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Q&A with Cloud-Based Telephony Company Exotel

Exotel  Techcom “Cloud telephony product for SME’s which is like many others but we have a different approach in our problem solving.” says Shivakumar(Shivku) Ganesan, its Founder. Currently Exotel focuses on offering an easiest and fastest way to setup a phone number for your business, with smart applications tailored to business needs. He shares insights for other entrepreneurs about lessons learned in finding a market and growing a startup.

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

I am a Computer Science graduate from BITS Pilani and after spending some great learning years at Yahoo! I felt I needed a challenge beyond what Yahoo! could offer. I met the Bansals “over a few smokes” and their office was really close to my house, so it sounded exciting and I decided to join Flipkart. That experience awoke my inner entrepreneurial spirit and I decided I needed a venture of my own.  

If I could point to one thing, it’s “Impact”. I get up every morning asking how I can impact more people around me and improve their lives. That’s why Roopit was solving my own problem when I was not able to buy a 2nd hand fridge, and Exotel when I could not solve the voice and SMS problems for Roopit. All of this inter connects to wanting to solve existing problems for others, using technology, and hence creating impact.  

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

I was running Roopit at that point of time, a C2C marketplace where buyers and sellers could meet and sell over voice and SMS. I was a techie all my life since BITS Pilani, Yahoo! and Flipkart and I wanted to automate the entire voice & SMS platform into a scalable solution for my business. I did not want to hire LOTS of people and build a call center; that was just not me. Also, dealing with telecom operators and trying other products in the market to solve this problem led to many frustrations.  

Then, I decided to use a bit of open source and build a platform/product for myself. In the process, I bumped into many of my friends running businesses asking for a similar solution for themselves, and with money hitting the bank from these businesses, the pivot was natural. 

What is your product’s differentiator from competitors?

Exotel is a cloud telephony product for SME’s which is like many others but we have a different approach in our problem solving. We believe that a product has to be very very simple and easy to use for firms, especially in a new space involving telephony and that’s the core of our product.

Exotel is the easiest and fastest way to setup a phone number for your business, with smart applications tailored to business needs. Anyone in India can start using the product in 15 minutes after purchasing a phone number and the application they wish to use. The application maybe IVR, voicemail, call recording, data and analytics, API, SMS or a missed call campaign, and all this without much hassle, just a simple setup. 

We have also grown and learnt that telephony infrastructure and down times in this space have been common for years, but after an initial harrowing experience with one of our early customers, we have quickly learnt and much of our product focus has been on stability, redundancy and reliability. We even openly talk about the evolution and tactics we have put in place to make up time much quicker. 

In a nutshell, quickest, easiest and most reliable phone system setup for your business. 

What is the biggest challenge Exotel has faced so far? How did you address the challenge?

As we perceive business phone systems very differently, there is no precedent to draw inspiration from. Each one of us has our own vision of Exotel and they are all just as good as mine. Arriving at clarity on what we are building, why we are building it, how to sell it, what to do, what not do to etc have been time consuming and tough. My role of fusing everybody’s ideas into mine and then creating a consistent story that all of us understand and agree upon has been challenging. 

Who is your customer?

A small or really small company up to 20 people, typically in the B2C space that depends on phone calls or SMS for a major portion of their business is our customer.

The belief is that Indian SME’s need to be “sold to” – the job that’s conventionally handled by IT resellers who are critical to Exotel’s business model. What are your thoughts on the changes that Cloud technology might bring to this scenario, with the whole “self-service” angle coming into play? 

Cloud (and SaaS) is a service delivery model, so, that does not change the sales and fulfillment models (resellers). Increasingly Indians are buying things online and they will purchase services for their companies too. But that is not going to take away the role of resellers in the short to medium term. Having said that, Who these resellers are, what they are reselling and so on changes quite a bit in the SaaS model. It is likely that the partners in the SaaS ecosystem might be IT services and other consultancy service providers rather than hardware and black-box providers.  

What are your future plans?

To create as much impact as possible in society. There are millions of SMEs, and technology hasn’t reached them. If Exotel could save their time and money so that they can go home early and spend it on their family, that is a plan worth working for.  

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

  • Solve someone’s problem.
  • Most Indians have a “services” bent of mind. “Product” and “SaaS” bent of minds have to be acquired/taught (learned).
  • Hire for attitude rather than/along with talent
  • It is possible to learn and excel in nearly everything.
  • Many “middle management” people from MNCs (who were very successful) are not readily suitable for a start-up.  

We see a lot of product start-ups coming up in both the enterprise and consumer space. What would be your advice to start-ups — where do you think they are lacking, and how should they go about correcting these issues? 

I don’t think I am qualified to give advice to other people yet. My entrepreneurial life is guided by two concepts: 

Curiosity: A genuine desire to learn new things and correct one’s mistakes.

Self-motivation: The need to get somewhere in life (being driven).  

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Showcase of 8 Innovative companies for #IndiaInternetDay – A TiE event

It’s here! The India Internet Day(a TiE event) celebration is beginning, and you’re all a part of it. You may be an outelier, an insider, a veteran, an investor, a trend spotter, an experimentor or an industry driver, but this is your go-to event this year.

Why? We’re looking at the long-term horizon and paradigm shifts in the internet industry globally and translating that in the Indian context. We will debate and discuss strategic drivers of the industry and will attract the top players.

Eight Indian startups get their “4 minutes of fame” at the event – an unprecedented happening. No wonder that when we opened the call for applications, we received more than 55 of them.

The competition was tight, and the job of the jury was not easy. The jury – Rajiv Prakash(Next in Advisory Partners , Saumya Meattle (ModuleOne), Srikant Sastri (Vivaki), Vivek Agarwal (Liqvid eLearning) and Vimalendu Verma (Magic Software) – rated the startups on the following parameters: originality, impact, practicability and applicability of the Innovation. After a lot many conversations and debates, 8 companies were shortlisted.

The big question: Will you be there to see the innovations being put forward by these companies? Next year could well be your turn.

Bluegape helps brands in setting up fan merchandising stores. Fan merchandising is ignored by most brands in India and is also a unique way of promotion for brands.

Cite Communities is an open online community for management professionals and serves more than 28 lakh people worldwide. The community offers a free-to-use knowledgebase with a discussion forum. This is where professionals can share career-related queries, which are answered by experts and mentors. The trump card? Anonymity.

Dineout is a table reservation website that enables customers to book a table, online and on the phone, at their favourite restaurants in town. It provides fantastic discounts – something not on offer if customers go to a restaurant directly.

