Take a look at this man. If he has his way, he will end up shaping the destiny of two companies with combined worth in excess of several hundred billions of dollars. Billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn is all set to lock horns with Yahoo executive board and wants to get rid of them. This man is obviously unhappy with the way things have turned out for Yahoo - Microsoft merger and is ready to plyay hardball now.

In plain speak, Carl thinks the internet company totally botched it.

And just how does he plan to bring the change. In an open letter, the billionaire investor has claimed that he has acquired 59 million shares of Yahoo, sounds like a big number but its only 4% of Yahoo’s market capitalization - and has teamed up with other investors to stand for election against the current board.

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(In Pic: Yahoo India building in Bangalore)

Adrian Bridgwater

In October, Yahoo ran an Open Hack Day event in Bangalore, hosted by one of the company’s co-founders, David Filo. Two hundred local developers were invited to a 24-hour code-a-thon to combine their own ideas with mashed-up services from Yahoo’s own library of APIs. The winning entry brought together Yahoo’s mapping tool with a handwriting function to allow users to give travel directions to each other.

This kind of innovation-focused event is symptomatic of what some commentators are claiming is a fundamental shift in the focus of India’s tech industry. “Innovation was always there, but the right conditions, ecosystem and critical mass did not exist from 1947 until the early 1990s. Now, venture capitalists are more willing to venture forth in emerging markets and back entrepreneurs — and India’s universities have helped create critical mass in terms of skilled workers. So, as these factors start to coalesce, innovation and entrepreneurship are now much more evident in many different parts of India,” said Kamla Bhatt, acclaimed Indian podcaster and presenter of The Kamla Bhatt Show.

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