friend) – focusing on the Forecasting Software for Pharmaceutical industry. We had learnt key lesson from the first failure. Second time around, we had clarity about target customer (Merck was willing to buy what we had prototyped) – however, we failed again. We understood our target market but we were not 100% focused on developing what our customer needed. We burned out after working for over 100 hours between two startups at the same time.
Stop Over#4: At Motorola, I spent 5 years working in different areas and built teams in 9 different countries. My teams worked on consumer facing mobile services; middleware for broadcast Set-tops / IP connected hybrid gateways, low-level platform services, java application frameworks and Head-End/Server side technologies. I also owned a technology group cutting across the business lines, tasked with developing Motorola wide Seamless Mobility architecture and platform, targeting delivery and distribution of digital content on devices across broadband, broadcast and mobile networks.
Stop Over#5: After leaving Motorola, I spent 3 years doing another Startup named Keetli. There, I developed an integrated communication software platform and media framework, designed for the edge gateways in a connected home – terminating broadcast content stream and converting it into IP stream to support various IP connected devices in home. It was acquired by Nagra (Kudelski Group).
Stop Over#3: Learning from the mistakes made during first two startups, we started a third company named 4thpass. I developed first product to prevent reverse engineering of Java binaries. I went on to develop micro java browser for phones – one of the smallest ones at 49KB in size (RIM, LG and Nextel were the key customers); later I developed the first Content delivery system addressing download and lifecycle management of Java Applications on mobile phones (first deployed at LG in S. Korea, followed by deployments at Telefonica in Spain, O2 in Europe, China Mobile & China Unicom in China, T-Mobile in US and many other global companies). It was acquired by Motorola. Finally, we had given our 100% focus in building what customers wanted (and valued), and it paid off.
Stop Over#6: Upon joining Nagra, I led integration of an acquired public company, OpenTV. Before I left for Amazon, I ran Connected Home business shipping embedded convergence software platform, UEX applications for TV and companion devices and services supporting broadcast and IP connected media devices in home. I also owned 4K User experience Studio, cross-platform applications development, Content Management and Service Delivery Platforms and Developer relations. My team shipped over 20 million devices globally every year.
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
So..Why Amazon and what next? If I were to summarize it: the same reasons which made me do four Startups were instrumental in my joining Amazon – opportunity to conceive and deliver massively disruptive customer-valued solutions; opportunity to work with the smartest people in the industry; and opportunity to conquer the world! I have been working with digital content delivery and distribution since my early university days, and I have not seen as big a paradigm shift in how digital content is being created, packaged, delivered, distributed and consumed by consumers. Not to mention scale, type, capabilities and ever improving user experiences on plethora of new devices. They are acting as a flywheel, further powering this massive paradigm shift. Amazon is a unique company, which has what it takes to deliver massively disruptive solutions in this space. When Amazon executive recruiter reached out to me for this role, it became clear to me that with the talent, resources, global reach and customer service centric innovative culture of Amazon, I could literally conquer the digital world! A lofty, but achievable goal as far as I am concerned. :-) I can see Amazon leading the charge and enabling new businesses by building atop its disruptive digital books business, and being innovators in how composite digital media offerings consisting of e-books, music, video and applications are packaged, authored and offered to its customers in a personalized and targeted fashion globally. In 2013 I spent over 280,000 miles traveling to countries in Asia, Europe, Australia and South America, meeting with customers to learn about their digital content business needs and spending face-to-face time my globally distributed teams, driving innovation. While I do not envision traveling that much (at least in the near future), I very much see myself spending time with our teams in Chennai on a quarterly basis. I consider myself fortunate that I got an opportunity to build and lead distributed teams across six continents all through last 15 years. I am humbled when I think of the talent I have had an opportunity to work with. If what I came across during recent OLRs is something to go by, I am sure that I am going to meet with even more talented people when I visit Chennai in the near future. From the data I have come across, it’s seems that while we have a strong team in Chennai, it’s still a young team. I intend to work very closely with our Chennai leadership teams in developing existing talent, attracting new talent and getting ourselves ready for the new opportunities that awaits us.
One constant, during many ups and downs in my journey
While various stop overs played important part in defining who I am, equally strong (if not bigger) role was played by one constant force in my life – my family. I would not be where I am today, without my wife Janaki’s unwavering support during ups and downs which one is bound to come across during multiple startups. She not only played girl-Friday during initial startups, but she was the stable presence in raising our two lovely kids – Param and Soha, during my crazy travel schedules during last 15 years. But don’t tell her I said all this – she would never let me win any arguments!! Apart from work – I love to travel! I also enjoy sailing, writing short stories and poems (which I intend to public in the near future using Kindle Digital Publishing and Amazon Publishing) and watching cartoons. Yes, watching cartoons – ‘Pinky and The Brain’ being one of my favorites! Search for it, watch an episode and drop me an email to see if you figured out as to why I like the character ‘Brain’ in cartoons! (Btw - did Vinod tell you that I like giving a lots of homework? )
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
e
D a Yo u R Le
eR
gU
sS
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
the jedi starfighter plane
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
Kindle Chennai Leadership Team In 2013 Driving innovation across kindle groups in Chennai was one of the major theme for KCLT. There were multiple initiative taken to drive this effort. Here are some of initiatives which ended up with successful results in 2013.
