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Why are the benefits of technology scarce among those who need it most?

Indian women and girls washing clothes by hand in a lake in Andhra Pradesh. Photograph: Tim Gainey / Alamy/Alamy

We live in a modern world – modern in thinking and modern in capabilities. Our scientists and engineers and technologists empower us with the future, in the present. The technologies they develop solve problems we didn’t even know existed. As individuals we aspire to stay apace with these ever advancing innovations. With its ubiquity in our everyday lives technology comprehensively occupies and defines our realities. Its presence in our lives assumes a position of great power. Technology is the superhero of our generation.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Currently, the benefits of technology are skewed towards those who can keep up, as opposed to those who need it most. Technology is designed to cater to the luxuries of ready made adopters. In India, a typical urban dweller has even the most trivial of her tasks solved by technology, while a person in a rural setting might struggle to meet some of his most basic needs due to a lack of access. For a superhero as powerful as technology, I think it can do better.

I work in the field of social entrepreneurship and during my career I have come across a number of beautiful examples that buck the trend; Embrace (focusing on infant mortality care); Liter of Light (bringing eco-friendly bottled light to communities without electricity); Digital Green (combining tech and social organisation to improve farming, health and nutrition) and many more. The power of such projects to improve the lives of their beneficiaries is immense. And their power depends solely on technology to solve the problem.

In my own work I have used technology to positively impact the lives of the visually impaired. With a user-centred design intention and with technology as our medium we have been able to work on a number of solutions that allow better access to smartphones for blind and visually impaired people. The fulfilment of giving joy and empowerment has been the motivation; technology has been the super-heroic protagonist.

My experience in the field has helped me understand the significance of technology to increase impact and, as crucially, to understand the interrelationship between impact and sustainability. The more sustainable a project, the greater its positive impact will be. Particularly in non-profit projects, impact tends to scale only up to a point. But as we look at works that scale, a low cost, adaptive and upgradable solution results in easier integration and a longer project lifespan. Technology plays a role not only in terms of the solution but also in terms of the operational sustainability of the enterprise.

Ideo’s elaborate Human Centred Design (HCD) toolkit sheds further light on the relationship between technology, project sustainability and impact. It states the need for a product to be desirable by its users, feasible through technology and viable as a business. In our case, design helped us create a desirable solution in the form of a specialised mobile phone for blind users, feasibility made us refine the solution into an app that addresses the same needs yet can scale at a global level and viability allowed us to adapt a business model that supports development yet keeps the price low and accessible for its intended users.

In this modern age technology plays a central role in building viable solutions that create positive impact. It defines the scale of impact by being a key factor in the sustainability of these solutions. However, in a capitalist set up as ours, there’s room for increased intervention, and thus impact, from technology. It is not yet the Robin Hood it can be.

Sumit Dagar is a social and design entrepreneur working in New Delhi, India. He was made a Rolex Awards for Enterprise Young Laureate in 2012 for his work in the field of applied technology. 

The post was originally posted on The Guardian website.

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My Experience on Building a New Generation CRM Company and Ecosystem with Kreato

We started Navrita with a vision of making customer life-cycle management an easily accessible and adaptable process to every SME (Small & Medium Enterprises). To realize this vision, we started building Kreato CRM – a moderately priced, end-to-end Customer Relationship Management solution characterized by leading-edge technology, comprehensive functionality and a highly flexible architecture.

Building Kreato CRM

When we started with developing Kreato in mid of 2012, we finalized that it has to be built over four main pillars.

First being it has to be a complete and an integrated CRM solution – covering all three main facets of CRM: Marketing, Sales & Customer Support and pre-integrated with required 3rd party applications. We don’t want our customers to juggle through multiple tools to manage their customer relations. Kreato will serve as primary and integrated platform to manage the complete customer life-cycle.

Second it has to be naturally flexible – Hence we first built a CRM framework with qualities to restructure its schema as needed and also ingredients to include new modules and workflows as required. And then housed Kreato on top of that framework, so that our customers can embrace the exact customization that they need.

Third on the pricing point. It has to be very attractive, affordable and modular – To make it possible we framed a moderately priced one single subscription package with all the must-have CRM features loaded and adopted the affordable & incremental pay-per-user subscription model. And then all other add-on features and much needed integrations are provided through the pick-n-pay App subscription model. So that our customers can just pay for only the Apps they want in addition to the must-have CRM features that comes as default with user subscription.

And the final one being the security. We wanted to provide the absolute security – Having hosted our solution at Azure, we know for sure that we don’t have to think even once about the infrastructure security. And we don’t have to worry on the access level security as we have the 256 bit SSL -encrypted application and database access in place. And on the data security, we felt that absolute data segregation only will provide the heightened data security. So instead of following the shared database model where all customers’ data co-exist in a single database, we decided to follow the multi-instance database architecture model, providing every customer a dedicated database.

After nearly two years of time has been devoted to build Kreato Cloud CRM with focused research and engineering on base of the four pillars (explained above) which includes 6 months of stealth mode for Cloud Infrastructure testing, we launched Kreato for general availability on April 2014.

Building the CRM Ecosystem

During the journey of Kreato building process, we decided that in-addition to covering the sales, marketing and customer service facets of CRM, more innovative features and supportive functions have to be introduced in-order to enrich our customer’s usage of Kreato in their customer life-cycle management or on improving their customer experience. And we know that we alone cannot drive such innovations and the best solution is building the CRM ecosystem comprised of best-of-breed technology platforms, supportive service partners and professionals that suits the CRM space.