Huntshire helps solve the problem of finding the right talent in a given time frame. Right now, companies must post vacancies on job websites and wait for 30 days to get maximum applications. Post this, the candidates are screened. The entire process takes 30-45 days. Huntshire does all this in 3 days, eliminating the need for a two-step process.

PerfectMyEnglish is a Web and Mobile App enabling tangible improvements in English communication skills for students and professionals. They offer personalised mentorship, detailed analytics, spoken English skill remediation through VoIP services and end-to-end solutions, helping businesses and recruiters achieve key English training and assessment objectives.

NowFloats: With 850M mobile phones (over 90 per cent feature phones) and SMS being a pervasive technology, NowFloats enables creation and updating of websites through SMS for small and medium businesses in India. Smartphone owners can use mobile Apps.

MindHelix: Sentinel is the first app designed with women’s security in mind. The app can send instant alerts in case of any problems. A forced power-off of the phone or an improper exit of the application will trigger an alert to be sent. Prolonged signal loss will also cause a ‘fail safe’ alert SMS and email to be sent from the company’s server.

Mobile Harvest is a two-way oral and intuitive literacy neutral community and networking platform, much like an oral Wikipedia for our emerging billion. It attempts to bring the benefits of social media to people who are not comfortable with reading or writing. 

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Andy is a mobile robot platform that uses a Smartphone at its core.

Andy is a personal robot enabled by the intelligence of an Android Smartphone or any Android device. Personal or hobby robots till date have been unaffordable due to the high costs of the hardware involved. Abheek Bose, Andy’s creator shares the journey of building Andy and the factors that influenced its development.

What happened earlier in your career that led to your founding Andy?
Abheek Bose: We were always keen upon entering the educational and personal robotics sector but the challenge was keeping the price points low, especially for the Indian market.

After attending a mobile conference on advancement of smart phones, we identified an opportunity to utilize them and build cost effective robot systems for education and personal use 

What is Andy and how does it add value to consumers?
Abheek Bose: Andy is a mobile robot platform that uses a Smartphone at its core.

On strapping the phone onto the Andy base, the entire phone becomes a part of the robot:

  1. Andy is therefore now equipped with sensors like Camera, GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth Compass, Microphone, Touch Screen just to name a few.
  2. Andy is also highly programmable where the user can either program Andy or simply download apps on the phone which make Andy execute various functions
  3. In short, Andy is a robot with very sophisticated features yet highly affordable on an individual basis (Typically such robots costs between $2000 – 5000 while Andy is below $120)

With Andy, students and hobbyists can now afford to own their personal robot, hack and develop various applications as well as share them with one another. Users of lower age groups can actually learn the concepts of computing and engineering using Andy in a more interactive and entertaining way.

What is your target market?
Abheek Bose: Anyone in the age group of 14 to 25 years is our target user group. Andy falls in the personal robotics market currently estimated to be around USD 1.3 billion.

What is your product’s differentiator from competitors?
Abheek Bose: If you really look at the differentiators, they fall into two categories, Technology and Strategic. As far as technology differentiators are concerned they are:

  1. Andy uses the Android Platform which is open source, well supported and maintains a strong developer community around it.
  2. The hardware schematics and software developed are open source and we are providing an SDK to enable the target user group further.
  3. Andy already has an initial developer community involving top educational institutes like IIIT-Bangalore, VJTI Mumbai and IIT-Bombay. This community is also growing rapidly with more engineering colleges and schools enrolling into our developer program

Operational and Strategy Differentiators
Andy supply chain is well established and streamlined with the necessary arrangements to go for mass production.

We have finalized with the suppliers for all the components including chassis, electronics, batteries and other peripherals and the process is also set where we can order in lots and receive the same in our office within 2 – 3 weeks time. Andy distribution involves various channels partners including Robot training companies (education) as well as large retail formats (consumer / personal) to maximize reach.

We have currently the following partners in the educational / community development space

  1. Gade Autonomous Systems, Mumbai
  2. Open Robotics Club, Indore
  3. VJTI, SRA, Mumbai
  4. Andy design has also been registered with the Registrar of designs to prevent copycat products.

What is the biggest challenge Andy has faced so far? How did you address the challenge?
Abheek Bose: Out of the many close contenders, the biggest challenge was to streamline operations.

It was critical that the suppliers of Andy parts were reliable, assured  high quality and also within the target budgets.

The challenge was addressed (and we are still improving this) by trying out various suppliers during an early prototyping phase and creating procurement processes as well as conducting quality tests for the same.

Online portals like AliExpress and EBay were very useful to select the correct suppliers.

How has the recent Mentor program from Mindsphere helped your company? What mistakes/pitfalls has it helped you avoid?
Abheek Bose:Mindsphere has been absolutely crucial in Andy’s development. It is because of MindSphere’s involvement that we could complete the product launch from concept to the beta prototype in just 88 days!

Mindsphere has been involved in all aspects of the product development cycle since the conceptual stages taking on a crucial role in

  1. Prototype development and design ergonomics
  2. Market research, exploration & preparation (Go to market strategizing)
  3. Operations Management and Processes
  4. Project Financials and Budgeting
  5. Pricing Strategies
  6. Distribution Planning

What do the next 12-24 months hold for Andy?
The next steps with Andy would be to concentrate on Sales, Distribution and Community Development. In parallel we will also be working on next generation design and product improvements.

Abheek is Andy’s creator and oversees the development as well as the business of Andy. Abheek’s mechanical engineering and software development roots are responsible for the Andy body design as well as the base software. Abheek also manages the overall business growth of Andy and looks into new partnerships, markets and users. Abheek when not hacking on Andy, loves to play around with gadgets, listen to music and recently taken a liking to reading Dilbert! Abheek is also a big foodie and loves trying out new places to experiment.

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Presentations to CIOSE and the KUDOS!!!

In our latest blog we had written about CIOSE(CIO Strategy Exchange) and  about the 5 companies that were shortlisted to provide a presentation to Ernest M Von Simson and these five companies were 

  • ArrayShield – “Two-Factor Authentication”
  • C2il – “Asset Life Cycle Management”
  • i7 networks – “Agentless BYOD Discovery & Control”
  • Fieldez – “On Demand mobile workforce management”
  • Kreeo – “Knowledge management”

Everyone who presented to Ernie walked out with a smile, with abundant knowledge on how to pitch for the CIO and also what makes sense in the local market and what might not. Ernie was very happy to be the audience for these presentations and he was all praise for the Indian companies and this is what he had to say:

Though the presentations and dialogues were fairly brief, I was impressed by the sophistication shown by the Indian developers of mobility apps and mobility cyber security. They had learned much from analyses of their American counterparts and developed products that produced similar results with much, much lower TCO. “Less is more” in the words of the famous architect Mies van de Rohe.

