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“The day we claim success is the day we fail”– Andy Walter, CIO of Procter & Gamble #InTech50

Andy Walter, CIO of Procter & Gamble strongly believes that the day we claim success is that day we stop innovating and the day we start climbing down. We are very fortunate to have Andy Walter CIO P&G to visit and talk about his experiences in what it takes to be a global enterprise product company and specifically what it takes for an Indian product to break into US enterprises. He is here visiting, speaking and being part of the advisory board to shortlist the 50 Indian enterprise product companies showcasing at InTech50. Have you applied for InTech50, if not, please apply here

Andy WalterAndy is the Vice President, Delivery & MDO Solutions at Procter & Gamble. With 24 years of experience at P&G across the U.S. and Europe Andy’s career has spanned a variety of assignments including Global R&D, Product Supply & Manufacturing, Marketing, and International Sales & Operations. Prior to his current role, Andy also designed and led the industry-leading Business Intelligence / Analytics journey across P&G. Under his leadership, P&G received the first-ever Excellence in Analytics Award by The International Institute of Analytics. His teams have also been recognized with CIO 100 Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012. In 2013, Harvard Business School will add a P&G-based case study to their analytics’ curriculum. Andy credits such recognition to clear “Play to Win” strategy choices, relentless talent development, and breakthrough strategic partnerships. Andy is driven by the belief that people and relationships make the difference—that “The day we claim success is the day we fail.” Execution is the only strategy consumers and retailers see!

Andy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. A native of the city, Andy lives on the West Side of Cincinnati, with his wife, Debbie, and their two sons. Andy believes that “perfect storm” of Talent, Technology, and Leadership (TTL) is required for the success of a company and in particular at P&G. He strongly believes in TTL with TALENT gave it a good nucleus of people who understood analytics and already had a strong program in place. TECHNOLOGY – P&G also saw the technology advance to a point that allowed it to bring together disparate, siloed datasets, and run analytics on stuff it hadn’t been able to previously. Leadership. The third element of P&G’s perfect storm was the vision of GBS President Filippo Passerini that BI and analytics needed to be a “key area of investment and a breakthrough for P&G and Andy was asked to head it.

Andy designed and led the transformation of Consumer Digital Services, and, more recently, the industry-leading Business Intelligence/Analytics journey across P&G. Under his leadership, P&G received the first-ever Excellence in Analytics Award by The International Institute of Analytics. His teams have also been recognized with CIO 100 Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012.

P&G’s transformation into a data-driven, analytically-rich culture happened quickly. And Walter said, “because we made the courageous choice at that time that we weren’t going to wait until the data, infrastructure, and core systems were perfect before we started doing analytics or visualization.”

Andy shares that P&G adapted new technology at the right and that is the risk they took and today they proudly say and No doubt, P&G deserves recognition as an analytical innovator.

Let’s all welcome Andy Walter to InTech50 and we are all very fortunate to have him here!!

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If you have built an Enterprise Software Product, here are 5 reasons why you should apply for #InTech50

If you have built an Enterprise Software Product and have aspirations to take it to a global scale, here are the 5 reasons why you should apply for #InTech50.

  1. An opportunity to showcase, get validation of the concept and product direction, better understanding of business value in the enterprise from Global CIOs.
  2. High probability of being selected by Global CIO’s for pilot or early adoption.
  3. Possibility of being selected by large product companies for add-on/bolt-on value add/partnerships to their large scale product solution sets.
  4. Potential possibility of getting investors attention due to interest/validation from Global CIO’s/large product companies.
  5. Getting selected in the elite #InTech50 list and subsequently getting a high degree of visibility from different stakeholders especially media coverage.

InTech50 logoThe possibility of all this happening without the need to travel out of country is real! This is the 1st and only platform for Enterprise products to showcase their products to Global CIOs.  Only the 50 shortlisted companies will get to attend the event. So what are you waiting for, go ahead and apply, the last date is 31st Jan 2014.

 Read more details here – Announcing InTech50 – A showcase of 50 Innovative Product Companies to Global and Indian CIOs, Product Company executives, Investors and Analysts

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Innovate Delhi Entrepreneurship Academy: Apply to the June 2014 class.

One of iSPIRT ProductNation central goals is to build a vibrant ecosystem for the next generation of Indian software product statups. That is why we are so excited to partner with Innovate Delhi Entrepreneurship Academy.  The three-week long academy, which takes place in June, works with aspiring entrepreneurs to hone their skills in innovation, team-building, and strategy. Complementing the great one or two day startup events that seem to take place nearly every weekend in India, Innovate Delhi offers a more comprehensive and in depth experience.  Members of the June 2014 class will have the chance to learn cutting edge design and business frameworks, hear from successful entrepreneurs, build long-lasting relationships and perhaps even meet a co-founder and secure some initial seed funding!