To provide suitable examples – on the technology platform part, integrating cloud telephony will benefit Kreato customers with ability to track telephony communications from their CRM itself; on the service provider part, with the availability of trusted web designing provider, our customers can instantly create or enrich their web presence to make complete use of Kreato marketing tools; on the professionals part, our customers can instantly hire service of a sales professional well trained on Kreato lead and sales management features on a temporary or permanent basis to support their sales activities.

Including 3rd Party Technology platforms in the Ecosystem: We started addressing the first part of the CRM ecosystem – integrating more and more technology platforms like cloud telephony, text messaging service, web, social and email marketing solutions, web chat software and lead generating platforms with Kreato. Only one thumb rule that we followed on all these integrations is, we did the integration works up front and made all these integrations to be “Plug-n-Play” with Kreato. Our customers can enjoy the benefits of this ecosystem from the day one rather than spending more time, money and efforts to find external consultancy to make the integrations workable. So when an organization chooses Kreato, they are actually choosing an accessible and ready-to-use CRM ecosystem from the day one.

Our Kreato App Store is already live with inclusion of much-needed technology platforms. Mostly all the customers Kreato has got till-date make use of at-least one of these integrations, a welcome note which reinforces our dedication to enrich this ecosystem further.

Also we believed publishing the API platform can further fuel these innovations. Hence we opened up the API platform so that Kreato and any other third party applications used by our customers can talk to each other to build a custom solution that needed.

Including Service Partners in the Ecosystem: As we have progressed on the integration of technology platforms part and confident that we can add more and more required technology integrations, we started working on the next part of the ecosystem: Service partners. And now we are excited to announce the launch of service partner program, where we wanted to align with like-minded service partners who can help our customers on execution of various support systems of CRM like digital presence, social media management etc. It becomes easier for our customers to choose and use the service of these trusted providers who are already partners of this ecosystem.

Including CRM certified Professionals in the Ecosystem: We felt that adding the human-touch to the ecosystem will make it complete in real sense. We wanted to provide a platform as part of this ecosystem which will create a talented pool of professionals (sales, marketing, administrators and consultants) who are trained and certified in Kreato CRM ecosystem. Our customers can easily hire and use the service of these certified professionals to support their business operations. We will be co-launching this platform along with the service partner program.

We firmly believe that building an innovative cloud based CRM product supported by the ecosystem of compatible technology platforms, service providers and certified CRM professionals will strategically address and help us to realize our greater vision of making customer life-cycle management an easily accessible and adaptable process to every SME.

Even though it’s a beginning, we feel we are moving in the right direction to build the much needed CRM ecosystem that really matters to our customers. We are proud that even we are taking part in building India as a Product Nation.

Guest Post by Lokanathan Kutuva, Founder & CEO, Navrita Software Pvt. Ltd.

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Access to the most vital funds for early stage startups

Angel funds are the most vital funds for any startup. It does not only help in validating the idea and prevents the early startup death, but also brings in the valuable mentoring to the table. Having the first right angel investor to back you in your startup journey sets the tone for more investments to come for the startup’s growth. At the high-risk stage (early stage), angel investors on board help sail through the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey.

2014 was a defining year for Indian startup ecosystem. The year saw the highest-ever inflow of angel and seed funds in India. According to VCCEdge (a platform which provides information about the Indian deals landscape), $115 million was raised by entrepreneurs through angels and seed funds across 285 deals, compared to $69 million in 2013 across 262 deals. In the last two years, LetsVenture ( an online platform for angel funding) closed 23 deals on the platform with $6.5 million being raised. The very interesting trend to note across these deals was that out of the 170 angels who invested online, 40% of them were first-time angel investors. It’s so encouraging to see senior professionals and successful entrepreneurs joining the startup investment bandwagon.

India, as a country, to grow economically needs many successful startups. And to reduce the high mortality rate among startups at early stage, we need thousands of angel investors in our startup ecosystem. Though Indian startups raised nearly $ 5 billion from venture funds and angel investors last year, a large number of young startups still find it difficult to access capital and mentors. Also, we have seen entrepreneurs falling into the traps by raising funds from investors who don’t have any idea of the startup ecosystem. These startups are forced to give a high equity for a small capital and subsequently face trouble in the future fund rounds. Also, there is a major Series A crunch in the ecosystem. Hence, there is a dire need of mentors and advisors who can help startups to be Series A -ready.

LetsIgniteKeeping in mind the absence of an opportunity to network with reputed angels,VCs and mentors for early stage startups, LetsVenture is coming up with the biggest Angel Summit for smart entrepreneurs, investors and mentors – LetsIgnite on April 21-22, 2015. There is a ‘Startup Competition’ to choose 100 best startups for the opportunity to meet the best Angels, VCs and mentors from India and abroad on a single platform. The competition is open for startups who are actively fundraising, looking for fundraising in near future and those who are looking for right mentors and advisors. More information about this competition can be found here. Last date for receiving applications is 20 March, 2015.

Post Contributed by Niti Shree, LetsVenture

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Innovation Is Saying No To Thousand Things

At ShimBi Labs, simplicity is the biggest motivation for us, and it reflects in our people, office and our products too.

I developed the appreciation for simplicity from Steve Jobs and the product he created at Apple. Simplicity works because the world is so complicated, and when you do something simple, it stands out.

People need a good product with advanced capabilities and high usability, but you need to make that in a simple way. Customers love simplicity. With the simplicity, they feel an emotional connection with the product. And it is important for any product to success.

Many a times people are confused about their needs and desire for lots of features in products they buy. They find it difficult to control that desire for many features and end up buying complicated products. After few days, they simply stop using those products and move on to other. As a product developer, we must educate customers and provide them option to try simple products that just works!