Manjunath M Gowda, CEO of i7 Networks who was one of the presenters was very happy with the outcome and was amazed how much he knew of  the space and how laser focus were his feedback and this is what he had to say “He knew the subject very well and he asked me the right questions and his help in how to position was amazing. Looking forward for the next step”.

Pavan who is the CEO of ArrayShield was amazed to know how well it can fit into US enterprises too and he was thrilled and he profusely thanked Product nation for providing this opportunity and he said “The feedback and suggestions shared by Ernie was quite valuable, especially good to know that the market demand for our kind of products in US is high and we are addressing an opportunity which is currently under-served”

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#ReversePitch “The day VCs pitch the Startups”

Depending upon who do you ask the question, the answer to “Indian Startup ecosystem has a shortage of good quality?” would oscillate between kick-ass investors and great customers. While the presence of both is crucial to validate the success of the startup, founders always seem to be cut-off from both of kick-ass investors. With India poised towards climbing up the entrepreneurial ladders, no wonder we would see more first generation product startups coming out of unheard Indian towns and cities.

With this in mind, the recent edition of #ReversePitch took place at 91SpringBoard. The premise is simple, at any conventional networking/demo event the startups are the ones pitching their ideas and its potential to a room full of investors. But by turning the tables in favor of the startups the idea of reverse pitch was born. Investors now make their pitches to a room full of potential startups as to why they are the best bet.

For those of you wondering whether this was another bout of “networking” and “gyaan” session by investors making tall claims for their funds haven’t seen Mukund Mohan in action. Seeing that the founders were taking time to warm up that too in a room full of people having the exact same question in mind. Mukund brought everybody at ease and what followed were interesting rounds of presentation by VCs and subsequent Q&A by the audience.


The questions were spread across the entire spectrum from the usual one on how to raise their seed fund to a startup specific. What tricked both the founders and the VCs were the most simplest of questions which required the greatest insights. Not many might have wondered about “How do VCs actually decide their investment amount?” or our personal favorite “Who gives money to the VCs?” The latter had the entire crowd glued should they find their secret!


With the wheel set in motion the post event discussion was full of its own share of fun. Where else can you find a startup sharing their experiences on raising their first round with a former-founder-turned-VCs chipping in to reminisce about his own life.


This was not the first time #ReversePitch took place in India and this will definitely not be the last time it takes place in Delhi. Nothing is more better than learning from shared experiences. For those of who missed the event can search for the official hashtag #ReversePitch on twitter and relive the moments and maybe even catch the VCs no hold barred in the after party!


A handy list of the VCs who presented at #ReversePitch in no particular order of their likeliness to fund your venture:

 


The pitch sessions was followed by networking with the investors and the community had an amazing time. Thanks to Subhendu(ReversePitch), Mukund, Mukul(Saif Partners), Apurv & for the 91Springboard team for putting together an amazing show. Stay tuned for some more excitement in the next few months!

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Announcing the First Playbook Roundtable: Positioning and messaging for Product Entrepreneurs

We are pleased to announce the first Playbook RoundTable for Product Entrepreneurs around Messaging & Positioning. A strong, differentiated & memorable product messaging is essential in creating traction for your product. Effective product messaging speaks directly in the langauage of your target audience. This Playbook Roundtable is brought to you by iSPIRT. One of the initiatives of iSPIRT is to convert conversations into playbooks for product entrepreneurs.

This Playbook Roundtable is led by Shankar Maruwada and is intended for companies that have a software product (consumer or enterprise), have initial customers and are trying to scale to the next level. They are keen to make more crisp their value proposition to the target audience and more clearly articulate their position relative to competitors.

This Playbook RoundTable will be interactive and will help your team step into the role of your target audience, map your features to benefits, organize those benefits into message themes, and summarize the product in a positioning statement.

To apply for this workshop please send a PDF document(one pager) to avinash(at)ispirt.in with the following information by 23rd March ‘2013:

  • Name of the company
  • Name and title of the intended attendee
  • Mobile phone of attendee
  • Email ID of attendee
  • The top two practical problems your company faces in messaging, communicating, positioning your product, that you would like help with. 
  • Top 2 desired outcomes from the workshopPlease share, as briefly as possible, your current resources and efforts in this area
  • Write (max 150 words) on the ‘What’ and the ‘Why’ of your product, in simple language. You may accompany this with a single visual (optional).
Find more details about the playbook roundtable here.
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Great Mentoring Session for Product startups with Piyush Singh & Greg Toebbe

Both, Piyush Singh(Sr. VP & CIO) & Greg Toebbe(Sr. VP) at Great American Insurance, are active participants in the Indian software ecosystem and are acknowledged speakers in the NASSCOM Product Conclave. This time they selected 4 companies to have one-on-one sessions with them on February 27, 2013 after reviewing several companies that had applied for this mentoring session.

Objective of these one-on-one meetings was mentoring/guidance on product strategy, Go-To-Market (GTM), scaling and sales among other things. The number of companies selected was consciously kept less so that each startup gets quality time of one hour with Piyush and Greg.  The time was split as follows: 15-20 minutes of introduction and product presentation followed by a few minutes of the product demonstration. More than half of the allotted time was suggested to be used for seeking advice and feedback. These sessions were voluntarily given by Piyush as part of helping the Indian Software Product ecosystem. Participants were at liberty to seek out the mentors for any advisory role or future involvement. I am sure that every company walked away feeling satisfied and renewed energy to pursue their dreams after these meetings. The companies selected were:

Here are some of the snippets of advice given to the companies (in random order):

  • Presentations should immediately connect with the audience. Great way to do this is to start with user stories/perspectives so that people immediately see the product’s value rather explaining the technology involved or the general problem that the product is solving. He also mentioned that CxOs like numbers. Numbers hit them more than anything else. One of the startups declared that their product reduces the testing effort, increases productivity and saves license costs too. They were advised to take a specific case study and put the actual savings in numbers. These would then make people see the value instantaneously.
  • One company had built a great enterprise technology platform over the last couple of years. However, it had difficulty in selling it to the big guys. Piyush advised them to build vertical-based solutions on their platform and target one or more marquee customers in that segment. He said they could keep the core common and build vertical-focused modules. This would help them differentiate from their competitors as well as have potential customers see the value immediately.
  • While everyone is clamoring for moving their applications into the cloud, he said cloud is not meant for everyone and everything. Companies should not make superficial efforts to move their product into the cloud if it doesn’t make sense to their customers. Alternatively, if they could offer the hybrid model (cloud and on-premise) then customers are free to choose what they want. Ultimately the development should be driven more your customer needs rather than general technology trends around you.
  • For selling in the US, he said there is no alternative to burning shoe leather. Companies will have to meet the leads face-to-face and sell. Specific targeted Tradeshows as well as exposure in right magazines are another avenue to generate good leads. He also advised the startups to tie up with bigger player in their domains and use their sales muscle, if it works out symbiotically for both parties.

