Author: ProductNation Network

ProductNation has been set up by a team of enthusiasts who have created a platform for entrepreneurs, employees and indeed, onlookers to share ideas, ask questions and gain knowledge about various dimensions of the software product business.
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UPI – The Revolution in Payment Industry

Japan introduced ‘Zengin’, a real-time money transfer mechanism in 1973. Thirty Seven years later, NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) introduced IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) in 2010 as the first real-time 24*7 money transfer mechanism in the country.

In-between PayPal launched money transfer by just knowing a person’s email ID in 1999 and now in 2016, India is about to make UPI (Unified Payment Interface) live in few weeks. It will enable real-time transfer of money 24*7 just by knowing a person’s virtual address.

These two comparisons above need to be looked at with different lenses, one from the laying of groundwork and the other ease of usage. It took some time but NPCI setup IMPS which has performed very well with IMPS transactions growing at a staggering pace, over 100% every year. In May 2016 alone, USD 3.4 Billion were transferred on it.

However, these transactions have not really been very easy to carry out for Indian consumers. Whether with account numbers and IFSC codes or with MMID, the friction has curtailed the full potential of this behemoth on rise. This is where UPI comes in, abstracting the payments on top of existing robust IMPS to the degree that Indian consumers can now carry out transactions in few taps with just a virtual address. It is India’s PayPal moment for consumer payments bringing it to that parity in terms of end user convenience that will only lead to further digitisation of cash in the country.

This moment is also an inflexion point for us. Bill Gates recently said that “India will lead the world in digital financial inclusion”.

Few key things have led to this point.

The Indian consumer has adopted smartphones and internet very well. In 2015, the internet user-base in India recorded an impressive 40% growth over the past year and the smartphone shipments in India is estimated to grow by 29% in 2016. Stepping few years back, it has been a remarkable journey starting with paying for a train ticket on IRCTC website to small mobile recharges to e-commerce payments, Indian consumer got a taste of online payments and got comfortable with it and now slowly like it panned out in West, the demarcation of high touch and low touch products is diminishing with users now purchasing anything online.

Consumer trends aside, policy-making and the work of bodies such as RBI, NPCI, iSPIRT (Indian Software Product Industry Round Table), IAMAI and many more has helped in information collection, dissemination and laying of frameworks to provide a solid ground to build up Indian mobile payments story.

Apart from peer to peer payments, IMPS can now carry out PULL based transactions as well so that a user can now make merchant payments seamlessly with just an MPIN in a ‘Single Touch, 2 Factor Authentication’ method where a user’s device ID is being treated as the first factor of authentication.

Like any new system, it will take some time to set up and grow. The merchants will have to come on-board quickly to accept payments with UPI and users will need to be educated. For merchants, it will have a low TDR (Transaction Discount Rate), comparable to low Debit Card rates and higher conversion in transactions as multiple intermediaries and hops for an online payment to take place successfully will get out of the way. For the paying customer, it will allow payments in one tap and money will get debited directly from their bank account.

In past, we have seen many financial systems and methods take years before going mainstream but we believe that UPI will get adopted at a faster pace than what we have seen in the past. A lot of macro-trends and unique Indian payments landscape in which masses skipped credit cards altogether and many had a mobile smartphone as their first internet device indicates that things will play out differently here.

That brings us to the question that amidst all of these changes in the ecosystem with all of the above playing their crucial part, what role do we, the startups have? Answer is that as young entrepreneurs, it is our obligation to take this story forward.

Just like Uber used GPS, Google Maps and different facets of established or emerging pieces of technology, we have to use UPI to provide Indian consumers with great experience and delightful products.

In doing so, we will have to educate Indian consumers about what UPI is – what a virtual address is, how safe and secure it is, how they can have a virtual address issued by a bank when they don’t even have a bank account with the bank application (Payment Service Provider) issuing that virtual address and more.

The experience of on-boarding them onto UPI will have to be very simple and delightful.

The old ‘Goldilocks effect’ will have to be brought in where a user should not get too wary of the new yet understand that the whole payments paradigm has changed for good.

We at Mypoolin have spent a great amount of time acquiring tacit knowledge in how consumer payments are made and users behave in various social contexts and settings when it comes to payments. We are of the strong view that UPI brings the great convenience required for payments to be made smoothly and we will build great value on top of it for Indian consumers. We have begun playing our role by education our existing users and more with a UPI specific website and other channels about UPI which has helped us gauge market response to it and get valuable feedback that we can share with the ecosystem at large for the benefit of the market.

The applications of UPI are in many different use-cases and it is upon us startups to recognise it and take it to market.

We can’t blame it on anyone – the system or the current economic downturn to not do our job – UPI is one of the many enablers to follow that will help us build great technology products to make India a ‘Product Nation’

The true mettle of Indian founders to build great products will be tested and it will change the mindset as well to build India specific New from the scratch and set a trend the country needs for future entrepreneurs to follow.

This is our pivotal moment and we must not let it slip away.

Guest post By Ankit Singh, Co-Founder, Mypoolin

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#SaaSx3 has made a huge difference for Syscon.

Step-by-step secrets of deciphering the digital world.

We are an ERP product company. Our ERP solution, Syscon Cronus is targeted for manufacturing industries. We have all along for the last 20 years were been following traditional marketing route, out-bound. Though being an IT company, may be due to my manufacturing background and our Customers are from the same segment, we never put our stake in digital marketing. We always believed in Outbound rather than Inbound marketing.

SaaS x3 has completely changed my perspective. It was such a power packed digital Sales event. But the real beauty was the way it was structured. Every step was explained in detail that a dummy like was able to understand and implement it.

I really would thank the great guys like Girish, Suresh Sambandam, Pallav Nadhani & Shekhar Kirani who had taken their time-out and make it a point to hand-hold the eco system. Also wish to put my learning as a gesture to them, though many of this information will be available in a much better way in public domain.

Basics of Digital Marketing

Google Adwords:

Efforts:

  • It is all google Adwords, Analytics.
  • If google does not have a category for your business better do not waste your time (or) you can still run your business a life style one.
  • Having identified your business category, Google might provide its key words suggestion. Make sure that you pick the generic ones.
  • Also spend time in identifying your own key words. After the key words are just the way you think that your customers are searching for your product or service.
  • It may not be wise to use the competitors name / brand as your key words. It may fetch more as impressions and clicks but may not conversions.
  • Make sure that you remove the negative key words at least once a week.
  • You have to spend money on Adwords and but decide how much is feasible for you.

Results: In last 2 months we have generated close to 25 inbound enquiries and closed 4 orders

Website:

Efforts:

  • The first day after completing the above the bounce rate of my website was 99.9%. I never scored good marks in my education and I was happy to see that at least my website was doing better.
  • Later I came to know that it is real bad news for the bounce rate being high.
  • What is bounce rate? Bounce rate is an indicator that shows as to how long the visitor spent time on your site.
  • We then spent time in fine tuning the site performance of home page and other page information.
  • We have recruited a full time digital marketing guy who worked on SEO. After 2 months you know now the bounce rate is between 2 – 6%
  • Most important learning was, Call for Action (CFA). When a visitor comes to your site what you want them to do. So the first image in your site has to tell what you do and now what you want them to do. If this is not addresses well traffic will not lead to conversion.