Innovation is saying no to a thousand things – Steve Jobs

If people are attached to the product, they will keep buying it or upgrading it. If people love your product, they will tell their friends and family about it.

Do fewer things but do it better. Your product should make customers life simple; it should amaze them every time they use it.

Unlike Dell and HP  that gives 100s of PC  & Laptop choices, Apple kept it simple with just 4 Mac choices! Two choices each for home users for Pro users. Apple made selection and decision process simple for customers.  And Apple makes more money than Dell and HP combined.

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove – Steve Jobs

But being simple is not simple, being complicated is really simple. Don’t do anything, and everything will turn complicated.

Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it is worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains – Steve Jobs

At ShimBi Labs, we take one problem and build a simple product around that it that just work. We work to amuse the customers.

Let me know what is your thoughts about Simplicity?

Guest Post by Siddharth Deshmukh, Shimbi Labs

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‘Finding’ Innovation

In a highly competitive market, and one where market dynamics are changing faster than ever, innovation is the key to long-term sustainability and success. History has proven that companies that have a culture that encourages innovation stand a far better chance at sustaining their leadership position or emerging as market leaders.

1Harvey Firestone, an American businessman, and the founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company once said, “Capital isn’t so important in business. Experience isn’t so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life.”

Businesses recognize that. Most progressive businesses have put in place people, processes, resources, and investments and encourage a culture that fosters innovation.

Considering the fact that companies need to innovate faster than ever before, many companies now are also looking for absorbing innovation that is independently created outside their company. Smart companies recognize that they cannot hire all the smart people, and that smart and relevant innovation is also happening outside of their organization. Their efforts are therefore directed not just in innovating within the organization, but on engaging with innovations from outside as well.

By ‘outsourcing’ innovation, many leading companies have managed to minimize innovation costs and associated risks by as much as 60% to 90% while simultaneously reducing cycle times. In addition, they leverage tens to hundreds of times by internally investing the resultant savings. By engaging with innovators outside the organization, larger companies are able to look at a significantly larger pool of concepts and products, and thus are able to significantly reduce the cost of deploying innovative solutions and products for their businesses.

To enjoy the benefits of outsourcing innovation, the executives and the front-line should be on the lookout for the latest and most innovative technologies emerging across the globe and then figure out which ones they can leverage to derive the maximum synergy.

What is important is that you catch innovative companies’ young, i.e., when they are still in the startup or early-growth stage. Identifying and engaging with companies at an early stage has significant benefits for a large company, not just in monetary benefits, but also in being able to guide the product / concept design to best suit their own use case.

Larger companies who may not have the ability and bandwidth to scout for innovation independently can easily collaborate or partner with enablers in the entrepreneurial eco-system like accelerators, incubators, early-stage funds, and also the emerging online platforms that showcase startups and early-stage companies. Domain specific ‘hackathons’, mentoring clinics, and boot camps are some other ways in which larger companies can connect with relevant innovators.

Once the organization has identified which of these innovations fits into their scheme of things, there are 3 options before them:

  1. Acquire the company – in some situations for competitive reasons and to get a longer lead-time compared to competition it might make sense to acquire the company.
  2. Use the product – – sometimes it is worthwhile to simply use the product as an add-on or bolt on to the existing eco-system to provide a unique offering or enrichment to the existing solution.
  3. Partner with the company – This option involves jointly developing the product or innovation further, keeping in mind your specific requirement. This way, the innovation can be customized to suit your needs.

These are interesting times, particularly for software products. The pace and quality of innovation in India has gone up significantly. At iSPIRT, we have seen the quality of entrepreneurial talent, ideas and products, improve rapidly. We have quite a few global standard companies as witnessed by the global scale acquisitions, and the pace at which newer ideas are being introduced is very encouraging. It is also encouraging to note that a number of larger companies have already connected with us to get an early glimpse into innovations. The InTech50 event is a great initiative to showcase innovation to CIOs, product leaders and VC’s that provide the platform for the innovators to springboard.

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The best things are simple. Is your messaging there yet? : from #PlaybookRT

The most crucial lessons come from looking at the mistakes: those that we make and those that we spot others making. A thought might get triggered by listening to great dreamers like Steve Jobs. But the termination, in terms of realization, implementation and imbibing the essence comes only when you have walked through that journey and declared a new start.

Shankar, who imagined and steered the 43rd round table in Delhi, created amazing examples to drive across the points, we had often read heard and hoped to understand. I will try and share what were my takeaways.

This session, thanks to Rajat Harlalka and the amazing iSPIRT movement, started off with an unforgettable lesson, on what is the Curse of Knowledge.

You need to attend one round table to experience it. For now I can only re-iterate one of the ways it is often represented.

“The moment you know how to speak a language, you forget what it is like, to not know it.”

The same thing happens with you and your product. You know it too well to imagine what it looks like to those who don’t know it. What should the message be, so that the potential customers want to have it?

Who?

So if you are looking at spotting your messaging, spot the Who of your customer.

  1.       Who is your Bob (What Bob?)
  2.       What does he look like
  3.       Where does he go
  4.       What does he do

Why?

Once you have figured out the Who, move on to answer the Why

  1.       Why should Bob need your product
  2.       What’s in it for him
  3.       How does it make him better

Only after figuring these questions would it make sense to move on to ‘What’ your product does and ‘How’ does it do it.

I want you to read that again. Give it some time to sink it. Let it challenge what you think you know.

List of Videos by ShankarIt’s only after spotting “Who is your Bob” and “Why should he bother” that you product and it’s features and functionality come in.

