TechCrunch India site
By Techgirl

Founded in 2005, American tech blog group TechCrunch is one of the great success stories of new media. TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington, assisted by a great team, has made it the No. 1 tech blog in US. TechCrunch gets 7.5 million unique visitors a month and has the power to make or break startups.  When Bill Gates started a Twitter account, he followed a handful of other Twitterers including TechCrunch.

In Oct, 2009, I had written about how Pakistan had the Tech Crunch Awards which sounded a bit too close for comfort to the American TechCrunch (See story below).

Now it seems we have an Indian blog named TechCrunch as well.  The American super blog is TechCrunch.com while the Indian one has been named TechCrunch.in.  To be fair to Ganesh from Chennai, he registered Techcrunch.in in 2006 well before his namesake in USA became such a super success.

As Ganesh explains in TechCrunch.in ‘About”: “I don’t have any affiliation with Techcrunch.com , its just I was looking for a good domain name to start blogging about the Tech gadgets I like and come across and this Domain came in handy not registered by anyone. I sent email to techcrunch.com stating I am using this domain to blog about Tech Gadgets I like. There was no response and that’s how it started.”

There may not be a problem now.  But if Techcrunch.com expands into India, there will either be a compromise or a clash. 

(Techgoss had published the following on Oct 21, 2009)

American TechCrunch and Pakistani Tech Crunch
By Techgirl

Founded in 2005, American tech blog group TechCrunch is one of the great success stories of new media. TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington, assisted by a great team, has made it the No. 1 tech blog in US. TechCrunch gets 7.5 million unique visitors a month and has the power to make or break startups. Pakistan now has its own Tech Crunch Awards.

Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT and ITES (P@SHA) was set up by a number of software houses in an attempt to create a functional trade association for the IT industry in Pakistan.  It now represents ISPs and BPO as well. P@SHA performs the same role as India’s NASSCOM.

The P@SHA ICT Awards, which are now in their 6th year, aim to provide recognition to software and service applications that have been developed in Pakistan, by providing companies an opportunity to gain local, regional and international exposure through on-going promotional activities. Hence, it is meant to acknowledge creativity, innovation and excellence in the Pakistan Information and Communication Technologies sector. This year the award ceremony was held at the Sheraton, Karachi on Oct 14, 2009. Microsoft was the Gold Sponsor, The Pakistani National ICT R&D Fund was the Silver Sponsor and Intel was the Bronze sponsor.
 
For the first time in the history of the awards event, this year the P@SHA Events Committee had decided to launch the P@SHA Tech Crunch Gong Award in which companies which have developed applications for the mobile and financial space were given the opportunity to pitch their cool product or service to customers, peers and technologists and have the opportunity to win a nominal US$1,000.

And how did the P@SHA Tech Crunch Gong Awards go?  By all accounts it was a great success?  Pakistan, like India, has a booming tech industry.

The P@SHA website described (it has many excellent photos as well) the Tech Crunch Awards as follows:

“
It was an atmosphere that you can’t pay to get. There was buzz, there was innovation, there was talk of collaboration, there was pitching and on-going mentoring and expanding of ideas and concepts, a vibrance that one hadn’t seen for quite a while had crept in on the morning of P@SHA’s flagship event – the P@SHA ICT Awards 2009. It started with the P@SHA Tech Crunch Gong Awards where 18 individuals pitched concepts, products and overall great ideas to a panel of 8 judges whose questions added value to the overall discussions.
“

What happens when Pakistan’s IT-ITES rivals India and makes even more inroads into USA?  It would be interesting to see how the American tech super blog TechCrunch reports on the Pakistani Tech Crunch awards.  Or is this another example of Indians/Pakistani’s taking an American product and making it even better? 

What do you think?

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog
http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com