Results: The bounce rate has reduced from 99% to 5 % which has resulted in 70% increase in organic traffic.

Content on Social media

Efforts:

  • It is important that you need to write original interesting content about your product and business.
  • Earlier I use to write articles in Linkedin. But I never thought that it was to be connected to my site. Now I post 3/4 of the article and for balance article it is linked to our site.
  • Presence in Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin is important.
  • We have been making at least 2 posts per week.

Results: This has created traffic from social media 40%.

Make the Customer as your marketing engine.

Effort:

Pallav’s presentation was so impressive. Soon after the event, we have implemented one small thing. In all outbound documents like Invoice, Purchase order, Offer etc., we have just added in the right bottom “Powered by Syscon Cronus” This was delivered with our latest patch.

Result: We have already received 4 enquiries through this.

The product tear down session by Suresh Sambandam was too good and very detail in highlighting the missing parts of our website from the visitor / prospective client perspective.

But the $1 million to $5 million was an ultimate-one by Girish – Freshdesk. In today’s dirty world, no one wish to give out so much of critical business information. I could also see the openness of the Investor – Shekhar Kirani, Accel Partners.

After this SaaS X3, our business dynamics has completely changed. All of us have developed detail eyes in the company. With so much of activity even our development and testing teams have become more agile. Every time when we make a new version release, there will be at least 1 or 2 critical bugs and 5 -6 non-critical bugs. But surprisingly, this time there were no bugs. Our team has become more conscious.

I wish to thank each and every one behind SaaSX, especially to Girish Mathrubootham, Suresh Sambandam, Pallav Nadhani & Shekhar Kirani for their self-less efforts in creating strong SaaS eco system.

Good karma by iSPIRT

Contributed By S.Vijay Venkatesh – CEO, Syscon Solutions Private limited, Hyderabad

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How we incorporated Deducely, Inc in the USA using Stripe Atlas

In our first blogpost, I’d like to talk about how we incorporated in US from outside the USA.

This is a version 3.0 post that is inspired from V 1.0 by my former boss Girish Mathrubootham and V 2.0 by Suresh Sambandam, CEO of KiSSFLOW.

This article can not be considered Legal advise, please consult a lawyer and/or accountant before incorporating.

US Incorporation 101

The US has one of the most mature banking and financial systems in the world. Owing to this many internet businesses prefer to incorporate in the US. In India the reserve bank of India does not allow businesses to automatically charge user’s credit/debit card’s; explicit user consent is expected via a second factor authentication like an OTP or a password. This hampers the smooth functioning of subscription businesses that charge users every month.

However A US based company can store its user’s credit cards and charge them automatically in a recurring fashion seamlessly. For the convenience of auto-charging credit cards many ‘Subscription As A Service’ (SaaS) companies based out of India have their headquartered in the US.

Deducely being a SaaS product, we wanted the ability to charge our user’s cards every month automatically without asking them to input their card number every month. Since we operate from India our options were very limited

We had 3 options in hand, but we had apprehensions too:

  1. Incorporate in a foreign country – Too costly, close to $2000
  2. Use 2Checkout or FastSpring – About 10% to be paid as commissions
  3. Use Paypal subscriptions – Developer un-friendly, average customer support

Enter The Atlas Program Stripe Atlas

Stripe atlas is a bento box for businesses to get up and running. Stripe Atlas grants the following for a flat fee of $500:

  1. US company registration (A Delaware C corp).
  2. Registering with the IRS for taxation purposes.
  3. A Zero balance US bank account in Silicon valley bank.
  4. Access to Legal and Tax consultation from PwC, Orrick and UpCounsel.
  5. $15,000 in Amazon Web Services Credits.
  6. A Stripe account ready to accept payments.

We were skeptical about this program, We even felt it was too good to be true but when we approached Avinash Raghava of iSPIRT and Suresh Sambandam of KiSSFLOW for expert opinion, we were advised to go ahead and incorporate via Stripe Atlas. It was totally worthwhile.

How to incorporate a Delaware C Corp in the USA through the Stripe Atlas program?

Step 1: Get an invite to the Atlas program

This is the most difficult part, as of now the stripe atlas program is invite only, you could try requesting an invite on the website or via their twitter account. Once you are successfully invited you’d get an email with a link that can be used to register an account at Stripe Atlas. Now You’d be required to create a new Stripe account.

Step 2: Enter detailed information about your business

Once you have signed up for the Stripe account you would be presented with the following overview screen :

stripe starting page

When we click on get started we are presented with a screen that asks a few details about the product and the business:

business details page

Step 3: Enter how you’d like to structure your company

There are two ways to structure your company when your business is not physically present in the US. This is a very crucial decision and should be taken after thorough deliberation.

  1. Setting up a US headquartered company with an Indian (or other non US country) subsidiary:Freshdesk’s model
  2. Setting up a US subsidiary for a non US parent company: KiSSFLOW’s model

Company incorporation screen

We had not incorporated anywhere yet and we went ahead with Freshdesk’s model , so we were asked to enter our company’s desired name, while entering the desired name please ensure that the name is not registered by any other entity, a simple google search could help you out.

Although we could have entered our local non US address, we went ahead and purchased a physical address in the US through virtual post mail for $10/month; virtualpostmail.com scan the physical mail that we get and email it to us. We received our ETPS(Electronic tax payment system) credentials through our physical address. Though the US address wouldn’t be of any other use in the immediate future, we wanted Deducely to be global and hence we invested in a US physical address.

We got a US phone number for free through Google Voice and entered that as our phone number, to get a Google voice number you need to know someone with a US phone number from a major carrier like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint. Once the google voice setup is done you will be able to make and receive calls from your US google voice number through the Hangouts dialer app . You could enter your local number here as well.

If you choose to set up a US subsidiary with a Non US company as the parent you would be asked to present the Non US company’s tax ID and registration certificate. Please consult your local lawyer and accountant for any regulatory compliances that need to be met.

Step 4: Enter the details about the people in the company

In this page you’d be prompted to enter the personal details of all the people who would have more than 25% stakes in the company. Please have a scanned copy of your passport or any other government issued IDs.

Personal details about the founders

Now, in the same page, you will also be asked to select the company’s president, secretary, incorporator and directors.

Board of directors

Step 5: Enter the bank account administrator details and pay:

Getting a US bank account is the most difficult part for any non US entrepreneur , You either have to be physically present in the US or know someone in the US who could introduce you to the bank. These banks tend to have high maintenance fees and high minimum balances associated with them. However stripe atlas has partnered with Silicon Valley Bank(SVB). SVB provides a zero balance account with no maintenance fee for 2 years. In the following screen you will get an option to select the administrator for the SVB account

SVB administrator

Step 6: Enter your credit/debit card details:

You will be presented with a stripe checkout popup where you can enter your card details. You will we charged $500 USD only after the successful incorporation of your company. After the payment you’d get a prompt saying that your incorporation would be complete in one week.

Since Deducely was one of the initial pilot companies to be incorporated via the Stripe Atlas program we did not have to spend a dime to get up and running with a US company and bank account! Thanks a tonne Patrick, we owe you one!