First response of one of my fellow entrepreneur to this statement was: I know all that.

‘I am the best ecommerce setup for finding XYZ. That’s why he should care’, he went.  Really?

It’s like saying, “I am the best writer. You better read my books”. Does that work?

If you have both the answers, feel confident. You are amongst the top 5% companies who have their basics right.

Now what do you do with this knowledge?

Let your Bob know!

This was where I would say, the workshop’s original aim hovered.

If you have your answers, incorporate them in your messaging. Share a story that people can relate to. Share with your Bob that you are going to make him better. Let your messaging help Bob, feel this sentiment.

If you look at the steps we went through and reinforced during our Bob journey, there were just 2.  Make yourself :

  1.       Meaningful, and,
  2.       Differentiated, to your Bob.

One other takeaway that stuck with me was this: The best things are simple. Is your messaging there?

Guest Blog post by Kritika Prashant, VoiceTree Technologies

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HasGeek announces Meta Refresh and Rootconf 2015

HasGeek is a community of geeks that gets together several times a year to discuss technology relevant to product startups. HasGeek’s conferences are community driven via an open submission and selection process through Talkfunnel.

Product startups spanning the spectrum from Flipkart to Freecharge and SupportBee to Qubole are a recurring feature at HasGeek conferences, where they come to share candidly and compare notes on how their technology works.

Our next conference is Meta Refresh (April 16-17), on building stellar web-based interfaces, and this year’s edition takes a serious look at the mobile web, an area that remains significant despite the growth of native apps, whether for the initial acquisition of a user or a full transaction cycle. A sizeable portion of your existing user base could be accessing your website only through a handheld device. It is quite likely that future web users will never experience a site on a large screen. We’re looking at proposals from the community that address the evolution of mobile web design, content design for mobile websites, as well as best practices for mobile web UX.

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Meta Refresh is followed by Rootconf (May 15-16), on DevOps, cloud infrastructure and operational reliability, from development to production. Operational excellence is primarily about learning from experience and tactical improvising, but achieving it isn’t easy. We’re trying to address issues pertaining to continuous integration, deployment, testing and delivery strategy as well as team dynamics, which come up in the process. To that end, we’re inviting proposals about infrastructure scaling and automation, CI/CD strategies, microservice patterns, code security, server vulnerabilities, logging and server monitoring, as well as LXC technologies, and Docker adoption strategies.

The funnels for Meta Refresh and Rootconf have full instructions on focus areas and the selection process.

In addition to the main conferences in Bangalore, Meta Refresh and Rootconf also have mini editions in cities across India. The current planned editions are in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kochi. Details on the Meta Refresh talkfunnel.

Guest Post by Rudi MK, HasGeek

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Why India needs to move beyond “Jugaad”.

Innovation is a result of an unaddressed problem.

TITLE (1)Contrary to general perception, design process strives to find the correct problems. Solution to these form the second half of the process and which has complete dependency on the earlier, yet is more celebrated.

A designer observes a given brief, studies it in the context and then identifies the problem(s). He finally calls upon his knowledge and experience to address these. Often enough, reaching out to experts. Later, he iterates solutions at various levels of implementation, progressively validating in the context.

In the case of jugaad, the journey to innovation travels in the opposite direction. The innovator is the user himself. He defines the brief after he has already pinpointed the problems, then makes do with his limited knowledge to address these. In ideal cases, this leads to innovations that are appropriate for his use, and exceptionally, a genius product to generalise.

Much like any heroic story, jugaad innovations are also widely acknowledged. While its solutions are obviously admirable, the process itself isn’t. I offer a few words of precaution in this context.

A step-by-step comparison between the two reveals the risk. At the initial stages, jugaad does a better job in understanding the context and the defining of problems as the user (/innovator) understands his problems better than anybody else. On the other hand, a designer uses his observation skills to relate to the persona of the user, ideally, becoming the user himself. But this ideal case is by-default in jugaad and unrealistic in design process.

However, at solution stage, design process has its advantages. Being better equipped, given the expertise of a designer and access to experts, it not only leads to more efficient solutions but also makes sure that these are appropriate in larger system. Jugaad however depends solely on knowledge and capability of the innovator. In exceptional cases, smart workarounds come out. But these are rare, and bound to fall short of a designer’s resources.

In cases when the solution itself requires lesser expertise, a bigger knowledge pool might be irrelevant. But it can again be a risky proposition to generalise such cases. And that is what we would be doing if we recognise “jugaad” as a parallel process.

However, as I earlier stated, finding the correct problem(s) is crucial, and jugaad is better equipped. A more inclusive process might be to involve users with designers during initial phases. This can lead to exciting results with juxtaposition of experienced users and resourceful designers in brainstorming solutions.

Jugaad by itself should only be looked upon as a desperate option rather than a process. India, being a country well equipped with resources and aiming to be a world-class innovation hub, should do well to encourage correct processes in this endeavour.

Guest Post Contributed by Sumit Dagar, Kriyate

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Knowing Versus Understanding Your Customer

When it comes to retaining your customer, you simply do not need to know them but should also try to understand them. If you wonder that why are your competitors holding a superior hand than you and why are they successful in catching the pulse of the customers?

The reason could be that they are putting more efforts in understanding the customers than you.

And here you are….You just know who your customers are, but do not understand them?

Understanding them could mean the difference between retaining customers and losing them to the competition.

Knowing your customers — information typically collected by a business — means you know who they are demographically, what content they’re reading, and so on. Most companies do a good job on this front.

When it comes to understanding customers, however, many companies come up short. Understanding customers helps businesses deliver an online product with meaningful and compelling value propositions that meet not only their current needs but also their evolving and future needs.

