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Nuts & Bolts of Marketing & Selling in US for First Timers: A crash course playbook!!

After releasing recently SoftALM and SoftAgile (Agile Project & ALM Tools), we at JamBuster were trying to decide on how to sell these tools in US.  We had sold software services in US earlier, but selling software product to US from India is new to us. So we were looking for some help!

They say- we start seeing things, when we start looking for them.  I noticed an email from Avinash Raghava, the co-founder of iSPIRT Foundation, about a PlayBook on Nuts & Bolts of Marketing & Selling in US for First Timers, in Hyderabad on 27th February. It was to be led by Suresh Sambandam of KiSSFLOW.

Playbook Roundtables are the small, intimate and intense experiential learning sessions that iSPIRT have pioneered.  Suresh is a iSPIRT maven, meaning trusted expert who pass knowledge to others in a pay-forward model. Suresh is a kind of celebrity in selling products or productize services in US from India! He led KiSSFLOW to have more than 10,000+ customers across the globe, in less than 3.5 years. That is absolutely phenomenal success in SaaS world, doing it from India!

Looking at these credentials, I registered for the event and got a quick reply from Chaitanya Chokkareddy of Ozonetel.  Ozonetel was to host the event. Ozonetel offers CloudAgent -a Cloud Call Center Solution that was already successful in India and was also starting on their US go-to-market strategy.  On Saturday morning I met with Vikas & Aditya from FirstHive, who have recently introduced a customer engagement SaaS offering.  I could see this was going to be informative.

Suresh’s presentation was logical, down to earth, like him. He started with timing or relevance of this phase (after Product-Market Fit), followed by knowing your customer through B2B Customers Characterization.  Next focus was on Product, inversion of selling model, freemium vs free trial, and the price.  This is then followed by digital marketing toolset, such as website, SEO, Adwords, Content writing and email marketing. Similarly, Suresh went through step by step in sales, founders and each and every aspect, as available on following presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/ProductNation/nuts-and-bolts-of-marketing-selling-saas-products-to-us-customers-from-india-for-first-timers

Few quick take aways:

  1. SaaS is a tough business, even when done correct.That is evidenced from the fact that 1st $1MM in revenues is almost impossible, while first $10MM is improbable, but if you do pass $10MM, then $50MM is almost inevitable. Hence the lure.
  2. SaaS models lends itself to simpler applications and focus is on
    SOHO / VSB  : no touch
    SMB & Midmarket : low touch
    Enterprise : high touch
  3. For SaaS, traditional model of marketing, sales and products gets inverted. The marketing’s job is to bring horse to pond, the product is the water and sales is understanding what the horse did with water.

I think the success of Playbook was in small size (8-12 companies), along with focus on making it relevant to your business.  While some topics may feel dry on slide, Suresh made them very interactive by first sharing his experience and then asking participants to chip in their experience.  Suresh used these chip-in opportunities for people to get honest feedback. He suggested to Sainath Gupta of AnythingAI to who go through Product Market Fit analysis for his offerings of AI Platform along with Data Science Team as service. In our case, SaaS turns out to be not a path for now, as our solution focuses on end-to-end Agile Application Development platform for teams of 25-2500.

An interesting contribution here comes from Avinash Raghava, who is walking encyclopedia of Indian Software Product ecosystem, its history.  He is focussed on making this even successful from back end, but during the event, he is the source of amazing information on who’s who, what and when!

While registering, I had asked for payment getaway, Chaitanya mentioned that it was a free event. He was surprised that someone from Pune was traveling to Hyderabad for essentially a six hours long workshop.  For me the timing of it and Suresh’s experience was an immense draw.  Turned out the open discussion with fellow product or productize services companies on their way to sell in US and Suresh guiding with refreshing openness really made it icing on the top.

Thank you Suresh for sharing the blue print, that took you 1-2 years to discover through sheer hard work. Thank you Avinash for the event and the fellow product entrepreneurs for such a debates. Thank you iSPIRIT for building this wonderful ecosystem!