Once again, ProductNation and the participating companies would like to thank Piyush and Greg for their valuable time and advise. And last but not the least, we would like to thank Pramati Techologies (Syed Khadar) for hosting these meetings and helping us with the arrangements at a very short notice.

Few testimonials from the companies:

Thank you very much ProductNation for the opportunity to Mr. Piyush Singh and Mr. Greg Toebbe.  The feedback and suggestions shared by them was quite valuable, especially good to know the buyers perspective, which will be helpful in presenting a business case to the prospects.  Once again thank you ProductNation for all support extended to start ups – Sudhir Patil, Qualitia Software

It was a great experience meeting Piyush & Greg, very high return on my time spent (RoT).  The quality & amount of, to the point, practical and meaningful advice I got in one hour of our interaction was invaluable and is impossible to get by even attending a dozen startup events.  Very productive, very helpful, expecting more of such interactions with people who know and understand the needs of your target customer segments besides knowing technology! – Sumeet Anand, Kreeo Software

Our main intention was to validate some of the assumptions we have made for building the Enterprise Software. Piyush, being the CIO of a huge enterprise, provided that validation as well as helped us prioritize a few things. His offer for using out free Lite version (when it is available) was also deeply appreciated. Overall, we felt it was time well spent. – Chandra, i7 Networks

The interaction provided some valuable feedback for our company growth and scale. Even though the session time was limited, ROI was there ! Today we need to interact with wide/diverse network of people due to the product DNA nature in the business model and the pace at which this model is growing as compared to the old mentoring model and nature of the companies/business model.
Also he was good enough to keep the interaction beyond the session as well ! I would like to quote Jim Rohn in this context – “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Lot to learn from their expertise and hopefully the session provided the platform for the same/to get started with. Thanks to ProductNation for organising such a session and expect to do more sessions. Abdulla Hisham, Fordadian Technologies
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Geeks with Dilli Wallas

Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. #GOAP is headed to India and after visiting Bangalore & Mumbai the geeks will be visiting Delhi from 27th to 2nd March ’13. We (91Springboard, ProductNation & Moonlighting) are hosting #GOAP while they are in Delhi. Come join us to meet the #GOAP team, most awesome startups & entrepreneurs in Delhi-NCR and other cool folks accompanied with a light lunch on 28th Feb ’13 from 11am to 2pm.

Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is program initiated by 500 Startups, a startup accelerator from Silicon Valley. Through this initiative, founders Dave McClure and Christen O’Brien travel to technology markets with geeks and startup enthusiasts. The participants come from companies like GE, Wahooly, XG Ventures, SoftLayer, JESS3, Qualcomm Ventures, SendGrid, Google and more.

Tentative agenda:
1100 – 1115 hrs – Welcome & Introductions
1115 – 1130 hrs – Talk by Dave McClure – Go Local or Go Global (or both)
1130 – 1145 hrs – Talk by Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder, iSPIRT – Surfing the Innovation Wave
1145 – 1245 hrs – Lessons Learnt from Product Startups in Emerging Economies – Ambarish Gupta (Knowlarity), Aloke Bajpai (iXIGO), Kavin Bharti Mittal (Hike) Ketan Kapoor (Mettl), Paras Chopra (Visual Website Optimiser), Rajat Garg(SocialAppsHQ); Moderated by Kunal Bajaj – Advisor, iSPIRT Founder Circle
1245 – 1400 hrs – Networking Over Light Lunch with the Geeks

Venue: 91springboard

Entry free: Rs 500. Register Online. We have very limited seats, please do register online by filling up the form and we will confirm your participation. Here is an opportunity to meet and interact with the geeks. Register now to avoid disappointment. No on-site registrations will be allowed.

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CIOSE selects 8 #MadeInIndia product companies to showcase on global platform

CIO Strategy Exchange (CIOSE) has selected 8 companies from India from the #MadeInIndia tag to showcase them on a global platform. Its director Ernest M. von Simson reviewed many applications that were submitted and chose 8 companies to showcase when he is here in Bangalore. The eight companies are Kreeo, Cloudpact, OrangeScape, i7 Networks, C2il, ArrayShield, Anoosmar, and FieldEZ.

CIOSE received many applications from early stage technology startups to those who have spent few years in the industry, with exciting ideas across Big Data, social networking, Analytics, healthcare, education, mobile applications, security, etc., during the one week period starting January 31, 2013 until February 8 2013. The final 8 were selected after several rigorous rounds of screening by CIOSE. 

The demo from these selected companies will happen in Bangalore on Februay 26th and 27th in iGate premises. 

Here are the selected companies and their product details:

  1. Kreeo: Due to information overload, inefficient information discovery and ineffective management of knowledge and learning.  Despite the best of tools from biggest of vendors organizations are not able to significantly enhance knowledge worker productivity.  Kreeo’s innovative “Collective Intelligence” framework and product uniquely combines the power of social computing, PaaS and Big Data in a unified framework (winner of Nasscom Emerge 50 2012 in Innovation category) is used by companies like Standard Chartered Bank to evolve to next level.
  2. CloudPact’s Marble Enterprise: CloudPact Marble is an award winning, unique enterprise mobility platform, with the world’s best cloud hosted mobile application development IDE, smooth enterprise connectivity, security and comprehensive management tools. We help our customers mobile enable their enterprise and extend their business frontier to very edge of mobile reach.  We provide mobility solutions across industry verticals which can be deployed in public clouds, private clouds and also dedicated, traditional IT infrastructure.
  3. OrangeScape: Cloud has disrupted the middleware market with Platform as a Service. All larger enterprise are evaluating PaaS offerings currently. However, there three key capabilities enterprises are looking a) Private Cloud Deployment b) Productivity with greater price performance c) Specialized for B2B Apps. OrangeScape Visual PaaS elegantly address these 3 key requirements when compared Generic PaaS offerings. OrangeScape is featured among the Global Top 10 PaaS companies in research reports of Forrester and Gartner.
  4. i7 Networks – PeregrineGuard: i7 Networks enables enterprises to “say Yes” to BYOD by providing an agentless paradigm for discovery and access control. Our premier offering in this space – PeregrineGuard – enables an intelligent, non-intrusive, clientless way of detecting all devices that are trying to connect to the corporate network. By the use of proprietary algorithms and sophisticated fingerprinting techniques, we extract highly granular information like device-type, device-class, OS, version, user of the device, etc; this information is used to provide device based differential access to corporate assets and to make sure sensitive data is provided right access to the right device type. It integrates with EAS and also provides authentication via AD and also denies access to all jailbroken/rooted/compromised devices. Only those devices that pass the company’s baseline configuration and are registered via EAS are allowed to connect to network for further access.
  5. C2il’s inciseEAM: inCiseEAM Asset life-cycle Management system takes the power, performance and possibilities of Asset management to an entirely new level. Built on a single software platform, inCiseEAM Asset life-cycle Management framework delivers a comprehensive view of all Asset types — production, facilities, transportation and IT — across your enterprise. This holistic perspective allows you to see all your Assets, as well as identify all the untapped potential within them. You gain the knowledge and control you need to closely align your organization’s goals with the overall goals of your business.
  6. ArrayShield’s ArrayShield IDAS: This product addresses the growing threat to enterprises from advanced malware/Trojan based attacks that steal the credentials and attack the enterprise in real time. By protecting the critical organizational data from advanced malware attacks using innovative two factor authentication, enterprises can minimize their security risk and protect their organization data and brand. Globally, Two factor authentication is now being considered as a must have much like anti-virus or firewalls. As per Gartner, 2FA market is expanding by 30% globally and many of the current 2FA mechanisms are flawed like that of hardware tokens, sms based solutions. Hence ArrayShield is uniquely positioned to capture the 2Bn$ global market that is growing at 30% CAGR.
  7. Anoosmar’s Vaultize: The current CIO challenges: 1. with the rapid consumerization of IT and proliferation of consumer solutions like dropbox in enterprise, enterprise IT is looking to control the data loss that might happen through these cloud services 2. traditional file sharing is too cumbersome for roaming users endpoint data (e.g. laptops) is hardly backed up and encrypted. Traditional backups are geared for structured-data (application data) and not unstructured (files) Vaultize provides a unified platform for file backup, file sharing, endpoint encryption and mobility. Vaultize offers this through public cloud, appliance or private-cloud/on-premise. Vaultize’s at-source encryption together with de-duplication helps enterprises adopt cloud based backup and file sharing by eliminating concerns about security, data privacy and compliance. The patent-pending technology secures data even before it leaves endpoints. 
  8. FieldEZ: is an On-Demand mobile based solution that makes managing mobile workforce such as field sales or service teams very efficient and easy. With features such as call management & scheduling, enterprise collaboration, time & location reporting, integrated bar code scanning and payment options, FieldEZ provides valuable field insights to management and boosts the productivity of field personnel while making a positive difference to their work.  It works on common feature phones and smartphones, with a highly responsive user interface, robust security, ease of configuration and web-services for integration. It can work as a standalone Field Service / Sales Management solution or provide the “last mile” mobility to incumbent backend systems.

ProductNation and CIOSE take this opportunity to thank all the participants and like to congratulate the selected 8 companies.

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Product development is stimulating

“Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is wasting time. Vision with action can change the world.” Joel Author Baker. Abhiraj Malhotra is “Technology Head & Evangelist” – SchoolPad at Chalkpad Technologies Pvt. Ltd. 

Abhiraj is a passionate software developer and an entrepreneur, whose vision is to infuse productivity into organizations towards a positive change. His interest is in web technologies, web application development, and user interface designs. The Malaysian hockey federation recognized Abhiraj’s work and appropriately awarded him for designing and developing Hockey Champions trophy 2007 official website. This is an astonishing achievement! Today, Abhiraj’s flagship product is “Assistwindow.” 

The content of this interview has the potential to increase your organization’s productivity. Read on….

Please tell us your story that inspired you to be an entrepreneur.
Even when I was studying in school, I loved programming in C++. It not only helped me learn more but I was also able to dabble and learn the intricacies of programming. My passion to write computer programs blessed me with the much needed exposure to solve real-time problems. When I was studying 11th grade, I designed my first website. I kept enhancing my knowledge in programming through continuous learning. My first breakthrough in freelancing was the development of a matrimony portal in ASP 3.0, alternatively known as “Classic ASP” – a popular web development language then. 

I continued to succeed in my programming endeavors, and I was not only reaping financial rewards, but these successes were fuelling my entrepreneurial dreams. Infosys recruited me as a software engineer at my B.Tech campus interview in 2008. I served Infosys for two years. In pursuit of my entrepreneurial dream, I am now a partner in a scholastic organization in Chandigarh. 

Please define “Assistwindow” in less than 25 words.
“Assistwindow” is an online and internal Q&A platform for knowledge sharing & organizing. “Assistwindow” provides meaningful answers to seeking members, thus increasing organizational productivity.

Why and how did you start your company? Why this domain?
Product development is stimulating; hence I migrated to developing products for schools. I simply love my work. In my present work tenure, I enlightened myself in the usage of B2B (Business to Business) technology tools. My present journey also enlightens me much about business and client servicing from which I continually comprehend the multidimensional facets of user experience and product knowledge. 

My team has grown to a strong and dedicated seven member team over the last two years, and as a result of which my products are being developed successfully. During this journey, knowledge sharing was one of the management concerns that I reckoned could directly impact productivity. Since I derived tremendous value out of Q&A platforms such as “Stackoverflow” and “Quora,” I planned to construct an internal Q&A platform. Consequently, “Assistwindow” came into being.

“Assistwindow” is an online Q&A platform for sharing & organizing knowledge within an organization that provides relevant and meaningful answers to seeking members. Members of staff in an organization can answer questions raised by their counterparts anytime and from anywhere. The knowledge that is continually being built is grouped intelligently, and hence can be retrieved quickly. This results in an enhanced productivity for an organization since staff members avoid disturbing each other to gain answers and clarity.

When we deployed “Assistwindow” internally, we realized its tremendous value for internal knowledge sharing for B2B (Business to Business) organizations. This platform will facilitate greater productivity in an organization, since it empowers the staff to enhance their time management skills. 