The Focused Hackathon We saw good participation from engineers when we conducted hackathon. In 2013, apart from conducting hackthon to generate ideas, we took initiatives to showcase those ideas to Product Managers to take it to the next step. We also hired interns to prototype those ideas and write BRDs. We then demoed that Product Managers, VPs to get their feedback. One of the hackathon idea (Vocabulary list builder) was added as feature to New Kindle Paperwhite. Another idea (Predictive Dictionary) is on the roadmap for Bourbon. Engineers are really boosted to see their ideas showing up in products, which are used by millions of customers. Recently (in December), we did a focused hackathon on educational and enterprise features. We received 75 ideas, and top 5 ideas demoed to Raghu Murthi (VP, Kindle education/enterprise), and have decided to prototype 3 ideas.
We started the initiative to collaborate with collage where they can work on research problems with Amazon assistance. We worked in College of Engineering Guindy to run this program. More than 70 teams were interested to participate and we selected 8 teams. As a result of this program, the college is now ready to allow 6 months internships for Amazon. We hired 2 interns and also made good progress on the research projects (eInk on Android). Jon McCormack gave a talk in the college addressing the final year students.
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
THE PM JOB FAMILY We wanted to hire Product Manager to help us drive features working closely with engineers and deeply connected with PM team in US. We hired 3 interns from SP Jain College and they came to Chennai for 3 months internship. At the end of the internship we made offer for one of the intern. We also then interviewed ISB students for PM job family and hired 2 people for kindle group. These PMs will be joining by mid 2014.
Kindle in Indian Education As part of Amazon live project, we gave kindle for Indian education as the research area for MBA students. We can the maximum respondents to out topic and we selected 3 teams from ISB and Great Lakes. These teams were given different segment on Indian education to do analysis and come up with a report. When Raghu visited India, we got all the teams to do the presentation for Raghu. As an extension to this effort, we arranged for Raghu to meet few schools and start-up to understand the landscape of Indian education. This effort is helping in driving direction for Kindle in Indian education.
Here are some of the initiatives which we did in 2013, but needs improvement Patent: Even though we were generating lot of ideas through hackathon, the number of IDF, patent filed are less. We had training sessions conducted in 2013, to drive awareness on the process of filing patents. We need a program/process to drive engineers to file more patents and IDF. In 2013, we received only XXX patents, we want to double that number in 2014.
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
HERE ARE THE INITIATIVES WHICH WE WOULD FOCUS ON FOR 2014.
Hackathon
We want to continue the efforts on hackthon and driving ideas to product roadmap. We want to integrate the hackathon process with Lab126 hackathon process (similar to kick starter). This way we want to make sure that we have a structured manner to demonstrate the top ideas to execs to get feedback and visibility. We will conduct hackathons every quarter.
In 2013, we established collaboration with CEG, and this year we want to extend this process to IIT Chennai. We also want to drive more internship and collaboration through this process. We would also have some of the Amazon execs to deliver tech talks at IIT and CEG.
Kindle in Indian Education We want to continue our collaboration with MBE colleges to drive these initiatives. This year the major focus will be to establish relation with NCERT (central govt) and state government to get the content and make it available in amazon.com. We will also be doing a thorough market study across various segments to identify the segment which we need to focus.
Kindle Innovation Premium League There are various events like hackathon, srujan, dev conference where engineers participate to showcase their ideas. They also file their ideas for patents. We want to drive a model to recognize these initiatives with points. At the end of 6 months the team with maximum points will be awarded. This will we encourage and motivate engineers to drive ideas and initiatives.
Patent day Once a quarter, we will have a patent day where each team will be given time slots to come up with ideas. We will also have a patent attorney who will review their ideas and give instant feedback. This will drive more awareness and increase the number of patents from Kindle Chennai.
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
India is Amazon’s fastest growing market in mobile traffic & sales Digital Market Asia: The article is an interview of Amit Agarwal, VP & Country Manager, Amazon India wherein he said, “With increasing penetration of smartphones and broadband penetration, and a rising affluent middle class, India is all set to be a massive market for m-commerce. While the top six metros remain the biggest spenders, there has been a substantial jump from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities too. Today, Amazon.in is our fastest growing (amongst all Amazon sites around
the world) ever in terms of mobile traffic and sales. We want to make online shopping a convenient and on the go experience for as many of our customers as possible. Following the encouraging response to Amazon’s shopping app for Android phones, we launched the Amazon app for our customers on iPhone and iPad. Online shopping firms prepared to invest in creating world class mobile platforms will be able to capture greater market share in this space.”