Gain customer insight and just merely not know but try to understand your customer’s:

  • Purchasing power: Find out the degree of disposable income within the community.
  • Demographics: Demographics serve as a means of locating geographic areas where the largest number of potential customers live.
  • Residences: Are homes rented or owned? In what kind of accommodation do they live .
  • Means of transportation: Do prospective customers in the area own vehicles, ride buses or bicycles, and so on?
  • Age ranges: Does the community consist primarily of young people still approaching their prime earning years, young professionals, empty nesters or retirees?
  • Family status: Are there lots of families in the area or mostly singles?
  • Leisure activities: What type of hobbies and recreational activities do people in the community participate in?
  • Credit risk profile: The credit risk profile of the customer needs to be evaluated in order to understand your customer well.
  • Attitudes to and uses of technology:
  • Environmental and ethical views
  • Their preferences to go to your competitors

To innovate and retain your customers, you should clearly understand their preferences if you want to stand out from your competitors.

Guest Post by Shweta, Institute of Product Leadership

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Location is a context, not THE context

Being context aware is about knowing location, identity, activity and time.

Many context-aware technologies give a huge importance to location, but location is just one aspect of context, not the context. Location awareness can improve user experience, but knowing a user’s preferences and specific environment makes it all the more personal and all the more powerful. Mobile apps and devices can tap into this information, as can ad platforms, to create relevant experiences for consumers. Location is certainly important, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle.

There are plenty of applications that use location-awareness successfully from tracking deliveries to managing inventory or simply helping a user find their lost smartphone, or even a pet. But what if those same applications could know, not just where you are, but what you’re doing? Or better yet, what you’ll be doing or needing in the future. In that case, you’ll get a lot more targeted and helpful information rather than educated guesses.

The experts say…

According to Gartner Inc., “context-aware technologies will affect $96 billion of annual consumer spending worldwide by 2015.” In addition, the company’s research shows that by next year, 40 percent of smartphone users will opt-in to context service providers that track their activities. This would equal about 720 million people, by their count. The research company believes that transportation, utilities, energy and healthcare firms, in particular, stand to gain from these trends.

“Context-aware computing is the method by which new experiences are constructed that blend information from mobile, social, digital and physical world sources,” said William Clark, research vice president at Gartner. “The disruptions caused by context-aware computing will include major user, technology and business shifts, including the use of model-driven security in fraud detection and prevention, convergence in television, game, Web and mobile advertising, and new styles of application programming.”

He added that “organizations that do not prepare for thoughtful information sharing — balancing usage, privacy and business models of consumers, context providers, and the enterprises themselves, will be at a severe disadvantage.”

Currently, context-awareness is being leveraged by mobile applications and wearable technology such as fitness trackers from companies like Fitbit, Garmin and Nike as well as numerous smart watches like the upcoming Apple Watch, and finally, Google Glass. In the app realm, one example is Easilydo, a virtual assistant that manages your contacts, calendar and more, in much the same way that Google Now does, by learning from your actions and stored data.

These smart apps and devices are still limited in their intelligence; they only know what a user shares whether it be actively or passively. For example, location-awareness becomes a challenge when one is indoors and out of range of Wi-Fi. Beacons, standalone devices that beam Bluetooth signals, are one solution that can be seen in the retail sector, where stores can communicate with shoppers, for example. Apple has joined the game with iBeacon, which is built into its devices and OS and can communicate with compatible beacons at retailers. Additionally, apps like Placed can be used to launch apps based on which room of your house you’re in, which makes the beacon experience more personal. But there is so much more potential to be tapped in this arena.

How business benefits

On the business side, mobile ad platforms can use your location to serve ads, but they can become more targeted through user profiling. Here too, location is just one tool at their disposal. InMobi, a mobile ad network, uses context-aware technology to create “SmartAds” which exploit a user’s immediate environment to trigger relevant ads. For instance, a user checking the weather on a hot summer day might see an ad for a cold drink or an air conditioner; conversely, on a snowy day, that same user might see an for a hot drink or winter boots. Looking into the future, a platform that knows not only that a user is at a ski resort, but is actually skiing, could serve ads for nearby après ski locations, or other relevant businesses and services.

These apps and devices are only scratching the surface. Currently, all of them require at least some user intervention or prompting. Eventually, we’ll see smarter applications that can infer more about a user, digging deeper into their interests and preferences and learning from mistakes. For instance, apps could know without explicitly asking, where a user works and lives and what their regular schedule entails, and when they might need a break–almost reading one’s mind.

The possibilities are endless

Guest Post by Prima Dona, Keypoint Technologies

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The Bootstrap Ride

There are many paths to successfully bootstrapping a start-up. The trick is finding the way that works best for you. Now more than two years into my journey, I want to share a few lessons I wish I had learned earlier.

I would like to share a few tips from my experiences of bootstrapping an international startup. I want to speak the reality I experienced, my personal opinions, and I do not intend to contradict what others from the industry have said. I only mean to share what I have learnt from my B2B start-up experience within my business context.

Starting-up: Find a problem that exist in a considerably large scale and is solvable. Ideate solutions that could make lives easier. A problem could exist anywhere — in your current job or existing business models. People may or may not know about it. Develop a market need. Don’t build a start-up in view of a million dollar exit. Be obsessive about what you do, aim higher, execute mid-long term plans and take it higher.