You can apply to the program at www.innovatedelhi.com/apply.  Applications are due by February 1st.  More information about Innovate Delhi can be found below and at their website www.innovatedelhi.com.

What is Innovate Delhi?

A three-week academy for aspiring entrepreneurs to be held on the campus of Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology – Delhi from June 1 to June 22, 2014. Innovate Delhi is funded by grants from Stanford University’s SEED institute and IIITD. During the three-week academy, participants will learn from professors (from Stanford GSB and IIITD), entrepreneurs, and industry experts about design thinking, marketing and branding, competitive strategy, venture design and leadership. Each week, participants will complete a project with three of their peers that will help them learn how to identify market opportunities, iterate on product ideas, and effectively start and grow their own companies. Teams with the best projects can win big prizes—over the three-week program Innovate Delhi will be giving away prizes totaling 4 lakh Rupees to help participants fund their startup.

Why apply Innovate Delhi?

Three simple reasons: 1) Learn the latest startup frameworks from professors, entrepreneurs and experts; 2) the chance to meet startups that will be recruiting great talent; and 3) a chance to win 4 lakh Rupees in prizes that will help you turn your vision into a startup.

Who should apply?

We look for men and women who are smart, creative, and passionate about changing people’s lives by creating innovative products and services. There are are only three formal criteria for applying. You should be: 1) fluent in written and spoken English, 2) be 18 years or older, and 3) own a laptop that can run Google Chrome and connect to wi-fi.  This year, Innovate Delhi will be accepting 300 applicants.  We expect to receive many more applications than there are spots available, so apply early at www.innovatedelhi.com/apply Applications are due by February 1st, 2014.

When and where will it be held?  Innovate Delhi will be held from June 1-22, 2014 at the campus of IIIT-D in the Okhla neighborhood of New Delhi. Housing will be available on campus.

How much does it cost?

With funding from Stanford’s SEED Institute and IIIT-D, the only cost will be a small materials and technology charge totaling Rs. 3,000 and for students staying on campus, there will be a Rs 11,000 room and board fee. You can apply to the program at www.innovatedelhi.com/apply.  Applications are due by February 1st.

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Launching ProductCast – Podcast of Interactions with ProductPreneurs

Come 2014 and we will launch ‘ProductCast’ – the interactions with ProductPreneurs. These will be in podcast medium and will get to hear from iconic ProductPreneurs on their journey.  Certain to provide inspiration and valuable education based on first-hand experience, these sessions will extend the experiential learning to your mobile device, for your consumption at the time and place you choose. Our host will be Vish Mahajan, who likes to call himself , ‘ProductPreneur in Exile’. He ran one of the earliest Indian product ventures in last decade before exiting it.

Here is an invitation for you to a. suggest ProductPreneurs we should interview b. suggest the questions or areas in which we should seek their knowledge and experiences.

Stay tuned and get your mobile devices ready to receive these “ProductCasts’ in the new year.. J

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Announcing the Second list of #PNCamp attendees

Here’s the second set of attendees and more will get announced as soon as we’ve collated the registration details. Stay tuned for the updates.

Cohort2We’re almost full now, but if you are interested in the last remaining seats up for grabs, there are few days left and would request you to apply before 27th November.

More details about the attendees can be seen by clicking on their names

Attendees for the Discovery Hacking

Archana Stalin

Sagar Vibhute

Shashikant Kore

Arun Prabhudesai

Sarang Lakare

Vivek Beria

Aravind Sivashankara

Sudarsan Ravi

Tejaswi Raghurama



Dhanyal Gopi

Neha Arora

Attendees for the Scale Hacking

George Vettath

Praveen Hari

Sushant Khurana

Sumesh menon

Jazeel Ferry

Rohit bagad



Naveen Chandra Voruganti

Ajay Navgale

Sunil Patro

S Vijay Venkatesh

Kiran Nataraj

Akshay Tilak

Shashikant Anpat

Tejaswi Raghurama

Sudhir Patil

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Announcing the first list of #PNCamp attendees

Last evening was a really exciting one for Team #PNCamp. We’ve been cracking some goals we set for ourselves while building this bootcamp from scratch, and lofty as they were, the team has been reaching milestone after milestone. The incentive of putting together an event to help the ecosystem we are part of, has pushed us all towards something special, and we hope you’ll see that passion come through on December 4 and 5.

Amidst a flurry of mails yesterday then, we have just been able to take some time off to publish the first list of confirmed attendees.