I highly recommend all entrepreneurs, whether you are about to or already started or even successful selling in US to attend this and other Playbook Roundtable. I thought these 6 hours saved me at least 100 hours of discovery work. Even more importantly, it is making Indian Product Ecosystem come alive!!!

Guest post by Satish Kamat, Jambuster Technologies

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Going From Negative To Cashflow Positive

This is not a new story. At least, not the first part of it.

About two months ago, the company I had founded, Synup had grown 4000% in a year but, we were still burning money like crazy.

It was really bugging me that we were growing so fast, adding so much more revenue, but still had to depend on external sources for growth capital. This is not how truly strong businesses are built, at least not in B2B SaaS.

We had two options — give up on trying to get profitable and raise more money. Or, do the logical thing, get cash-flow positive.

I needed to break the news

On a Friday, I brought the entire team in for a meeting and told them what had to be told. We were not going to be raising money any time soon, not because we couldn’t, because it wasn’t the right thing to do.

We needed to be cash-flow positive, otherwise, we’re yet another struggling startup dependent on handouts for survival.

I needed to take responsibility

Being unprofitable is really a founder responsibility. More so, the CEO’s responsibility. I have the title; now, I needed to play the part.

I told my team that I wouldn’t take a salary, even though I had practically zero savings and would tough it out until we got to a point where the company could afford to pay me.

Call this a moral high, taking responsibility or cliched, but this needed to be done.

There needed to be a physical reminder

It wasn’t enough to just make an announcement. There needed to be a physical reminder that drove the point into everyone’s head that we were still not where we needed to be. It had to be something that people couldn’t miss.

So, I offered not to shave. At least until we reached the point of breakeven.

It was so friggin hard

Everyone had to make sacrifices, work 2x harder and we had to cut costs. But, we did it.

We could no longer afford “breathing room”; we had to be shipping, selling and busting balls everyday. This wasn’t the kiddie pool anymore, it was the real deal. I’m sure everyone who worked with me had to push themselves to the limit, but they still did, because they believed in what we’re doing and for that I will be forever indebted.

On a personal front, I realized that I couldn’t grow much of a beard and had to bum food off my employees. Nothing, I repeat, nothing can be as bad as not shaving when you obviously can’t grow a proper beard.

There were times when I just wanted to give up and take the money

There were still people willing to give us money, not a lot, but enough to make the pain stop. The entire startup ecosystem in our country, unfortunately, encourages you to take as much money as frequently as possible. It’s almost like we’ve become a society that actually celebrates raising more venture capital.

But, I resisted. I knew in my heart that taking more money when were so close to getting there wasn’t the right thing to do. Nothing can really be accomplished in life without a little pain.

We became cash-flow positive this month and doubled revenue

It was the greatest feeling in the world. To have a goal, something that drove everyone in the organization, something that seemed impossible; and, actually make it happen. We had actually grown 100% in two months to make this happen.

We are now in control of our own destiny, in a small way. We don’t need external capital to pay the bills. Any capital we take will be from the right people and for the right reasons.

My advise to fellow entrepreneurs

Try getting profitable. Even if you don’t have to or need to, just try doing it once. It’s one of the best feelings in the world. Do it as an exercise in restrain and a test of your grit.

You will realize that nothing brings your team together as much as this will. I never thought we could do this as quickly as we did, but I underestimated how much more motivated everyone gets when there’s a common cause.

Guest Post by Ashwin Ramesh, A (s)crappy entrepreneur who runs http://synup.com and tweets @ashwin_ramesh

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Reactions from #iSPIRT to the Union Budget presentation

iSPIRT is happy to note the Union Finance Minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley’s thrust in the direction of boosting the digital infrastructure in the country with specific reference to the Aadhar.

Aadhar powered by India Stack will allow people to offer presence less, cashless paperless service delivery to millions. Also digital literacy will also provide a big impetus in the rural areas.