Step 7: The application review process:

I am not sure if this is step would be applicable for everyone. A couple of days after we had submitted our application we received an email from stripe requesting us to furnish details like our estimated timeline, screenshots, Terms of service etc… and we showed them our screenshots and git account; after a few anxious days our application was accepted. I feel this is necessary steps to prevent abuse of this program.

Step 9: Digitally sign the incorporation documents:

After the review process is done and dusted, all the associated people in step 4 would receive an email with a link to a Docusign document. You can read the documents and sign. We would be able to proceed to the next step only when all the associated people have completed signing the documents.

Step 10: The AWS activate account:

After signing all the documents you’d get an email with a link to activate your AWS goodies. You’d get:

  • $15,00 in AWS credits valid for 2 years.
  • Access to AWS web based training (worth $600).
  • Access to AWS business support (worth $5000).
  • Access to AWS solution architects.

Step 11: Receive your incorporation documents:

After you digitally sign all the incorporation documents , wait for around 5-7 days to get your Delaware C corp incorporation certificate and your Tax ID(Employer Identification Number) from the IRS.

Step 12: Opening the SVB account:

Since we had given a PO box address in the US we were asked to give the physical address where our business is present. We emailed this to SVB and after 1 week we were granted access to SVB online banking.

This is the end of the incorporation procedure, here a few things to be done next

Next Steps:

1) Signing the stock plans: Stripe would email you a draft of a Stock agreements, get it signed by your board of directors. Stripe would also schedule a free 30 minute call with upcounsel – a law firm for clarifying any queries.

2) Sending funds to the SVB account: Ideally you can wire funds into your SVB account, but this is a tedious process involving a lot of waiting. We found square cash to be a convenient way to send cash into our SVB account. It takes 2 working days for the cash to show up in your bank account.

3) Getting a credit / debit card : You have funds in your SVB account and you want to pay for your hosting and other subscriptions, there are two options that I am aware of, the first method would be to apply get a business credit/debit card from SVB and get it delivered to your address. The second method is signing up at privacy.com. Privacy.com is a new age fin tech company that links with your bank account, through this service you can generate virtual VISA cards with fixed spending limits and close them whenever you want. We use privacy.com to generate virtual credit cards and track our spending. This service is free!

4) The Unofficial Stripe entrepreneurs Facebook group: If you are not based in the US and have a US based company , we have created an unofficial stripe atlas entrepreneurs group in Facebook . You are not alone here, if you run into any issues or need help you can ask other fellow atlas entrepreneurs for help.

Overall our experience with Stripe atlas was exemplary. Their support team always had our back; I’d like to give a huge shoutout to Anita from the Stripe atlas team, she was not only very knowledgeable but also very patient in replying to the barrage of queries that we raised every day! Ideally a service like this would cost you at least 800$ without the bank account and $15,000 in AWS credits. Stripe Atlas = A happy meal for company incorporation!

If you need any help or have any queries related to this post please reach out to me at aswin <at> deducely <dot> com

Guest Post by Aswin Vayiravan, Deducely

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India can’t afford the comforts technology provides. Here’s why

There’s a belief globally that we have a burgeoning middle class in India — and we’re following in the footsteps of China’s massive change from immense poverty to a stable middle class.

But that’s really not the case. There was a very interesting article onScrollsome time back explaining this.

According to the article, “China…saw its middle-income proportion go up from 3% in 2001 to 18% in 2011.” This growth in disposable income, coupled with technology, fueled growth in consumption, most probably with some visibility of profitability for businesses in the country.

In India this hasn’t happened.

“All those stories about India’s burgeoning middle-class have little to do with reality: India is, as it has always been, woefully poor.”

Instead, it seems that the major shift that’s happened is the really really poor are now just poor. And no where close to being determined middle class by any definition. The article does a good job of showing how middle class globally is defined.

Here are a couple of charts showing this move.

We don’t know how fast this low income bracket will start moving into middle income, but my guess is quite slowly. There is a lack of education, lack of opportunities, and lack of incentive for anyone in a position of power to do anything drastic about it. And even if we were motivated, these things take much more time in multi-party democracies like India vs countries like China.

If this is the reality, it’s going to be tougher and tougher for transactional business dealing with consumers (like ecommerce) that make money on delivery/logistics to grow in spite of this long term. Here’s why.

Today, the average take rate (the percentage of each transaction companies make to run their businesses) isn’t sufficient to cover costs related to the transaction. Yet, the take rate as a percentage of the cost of any one item is so high that it’s difficult to imagine most companies being able to increase it. On average companies charge a 10/15% take rate. How realistic is it that any consumer will be willing to pay 25/30/40% extra on top of the cost of an item? Probably not that realistic.

More woes

Photo credit: Lord Enfield

It gets worse. Logistics costs are going up. Believe it or not, ecommerce players have been lucky with overall delivery costs so far. They have spent on everything except their front line. And that’s showing. We’ve seen the repercussions of this at Flipkart already, and things are going to change really fast — starting with delivery staff salaries. So, even increasing take rates (as unrealistic as that sounds) will only help maintain present losses.

Seems like an impossible problem to crack, right? Well, it gets worse because scale doesn’t solve the problem. All these businesses need a substantial offline operational capability. As a result, they get little benefit from growing because they keep needing to add people, delivery centers and other logistics related costs.

And now, to top it off, they’ve been marketing to a middle class that is significantly smaller than was originally imagined. Most people can’t afford as much as online companies need them to — meaning the size of every transaction is only going to get smaller. And since take rates mostly work as a percentage, they’re going to reduce. In fact, it’s very possible that the take rate percentage itself will be under pressure to reduce. And all the while, customer expectations on quality service and delivery will remain the same.

So how do you make up the income? Ad revenue? How realistic is that ad spend in the country will go up any more than marginally anytime soon? How realistic is it that any ancillary revenue streams will make up enough of the short fall? Seems far fetched to me.

It’s actually really unfortunate. There are so many businesses that we truly need in India, but the majority of us can’t afford for them to be as efficient as they are today. How long will this gap in affordability and convenience be funded by private equity? My guess is — not long enough. (But as a consumers, I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.)

From what I can tell, as bad as the margins are for these businesses, this is the best they will ever be. And that’s scary.

Guest Post by Sid Talwar, Partner at LightBox Ventures

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5 Signs you need a SaaS based Cloud Payroll Software for your Startup

Startups are natural transgressors, but payroll and HR is one area where a startup simply cannot afford to break rules. Entrepreneurs of startups may have to come up with disruptive ideas if they want their enterprises to be listed in Fortune 1000, but there is one particular area, where entrepreneurs of startups certainly would not want to break the rules: HR and payroll.

5-Signs-you-need-a-SaaS-based-Cloud-Payroll-Software-for-your-StartupStartups that fail to comply or neglect HR and payroll laws are often slapped with stringent financial and legal consequences. In fact, some penalties are so stringent that they can throw the entire business off track. With that being said, here are five common yet biggest HR and payroll mistakes that startups commit and why it’s time to embrace a mobile payroll app or cloud-SaaS based payroll software.

Mixing Business and Personal Finances

During the initial days, a business banking account may seem pointless for a startup. This is because a startup in its initial days hardly makes any money and for most of the entrepreneurs of newly launched startups, it is pointless to pretend that they are paying their employees with the company and not from their personal pockets.