What did you choose the name “Assistwindow?”
Those who seek knowledge require ‘assistance,’ and ‘window’ is primarily construed as an entrance of life (light and air). Thus our product derived its name “Assistwindow.” 

What is Assistwindow’s key differentiator?
The two core differentiators of “Assistwindow” are its simplicity and efficiency. It is a terrific value offering for it delivers its promises to increase clientele productivity. 

What is the greatest challenge AssistWindow has faced thus far? How did you overcome that challenge?
Our biggest challenge is to connect with people who need such a product. To overcome this challenge, we invest in social media. We share our experiences and learning through our blog named “Business, Web & More…” 

Our blogs have attracted people’s attention. Our recent blog titled “How Plans Kill Productivity” on “Hacker News” received 5000 unique hits within 5 to 6 hours of its publishing. 

Who are your potential clientele?
Our potential clientele are single or multi-site B2B (Business to Business) organizations with a need for internal knowledge sharing.

Organizations in the manufacturing and services verticals can also deploy “Assistwindow” as a personalized Q&A platform for their clients. The questions clients raise about the product and the answers received from the manufacturer will be grouped and reused as and when required. 

What are your future plans?
Our objective is to expand the reach of “Assistwindow” for it to serve our potential clientele. Moreover, any product of such a genre should be continually fine-tuned to keep abreast with the constant advancements in clientele need and technology.

What has been your moment of glory?
Our moments of glory will always reside in customer satisfaction on account of their enhanced business productivity through “Assistwindow.” 

What have been your personal and professional learnings thus far?
Consistency and patience is my primary learning. Nothing big can happen overnight, and one needs to be consistent with his time utilization for any meaningful achievement. 

I have also learnt not to work ad hoc. I desire planned routines of all the tasks that I like to accomplish. The tasks could relate to work, hobbies or even setting apart time to relax and restore my body. One needs to maintain a mix, for one cannot pursue a single objective always. 

I like to discuss any situation, for I believe courteous discussion will provide clarity to any situation 

Finally, I love writing, since writing helps me to think deep, and deep thoughts are vital to success. 

What support would you like?
The only support that will satisfy me is to expand the reach of “Assistwindow” as a tool to improve the business productivity of many more organizations.

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ProductNation is now Proudly Powered by iSPIRT.in

I am happy to inform you that ProductNation will now be part of iSPIRT – a think-tank focussed on transforming India into a hub for new generation software products, a thought which finally is seeing action. Welcome to the new look of the website where we have made it easier for our readers to find stories that interest them and share it with friends and professional colleagues. Do drop by and share your comments if you like the design or have any suggestions for improvement.

Let me tell you how this all started. For a long time, I have had this urge to make a substantial contribution to the product eco-system in India and I shared this in my previous blog. I am proud to say that in less than five months, we have been able to do 175+ blogs, got around 20+ blog contributors, and featured 40+ #MadeInIndia Product stories. With the support of few PNEvangelists, we have been able to do few #PNMeetups in the NCR region.

But ultimately it’s not about what we want to do but about what the product ecosystem expects. I think the real value comes when ProductNation is looked upon by this emerging industry as the most favored watering hole for good ideas and thoughts that will contribute to the growth of the industry.

It’s been an exciting journey and going forward we will be able to add value in a much more structured manner to the ecosystem. As I write this blog, I’m already working on few partnerships which will be able to give more visibility to the product start-ups from India.

So what does this alignment with iSPIRT mean?

The goal of ISPIRT is to help product entrepreneurs learn from each other and from experts so that they grow their companies faster. We also seek to encourage the right policy environment and the availability of public goods so that the industry can scale more rapidly.
In the first year, we aim to achieve the following:

  • Explain simply, cogently and persuasively to public intellectuals why a vibrant software product industry is vital to India’s future
  • Establish pn.ispirt.in as the open platform for deeper conversations within the industry
  • Spawn new community-led initiatives like iSMB and M&A Connect to address critical gaps.,

You can find more details at www.ispirt.in.

Finally, I’d like to thank my supporting partners (Sandhill, Yorke Communications, Iridium Interactive & Boring Brands) and the contributors for ProductNation who have actively stood by me in making ProductNation a destination for software products in an extremely short time.

I continue to seek your support in the journey ahead. Let’s all contribute and make a positive impact to the eco-system. Thank you.

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Have a plan B to sustain yourself, while you are trying to make it big as a Product Startup says Amarpreet Kalkat, Frrole

Ciafo is a software products startup, based out of Bangalore focused on building consumer products for the web (including the mobile web). Ciafo has three products – Travelomy, Wayr, Frrole. In this interview, Amarpreet Kalkat, Co-Founder, Ciafo discusses aspects of building a B2C product from India and shares some of his learnings with startups. Frrole is an information exchange medium, not a unidirectional news provider. It has a heart and it likes to talk – hear from the people what they want to say, and tell them what they want to know.

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

I always had a passion for building intelligent products. If I have adequate resources, I find a way to connect the dots. This is what I have always been good at, and this is what I always wanted to do – use these skills to create intelligent products that could simplify lives.

In a large corporate setup, an individual is constrained in more ways than he can be comfortable with. A typical project manager or a product manager profile in a large company strictly limits one’s degree of freedom, thus affecting his ability to innovate. While some people love to work in a focused, defined way, I believed I needed more freedom than was possible in a normal corporate setup. By the time I realized this, I was already juggling with a few ideas in my mind. So, it was not difficult for me to quit my job and create Frrole, independently.

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

We were working on our first product Travelomy and one of the features we wanted to build in there was ‘real-time social information streams’. We were surprised at not finding any readymade localized streams, so we just decided to build one of our own.

But as we started digging deeper, we could see that real-time, curated social information was missing not only in travel guides, but at a much wider level. The challenge was in separating out that 1% signal from 99% noise, and we thought that we could do it. Slowly, we became sure that this could be an independent product by itself, and that is how Frrole was born.

Why the name?

The name Frrole is a derivative of a word in Punjabi language that roughly translates into ‘to play around, to discover, to explore’. We had always thought that this project was about building a brand new way of exploring around the cities that we live in, hence the name was always there in the shortlist.

The fact that it met 6 of the 7 criteria we had for choosing the name (refer Paul Graham’s essay) and had the .com domain available, finally sealed the deal.

Also, the core of Frrole is to find and present information that is nowhere else available. Justifying its name, the application enables people to discover news from sources totally unknown to them. Just like ‘Googling’ has become a generic term for ‘finding things that are known’, we hope to see a day when ‘Frroling’ becomes a generic term for ‘discovering things that are unknown’.   