The most important thing we want to make clear is that being in the same track as your friend or someone you know doesn’t mean that you are going to be attending the camp together or that you can sit together and so on. The boot camp format is not going to work that way.

How will it work then? Well, it’ll work better.

Here’s the first set of attendees and more will get announced as soon as we’ve collated the registration details.

Cohort

Dec 4th – Customer Discovery Hacking track

 

Dec 5th  – Scale Hacking track

If your name is not in this list, there’s nothing to worry. We’re still collating all your info and will be announcing the next set of attendees soon.

We’ll be seeing you in Pune!

If you haven’t registered/applied yet (there’s still time — in fact if you register before 22nd November, we have something special for you 🙂

 

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Happy B’day ProductNation, We are One year Young

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. ― Mother Teresa.


ProductNation is today, one year young. Yes! One year. It didn’t seem too long ago when I was contemplating putting a blog together to showcase Indian Product companies. It all started as a passion project at the One97 office with the support of Vijay Shekhar Sharma; it was something I wanted to do for a long time. Having worked for almost eight years with the Product eco-system, I wanted to connect and contribute in a small way to the project building India as a ProductNation. I wanted to build something which allowed product people to share their experiences. I did bounce off the idea with a few of my friends, evangelists of the Product Industry and I had spontaneous commitment from many of them.


I always like to read and understand the successes of product entrepreneurs, which include some inspiring stories, the challenges faced by them and how they have been able to address global markets. These are the stories which will inspire a new generation of product companies from India, and indeed, it’s been a wonderful journey, for me personally, as well as for the people who have been involved. 

Here’s what ProductNation is today – 

  • We are home to 400-odd blog posts here in 50+ categories such as Product Management, Reviews of Products, Design, Eco-system, Funding, GotoMarketing and so on.
  • We have featured 110+ product companies on the site.
  • We do 5 blogs every week – Monday to Friday at 11am and once in a while do a blog on Saturdays.
  • There are 75+ contributors who actively contribute articles and share their own learning’s here. Many of them help me do the Product Reviews, interviews with Product Companies and the like.
  • We have started #PNHangouts where we have conversations with Product Managers.
  • We started out with sending newsletters twice a month, but now with so much of content coming up, we schedule the newsletters thrice a month (5th, 15th and 25th).  You can access the past issues here and subscribe to the newsletter here. We have sent out 53+ newsletters so far
  • We have 80+ Posts on Product Management
  • 18+ Playbook RoundTables which have been covered on the site
  • A vibrant community with 500+ members and 50+ conversations
  • More to come…stay tuned 🙂

 

ProductNation is the result of a collective effort, and I’m grateful to all the evangelists who have spent enormous efforts in contributing and in making what ProductNation is today! When I started, it was just me and my passion. Today, I have a large “virtual” team and many evangelists who truly believe in the movement. I do get many people who compliment me on the content and the regular updates that they get from the site. There are many who are silently observing the movement and I’m sure will jump in soon. 

ProductNation was one of the first steps in the formation of iSPIRT(Indian Software Product Industry RoundTable) – a think-tank with a difference to transform India into a hub for new generation software products. So here’s the deal. We need to put India on the global software product map. We need to do it soon. Come, join us.

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Keeping Data Theft Prevention Simple & Green!

Zarir M. Karbhari is the Chief Architect of CopyNotify! & Founder of CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd shares his journey of diversifying a outsourced programming services company into a software product company. The company was founded in 1995 with a focus of offering hi-tech outsourced programming services for companies based all over the world. The company maintained this hi-tech niche by ensuring that most of its projects involved network programming, communication protocols and device driver development for various operating systems.

Decision to diversify to product development — What factors contributed to this?

Based on inherent in house expertise and experience of over 100,000 programming hours in the field of application development, networking, security and communications, a strategic decision was made by CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd. in 2007 to move up the ‘value’ ecosystem and develop a network security software product which catered to the needs of the small business user which was at that point a perceived need of the hour.

Explain the journey of evolving your core product. What aspects and feedback were important in this process?

Security against data theft of source code was becoming paramount in the outsourced programming industry in India and many nightmarish stories of how data was being copied in an unauthorized manner and without detection via USB flash drives were beginning to surface. So theft via USB became the initial ‘problem to solve ‘. Instead of searching the web for similar
anti data theft products and cloning them, the engineers at CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd took the route of talking to system administrators & small business owners and created a vision specification for CopyNotify based on their feedback.

The company had identified a problem, spoken in detail to those who were facing the problem and then went on to design a software product to solve the problem. From a simple beginning of just detecting the insertion of USB Flash Drives, the product soon evolved into a full fledged Data Security Software for small office networks.