The second initiative of iSPIRT which has been positively impacted by the Union budget is the ease of doing business in India and therefore the incentive for companies to Stay-In-India through the capital gains incentives where there will be no capital gains tax applicable if the funds so received are invested in a notified fund of funds by individuals in specific start-ups. The other major step is the decision to tax the Royalty Income from Patents developed and filed in India at only 10%, this we believe will certainly encourage companies to file more IPR in the country.

That said, we are disappointed with no attention being given to easing taxation norms of software companies where there is significant friction, the confusion on “goods” verses “service” tax on online downloads, TDS on sale of Software products and competition from foreign selling B2C products without any tax in India.

iSPIRT continues to work closely with the Government of India to enable the software product companies and start-ups to make the next leap with incentives from the Government. The Union Budget just presented is semi-sweet with specific sops being given to the start-up community in continuation of earlier policy announcements made by the Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi. There is a lot more that could be done to incentivize innovation and specifically ease the TDS conundrum which start-up and product companies find themselves adversely caught in.

Here are some specific comments from the iSPIRT team:

According to Mohandas Pai, Advisor, iSPIRT, “The Government continues to incentivize the start-up ecosystem as we have seen in the recent budget pronouncement. I am glad that the Government clearly recognizes that start-ups can be powerful problem solvers for the myriad issues facing the country and in turn generate employment as well. The Government’s decision to allow for 100% deduction of profits for 3 out of 5 years between April 2016 and March 2019 is certainly a welcome step that will boost start-ups.”

“While there are no major sops announced for the software product industry, the Government must understand that incentives to this segment of the industry will result in an exponential leap in exports and place India in an unshakable position on the world software product stage. That said, the decision to tax the Royalty Income from Patents developed and filed in India at only 10%  is a good move by the Government and will certainly encourage companies to develop and file more IPR in the country ,“ says Vishnu Dusad, Co-Founder & Governing Council member of iSPIRT & MD, Nucleus Software Exports Ltd.

Sharad Sharma Co-Founder & Governing Council member of iSPIRT says, “Start-ups in the country will certainly benefit from the budget announcement of amending the Companies Act to announce easier and swifter registration of companies. Another positive announcement from the budget speech by Mr. Arun Jaitley has been the focus on Aadhar for subsidy delivery. The Aadhar powered India stack from authentication to exection, coupled with the open API policy in India, can certainly transform the way in which digitally focused companies can reach the masses quicker and more effectively.”

Says Jay Pullur, Governing Council member of iSPIRT & CEO & Founder of Pramati Technologies.“The Government through the Union Budget has done well to do away with capital gains taxation if the funds so received are invested in a notified fund of funds or in specific start-ups. Of course, a lot more can be done to ease working norms for the software industry by looking into issues like dividends from overseas subsidiaries and a clearer and unambiguous definition of digital goods and digital services from a taxation point of view.”

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India Stack to bridge the digital divide in our country

India’s digital startups have an analog problem. They face a kagaz ka pahad. Literally. Many of them are designing for the digital desh of Bunty, the 37-yearold Udaipur shoe-seller who gets 40% of his business on his smartphone. Or, Chaitanya Bharti, Guntur’s 30-year-old single-room school teacher who gets remittances on her basic phone.

But every time they collect and store paper records, scrutinise “wet signatures”, and handle lots of physical cash, they can’t grow as fast, be as affordable or innovate to create the digital desh Bunty aur Bharti aspire to.

Nowhere is this more visible than in financial services where the kagaz ka pahad unwittingly aids what Prime Minister Modi called “financial untouchability”.

There is good news. The JAM trinity — a basic account like Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile phones — makes it possible for digital services to reach every Indian. JAM is much more than aslogan — it is the result of public policy and technology that made this foundation a reality. With that foundation in place, public policy can go further. It must go further.

We don’t just give digital pioneers wings, we strap on booster rockets to launch them well over and past that kagaz ka pahad.

India Stack is just that. It is a series of new-age digital infrastructure which, when used together, makes it easier for digital pioneers to run faster, reach more people.

