The Bollygarchs: Meet The 15 Richest People In India

In the past few years a new word has appeared in India to describe the new mega-rich — “Bollygarchs”. These Indian business-owners have become a new, distinct class of the international elite.

Via Business Insider

Gandhi’s Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World

Mahatma Gandhi needs no long introduction. Everyone knows about the man who lead the Indian people to independence from British rule in 1947. Here are some of excellent tips from Mahatma Gandhi:

Via The Positivity Blog

Chikilidae, Legless Amphibian Family, Discovered In India

Since before the age of dinosaurs it has burrowed unbothered beneath the monsoon-soaked soils of remote northeast India — unknown to science and mistaken by villagers as a deadly, miniature snake. Over five years of digging through forest beds in the rain, the team has identified an entirely new family of amphibians — called chikilidae — endemic to the region but with ancient links to Africa.

Full story at The Huffington Post

Asian Social Media users create, Western users consume

Social media users in metropolitan China and India are much more apt to be “creators” on the platforms than their Western counterparts, according to a new report.

Forrester Research polled about 100,000 consumers in Asia, Latin America and North America in the second and third quarters of 2011, and the results show that people in emerging markets are often enthusiastic adopters of social media. Among those who have Internet access, 93% report using social media once or more a month vs. 49% in the seven European countries in the study — the U.K., France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Italy.

Consumers in emerging markets also tend to be creators, according to the report.

Full story at Mashable

India’s low-cost Aakash Tablet pre-orders hit 1.4 million

The low-cost Indian tablet known as the Aakash, is finally shipping. In late December they opened up orders for the first batch of 30,000 units, and brought so much traffic to their retail site that an Indian cyber regulation agency called to inform them they were possibly under attack. And in the last two weeks, they’ve racked up over 1.4 million pre-orders — iPad-scale numbers.

It’s being sold for Rs2500, which translates to just under $50. The government then subsidizes sales to students, bringing the cost down to $35.

Via TechCrunch