Can you share details about your products.

CygNET Systems currently has released 3 products.

1. CopyNotify! (Data Protection that went GREEN)

CopyNotify! is an entry level data protection software designed specially for the small business / SOHO networks. The software deploys anti data theft measures for computers on the office network by disabling the copying of data to external USB drives and Smart Phones, blocking internet connectivity via portable modems / data cards as well as restricting browser based uploads of data.

The software monitors user logon activities such as privilege levels, remote logons and invalid logons. Software installs and un-installs on the network are logged as well as rogue devices attempting to access network resources can also be detected.

CopyNotify! goes GREEN in data protection by also offering electricity saving features such as switching off IDLE machines and the auto shutdown of computers after office hours.

2. Insta-LockDown ( Data Protection at a Key Stroke )

The personal edition of CopyNotify! is called Insta-LockDown. It has been designed for single computers / laptops and locks down the copying of data with a simple keystroke combination.

Insta-LockDown restricts the copying of data through various routinely used data channels such as the internet, file attachments, removable USB devices and Bluetooth transfer to smart phones and comes in handy when single PCs are used by multiple users and protection of confidential data is a concern. It also plays a protective role against data theft when administrative privileges are granted to multiple users of the same PC or the admin password has been inadvertently compromised.

3. GreenNotify! (Energy Saver Software)

GreenNotify is an energy conservation software that reduces electricity bills of small businesses by automatically switching off computers that are not being used and shutting down computers automatically after office hours.

Your views on how your offering is differentiated in the market / Competitive advantage you have over others in the same space. Your plan of achieving success in a crowded and mature marketplace.

During this endeavor of developing a security software, CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd in its strategy never tried to compare or clone its software with those released by its perceived competitors. A data security need had been perceived and the requirement of simplicity of acquisition, cost and expertise for Indian conditions had to be addressed.

In today’s digital world, protection from data theft is crucial and soon will become a ‘must’. However for small business users, the prohibitive acquisition costs of sophisticated Data Loss Prevention software and the level of IT expertise required at times results in data security being ignored all together. Also more often than not, the DLP software is an overkill in terms of ‘cost versus capability’ for small organizations due to non suitability of all available software features.

With CopyNotify! and its affiliated products, data protection software is made as easily available and affordable as a ‘wada pav’. A ‘wada pav’ is a popular spicy fast food native to Maharashtra. It is filling, inexpensive and caters to the masses.

Keeping the analogy of the ‘wada pav’ in mind, CopyNotify! offers data security solutions that brings enterprise level data protection to the average computer user. The software does basic data protection, is inexpensive in acquisition, feasible in implementation and simple enough to accepted by the average business user. CygNET Systems firmly believes that in India unless the use of data security software percolates down to the average user, an acceptable deterrence against data breaches will never be achieved whatever the size of any organization.

Very low cost of acquisition, suitability for Indian conditions and ease of use of the software products developed by CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd are already paying rich dividends by the way of increase of sales.

Key learning from selling to customers

Feedback is crucial for a good product. Right from its inception, the team behind CopyNotify! have taken the feedback of users in the field, tried to understand the problems they face in a routine day and then design the software to alleviate these problems. This principle of user feedback based feature additions has made CopyNotify! very popular with its existing customers.

Your views on relevance or importance of leveraging channels and partnerships to sell.

It is far too expensive and time consuming for a startup to set up its own channel of resellers / distributors or having its own sales force. Partnering with existing VARs/Distributors/Resellers is best way to proceed as these organizations already have existing sales networks which can used to push the product out to the market.

The biggest difficulty is getting a partner / distributor to sign up with a start up is the ‘curse’ of being an unknown brand as the effort to push non branded product becomes more time consuming and expensive for the partner hence the reluctance to partner with a start up.

Your views on alliances and its benefits/pitfalls.

For any software product, alliances should not be shirked away from, be it technical, financial or by the way of sales and marketing however care should be taken that all is in ‘black and white’ and immense care should be taken that in the hype tornado of ‘promises and assured success’ the best interests of the start up is kept in mind at all times.

Your views on networking with industry colleagues and participation in conferences. The benefits or pitfalls of the same.

Networking is great provided one can get themselves in a group that is one step ahead of one’s current stage of business and can actually help with getting more sales. Networking is about getting the right connections to make more sales and not just about collecting visiting cards. 

Your message for product development entrepreneurs for India.

You might have a great software product but unless you know how to tell the world about it, it will never sell. If it does not sell, your idea was of no use in the first place.

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How does an Ecosystem need to help itself? The Zensar way of doing it!!