The Stack has four layers: (1) a presence-less layer where a universal biometric digital identity allows people to participate in any service from anywhere in the country; (2) a paper-less layer where digital records move with an individual’s digital identity eliminating the kagaz ka pahad; (3) cashless layer where a single interface to all the country’s bank accounts and wallets democratises payments; and (4) a consent layer which allows data to move freely and securely to democratise the market for data.

Each layer has a specific technology — Aadhaar authentication and eKYC, eSign and Digilocker, Unified Payments Interface, and consent architecture — with corresponding public APIs, under India’s Open API policy.

The National Payments Corporation of India released APIs for the Unified Payments Interface and is now running a hackathon for businesses to experiment.

You can go to indiastack-.org to participate. Each layer is managed as a public good. This is important. This makes the India Stack not just new-age technology but a smart policy. Technology stacks are not new. Uber, the highest valued startup on the planet, rose to success on GPS, Google maps, electronic payments and more.

In Kenya, the mobile payment service of M-PESA is like the cashless layer enabling a whole slew of digital businesses. What is different about the India Stack is that it is designed to level the playing field for newer, smaller entrants.

There is no one company or a handful of companies controlling access, behaving like bottleneck monopolies.

India Stack sets a global precedent. It is of Indian origin but not India-specific. Bits and pieces exist elsewhere in the world but nowhere under such a common frame and vision. For example, globally, data has become a battleground for the future of business.

The consent architecture, arguably, is a breakthrough to democratise the market for data without compromising on security. The India Stack is designed to propel the digital world forward in India or anywhere.

Guest Post by Kabir Kumar leads FinTech initiatives at CGAP. Sanjay Jain is a volunteer with iSPIRT Open API team. 

This was first published in Economic times

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Tax holiday for startups should be provided in first few profitable yrs instead of first 3 yrs

Progressive steps taken by the Union Government for the Startup Community in its Start-up India initiative are encouraging. We hope the Union budget will reflect a similar sentiment and introduce policies around tax relaxations and process simplifications.

The structure of taxation and corporate laws in India is not very conducive for startups and early stage companies. A lot of these issues were addressed by the Union Government in their Start-Up India policy.

The industry is hoping for a fair budget and has a lot of expectations from the government to help ease setting up businesses. There are a lot things that can be improved to make the environment more friendly for startups and here is what we feel can be done to boost the ecosystem:

Income Tax: Mr. Modi recently announced that startups will not be charged Income Tax in the first 3 years.

Though that’s a step forward in the right direction, it’s common knowledge that very few startups are profitable in the first 3 years, and if that is the case they will any ways be not paying tax.

Instead of capping it on based on the number of years, tax relaxation should be provided in the first few years of profitability.

Additionally, while a company is making losses, they still have to pay tax (through TDS) and the tax gets refunded after 5-6 months at the end of the financial year. For a startup any proportion of liquidity is critical. Government should propose a solution such that loss making startups don’t have to part with critical liquidity.

Capital Gains Tax: Creating personal wealth is one of the core motivations for entrepreneurs to build startups. This ambition of personal growth often leads to creation of large enterprises that benefit thousands of people and is an enabler for the overall growth of the country.

Lesser capital gains tax in countries such as US and Singapore makes it more lucrative for entrepreneurs. Mr. Modi has announced relaxation in capital gains if they are invested in government schemes, however the relaxation should be across the board.

Simplified Policies: There are lots of policies, especially in the Companies Act where the processes are too complex for early stage companies, which often do not even have an accountant on board.

For instance, ‘Rights Issue’ has been made the mandatory process for allotment of shares. For startups, which often go through multiple rounds of funding these procedures are not only expensive but also time consuming and confusing. Simplifying such processes will go a long way in enabling founders to focus on core business areas.

Guest Post by Sachin Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of HackerEarth

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How the UPI Platform will transform the Payment System in India? #FinIndia

UPI Platform is Cheap, Secure, Reliable mobile first, inter operable/ open source, instantaneous settlement, both pull and push.

One major disadvantage of pre paid wallets is in a given month they can’t do more then 10,000 worth of transaction with out KYC, while UPI enabled platform bank accounts can do a transfer upto Rs 1 lakh instantaneously.