Such a thinking in particular can have grave consequences in the long run. Eventually, a startup would need to separate all the expenses and repay taxes.

In case the startup is audited or sued, the blurry discrepancy of business and personal finances can render the entrepreneur’s personal assets vulnerable to seizure by the court. To make it worse, the startup might even lose its corporate status. Unfortunately, most of the startup founders are of the notion that this won’t happen to them, but it does and quite often.

Thus, to keep away from legal hassles during such untoward incidents, payroll software for startups is your best bet.

Relegating Employees as Independent Workers

Treating or misclassifying your employees as independent contractors or workers when in fact they ought to be legally regarded as employees is one of the gravest mistakes that startups commit these days. The major reason of doing this is that they don’t have to pay insurance, overtime or taxes for independent contractors. Also, they don’t have to bear other contractor benefits.

Misclassifying is quite common among startups, where several entrepreneurs practice the “try before buy” recruitment technique. It is one of the biggest human resource management mistakes that owners of many startups commit resulting in increased employee turnover rates.

Nevertheless, if you are still relegating employees as independent workers, then it’s advisable to have an automated SaaS based mobile payroll app or cloud based payroll software for startups that can sort out or distinguish payroll and all other independent contractor benefits from what is offered to employees in your company.

Attempting to Manage Compliance and Payroll through Spreadsheets

Payroll undoubtedly is a complex and tricky process, most of the businesses especially startups screw at it often only to be penalized for compliance violations by using spreadsheets. This is the reason many businesses resort to employing some or the other kind of payroll service.

However, startups require compliance such as compensation, healthcare, employment insurance, etc. These are mandatory in almost every state. Compliance overheads even in a freshly launched startup can escalate quite fast.

Thus, many tech-savvy startups make use of cloud based HRMS and payroll software for startups instead of spreadsheets to manage their payroll and compliance. A mobile payroll app helps to manage payroll for a startup including a range of taxes whilst ensuring compliance with all the necessary insurance and other stuffs as well as reporting.

Over/Under Paying Employee Benefits

With the startup competition getting fierce with each passing day, recruiting and retaining best talents has turned a lot more difficult and challenging. Thus, you must offer amazing employee benefits to retain the best talent pool that can drive your startup.

A cloud payroll software for startups can be of great help here, because a mobile payroll app with its excellent automation functionalities computes accurate figures to be administered as benefits thus, ruling out odds of human errors paving way for redundant and error-free benefits payouts.

Being SaaS based makes it scalable thus, startups don’t have to spend a fortune making it budget-friendly. It eliminates the cumbersome paperwork that goes into filings and benefits administration for your HR and payroll department saving them time and efforts.

Frustrating their Employees with Endless Paperwork

No one likes paperwork and startups are no exception. Yet, a number of businesses are still stuck in ice-age, as they use outdated HR practices or legacy software.

As we are living in the 21st century, gone are the days of asking your employees to filling out forms and email or fax them to the respective departments. Several businesses are making use of payroll software for startups to automate this entire process making it easy for both HRs as well as employees. A mobile payroll app helps a startup to go paperless when it comes to carrying out payroll and other key HR processes.

So these are five signs a startup needs to shun those legacy HR/payroll software or practices and embrace a cloud and SaaS based payroll software now.

Guest post by Anwar Shaikh writes about HRMS solutions and Payroll Software. A self-made, reared-up writer, Anwar is a wannabe Cloud evangelist and has a great penchant for cloud SaaS and automation technologies, SMAC, CRM, ERP and human resources. 

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How IndiaStack can bridge country’s digital divide

IndiaStack can enable the government, the citizens and entrepreneurs to interact with each other through an open digital platform.

At a time when financial technology is changing the face of Indian banking, the government is looking to bridge the digital divide.

The biggest hurdle here is paper-based authentication and approvals. To bridge this gap iSpirt is working with various government agencies to develop IndiaStack.

What is IndiaStack?

IndiaStack is a paperless and cashless service delivery system being conceived by a digital think tank iSpirt. It can enable the government, the citizens and entrepreneurs to interact with each other through an open digital platform. It is the largest application programming interface that is being developed in order to enable 1.2 billion Indians to get access to goods and services digitally.

When was it started?

It was conceived by the government of India in 2012 when they realised, in order to help services reach the last mile of the Indian population, it needed private technology solutions to be built on the Aadhaar database. The project is being pedalled forward by Nandan Nilekani the ex-chief of Unique Identification Database Authority of India, who describes it as the “Whatsapp moment for Indian banking”.

Why is it essential?

The government has been striving for a less cash economy to prevent pilferages and last mile connectivity of financial services. While the Aadhaar database allows users to complete all KYC requirements, there is still a gap in getting approvals because of the need for a signature on paper.

IndiaStack will be able to bridge that gap through its digital lockers which will allow for digital signatures and seamless API (Application programming interface) integration for authentication through eKYC.

How will it be designed?

IndiaStack is conceived as a pyramidal structure based on the Aadhaar database as the base and unified payments interface (UPI) that is being developed by NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) as the top. The two middle stacks comprise digital signatures and eKYC.

Nilekani has explained that with the help of digital signatures customers will not need to actually sign a paper document, instead it can digitally sign it by using a smartphone. eKYC will also enable the identity of the customer to be determined digitally as well.

How will it be beneficial?

The biggest benefits could be completely digital payments through the UPI infrastructure for a less cash economy. Also, loan approval through eKYC and digital signatures could be done faster in a paperless fashion. Both these steps can bring people without access to digital payments to come within the digital fold.

Republished from ETTech
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When to open the purse for that Blockchain-y project of yours?

Blockchain, Blockchain ! The buzz continues to spread from coffee machines to boardrooms. Everyone I speak to nowadays is eager to know how to leverage Blockchain tech and what’s in it for them.

A key question in front of us as solution providers is when to choose Blockchain (and when to stick to relational databases) and more importantly which use case to fund/invest.

Based on my experience of Blockchain technology, if your use case meets all the conditions below, using a Blockchain makes business sense:

  1. A Shared Database: A Blockchain is a distributed ledger. The data contained in a Blockchain is replicated across all nodes within the network and is therefore shared. First step would be to determine if there is a genuine need for data sharing across the entire network.
  2. Multiple Writers: In a Blockchain, the database is written by multiple writers simultaneously. These writers could be a bank’s customers initiating payments, traders trading in a exchange, ATM/POS transactions, multiple companies updating their records in a government portal etc.
  3. Lack of Trust: Does your use case involves multiple users that trust each other? Let me ask it differently. Is one user willing to let other users modify the database entries it owns and is he/she blindly trusts the ‘read-only’ information provided by other users? If your answer is a clear NO, then Blockchain can be the answer. But everyone trusts a Blockchain as transactions are confirmed by ‘autonomous’ nodes (that do not trust each other) and considered immutable.
  4. No need for a central intermediary: If all we needed was a solution that let’s multiple non trusting writers update a shared database, then having a central intermediary that is trusted by all writers could have solved the problem. Everyday we interact with such central intermediaries e.g. Uber, commuter train companies, our banks, government etc. Govt issues us identity documents that are acceptable to all, a bank’s confirmation on a successful transaction is treated as a gospel of truth. Blockchain removes the need of having a central intermediary by its inherent design of immutability, block confirmations, distributed consensus. The transactions performed on a blockchain can thus be trusted by multiple writers who do not trust each other but trust a Blockchain. Do you really need disintermediation and does not having one makes it cheaper , faster , more efficient for your customers.
  5. Transactions Linkage: It means that transactions created by different writers often depend on one other. For example, A sends some money to B who in turn sends it to C. So, C’s balance is dependant on A. Because of this dependency, the transactions naturally belong together in a single shared database. Taking this further, one nice feature of blockchains is that transactions can be created collaboratively by multiple writers, without either party exposing themselves to risk.
  6. Authoritative Final Transaction Log: All nodes agree to the contents of this log. For a new node, downloading the entire previous blockchain is a starting point. If a node is down for some time, it can download the incremental blockchain to know the latest contents of Blockchain. In a peer-to-peer database with no central authority, nodes might have different opinions regarding which transaction to accept, because there is no objective right answer. By requiring transactions to be “confirmed” in a blockchain, we ensure that all nodes converge on the same decision.
  7. Guaranteeing the represented assets: Who stands behind the assets represented on the blockchain? If the database says that I own 10 units of something, who will allow me to claim those 10 units in the real world? Who do I sue if I can’t convert what’s written in the blockchain into traditional physical assets? Is it going to be a bank, a stock exchange, a mineral company? It all depends on the type of asset that is recorded on the Blockchain.

Conclusion: If your use case fulfils the all of the above criteria, using a Blockchain makes sense. Go ahead and invest in it, Blockchain is worth it.

(Disclaimer: Inputs from Gideon. Views expressed are personal and may not necessarily reflect views of my employer.)

Guest Post by Gaurav Singhai, Sopra-Steria

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Setting up Inside Sales to sell SaaS into US – Learning’s from iSPIRT #PlaybookRT

Inside Sales was presented as one of the strategic levers for SAAS companies selling to the US market at a recent Google Accel event. no wonder when

iSPIRT arranged for a round table on this topic there was a buzzing interest.

If you are not familiar with the round tables of iSPIRT check them out here. (Highly recommended)

Suresh of kissflow.com who has been successful in cracking the US market with his DIY Self-service workflow product conducted this round table.

Agenda

What was interesting is when the group was setting an agenda. It sort of covered areas from the complete funnel from marketing to Sales. Here are the sections and key learnings that were discussed in each. End of the article we also have links to tools and resources that can help.

Leads/Marketing
This is concerned with generating leads. These might be signups on your free-trial self-service product or request for demos. [Inbound]

These might also be leads that you have gathered by list building/event which you might be nurturing through email marketing or Inside Sales for outbound.

Learning

  • SEO is a must and early start helps
  • Start with a keyword list (Commercial intent) and then keep building backlinks and writing content. In Suresh’s words its do-able and needs discipline and not hacks. [In my own opinion we as Indian entrepreneurs have done a shoddy job in this area and need to learn this fast]
  • Keywords, which you cannot rank on, go with PPC. The typical signup costs discussed were between 50 USD – 200 USD per signup / MQL
  • Data for outbound prospecting is very important; Mass Emailing does work but it is super important to spend time on defining segment well and crafting messaging which is relevant.
    [In my opinion one would actually have to go a step further with personalization if you are not a mass market solution and selling to mid-large markets]
  • Having a strong Web Engineering team which works on Google Analytics and conversion optimization is a must

Inside Sales

Roles

You may be calling this team with different names. In theory the following are possible

  • Lead Development Rep – Qualify Inbound leads
  • Sales Development / Account Development – Generate Qualified meetings from outbound
  • Other names discussed were BDRs (Same as SDRs or some times channel)
  • Account Executive – Someone who closes
  • Product Specialist – Someone who knows product well and closes
  • Should you have a product specialist closing or Account executive?
  • Self-Serve product with low complexity AE (sometimes even an SDR) can close
  • If a product requires mapping use cases configurations (Like KissFlow) then Product specialist are in the best position to close
  • If you selling 50K + ACV then a field Sales or experienced AE in the US is recommended.

Where to Hire Inside Sales

There were different thoughts and opinions on what talent can fit into this role. Typically the options are

  • Someone who has been in a BPO
  • Fresh Graduate who wants to build a career in Sales
  • Experienced Lead Generation in IT Services / SaaS

It was recommended that if you are starting out get someone who is more experienced and can then train new members. Training was an important aspect of Inside Sales and once you have 2-3 members it’s best to invest into training.

One of the learning I have had is that the player coach model does not work. If you are getting someone to manage / coach a team do not have a individual quota for them.

Compensation Structure

  • At one point this became a discussion of Chennai vs RoW ☺
  • SDRs should be compensated and evaluated on meetings / opportunities passed and accepted.
  • AE should be compensated on MRR addition (and may be a bonus on long term contracts)
  • The starting costs of SDRs discussed varied from 4L – 8L [Inbound is far easier than outbound]

Metrics discussed

  • Inbound leads per Rep per month – 200 – 300 this is for ACV <10K kind of deals. Larger deals lesser leads
  • Outbound accounts per SDR per month – 200 – 300 and aim for 1-2 meetings per day
  • Email Open Rates for Cold Emails – 20% – 30%
  • Right party Conversations per Day – 8 – 12

Tools discussed

Resources/Books

Guest Post by Sachin Bhatia, Founder at InsideSalesBox

 

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India’s reverse Brexit: Passing the GST Bill will create millions of formal sector jobs

Imagine a warehouse of more than one crore square feet in Central India – around five times the size of the largest football stadium in the world. It would have an eight lane highway that is connected to all four corners of the country on one side. It would have one of India’s largest railway container terminals for handling enormous goods trains on another side. It would have an all-cargo airport terminal operated by a partner on another side. And on the fourth side would be a cluster of manufacturers supplying the warehouse in real time based on big data analytics of national demand and inventory for their products.

This warehouse is not even on the radar today but can become a reality with the GST Bill. Passing the GST Bill – India’s reverse Brexit moment that will end state-by-state rules and create a national market for goods to be supplied from anywhere to anywhere – will create millions of formal jobs.

Currently, supply chains for e-commerce companies are not optimised but distorted by regulatory cholesterol that prevents us from offering customers the lowest cost or fastest delivery. We are unable to supply goods worth more than Rs 5,000 to UP because our customers have to go to a tax office and complete paperwork. We are unable to keep goods from our 90,000 suppliers in our warehouses across Karnataka due to double taxation. We often face confiscation of goods and cash in Kerala because of their approach to tax domicile, which conflicts with supplying states.

With GST, all of this will be history.

A seamless national supply chain that is agnostic to supply or demand destination is urgent, important and overdue for three reasons. First, it is India’s development trajectory to reduce poverty. Second, it will improve enterprise productivity. Finally, it is about empowering consumers and producers.

Let’s look at each of them in more detail.

We need to evolve very differently from China as we do not have the same global manufacturing and trade opportunity China had in 1978. Plus, democracy imposed some very desirable but real fixed costs on infrastructure building and growth. Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann suggests that the best predictor of sustained prosperity is “economic complexity” and India’s economically complex economy is a great opening balance for building on domestic consumption growth to reduce poverty. Essentially, instead of the traditional formula of large manufacturing, exports and large enterprises, i think India’s destiny lies in services, domestic consumption and small and medium enterprises.