As part of the iSPIRT ProductNation initiative, we work together helping product startups to connect to the enterprises to find, build and utilize the synergies and in the process helping the product startups as well as the enterprises have a inclusive growth. As part of this initiative we are very proud to bring in such a TechShowcase organized by Zensar Technologies from Pune.

When we approached Ganesh Natarajan of Zensar, he was more than happy to make this happen. Later we worked with many other heads at Zensar and we were astonished really at their eagerness and the hurriedness and for a second we were confused at the speed of execution. We have so far never seen this sense of urgency from a large enterprise. Anyways we got around 73 applications for this coveted TechShowcase and Zensar as promised chose the top 10, which makes a lot of synergy for their offerings and for their customers.


Last Saturday (Sept 8 2013) they flew us all the ten companies to Pune and the startups had to do a double presentation – one in front of the executive council and the other in front of the tech council. To be frank we were amazed at the preparations at Zensar with the kind of welcome we got, the setup, the welcome boards, the executive & the technology council being ready and on time considering it was a Saturday and it was a long weekend, and of course the goodies we got. Just amazing!! I think if Zensar is anything to go by the discipline and sense of urgency and the diligence they showed they have a great future for sure!!

Thank You ZENSAR – we appreciate all your efforts and your hospitality – from iSPIRT as well as all the participating companies.

Here is the list of 10 companies that Demo’d @ Zensar (& in the order they presented)

    1. Germin8 – Mumbai based company, which works on big data analytics on social media mainly that is text based. They started in 2007 and they mainly target Marketing and Corporate Communications team in an organization.

 

  • TriggerO – Delhi based; working mainly in the Rewards & Recognition space and employee engagement via Social. Their tag line is “Recognition is Social”. They provide smart analytics about employee engagement as well as ROI.

 

 

  • GoDB – Chennai based; started on 1999; Creates vertical focused mobile apps, which come with scalability and security, and is based of their platform and their main focus is on FMCG, BFSI and Retail verticals.

 

 

  • Kreeo – Bangalore based; Started in 2007; Helps share knowledge within an enterprise like what you do in the social outside. They call it a Collective intelligence and a unification platform for enterprises.

 

 

  • Seclore – Mumbai based; Started in 2007; they work in the space of information security policy based. Their tag line is security not at the cost of collaboration.

 

 

  • i7 Networks – Bangalore based; Started in June 2012; they work on the space of BYOD security; Their sweet spot is 100% Agentless device discovery, fingerprinting and health-check and then denying infected/malicious devices from connecting to corporate network.

 

 

  • Teritree – Bangalore based; Provides social commerce platform

 

 

  • Knowledge Foundry – Bangalore based; Advanced segmentation and profiling to target Ads and helps run smart campaigns and helps ecommerce with tools with Amazon-like recommendations.

 

 

  • Vondasoft – Mumbai and Bangalore based; Scans multiple social media for your relevant brand, filters data based on many attributes and provides the true social image metrics for your brand.

 

 

  • MeshLabs – Bangalore based firm; has a text analytics platform. Listens to all stake holders and unlocks the hidden value via text analytics.

 

As next steps, Zensar will shortlist those companies that they and their customers will find value to take them to their customers. We are sure this will be a huge value to the selected startups and ofcourse for the whole ecosystem. Can we have some more bigger companies doing the Zensar way?

We would like to thank Kumar Gaurav, Vice President at Zensar to lead this initiative with the support of Ajay Bhandari, Chief Corporate Development Officer, Sanjay Marathe – Head, Strategic Services Unit and CTO, Krishna Ramaswami – Senior Vice President, Healthcare Vertical & Global Infrastructure Management Business, Lavanya Jayaram – Head – Marketing and Sales Enablement & Vivek R Sarnobat – Marketing, for their support.

We also feel that these kind of events can be a huge boost to the whole ecosystem as well as a win-win proposition for both service comapnies which now can innovate and provide services that make a difference to their customer while the product companies can benefit hugely as their biggest problem today is not the product development itself but taking them to market. These kind of partnerships and differentiated solutions will help both and in the end help customers to get better, innovative and faster solutions.

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120+ companies in 120 days – Come join the movement to revolutionize India’s Software Product Landscape

iSPIRT’s roundtables create a buzz in the Indian software product community. Shehjar Tikoo doesn’t like conferences and seminars. The entrepreneur of e-commerce enabler Unbxd finds them boring and one sided. But all that changed when he attended the iSPIRT roundtable on Product Management in Bangalore. Says Shehjar, “I liked the fact that the audience was very carefully chosen as were the facilitators. The discussion was very healthy and I came away with some great learning. In fact, I still refer to my notes and each time it has something new to say to me.”

iSPIRT is known for bucking the trend. At the heart of the iSPIRT movement is the spirit of democracy. So just like decisions are made collectively and jointly, roundtables are whiteboarded and collaborative. It’s a joint learning exercise for both facilitators (note they are not speakers) and participants (not delegates).