Office: You don’t need a flashy office to start with. Work from home, Starbucks & co-working spaces. It’s alright to work from anywhere as long you have a seat, decent connectivity and fewer interruptions. When you set up the office, design it with bright colours and lots of natural light. Adopt a hybrid infrastructure of open workspace & cubicles. At some point in time, when you turn profitable with adequate cash balance and have a strong cash flow — consider owning an office instead of renting. It helps to save significant dollars in the long run and build company assets.

Team building: If you have an idea that you believe in and you have the skills, get started immediately. A few dont’s:

  • Don’t wait on a perfect team and plan to get going; such a thing does not exist.
  • Don’t be fascinated about rank holders, high percentile college degrees and flattery resumes.
  • Don’t do meaningless interview rounds and tests.

A co-founder is not a must-have. Look for freelancers & part time workers to help you get on the road. What matters the most is if the candidate can do your job, whether has the right attitude that fits within your company culture and goals. Give part-time work; engage to get more comfortable before offering the job. Look for skilled human capital available at low cost economies and build your teams internationally. Communicate efficiently, be transparent and set the expectations clearly.

Product: Build products that could be desirable and likeable for large, yet targeted audience. There is nothing wrong with taking a legacy business model, apply modern science and improvise it to create a new business. Change is inevitable; there is always a market for disruptive solutions. Once started, run faster and not ever stop innovating it more.

Go-to-Market: Know your buyers. Short-list them, study their potential business needs corresponding to your products and prioritize accordingly. Approach them with tailored messaging. Focus on showcasing customer benefits, NOT product features. Buyers only care how you can solve their problems not your badges in the sales pitch deck. Plan to be global from day-1. Build your products and company culture for global scale. Gaining market traction should be top priority. Constantly engage with prospective buyers, form a customer council to validate your products and gather market feedbacks regularly to improve your product road map.

PR: Winning new customers is the biggest award and growing your business profitably is the best coverage for startups. Don’t waste your time on pitching into media and investing with PR agencies. Instead, use your website and social media channels to shamelessly self-promote your company, products, case studies and thought leadership. Your prospects won’t buy from you because media covers you and you are popular — they will invest in you if you have a good product with proven benefits and referencable customers. Your company will become popular if your products are useful. Grow your company with disruptive products, global customers and an innovative team. Create newer jobs and give back to the society — let journalists bump into you.

Fund raising: Think of external capital only if you need it. Be sure about why you need the money, investment plan and projected outcome. Do your homework on who you want to partner with. Convince yourself with realistic valuation of your company and practical terms you want to work with; stick to it. Be honest in your pitch deck and fund raising approach. Investors are expected to do their home work too, so don’t be afraid to correct them. If they say ‘Grand ma should understand your business’, and you don’t sell into such audience, tell them openly. Avoid investors looking for start-up lottery. Instead, find backers who promote innovation and entrepreneurship. You can’t do an enterprise startup investor pitch in 3 minutes. Stay away from 3 minutes pitching gimmicks, it’s a ticket selling tactics for startup media events. You can easily find the VC communities from Google search. Pick up the phone and call them or send them an email. Use LinkedIn & leverage reference contacts. It’s at the best, if you build your company with market traction and proven products to be in a position to choose from whom you wanted to take money, if and when you need it.

Networking: Start-up events are trendy and fashionable these days. There is a lot of noise and smoke out there. Be smart to rise above the noise. Don’t compare yours with other startups. Don’t be too excited about showy startup media. Be selective in networking events and look for agendas that can give you key take-away for your business. Remember, your ultimate goal is not to build a worldwide network of know-who, but to know those few who can complement to build your company. Invest your networking time wisely. Not all great companies are built out of startup accelerators. Many successful companies are bootstrapped, built from garages and bedrooms. Startup media publications make most of their money from their event tickets, hackathons etc. It’s severely hyped up. Be practical and selective.

Mentors: Surround yourself with like-minded people who can inspire you and give guidance; people who can introduce you to customers, partners and investors. Build an advisory board that could help you establish your network & connect with right people and open doors to money. Advisers should be fluid, review and make changes at different stages of your start-up journey.

Social: Associate yourself with entrepreneur community. Share your experience and learning with aspiring start-up entrepreneurs. Volunteer in community development projects in small ways you can. Creating new jobs through your start-up is the best contribution you can offer to the prosperity of humanity. Build a company culture to help others and give back.

Personal: Be prepared to sacrifice, compromise and tolerate. Improve your patience level as much as possible. Don’t bring emotional sentiments in customer situations. Make friends with clients. Engage in some sports. Fall in love with everything around you. Never shut down. Travel the world, it makes you richer. Stay humble.

I am the Founder and Chief Executive of Corporate360, a global leader in B2B sales intelligence data solutions. We bootstrapped and turned our business profitable with multi million dollars in revenue. C360 now has a global footprint with over 300 clients, and a successful team of 30 full-time employees and 9 contractors in five countries. I want to share what I have learned from my B2B start-up experience within my business context in the hopes that it will help others on their own journey.

 

Post Contributed by Varun Chandran, Corporate360

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WIEF Startup Competition 2015 powered by LetsVenture

LetsVenture partners with Wharton on one of the most prestigious India-focused conferences in the US – the Wharton India Economic Forum (WIEF). WIEF provides a unique platform for thought leaders to discuss the opportunities present to India and the challenges that need to be addressed.

This year, WIEF will be hosting its second India-focused Startup Competition as part of the WIEF conference in Philadelphia on Feb 21st, 2015. 

LetsVenture invites startups to apply for this competition to stand a chance to win up to USD 10,000 in prize money, as well as the unique opportunity to showcase your product / service in front of a global audience comprising of angel investors, VCs, corporate leaders and serial entrepreneurs at Wharton. Apply Now

Who can apply?