The second point of enterprise productivity is important because poverty can be eliminated by improving productivity. We are thinking hard about individual productivity like skills and education, but we must recognise that India’s problem is not jobs but wages. Our official unemployment rate of 4.2% is not fudged. Everybody who wants a job has one, just not at the wages they want. India’s enterprise stack is largely informal, unproductive and built on self-exploitation. Of our 63 million enterprises 12 million don’t have an office, 12 million work from home, only 8.5 million pay taxes, only 1.5 million pay social security, and most tragically, only 18,000 have a paid-up capital of more than Rs 10 crore.

Drying this swamp is key. The US economy is nine times our size but only has 22 million enterprises. Ninety per cent of India works informally (this is the same number as 1991 and means that 100% of net jobs in the last 20 years have been created in informal enterprises). Many factors go into enterprise productivity but the main one is market access: connecting with buyers.

The final point is about consumer and producer empowerment. The majority of India’s 600-million-strong transacting consumers do not have access to quality products at affordable rates. Similarly, lakhs of producers are denied market access. Because of geographical constraints and artificial restrictions placed by the current tax regime, quality products are expensive and affordable products suffer from poor quality.

Here technology can come to the rescue post-GST. The ‘India stack’ framework for transactions (paperless, presenceless and cashless) is being first applied magnificently to finance but has huge implications for production and consumption once GST is passed. An unintended consequence of implementing the India stack across supply chains will be big data analytics for government that will not only improve compliance but greatly expand formal economic activity and create a virtuous cycle for credit, employment and wage rises.

One of the most remarkable books about India is The Integration of Indian States by V P Menon. It describes wonderfully how the 562 maharajas that administered more than 40% of India’s land and 25% of our population in 1947 were brought into the Indian state by 1951 in a project led by Sardar Patel, which secured the political unity of India. Passing GST will have similar impact on our economic unity. It will be a gift to first-generation entrepreneurs who don’t have connections or money but just the courage of their hearts, the sweat of their brow and the strength of their back.

Coming soon after Brexit – the UK’s economically baffling decision to leave the European Union – passing GST would also signal to the world that India’s economic ambitions have new rocket fuel. India’s regulatory cholesterol has been hostile to small entrepreneurs. GST rights that wrong and makes a new appointment with India’s missed tryst with destiny. This is one that she must keep.

Guest Post by Sachin Bansal, Co-founder & Executive Chairman of Flipkart

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Learnings from “Running Inside Sales for US, from India” – iSPIRT Playbook Roundtable

It is an exciting phase for the Indian SaaS eco-system. There are a lot of companies from India trying to build products for the global market. Some of them have been able to scale to tens of thousands of customers and millions of dollars in revenue. Many others are just getting started or want to step up their game. In both cases, there are trying to figure things out, sort of solving a jigsaw puzzle. Sales is a big part of the puzzle. There are many questions to be answered – how to generate leads, how to sell, whom to sell, how to hire for sales etc.

To get answers to some of these questions and more, iSPIRT organized a playbook roundtable – “Running Inside Sales for US, from India”. It was moderated by Suresh Sambandam, CEO, KiSSFLOW and I was fortunate to be part of it.

Running Inside Sales for US, from India

This blog aims to highlight some of the key learnings from the discussion.

Product-Market fit

This may sound cliched but getting Product-Market fit right is critical before you begin your sales process. Without getting this right you are just shooting in the dark.

Branding and positioning needs to be aligned to what the customer thinks/needs. Customers won’t be thinking the way we are – brand needs to solve that. One way to achieve this is to start by having your product / company name synonymous with what your potential customer is looking for. There are plenty of examples out there – Recruiterbox – Recruitment software, Freshdesk & Zendesk – Help desk software, SalesForce & InsideSalesBox – Sales/CRM software, KiSSFLOW – Workflow management software.

Marketing / Demand generation

Most early stages startups work on an inbound lead generation model. This means, getting SEO right and having a website that looks great & conveys the right message to your prospect is a no-brainer.

One point that came up during the discussion about SEO was content marketing. Invest in building great content for your users and they can prove to be a good source of inbound leads. Also important to remember is the role of distribution of content. No point in having great content if it doesn’t reach the right audience.

Interestingly, Quora was mentioned a good source of leads if answers point to content you have generated.

Other lead generation strategies that were discussed

  • Adwords : important to make a list of primary and secondary keywords and bid for them so that you end up in the first page of search
  • Listing on business app marketplaces – Google Apps, Capterra
  • Outbound lead generation : Some tools to get a database of companies – Discovery.org, DataGuru, Datanyze, Rainking. Use tools like Sendee or Amazon SES for outbound email campaigns to get better open, response rates.
  • Doing Paid webinars at domain specific sites : need significant effort and money.
  • Analyst relations : KiSSFLOW has used Capterra, G2CrowdSource, Gartner and Forrester, TrustRadius. Getting listed is not difficult. Improving ratings needs time and effort

Inside Sales Team Roles

Sales team structure

Before setting up the sales team, it is essential for the founders to map the entire sales process. This sets the tone for the sales team to follow.

Suresh raised an important question – Is your product complex enough to necessitate two roles – SDR & AE.

Sales Development Rep (SDR)

  • Should be good with talking and selling and need to do the bulk of talking and writing to customers
  • Generally have about 300-400 leads to work on and set demos for AEs .
  • Incentives – At KiSSFLOW, it is composite – based on email opens (they have some metrics), completed demos and a small portion of booked revenue.
  • Qualify leads based on multiple factors including no of active sessions, user-base, profile of signed up user etc.

Account Executive (AE)

  • Typical AEs are prior pre-sales guys with ~4 years of experience
  • Have very good product knowledge
  • Important metric for AEs is “Time to first WOW / Magic moment”
  • They typically floor the customer during the demo by spontaneously configuring everything needed during the session itself.
  • Should be able to figure out whether a discount would help close the deal.
  • Generate leads on their own other than leads from SDRs

Hiring

An interesting suggestion that came up was hiring AIESEC students for sales roles. These students would be foreign nationals visiting India on an exchange programme and are generally available to work for about 6-12 months and would be a good fit.

Some of the companies mentioned, they have a intensive training program to train SDR’s.

Pricing

Important learning – many make the mistake of making quick decisions when it comes to pricing, and not giving it enough thought. Needs to be very simple, but also needs to be constantly worked and improved.

Tools & Resources

Some of the marketing & sales – tools & resources used by the participant companies

  • LeadSquared : Generate landing pages easily for campaigns
  • Sendee / Amazon SES : For email campaigns
  • Discovery.org, DataGuru, Datanyze, Rainking : Lead database
  • FullStory : Recorded video of user actions/activities. Alternative tool, MouseFlow.
  • Moz : to check SEO ranking
  • Pipedrive, SalesForce : CRM
  • Wappalyzer, BuiltWith – technologies used on website – useful for competitor analysis
  • Guide to marketing & selling in SaaS – A Jump Start Guide To Desk Marketing and Selling For SaaS – thanks iSPIRT for this.

Closing thoughts

It was really a insightful and informative session and a great starting point in Sales for many of us.