Says Aneesh Reddy, Capillary Technologies, “It took couple of calls to talk about the challenges of product companies and the team defined three problem areas  – Product Management, Sales & Positioning & Messaging. The format was very clear in the minds of everyone – peer learning where founders come and do a deep dive, the objective was to create a cancer survivor network model for product start-ups.”

The first playbook Roundtable went on for around 260 minutes and attendees spent another 30 minutes outside the office networking.

“Round tables are a great way for teams, entrepreneurs to cross learn about the best things that worked in their scenarios and some of it can be implemented and experimented by other startups too, cross learning from startups is essential for this ecosystem to build and am glad iSPIRT round tables do exactly that.”, said Vijay Sharma of Exotel.

Since the first program on April 4, iSPIRT  has covered more than 120+ product companies (up to August 3). While the impact of the programs is slowly percolating the software product initiatives of different companies, what has proven an instantaneous hit is the format of community learning – for founders, by founders – little wonder it’s called a [Playbook] roundtable!

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Are you a #MadeInIndia Software product company with solution built on SMAC stack that sells to Enterprise segment?

If yes here is a great not-to-be-missed opportunity for you to explore partnership with Zensar Technologies….then Read on.

Zensar Technologies is a technology partner of choice for global organizations looking to strategically transform, grow, and lead in today’s challenging business environment. ProductNation is pleased to partner with Zensar to make this opportunity available for Indian Product Startups. Zensar is looking at hungry, innovative product startups that have built exciting products based on SMAC(Social, Mobile, Analytics & Cloud) technologies from India and showcase them to their Leadership Team, with a goal of offering these innovative products for their existing customers, prospects and partners

Details of Zensar TechShowcase are as follows: Date: 7th September 2013 (Tentative), Location: Pune

  • Format 40 minute slot, with 20 minutes of demo cum presentation, followed by 20 minutes Q&A session for about 12 companies. Expected to be a full day event.
  • Audience – Leadership Team of Zensar and Key Vertical heads.
    • Areas where the Zensar is looking for Products – Mobile Solutions, Mobile Analytics, Device Management, Social networking, Web 2.0, Application Integration, Intelligent Customer Interaction Solution, partner interactions, and internal business processes. If you have an area which is not listed here, please do send us an email at showcase(at)pn.ispirt.in

What you get? An opportunity to showcase your product to one of the leading technology companies which has customers across the globe. More details can be found at www.zensar.com

  • An opportunity to get feedback about your product from the team that engages with enterprise buyer community, giving you great inputs for your future engineering and design decisions
  • An opportunity to partner and take your product to international markets. And all this with no sales qualification cost!

Interested? Great. Here is how you can participate:

  1. Provide the information desired in the online form by 20th August 2013(Now extended to 23rd August 2013). Completed submissions will be sent to the Zensar for short-listing and selection by 30th August 2013
  2. A selection committee will peruse the submissions, and based on their need and interest, will shortlist a set of 10 to 12 companies, and invite them to be present at the  Zensar TechShowcase Event, on 7th September 2013
  3. All expenses for the participating in this event will be done by the participants themselves. Zensar will provide the venue, and the audience.
  4. There are no participation charges for this event.
  5. If you have already provided information about your product for the ProductNation OutSights, please do send us an email at [email protected]

If you have any questions, please write to us at us at [email protected] and we shall try to answer them.

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Oogwave gained insights from CIOs at the 8th #PNMeetup

5 CIOs/Mentors, 2 startups showcasing their products, 12 good listeners and a rainy Noida morning at Adobe campus. We had a different setting this time, 15 minute of product demo and 60 minutes of quality one-on-one with the CIO community. We had two startups – Gaurav Jain, Founder & CEO of Oogwave & Vikram Bahl, Founder & CEO, Yavvy who got mentoring/guidance on their product strategy, Go-To-Market (GTM), scaling and sales among other things. Sharing some takeaways which Oogwave shared with us.

Oogwave is the content sharing platform for Enterprises, albeit the medium sized ones, and they wanted a ‘peek’ into a CIO’s perspective in order to better position themselves in the crowded market-space.

Some of the takeaways from the #PNMeetup were:

The biggest takeaway for us was that we do not need to necessarily focus on smaller/medium companies and if we are able to increase productivity, the CTOs of larger companies are more than likely to take notice, especially if we can reduce the total cost of ownership.