Since Money sits in your bank account, you are earning your savings bank interest which is upto 4% per annum.
My points in elaborate:

Cheap: Cost of each transaction is going to be less then Rs 0.45, think of all the savings from and to bank accounts.

Virtual address: Now one can use virtual/ disposable accounts to do transactions generated right from your bank app. By this the merchant or the payee willn’t know your details and even if he is hacked you needn’t worry about losing money.

Pull & Push: Amount can be requested from a certain account or paid into some other account.

Instantaneous: The transfer is instant, yet to come across any other system over the world which works for the banks.

Mobile First: Its one of the few systems in the world designed for new mobile age, helping with easy integration across various platforms.

Inter operable: OTP generated on one bank app can be used across another for transaction authentication. Also, multiple level of identifiers can be used ( Bank account, Aadhaar number,  virtual identifier, mobile number.., etc) to send or receive money.

Bio-metric integration gives a 2nd factor authentication securing your account like none other in market.

Recurring Payments: Even though, directly not supported, but Payment Support Providers can provide an add on for easy to do recurring payments on top of UPI.

Open APIs: Most importantly i see open APIs are going to be game changer as before one with Cash & Contacts can’t control the ecosystem. Its a level play ground, by which even a small start up can do what a gaint MNC can do.

Hence, i feel UPI platform is going to be a game changer and going to give stiff competition to Mobile Wallets and would be enabler of payments.

Source of the image: mpf.org

Guest Post by Sainath Gupta, AnythingAI

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How culture is the fevicol of a startup

I recently attended a Playbook Roundtable organised by iSPIRT on “Culture Design” discussing how to preserve culture of a company that it started with? Reading so much strife because of culture conflict globally or in India or how MNCs should imbibe the “Transparency Culture” & “Accountability Culture” has made me wonder Isn’t “Culture” a confusing word?

Each time we use the word culture we incline toward one or another of its aspects: toward the “culture” that’s imbibed through osmosis or the “culture” that’s learned at museums, toward the “culture” that makes you a better a person or the “culture” that just inducts you into a group.

As per Wikipedia, Culture is, in the words of E.B. Tylor, “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

Tirthankar Dash articulated culture that can be depicted in a pyramid. At the base is the Philosophy – what are the belief systems underlying the culture.

On that base is built the Mythology or folklore. This would mean Stories – what are the stories that make your philosophy real and personal. And at the top would be Rituals – what can you do that will bring it all alive.

One truth we have seen over the centuries – whether it’s a team of 3 or a country or a civilization, culture exists in every community. So the choice is between letting an unconscious culture crop up like weeds or consciously creating a culture we truly love.

A lot has been said about “Corporate Culture” of late especially about “Startup Culture”. One can have big vision and goals, smart people, super pay, great products and more, but the undercurrents of culture many a times determine whether the company crosses the chasm from good to great.

So, the key question is what kind of culture we want to propagate, as a company, community and the country? How do we provide an environment where one can respond (said and unsaid) to people and situations to bring out the best in each of us?

How does one ensure that we preserve and pass the culture of company from the 10th employee to the 100th to the 1000th?

While each startup or a big company should identify its own values, rituals, celebration and mythologies, there are three critical aspects that each culture should have for it to sustain, have its employees be “in the zone”, an experience when your concentration and focus peak and you are able to scale uncharted territory.

Trust: Every culture should command and demand trust among its community. If there is trust deficit, it leads to fear which creates processes and policies. Leaders of many organizations are afraid of the 2 per cent employees who may break their trust. The reality is, whether you create restrictive processes or not only 2 per cent of the people break your trust.

You end up penalizing the 98 per cent of the employees with restrictive policies (attendance tracking, detailed travel policies, time-tracking etc.) Any driven employee cannot ever be in the zone if they feel restricted, monitored and trapped.

Progress: Growth, movement , opportunities whatever you call it progress is like oxygen for any company or culture. Driven people constantly look for avenues where they can satiate their hunger for learning. Hence the culture should foster open communication and collaboration coupled with professional & personal growth.