Thanks to

  • Amarpreet Kalkat, Frrole & Avinash Raghava, iSPIRT for organizing this round table
  • Suresh Sambandam, CEO, KiSSFLOW for moderating the session
  • Other startup founders for sharing your insights
  • And finally, Sumanth, CEO, Deck App for hosting us and for the sumptuous pizzas, tea and biscuits.
Guest Post by Gautham Sheshadhari, RecruiterBox
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The fundamentals that help us grow more than 100% every quarter

At Mypoolin, we have a consistent and strong belief that a very significant aspect of building a business is keeping the fundamentals strong. The fundamentals are not just the core pillars for making the company stand as an entity, but also serve as defining the form as the firm emerges from its initial amorphous self. When we started the venture last year, we had some basics and an initial direction in mind, but we could not define those at that time.

For the first timers, we are the social payments product company of the country. We enable seamless peer to peer transactions and group transactions for all use cases, varying from movies to events to parties to outings to rent and more. Over the past 12 months, the product has grown both qualitatively and quantitatively. Starting from transactions just worth a few thousands per month to achieving a high growth rate currently, we are intent on making this product an integral part of your social lifestyle.

Mypoolin1

Let us dive into the fundamentals that continue to shape us –

Tackling a big problem

The reasons big problems are so important to be solved, is that once you solve them, half of the battle (or even more) is won. Not only does it ensure that the product can deliver, it also incentivizes the user by default to explore and use the same. Once you hit a raw nerve and resolve a crucial pain point, you ensure that the barriers to adoption are now as low as they can be, from the point of view of motivation of the user. And at the same time, when the vision is big, everyone in the team is driven as well to execute on it and be a part of it.

MyPoolin2

Simplifying a challenging solution

Well, it is one thing to say and another thing to build on it. After defining the problem and realizing the challenge in front, we started iterating on the product and building it piece by piece. All along some factors and pointers helped us in defining the direction of the product –

  • What exactly does the consumer desire? (Putting ourselves in their shoes)
  • Does our solution present itself in its simplest form? (Analyzing)
  • Are users really feeling empowered by using it? (Observing and tracking)

Mypoolin3

The above pointers will answer that whether the customers have the necessary ability to utilize our solution or not. And at the same time, since we are combining two domains of the internet viz – social network and payments into one; the product tends to become intricate in terms of its engineering. This in turn makes sure that the ability of the team is tested as well to its full potential for making the product really polished.

Discipline, Focus and Fun

Another key fundamental in running a growing company, especially in the complex and sensitive infrastructure of payments, is the presence of discipline and focus. This applies to both the phases-

  • Developing the product as well as
  • Tracking the analytics and output

Mypoolin4

At the same time, fun is always a part of the equation and the hidden gem at times for everyone to appreciate the mission as a team. In fact, the point of fun trickles everywhere, including our product as well which portrays the statement of ‘Payments made fun’. Traditionally, payments have been a painful and mundane part of our lives, but not anymore. Time to make them cool….

Wish to join one of the fastest growing ventures in the intricate, growing and powerful domain of fin-tech? Ping us directly at hello@mypoolin.com

Cheers

Team Mypoolin, Rohit Taneja. 

 

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7 SEO Trends Entrepreneur Should Pay Attention To

Anyone who has been in the business of SEO for long is well aware that this is one of the fastest moving industries in the world. You have to be able to pay attention to the latest SEO trends if you’re going to stay ahead of the competition and preserve your ranking.

This guide is going to introduce you to the seven primary SEO trends you have to pay attention to this year. And if you follow these trends you will be well on your way in being a better marketer who understands not only SEO, but how to effectively grow your business.

  • Higher Google Ranking Doesn’t Correlate to Organic Clicks
    Just because you have a number one ranking website doesn’t mean that you become king of the Internet. The number one spot still has to compete with visual ads and paid search results. It’s still a worthy goal to aim for, but it’s definitely not something that you should become obsessed with.
    There are other ways to promote your brand.
  • Rich Answers are on the Rise
    Rich answers are those webpages that provide a huge amount of information on a specific topic; usually general ones. Unfortunately, publicly available resources tend to form the bulk of rich answers, making it difficult for you to compete.

However, focusing on getting your site featured as part of a rich answer can be hugely beneficial. 2016 is the year to change direction on rich answers.

  • Page Speed is Becoming More Crucial
    With the rise of video content, a lot of site owners are investing in it. The problem is that they are slowing websites down. You need to remain aware of page load times because if they’re slow you’re going to start losing customers. And Google will penalize your website anyway.

A SEO optimized website must have the fastest load times possible.

  • Analytics is Getting Harder
    Dark traffic comes from a range of sources, such as from a non-secure site to a secure site, image searches, and the rampant use of VPNs. This traffic isn’t able to be tracked and Analytics reports are becoming less accurate than ever before. This is making it harder to make decisions.
    You can get around this slightly by creating direct traffic reports within Analytics so you can at least filter out the dark traffic.
  • Keywords are Alive and Well 

Despite what some people think, keywords are not dead. They remain alive and well, but what people have to be aware of is that Google is looking at them differently.

The post-Hummingbird world is one where Google can recognize meanings behind words. Your goal is not to focus on individually themed keywords but on the thematic groups behind them. Your keyword lists will be more varied than ever.

  • This Year You Will Be Removing Link Penalties
    Google penalties have always existed, but they have become more regular in the last few years. They have a zero tolerance policy on low-quality sites or sites that are attempting to game the system. You may have been hit with a penalty before, but it’s not the end of the world.
    Get in touch with Google and ask them about a penalty on your website. Make positive changes and tell them about it. Google has been known to remove penalties. No site is ever completely lost.
  • User Behavior is Becoming a Factor

Google deny that user behavior matters. The independent experiments say otherwise. Social signals are a ranking factor, and they are based on user behavior. It only makes sense that user behavior will become a ranking factor. What they do and how long they do it for will matter.

So what should you do?

Concentrate on enhancing engagement levels. It’s the only way to get ahead of the game before it becomes a factor.

With all this in mind, how are you going to change the direction of your SEO campaign?

Guest Post by Charlie Robinson, a marketer and interim VP of Marketing of multiple tech companies. He is currently heading marketing at Adling a digital agency in Cupertino.

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Crafting experiences, which are awesome. by design #DTSummitBLR

These are exciting days for us at Pensaar. The Summit, which we have planning for a while is right around the corner.

Here’s what you can expect from our Summit workshop (Phase1 on 15, 16 and 17 July hosted at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore). The co-creation session is carefully designed to be a completely immersive and experiential 3 days. You’ll learn how to understand customers, articulate insights that will inspire innovation, ideate till you get disruptive ideas that you rapidly test with customers. The entire conference is focused on learning by doing. And, what’s more you will learn design thinking with a group of 50 people across startups, large companies and academia. We are envisioning creating change makers. You will walk away – empowered and inspired.

We are thrilled to be partnering with Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM, Bangalore) to bring the Design Thinking Summit. We are humbled by the tremendous response that’s already poured in.