As we are in the business of becoming the platform of choice for enterprise collaboration, it’s priceless for us to gain insights into priorities in a CIO’s scheme of things. So while we do employ all the right technology for data security and already work on the principles of compartmentalization and least privileges, we hadn’t given much thought towards getting ourselves ISO certified. It really helps to know we can improve our prospects substantially by demonstrating that we have adequate process maturity and robust safeguards to ensure data security in line with industry standards as per ISO.

Sitting across country’s top CIO’s is quite an elucidating experience, but at the #PNMeetup we additionally got to interact with other passionate young entrepreneurs. This invigorating passion improves everyone’s morale especially when the going is tough, which is not that rare when you are an entrepreneur fighting to carve out a niche for yourself and your product. Talking to fellow product creators, understanding their challenges and accomplishments, builds up a camaraderie and is great for the startup ecosystem in the sense of building ties and establishing mutually beneficial relationships among entrepreneur community. Gaurav Jain, Founder, Oogwave

We hope to build this program on a monthly basis. If you are interested to be part of this program, do share us an email at pnmeetup(at)pn.ispirt.in

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#PNMeetup – Showcase your Product & Get Advice from leading CIOs

We are pleased to partner with APAC CXO Forum to put together the 8th #PNMeetup in Noida.  If you have a brilliant Enterprise Product and you just know that its the best out there, here is an opportunity for you showcase your product and get one hour of quality one-on-one time with the CIO community. In this one hour, you not only get a chance to showcase your product to the CIOs but also get one-on-one mentoring/guidance on product strategy, Go-To-Market (GTM), scaling and sales among other things.

Interested?

Please click on the following link to apply. Alternatively, send us an email at pnmeetup(at)pn.ispirt.in 

Only 3 companies will be selected so that each startup gets quality time of one hour with the CIOs.

Process:

Your application will be vetted by the CIOs. Final selection of companies will be done by the CIOs themselves.

We are expecting some very senior and eminent CIOs in this session, supported by APAC CXO Forum. The session is scheduled for 20th July in Noida. Stay tuned for more details.

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Announcing ProductNation OutSights – Structured reports showcasing #MadeInIndia Software Products

As a lead up to India’s 66th Independence Day, ProductNation announces the launch of our OutSights Series. As there are a large number of thought leaders who have a lot of insights on a lot of topics, we decided that what we have, are OutSights.

We start this series with structured reports showcasing #MadeInIndia Software Products with Global Outlook. We will create a ready listing of software products #MadeInIndia that have the potential to take the international market by storm and may pose serious competition to established market leaders in their respective fields.

While this is not a competitive series, these reports will compare companies and their products, on the basis of published criteria. ProductNation intends to conduct in depth analysis of products submitted for review in order to arrive on the list of finalists, who make it into the final report. These reports will be published and syndicated across channels and will be available as a buying guide for those shopping in these categories. The finalists will also receive the ProductNation OutSights Badge which they can display on their web properties with pride.

Here are the list of reports that are scheduled for release between July, August and September, 2013:

  •      Enterprise Cloud Apps from India to watch out for
  •      Innovative Big Data Analytics Companies from India
  •      Indian CRM apps changing customer experience
  •      VAS providers from India for global telcos
  •      Amazing Indian software products with poor marketing

ProductNation welcomes all Indian software makers who wish to participate in ProductNation OutSights, for their respective product categories. Keep watching this space for eligibility and cut-off dates for entry.

For queries or suggestions for report categories write an email to [email protected]. Please submit your product details online before 20th July 2013.

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The dream of developing Enterprise Software Products from India

ProGen Business Solutions is a software products company with core focus in the Business Intelligence (BI) & Analytics space. The DNA of ProGen is built around R&D and Innovations, which drives the team to deliver State of the Art & High Quality BI Products that can add value to the customer organizations. Rahul Sharma, Founder & CEO of Progen talks about his joruney of building an Enterprise Software Product from India.

What is your Story? What inspired you to be an entrepreneur? 

I wanted to  create a Global Enterprise Software Products company from India that would challenge the market biggies and create a brand for Indian Products in the Enterprise Software Domain which is today largely  dominated by MNC products. 

Why and how did you start your company? Why this Area? 

The dream of developing Enterprise Software Products from India was the primary reason for starting ProGen. A True “Made in India” product that can deliver “Value for Money” to customers motivated us to take this road less travelled by Indian IT companies. 

The company was started as a garage set-up in Hyderabad with initial seed capital secured from like-minded individuals/friends who believed in the strength that India possesses in developing global software products. The initial team size in 2009 was 5 members, which has now grown to 25 plus. 