The Startup Competition is open to any individual(s) (subject to the eligibility requirements) with a business idea or model incorporating products or services targeting the Indian market OR Indian products or services targeting the US market.

What is the selection process like?

Competition entries will be pre-screened by a panel of experts from the Venture Capital industry. This panel will select semi-finalists (post review of 1st round applications). Shortlisted semi-finalists will be provided with 20-minute time slots to present their ideas to the judges (via teleconference) Finalists will present their business plans to renowned Indian entrepreneurs and Venture Capital investors at the Startup Competition to be held on the day of the WIEF conference. The presentation format will consist of a 5-minute presentation and a 3-minute Q&A session.

What prizes are on offer?

Cash prizes worth up to US$10,000. One member from each team of finalists will receive a subsidized return ticket to attend the WIEF conference (where the Finals of the Startup Competition will be held) in Philadelphia, USA. Apply Now

Guest Blogpost by Kasturi Shrivastava, Let’sVenture.

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8 Powerful Things I learned about “Positioning your Startup” at the iSPIRT #PlaybookRT

As a founder or technologist mired in the day-to-day tasks of product building, it’s easy to get drawn into thinking of your product as a collection of features. But do customers also see our products as a stack of features? Or do they see products as a sum of the solutions that they offer? How do we best translate our offerings into a simple and sticky pitch that piques our customers’ curiosity and gets them to purchase/sign-up?

To find a thinking toolkit to these type of questions, I attended the iSPIRT Round Table on Startup Positioning at the WebEngage  office in Mumbai this Saturday along with the founders and product leaders of 14 other unique startups.

2014-12-06 16.57.35Over six intellectually stimulating hours, all of us had our product pitches brutally critiqued by everybody else under the guiding presence of Shankar Maruwada, an ex-P&G marketing wiz and the man who got millions of Indians to sign-up for the Aadhar card.

Here are the Top 8 things I took away from the #PlaybookRT.

  1. First, make sure you are positioning to the right customer—A startup can have multiple “customers”. The customer who will purchase and implement your product may not be the same as the one who will use it. Which one of them do you pitch to? Example—should RippleHire (an employee referral hiring tool that uses gamification) position itself to a company’s Chief Recruitment Officer who will deploy the product in his company, or to the company’s employees who will be the actual end users critical to the product’s actual usage?
  2. Then, know your customers well—What 3-4 specific things do you know about your customer, which you can use to create a pitch? This resonated very well with me. Having interviewed a bunch of Instamojo’s customers in the past few days and quizzed them about the outcomes they were trying to achieve by using Instamojo, I had learned that “non tech-savviness” was a common characteristic among most of them. This insight suggested to me that Instamojo’s positioning should embed the fact that it requires “Zero IT Knowledge”.
  3. Find out the customer benefits that your product delivers and communicate them—Beware of confusing features with customer benefits! Features define the tasks that a product completes. Benefits capture the outcomes that customers achieve as a result of using the features.
  4. If your product provides multiple benefits, prioritise them in decreasing order of importance and then communicate just the one or two most essential ones in your positioning. Communicating too many benefits at the same time could make for a confusing message and take the focus away from your product’s superpowers.
  5. Beware of the “Curse of Knowledge”—As product leaders, we are prone to become so close to the body of knowledge surrounding the product and internalise so many assumptions that we forget what it is like being the user. Positioning the product correctly requires us to place ourselves outside the realm of features, technologies, implementations and industry terminology and speak in the language of customer’s problems and our solutions to them. Example—product leaders of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software may forget that many in their target customer base may not even know what ERP stands for, though the same customers may still be facing the problems that ERP software aims to solve.
  6. Use the power of analogies—Often, a complex concept can be explained simply using the construct “We are the X of Y”. Example—“Foodpanda is the Uber of Food Delivery.” or “Wishberry is the Kickstarter of India”. While such a construct may not always fully convey the idea, it catches you the customer’s attention enough for you to then elaborate further on how your product’s benefits make the analogy valid.
  7. Use the power of stories—A powerful customer story can illustrate your product’s benefits and allow the target of your positioning to visualise herself in the story. Example— Apartmentadda helped an amnesiac senior citizen find his way home. His apartment complex’s security guard pinged all its residents on SMS about the lost gentleman using ApartmentAdda. Among those who received the SMS was the old man’s son, who promptly arranged for his pickup.”
  8. Use numbers for a strong impact—What numbers can you say about your product that will help your prospective customers visualise its impact on their lives? Numbers can be about the number of customers whose lives you have changed, the number of steps (hopefully very few) it takes to get started with your product, the number of transactions your product did in the last X hours, the number of hours of customer work your product will end up saving, etc.

Guest Post by Apoorv Pandit, Sr. Product Manager, Instamojo

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Head start Higher 101

‘Headstart Higher’ is an initiative by HeadStart Network Foundation. This is as a platform to connect startups to rock star people who could be their prospective employees. This is carried out in the SPEED DATING format, where all candidates meet all startups and then startups can choose to talk further to those who they find competent enough to join them. Our vision is to help startups HIRE at a HIGHER level, hence the name Higher!

headstart_higher_fb_banner_design_v1a (1)Err… who is Headstart Network, by the way?

We are one of the biggest grassroots-level entrepreneurship communities in India, with presence in over 13 Indian cities. Besides organizing over 150 startup events of different scale ever year, we power India’s most popular startup mailing list and do a number of things towards building an ecosystem for startups in India. We believe entrepreneurship can positively impact India in a big way and are working towards that cause for over 5 years now.

So, what do we do at Higher?