What is your product’s differentiator from competitors?

Frrole is a twitter based product. It analyses a million+ tweets every day, posted by individuals, companies and mainstream media and selects 0.5% of the most informational ones among them. These tweets are then displayed to the users as news items. In doing so, Frrole creates an additional source of unbiased news, in the form of individuals like you and me. These million additional news sources are the core strength of Frrole, making it a superior product than its competitors.

The news on Frrole can be sourced from a common man like your friendly neighbor or from a giant publishing house, with complete impartiality. The core philosophy behind Frrole is to create a democratized platform using which any person can spread useful information, making each one of us a citizen journalist.

Like all other news apps and websites, Frrole gives you information collected from various news publications, blogs and your social media acquaintances. But, that is only half of what Frrole is all about. The other half is about news ‘for the people, by the people’. There cannot be any news source faster and more accurate than a common man who has witnessed an event, and this man is where Frrole sources its news from.

Other important differentiator between Frrole and its competitors is Frrole’s ability to generate localized content. Frrole lets its users select a city to enable them to get news relevant only to that city. Thus, Frrole makes you a person more aware of your surroundings, unlike any other news product.

What is the biggest challenge Frrole has faced so far? How did you address the challenge?

Not having a full-fledged, full-time team has been the biggest challenge by far. But we have come past that point and now we have a core team of three people. Nishith Sharma, an IIM Kozhikode grad who has earlier managed marketing for Jaguar Land Rover in India, takes care of marketing and Abhishek Vaid, an IIIT Gwalior grad, is responsible for building our backend analytics engine.

Who is your customer?

  1. We have a prize for everybody who claims he is not our customer.
  2.  We have yet to find a person who doesn’t find value in Frrole.
  3.  A typical customer of Frrole is somebody who can read English, aged 5-100 years old, living in any part of the world, and not totally disinterested in life.

On a more serious note, we define our core user as somebody who is 24-40 years old, socially active, and comfortable with the concept of informal information.

What are your future plans?

The mid-term future plan is to establish Frrole as the ‘world view’ news source. Something that people use to hear what the world around them is really talking about instead of being limited to only what mainstream media has to say.

In the longer term, we see ourselves doing the same thing for social web what Google did for the web – make sense of it. And while Google started with the search as the first application of that technology, we are starting with news as the first application. This technology can be applied to any more use cases as Google has shown, and we hope to emulate the same.

Your moment of Glory

Nothing really that big yet. Maybe a few small things like being called the future of news, having a TV feature on Frrole etc, hitting half million monthly unique visitors mark with only one full-time person etc.

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

See the last response below. Those lessons for others are derived from my personal lessons.

What kind of support would you have liked?

Entrepreneurship requires three kinds of resources – Man, Material, Capital. While ‘Material’ is not very important in the software context and entrepreneurs possess the ‘Manpower’ resource, what they usually lack is ‘Capital’.

India has very few investors who invest in early stages, so the ‘Capital’ is a big constraint for Indian startups. A report comparing funding in US and India says that while more than 60% of US startups manage to secure angel funding, only 15% manage to do that in India.

The situation is especially lackluster for products that are in the consumer web space. I hope that changes soon enough; otherwise there is absolutely no chance of a Google or Twitter coming out of India any time soon.

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

  • Have a team. Startups are way too much work for lone founders.
  • Show investors some incoming money. It’ll increase your chances of getting funded manifolds.
  • Start with a founding team, finding co-founders later can be an incredibly tough task.
  • Have a plan B to sustain yourself, while you are trying to make it big.

 The future looks very promising for Frrole and we wish Amarpreet all the best! Don’t forget to download their iPhone or Android app.

The Frrole Team
The Frrole Team

 

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iCalibrator – Bridging the Knowledge Gap

The product – iCalib aims to automate the process of practical learning during the training programmes. Trainees are given exercises to practice the skills they are expected to learn. In a typical classroom model, the trainer is not able to evaluate all trainees individually (sometimes the trainers are not capable of it also). The system would provide individual feedback, and also enable the trainees to re-attempt the exercises till they are able to achieve the desired objectives.

Pramod Saini started iCalibrator after gathering valuable experience from the industry. Having done his BTech & MS from IIT Madras and spent 10 years at Wipro in Global R&D role. In 1997, he left Wipro and Co Founded Momentum Technologies, which later on got acquired by Sopra, a French group.

Problem Identification : The Ideation
Every organisation begins with an idea. An idea is basically a solution to a specific problem which the founders are trying to address. In this case, in the year 2000, what was observed was the poor quality of software professionals in employment. The number of “professionals” flooding the market but with no control on quality whatsoever. Especially on the quality of input. The Students coming out of Engineering colleges, fell short on quality. This problem was identified years back and would find resonance much later as various studies were to indicate. In other parts of the world, especially in countries like US & Canada, a fresher would be able to write good software, within 2– 3 months of their first programming job. In India, this period would stretch to almost a year, and even more at times. The problem was much deep-rooted. Poor students were a direct result of poor
teachers, who were themselves all at sea, technically.

The Delivery Mechanism:
The approach was to impart training, through mentoring. To create an environment which wouldenable students through self-learning modules based on Practical exercises and projects. Mentors from the industry would assist trainees in writing good software, something on the lines of what was prevalent in Europe – Teacher & Assistant. Progressively, it was getting difficult for organisations to make freshers project-ready. It put additional pressure on resources and even then, the outcome was not always desirable.

Mentors, of course came with a cost. The effectiveness of this model would ultimately depend on the quality of mentors, which in many ways was a costly proposition and hence a challenge on scalability. This challenge would be addressed by reducing the dependence on mentors and leveraging technology to take up the same role. In due course, the product became very good and
the effectiveness was unparalleled. There was another challenge – to position the company in tech space, rather than as a training institute. The automation of solution would help position them as enablers to e-learning companies.

Challenges in selling this product

  1. Selling a complex idea is always tough and so is the positioning. The processes were pretty complex so not so easily reproducible by rival organisations.
  2. Selling to the target market in India. Decision-making is a slow process and there is some inertia which takes ages to overcome.
  3. Indian Product mindset, in the end-consumer’s mind. If it’s Indian, it isn’t good. Very difficult to break this mindset.
  4. Companies started putting their potent recruits though these tests and the results were disastrous. Not that the tests were exceptionally difficult but the aspirants were below par : The whole problem that was being addressed.