We selected the area of Business Intelligence (BI) & Analytics because of (i) a growing market demand (ii) Gaps in existing offerings with an opportunity to innovate both in terms of functionality as well as delivery (iii) Product Development expertise in the BI Domain.

Delivering superior value proposition through our simplified yet powerful BI Platform ‘pi’ has helped ProGen create a niche for itself. This is evident from the fact that within a short span of 1 year, customers across 4 countries trust our BI Platform for their daily & strategic decision making needs. Our customers include market leaders in their respective segments across diverse industry verticals such as: Airports, Travel, Pharma, FMCG, Retail, Distribution etc.

What is your product’s differentiator from the competitors? 

Our biggest differentiator when compared with established MNC offerings available in the market is our Product Design Approach. Unlike MNC vendors who conventionally follow a technology oriented design approach, we focus on a customer centric design approach that incorporates an Agile Product Development Philosophy. 

The approach has yielded tangible results in form of a simplified yet powerful BI Platform, which is as efficient and feature-rich as any of the contemporary product offerings from the established MNC players and is available at a cost much lower than other products. 

What is the biggest challenge ProGen has faced so far? 

Selling a “Made-in-India” Enterprise Platform to customers in India. 

Like any start-up company it was a challenge for us as well to sign the first few customers and being an Enterprise Product Start-up accentuated the problem further. It was extremely difficult for us to convince our customers about buying a business software package from a start-up that would eventually become the part of their organizations DNA in strategic and operational decision-making. There were multiple scenarios where business users at customer organizations had a buy-in on the value proposition from the Product but the IT Department was not willing to take the risk by engaging with a virgin product and it was frustrating for us to lose deals after months of sales efforts.

Rather the interesting point to note here is that the IT Teams in the prospect organizations still ask us ‘which Global Company’s BI software are you representing’. This reflects the acceptance level of Indian Enterprise Software Products among Indian customers and is indeed the biggest challenge that we face ALWAYS 

How did you address the challenge? 

The challenge was addressed through our Channel Partner Strategy.

Signing up channel partners for a new product in the Enterprise Application domain turned out to be as challenging and difficult as acquiring new customers but the mileage that a good partner brings to the table goes a long way in building the business. 

Similar to customers, channel partners also look for engaging mostly with established product brands or for companies from outside India. 

Channel Partner strategy requires lots of hard work in identifying and working with those partners who are open to align with new product companies and see the product as an opportunity to add value to the customer ecosystem. Our initial few partners sensed this opportunity and took the initiative of introducing our BI offering to their customers or to the prospects they had. 

Who is your customer? 

In today’s world, data is growing at a rapid pace across all types of organizations irrespective of their size and industry vertical. BI as an application is a need of the hour across customers and verticals. Being a company in the platform business our customers are not restricted to a specific vertical or size and they are scattered across verticals such as: Airports, Travel, FMCG, Retail, Contact Center, and Pharmaceuticals. 

Our target customers can be basically classified as “Value-Conscious” organizations that are not “Brand-Conscious” and are looking towards a Product that is a combination of “Rich Features” and “Value for Money” 

What’s been your success mantra in expanding to emerging markets?

1)     Keep your Product Simple

2)     Clearly Communicate the Value Proposition

3)     Trust your Channel Partners 

What are your future plans? 

In the next Financial Year (2013-14) we target to increase our customer base in India with a growth focus on Middle East and Australian/APAC markets and augment our BI Platform with new product features/modules that are currently under different stages of testing and development. 

In the Medium term we plan to expand to other global markets and release our BIG DATA Analytics engine integrated with our BI Platform. 

Plans of providing a SaaS/PaaS based cloud offering in the BI Domain to customers in the Matured Markets of USA, UK, and other parts of the World is also in the pipeline and official release on the same will be announced in the coming months. 

What have been your BIG lessons – personal, professional and otherwise? 

Running an Enterprise Products Business in India is a mix of “Loads of Patience without losing Focus on R&D” coupled with right amount of aggression and perseverance. 

Overnight success in Enterprise Products domain is unheard of and one should be prepared enough to face the challenges presented by different phases with each phase demanding different approach and strategy.

What would you like to tell someone, who is struggling or planning to start a product company?

            • Get the right team in place and plan for a strong resourcing strategy
            • Stay Focused on your R&D Mission
            • Don’t get lured by the early revenue opportunities from services that may dilute the product vision
            • Raise Sufficient Seed Capital (if you plan to) that can cover the cost of your first commercial release and also considers for first 2-3 paying customer acquisition cost depending on your Sales Cycle. Early dilutions should not be seen as a threat and should not stop you from raising bigger money (if it’s available)
            • Work hard to get Testimonials and References from your initial customer