We bring STARTUP-READY candidates closer to startups that are looking to hire great people. This is the process that we follow to achieve the same:

  1. Invite participation from prospective candidates and startups. Get details of what the participating startups are looking for in their prospective hires.
  2. Screen candidates based on their profiles and the requirements of the startups.
  3. Let the startups pitch to the candidates on the day of the event.
  4. Let the startups and candidates speed-date i.e allocate 3 minutes to each candidate with every startup and let the magic unfold!

Is this the first of its kind that we are doing?

No, we had a successful Higher session last year in Bangalore. Out of the 40 startups that attended, averages of 3.7 candidates were shortlisted by companies. Hence, this year we wish to take Higher higher, by helping a number of startups hire!

What Higher is and what it is not…

Higher is:

  • A platform for introductions
  • A platform to accumulate the right set of people together in one place.
  • Skillset agnostic. You will find a start-up ready developer, but not necessarily a start-up friendly Xamarin developer.

Higher is NOT:

  • A job fair. Only early stage startups are allowed here and we are quite particular about that.
  • A place where joining offer letters are handed out. They are a gateway for final joining offer letter to take place, but they may not necessarily happen.
  • A selective meetup. Here, every candidate meets every startup. One cannot pick and choose. We do this to make sure maximum value is derived out of the event by every candidate and every startup and it also helps us run the event in an organized fashion.

How can you participate?

Startups and candidates can register here: http://higher.headstart.in/bengaluru/

When is it happening?

This year, the event is happening on 14th December in Bangalore.

If you have doubts/questions/clarifications, please do drop an email to [email protected] and [email protected]

When is the last date for registration?

It’s 10th of December. Hurry!!!!

Guest Post by Malini Gowrishankar

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The Leap from Context to Hyper-Context to add Value to the Consumer

Mobile is redefining customer engagement models. Highly personalized recommendations are possible now that companies can access location information and user behavioural data. Brands and services must leverage intelligent targeting to win customer loyalty, rev up engagement, boost conversions and most importantly, to stay competitive in the mobile-first world.

By analysing the customer journey and expectations in their moment of need, mobile applications in coming years must become smart enough to design experiences that fulfil their customers’ needs in real-time. Of the many factors that deliver an outstanding customer experience, context rules. Context-aware mobile applications understand the location and environment of the user, as well as interests and past actions.

Keeping in mind the immediacy associated with mobile, accurate data delivery is essential to enhance the consumer experience. Personalizing mobile content delivery based on users’ demographic data, preference, purchase behavioural information and context can positively influence consumer experience, which in turn strengthens engagement or purchase intention.

Context-aware mobile apps are already very common. One example is Gas Buddy, an app that helps you find nearby gas stations once you share your location. But what if apps knew more about you than simply your location? What if your apps knew what kind of car you drive or whether you prefer a window or aisle seat when traveling? Or even your favorite food? That’s when we step into the world of hyper context, where apps can store your preferences, learn from your actions, and make your life a bit easier.

As Cisco defines it “Context aware mobile applications leverage information about ‘where’ the user is. In contrast, Hyper-context aware applications move beyond just location and include ‘who’ the user is, and ‘what’ interest or past behavior the user has exhibited.”

Google Now is one such hyper-context aware application that delivers personalized and targeted recommendations for a highly positive user experiences. On the way to a meeting? Launch the app and Google Now will suggest the best route to your destination as entered in your calendar. The app optimizes your experience by alerting you to the traffic conditions along the way, suggesting alternate routes and continually updating the estimated time of arrival. The application delivers a satisfying solution to an immediate problem by understanding your context – location, time, history, intent, and other relevant information.

Another example of a context-aware application is the Cortana personal assistant for Windows 8.1 phones. Basically a cross between Siri and Google Now, Cortana will not only perform basic assistant-like tasks such as making calls, sending texts and updating your calendar, it can also help you plan ahead by predicting your needs. If you’ve planned a trip and added it to your calendar, Cortana will warn you if your flight is delayed. On a regular work day, Cortana can tell you what traffic looks like for your evening commute. Even better, Cortana can practically read your mind, reminding you when you arrive at the grocery store that you need to pick up milk, for example.

Leap from Context

Contextual Information = Better User Experience = Deeper Engagement

Making a leap from context to hyper-context, it is hyper-personalization that can be the key driving force for deeper customer engagement and an influential factor to drive conversions. Context leverages on the saying “your past influences your future,” but with hyper-context, we go further, by not only looking at your past preferences, but predicting your future needs to give better user interaction with brands and services. That’s personalization at its best.

Today, so much data is being collected from consumers whether they actively share it or passively allow it in the background. If you can serve relevant content, it turns out that consumers are willing to share some private information in return. A recent survey shows that a whopping 88 percent of participants would share their locations in order to receive coupons and offers.

Personalization is the best way to deliver relevant content to users based on their interest and also one of the best ways to influence purchase decisions. In a survey of US based consumers, 86% said that online personalized product recommendations influenced what they purchase, with 25% saying that personalization significantly influences their purchases.

Personalization Influeces Purchases

Mobile data is enabling better predictions using faster processing technology; hyper-context has arrived and will get better in the coming years. Several existing and upcoming applications are joining the Google Now and Cortana tribe and going beyond serving hyper-contextual recommendations on mobile.

Mobile has enabled us to do more, in less time and on the go. Mobile applications need to catch up; and why shouldn’t they, with so much opportunity. With mobility enhanced, there is a strong expectation from new and upcoming applications to leap from context to hyper-context.

The article is attributed to Prima Dona – VP Product Innovation, IP, Business Strategy at KeyPoint Technologies