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Amazon.in introduces guaranteed 'one day delivery' service
T3: The article is a review of Amazon Kindle Paperwhite whose speedier processor under the cover results in faster page turns and the more touch-responsive screen means that even the fastest readers can flick through novels without patience-straining transitions. The improved touchscreen is also an advantage when typing in Wi-Fi passwords or using the new PageFlip and Smart Lookup features - the former enables you to skim through an ebook without losing your place, while the latter provides Wikipedia elaborations.
Express Computer: Amazon.in recently announced the availability of a guaranteed ‘one-day delivery’ service for items fulfilled by Amazon in select pin codes across several Indian cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune. Customers in eligible pin codes can choose ‘one-day delivery’ at the time of checkout and will be able to enjoy guaranteed next-day delivery service by placing the orders before the cut off time. Customers in Mumbai and Pune can place orders as late as midnight to receive items next day. For other pin codes, the cut-off time to place orders under this offer is currently 3.00 pm.
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
Amazon.com Price Target Hiked, Citi Cites 'Strong' Q4 Investors.com: Amazon.com nailed a strong Q4, boosted by online holiday shopping and demand for new Prime memberships, said Citigroup, which on Thursday raised its price target on the e-commerce leader's stock. Analyst Mark May raised his target to 457 from 381. Amazon stock was down a fraction in morning trading in the stock market today, near 396. Amazon stock touched an all-time high of 405.63 on Friday.
New camera phones notable in 2013 The Economic Times: The article reports about 5 areas of innovations which are likely to take place in 2014.One of the area is Personalized technical support. With Mayday on Amazon's new Kindle Fire HDX tablets, you no longer need to do that. Instead, just tap the Mayday button, and you'll be connected to a live customer service representative within seconds, even at 4 a.m. on a weekend. Amazon's representatives can help you install apps, connect to Facebook or tackle anything else confounding you. You see them on the screen, but they can only hear you. They have a virtual orange marker to point you to buttons and menus on the screen. They also can take over your machine remotely and do it for you. This news also appeared in the following: The Asian Age: Camera phone tops list that made a mark in 13 The Times of India: 5 things tech made better in 2013 IBN: 2013: 5 biggest tech trends that defined the year Techgig: 5 things tech made better in 2013 Indiatvnews: Top technology trends that got people excited in 2013
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
Amazon Chennai helped me identify a lot of passion in me – be it working backwards from the customer, or handling Sev2s, or launching products which create history. One passion I didn’t expect it would kindle in me is the passion for trekking. I got to know Chennai has quite a nice bunch of trekking enthusiasts! For a couple of years it was great 5 days at work and similarly a great weekend trekking.
MY P ASSIO N
“Though I no longer trek this often, the passion to challenge the human body and be one with nature hasn’t stopped in me”
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
ELLO! Other than classes, Ello has been keeping itself busy taking workshops at different places across the city. A two month intensive dance workshop was held at IIT, Madras. Ello held a workshop at NIFT’s annual event ‘Spectrum 2013’. This year Ello conducted a summer camp for kids. We got the opportunity to perform at the TCS annual event. Ello choreographed for HCL Technologies for the recent inter-corporate competition where HCL was placed 1st. These are just a few of the many feathers Ello has in its cap. I have been able to make this dream of getting my own dance studio come true, due to encouragement from a lot of different sources. At work my manager Shafeeq has been a constant support. Due to Shafeeq’s much needed push, I along with two other colleagues – Alister and Kishan, from our team SPARK took part in the Amazon annual bash in 2011. This was ‘a special one’ since it gave me an opportunity to showcase my talent in front of a much bigger audience. Another person I wish to thank is Alister who is also a fellow lover of dance like me. He keeps giving me ideas and it comes in handy to have a person who has your same wave length to share ideas with. Robert Frost said miles to go before I sleep, and I definitely have many miles to cover but I know I will get there due to the belief and faith my well-wishers have in me.
“i have been able to make this dream of getting my own dance studio come true” (Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
ELLO!
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
fun AMAZON
@
chennai
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
fun AMAZON
@
chennai
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
n o z a am
bash
IGNITE Ignite – the Amazon bash for the year 2013 was held in grand fashion at ITC Grand Chola, loud, colorful, and musical, the bash saw a host of talented people entertain the crowd with dance and music. It was a reason to unwind and paint the evening red as folks from RBS, KCQ, CMT, E-periodicals, KDP CS, SPARKS put a great show in keeping the crowd involved with their brand of fusion music and dance. Ignite lived up to its tagline wherein the revelry and festive atmosphere restored everybody’s spirits and refreshed the senses.
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
An evening of such massive proportions required careful planning and execution, from building up the event with teasers to making sure everything functioned smoothly on D-day, all of it was fantastically put together by the event crew comprising of Raghu (KCQ), Sankar & Sheel (RBS) Nanda (CMT), Shafeeq (Sparks), Srini (E-periodicals) & Mansherin (KDP CS).
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)
(Amazon Confidential – for internal use only)