Designthinking

Our mission is to raise the levels of awareness for Design Thinking in India and elsewhere. Particularly in India, where we think we’ve had a strong legacy of an engineering led culture. Sadly though that legacy is a big factor in India being perceived as an outsourced development center. The opportunity though, as we see in every challenge, is to bring about the perfect marriage of engineering & product development with a design thinking mindset – a mindset posited on a user first, design led solutioning

In our experience, many teams and organisations are deploying a tactical workaround – that of hiring designers. Merely hiring designers isn’t enough, its critical for leadership teams to harness the power of design thinking to create experiences for customers, which are awesome.by design

But I get ahead of myself here. Let me back up here a bit.

What comes to mind when you think of Innovation? Ever so often, it means it’s a flashback to one of three ways we experience the pursuit of innovation across organizations:

  1. The Eureka moment
  2. Start thinking out of the box
  3. BOHICA: Bend Over Here It Comes Again

DT2Not surprising that companies (of every shape, size and origin) are struggling with innovation. Good work is happening, the right interventions are being made but these interventions are happening in silos. One is left with the feeling that “some secret sauce is missing”. Is there a secret sauce? And is it missing?

Design thinking is the answer. It’s missing for sure. But it isn’t missing as an ingredient – it’s missing as a mindset within teams and across organizations.

So, what is Design Thinking (DT)? Design thinking or Human Centered Design is a process for solving problems. It’s a perfect blend of divergent and convergent thinking allowing for a wide exploration of possibilities vs. being fixated on a single solution (a uni-dimensional solution)

We approach DT as a “disciplined pursuit of disruption”. Let me explain the 3 key words there:

  1. Disciplined: It’s disciplined, because innovation isn’t about happy accidents and good fortune (serendipitous innovation). We believe in “engineering serendipity” to get to the future we want to create (note: we don’t say get future ready, which is an ever-shifting frame of reference)
  2. Pursuit: it’s a relentless pursuit with rigour. To fully harness the potential of DT, you have to anchor it within the DNA of the team / organisation. For organizations to realize the full potential of their innovation capabilities, they need to look at it holistically, from up skilling talent, empowering them with the right processes, values and decision making, allowing them to push the boundaries of what’s possible
  3. Disruption: This is an oft quoted (largely misquoted) and we make an effort to make that distinction. Disruption is doing new things that makes old / existing things obsolete. Innovation on the other hand is just doing new things.

We are super excited at how uniquely positioned we are. And the DT Summit is our chance to share this unique perspective with the broader audience. We love diversity and we embrace it wholeheartedly.

We fight educated incapacity, because we bring to bear the power of design thinking, which is domain agnostic in its approach and application.

So, what is that Pensaar way of Design Thinking? Our process: Discovery —> Insight —> Dream —> Disrupt is designed around some core principles:

  1. Co-creation: We love co-creating with our client partners (and in turn, encourage our clients to co-create with their users / customers). We love to share the ownership of problems (product or business or social) and solutions we co-create.
  2. Designing for Human behaviour: We love technologies (emerging and disruptive) but only as the means to the end. We believe humans are the best technology and our emphasis has always been on designing solutions for behaviour change – human-to-human interface. (No we don’t think apps are a business model)
  3. Problems & Goals focused: We are obsessed and fall in love with problems. Our approach has been carefully designed to avoid the path of least resistance. To be honest, it does make a lot of our partners edgy, because we spend a disproportionate amount of effort in building customer empathy, generating insights and carefully crafting that problem statement.
  4. Addressing a genuine human need: Most product / business failures come from lack of customers and NOT products. That’s really from NOT understanding customer’s evolving needs and yet trying to design a fancy product. Unless you’ve understood the customers real pain points and his/her hierarchy of problems, any product, no matter how good it looks on paper – its bound to fall short of its potential
  5. Assumptions test: It’s simple really. Any idea or thought you have, is a hypothesis, which needs to be tested. Without, rapid experimentation to test for assumptions and hypothesis you aren’t managing the risks in favour of success.

We can’t wait to meet you and co-create with you at the workshop. We hope to see you, both at the workshop (15 – 17 July) and at the Unconference on 12 Aug.

Please do share this event ‪#DTSummitBLR http://designthinkingsummit.com and help us spread the word on the summit. 

Guest Post by Venkat Kotamaraju – Growth & Strategy Leader, Pensaar

 

 

 

 

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The power of a question

A few days ago, while I was discussing a rather critical business solution with one of my colleagues, I noticed that there was a strange circularity to our conversation. I kept trying to convince him of the importance of deploying such a solution,but I seemed to fail at eliciting a sense of urgency or enthusiasm from him, even though he did not disagree with me.

It might have been slight vexation on my part when I decided to break the impasse with the question, “So, what’s stopping us from doing this?”

It was then that I discovered that he had concerns about how to go about the task while I was focusing the conversation on why the job mattered.

The communication fog was lifted. We had identified the roadblock.

We often assume that the best way to communicate anything — an idea, a challenge, a solution — is to perfect the art of explaining it to the listener to provide clarity.

However, we tend to overlook the possibility that the questions we are trying to answer are sometimes not the ones that exist in the others’ minds. This could render our efforts at providing clarity, completely irrelevant.

What might be another effective way to communicate, then?

Perhaps, asking questions?

Knowing the answers will help you in school. Knowing how to question will get you through life– Journalist and speaker Warren Berger — ‘A more beautiful Question.’

It turns out that I am not alone in my quest for questions.

A few months ago, the practice of brainstorming gained a fraught reputation, when technology pioneer and author of the book, “How To Fly A Horse”, Kevin Ashton kicked up a storm with his blog post provocatively titled “Why You Shouldn’t Bother Having Brainstorming Meetings”.

Brainstorming, of course, is a highly popular practice; as he noted, it’s the “go-to approach” for all types of organizations. A typical brainstorming session gathers groups of people to focus on collecting original, creative ideas on a set topic. But this apparently benign approach, Ashton goes on to argue, actually gives rise to ideas that are anything but original. That’s because the focus is on churning out answers.

But what if brainstorms were designed to generate questions, not just ideas for answers? It’s an approach that’s garnering support among many advocates around the world.

The latest champion of this approach is Matthew E. May, author of the book, “Winning the Brain Game”. His book describes a question-generation process called “frame-storming,” which uses questions to help in framing the challenge at hand. Several people have found it to be more efficient than traditional brainstorming in sparking fresh thinking in some situations.

What if we use questions as a method to drive home the thought behind an idea, to help the listener generate answers, instead of to generate questions?

Guiding people into answers through relevant questions surrounding a topic may seem counter-intuitive. It is more natural to try and get people to see the answers when we have them worked out. However, this question-based approach can lead to greater clarity than the usual method of having them ask questions for improved clarity.

It also helps to remember that a question triggers our brains to start serving up answers, almost on autopilot. The answers almost always reinforce the assumptions behind the questions.

Naturally, at this point how the question is formulated assumes paramount significance. A question could spark random divergence from the actual problem by introducing more assumptions, or could become a harbinger for radical solutions or ideas by shattering existing assumptions. Either way, the design of a question definitely begs a lot of attention.

For ages, questions have been at the heart of innovations in science, philosophy, medicine — why not extend the power of the question as a tool for sharpening and deepening communication?

About the Author

Shivku is usually found cracking PJs in the office and disrupting people from doing their job. A self-proclaimed foodie, he is the best person to get the local food scene advice from, irrespective of where you aretravelling to. This blog originally appeared on Medium.