GigaOM » NEA-IndoUS Ventures

Attero Picks Up $6.3M for Indian e-Cycling

Craig Rubens — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:13:25 +0000

Millions of computers and electronics get shipped overseas from the U.S. to the developing world, where they are cheaply, and often haphazardly, broken down for recycling. Now, millions of dollars of U.S. (and Indian) venture capital are following that disassembly chain. Attero, an e-waste recycler based in Noida, India, has raised $6.3 million (approximately Rs. 25 crore) from NEA-IndoUS Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Attero offers end-to-end recycling, pledging to pickup products to be recycled from consumers and keeping them updated throughout the disassembly process. The company plans to use its new funds to build a huge high-tech recycling center in Roorkee to process techno-trash, including old computers, cell phones, network gear, and TVs — known in the business as WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment). The plant will use mechanical separation techniques as well as a metallurgical process being developed in-house to extract precious metals, the company claims.

The Indian Supreme Court has been fighting the importation of e-waste for years, which is considered a hazardous waste. But despite a ban on the import of such waste back in 1997, e-waste is the country’s fastest growing waste stream. Industry lobbyists estimate that over 2,000 trucks dump around 12,000 metric tonnes of e-waste in Delhi every day.

According to a USA Today article citing Karnataka, India’s state pollution control board, 80 percent of U.S.-generated e-waste is exported to India, China and Pakistan to be recycled. But as developing countries raise the levels of disposable income, they’ll be generating more and more of their own e-waste, too. Either way, both are opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors to deliver more efficient, and more eco-friendly ways to recycle those junked gadgets.

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SightSpeed Shifting Places

Om Malik — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:30:55 +0000

A few days ago I read something about ABC trying to out-hustle the DVR technology. I found it amusing because these studio guys are sooooo late to the game always. DVR as a technology is at a point where most devices will carry some form of time-shifting in the near future. What he should really be worrying about is place shifting, a technology that has been gaining in popularity, thanks to Sling Media.

Place shifting as a concept, however is about to get more interesting. We have learnt exclusively that SightSpeed, Berkeley, CA-based VoIP software and services provider is going to soon add place shifting features to its new video/voip softclient. (Screenshot after the turn.)

You should expect more such entrants in the place shifting market. Last week, Engadget reported about Novac, a Japanese hardware maker that will use Skype to place shift television.

This is how SightSpeed TV works: say you have a Media Center, and you download and install SightSpeed on it, you can basically set up an account, and have the television beamed to your Sight Speed client software on another computer. You can also place shift your television channels from a Media Center to a Mac as well.

The software will come with a virtual remote to change channels. The timing of this new software release is a little fuzzy, but we have seen a demo. Hopefully, we will be able to test it out, and report the results.

(A more indepth post on this whole trend of place shifting everywhere will follow, perhaps tomorrow in tandem with a big report on Cisco’s consumer strategy and role of Linux inside the home. Any data points, send them across!)

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Do you “rebuild” your mobile devices?

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 23 May 2006 15:17:23 +0000

Although we try to maintain our mobile computing devices, they tend to slow down gradually over time. You know you add betas and other cool software "just to try", use it a few times and then forget they’re there, right? OK, maybe it’s just me that does that. Regardless, this adds to a vicious cycle of getting software updates for software you don’t even use any more, along with various Microsoft patches, temp files, and the like. Call me crazy, but I rebuild my mobile devices every 4 to 6 months; even my PDAs! The last time I did this was upon my return from CES, when the tablet was running slower than a turtle towing an anvil.

Last night I wiped the drive and I’m in the process of cleaning up the crapware as Warner would call it. What an amazing picture I have when I look at the drive properties. The basic OS and just a few apps is such a small piece of the pie. I have to add some software back in, of course; I’ll then partition the drive and put Vista on there as well, but I can already see the zippiness that I was once enamored with. How about you: are you meticulous about maintaining your mobile device or do you follow the "rebuild" method?

-kct

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