Expectations from the eco-system.
I guess, by eco-system, you refer to the whole learning industry. I hope that the Indian Software service providers actually put in effort to increase the quality of their software personnel. The problem of low quality is very well understood, but I believe that the organisations do not put in additional effort to improve quality because: (1) A large number of jobs are actually software maintenance jobs, and organisations believe that very high quality is not required. (2) Some senior management members believe that they do not want to invest in training personnel who might leave them and change a job immediately after. However, I think that this is a short-sighted approach that is detrimental to the overall industry and the value that we bring to the end customer.

Next 12 months for iCalibrator
In the next 12 months, we expect to raise some funds, and utilise them to enhance our product as well as focus on sales/marketing activities so that we can put our message across to the potential clients. We may be required to do some pilots, where the additional funds will help. We also plan to enhance our product so that it could be easily integrated into the training processes of any eLearning provider. Therefore, we see ourselves becoming a totally technical company, providing various automated aides to enhance the effectiveness of eLearning models.

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Changing user behavior – Cardback

This time, we feature Cardback a Delhi based startup, focused on helping today’s retail consumers discover the best deals and offers available on their credit, debit, loyalty and prepaid cards across merchant establishments. Its first product, also by the same name, is a location-aware mobile app that is currently in public beta for Android and in an invite-only phase for the iPhone.

What inspired you to build such a product?
We ourselves have always been sensitive to saving as much as we can while spending. While faced with a peculiar challenge of figuring out which one of our cards is best suited to use at a particular place, we identified it as a business opportunity that could be addressed using modern day computational techniques and the power and ubiquity of smart phones. That was, essentially, the genesis of Cardback.

Who all make up the core team at Cardback?
Nikhil Wason and Nidhi Gurnani started Cardback in July 2012 after months of brainstorming on the fundamental challenge faced by today’s credit and debit cardholders. Engineers by profession as well as by passion, both Nikhil and Nidhi are technologists, but with a business sense. While Nikhil, a graduate of Columbia University, was previously working with Adobe, Nidhi contributed her bit to the Aricent Group for a while. The core team got expanded with Ankita Garg joining a couple of months later to handle marketing. Ankita, a social media expert, has in the past helped several start-ups acquire a considerable user base during their initial days.

Can you tell us a bit about your product roadmap?
We currently have an Android app, while the iPhone app is in private alpha testing. We made a conscious decision to focus our initial energies on Android, as India’s mobile user base is more Android-oriented. Since its beta launch in Nov 2012, we have analyzed enough user behavior on the Android app to make fundamental decisions on its user experience on other platforms. We plan to ship a public beta of our iPhone app in January 2013. Cardback for Windows Phone and Blackberry are currently under development.

One very important aspect of our future roadmap is to build a partnership with banks and other card issuers. Using our platform, they will be able to push their special deals and incentives to cardholders at the right place and at the right time. Meanwhile, they will be able to gather valuable analytics, which will help increase the repeat usage of cards issued by them.

What challenges have you faced in your journey so far?
The biggest challenge that we have to address is changing user behavior.  While many people today claim to be tech savvy and gadget comfortable, they’re still very averse to making changes to their credit and debit card usage habits. Even though they would be interested in discounts, they rarely remember they have several excellent entitlements by virtue of holding certain cards. With these cards, many discounts become their “birth right” or so to speak. Cardback provides them the tools, but those tools won’t help unless people make use of them.

As a mobile application, another major challenge that we have to face is discoverability. With millions of products out there on every mobile platform, it becomes very difficult to make users notice your app, even if it solves a genuine pain point.

Are you collaborating with other startups?
At Cardback, we do not believe in re-inventing the wheel. We realize that the challenge we are trying to address is so specialized and requires such clinical execution, that if there are specialists in the periphery zone who have proven solutions, we will happily bring them on-board.

We have recently partnered with dineout, which is India’s premiere restaurant booking service, to allow our users to make table reservations at their favorite restaurants through our application itself. Our application already helps users save money, now with this feature, they save time too. And they even get discounts with every table booking they make.

How would you rate yourself in terms of achieving the targets you set out to achieve so far and what are your targets for future?
Being engineers ourselves, we are very data driven in our approach towards everything. Setting targets and evaluating our performance is no different. We have defined metrics that we’re tracking ourselves against and so far we are very satisfied with our performance.

Qualitatively, we set out to achieve two things by the end of the year. First, technological proof of concept, and second, basic customer validation. We’re proud to say we’ve done very well on both those fronts and we will be starting 2013 with a brand new level of excitement due to these accomplishments.

For the near future, our target is rapid expansion of our user base and scaling our platform to support that rapid expansion. We will also be adding new and innovative features as we get our apps synced across all operating systems.

As a long term goal, we would be partnering with card issuers such as banks, as mentioned previously.

How do you cover the operational costs?
Cardback is currently being bootstrapped. Several investors have expressed a keen interest in what we’re doing and we are evaluating the right time (and the right investor) to infuse additional funds into Cardback’s mission.

Wishing GoodLuck to the Team!!

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ProductNation and SandHill team up to bring industry best practices to the Software Product Industry

ProductNation, a portal dedicated to the cause of the Indian software product industry and Sandhill, a portal that offers business strategy for the software, cloud and mobile ecosystem have tied-up to share industry best practices with companies that are emerging and growing in India. This is an important development in the Indian software product landscape as it brings to the table pragmatic views from Silicon Valley and from India, which has grown to be recognized globally for its software prowess.

ProductNation was launched earlier this year in India to be the one stop resource for companies who need solutions and advice even as they conceptualize, incubate and grow their businesses. The portal is run by industry veterans who act as catalysts to bring in content from around the world and real life examples of companies who are in the software product space. The portal is run in a democratic fashion and anyone who has material to contribute from various domains is encouraged to participate.

Sandhill is run by industry leader M.R. Rangaswami from Silicon Valley, the hotbed of the software industry. Over the years, Sandhill has grown with the software industry and today is an important destination for the newer technologies and developments that must be understood by entrepreneurs who run or are contemplating to run their own enterprises.

Given that more than 400 companies start their businesses each year in India in the software product industry, it is important that an ecosystem support this endeavour to ensure that companies make a success of themselves and provide value to their customers. Today, it is estimated by Zinnov that there are more than 3,400 software product companies in the country alone with 51% located in Bangalore and the National Capital Region (NCR) around Delhi.

ProductNation encourages entrepreneurs, venture capitals, angel investors, advisors and the ecosystem in general to contribute their thoughts for the benefit of this nascent industry which has the potential to accelerate even further in the coming years.