The Indian culture, often labelled as an amalgamation of several sub-cultures is a prime example of this progress over several millennia.

Purpose: As a leader, if you had to choose to do only one thing to get your team to be in the zone, it should be to continuously, shamelessly and loudly remind them of the larger purpose of the team and the organisation they are a part of.

Remember, there are a bunch of operational tasks and distractions vying for your team’s time and attention. It is your job to take out time and remind them of the larger purpose of the organisation. It is your job to get them back on track when they are distracted and to give them the feedback and support they require.

At InMobi we believe in nurturing a culture that enables people to become more of who they truly are. YaWiO which is the foundation of our culture is like the wind – it’s the presence that can’t be directly seen, but it can be felt very strongly. It is our glue that holds the organization together and can guide how to behave & act!

Guest Post by Ankit Rawal, Proud Veteran InMobian

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The six key pillars of software that enables Innovation-led growth

Ever wondered if a Software could help business chart the next growth curve?.

The marketplace is changing and the competition is catching up. Organisations need a new concept to break out to create the next growth curve and they depend on functions like Strategy, NPD ( New product development ), R&D Teams internally. Some of these organizations also use external consulting firms, crowdsource, outsource, merge, acquire and do many things more.

In order to bring in rigor and predictability, organisations need sound processes, but the paradox in Innovation-led growth, unlike other variants, is the need to have the right balance between creative freedom and execution discipline. Most organisations are designed for execution discipline while some are designed to be creative. But, today’s organisations need both in the right mix to win in the long run.

We need to manage Innovation-led growth like any other process and to institutionalize this, a structured approach which would balance creative freedom and execution discipline would be more effective.

Well, can a Software help with this?

If yes, what should be the pillars of such an Innovation-led growth Software?

Business would need 6 Es to Innovate.

Empower:
Organisation needs to draw the creativity and drive to make things happen.Often the best source for innovation is the team within the business. A great leader turns them into entrepreneurs who are hungrily looking for new opportunities. The key is empowerment. An Innovation-led growth software should empower teams to achieve their goals through their own ideas and efforts.

The leader sets the destination, but the team chooses the route to get there.

Enabler:
Enable employees to adopt an “entrepreneurial mindset” to showcase their ideas and ideals. Allowing them to propel innovation and show initiative is the key to a successful workplace revival and an opportunity to re-energize individual and organic organisational growth.
Innovation and workplace transformation represent two-sides of the same coin.
An Innovation-led growth software should help business in tossing the coin instead of taking sides.

Effective:
Effectiveness isn’t just a property of the idea but, more importantly, a property of the execution, and that’s where an Innovation-led growth software comes in. It should help business with it right from the word go & ensure effectiveness on all sides by having an innate ability to look at your problem from multiple viewpoints thereby ensuring a holistic overview.

Engage:
The most important part of any business idea is to maintain traction, and that requires engagement: the kind which can grab the right audience. An Innovation-led growth software should help business create a meaningful engagement with and within the audience, be it internal or external. Software should help organizations get perspectives from people who matter and thereby helping it to improve its offerings.

Evaluate:
Evaluating Innovation-led growth initiatives is something that very few organizations have understood. Most of them use the traditional criterion which works against the constructive collaboration that is required. Software should have a new set of evaluation tools that supports such a collaboration and help business in making the decision.

Efficiency:
Efficiency is the result of all the other Es coherently and cohesively coming together to function in a synchronous manner. Software should have proven techniques that shall improve the efficiency of generating new business concepts at a faster rate and continuously.

Edge:
There are few companies, which have few of the above 6 Es.Not any single company possess all 6 Es at the right proportion for the right yield. Experts who are proficient in the field of innovation vouch that iEnabler Software has these 6 pillars at right proportion for companies embarking their Growth journey. For your reference (www.ienabler.co)

Guest Post by Sridhar D.P, iEnabler

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Applications are open for the Summer 2016 Accelerator batch!

And…we’re ready to accept applications into the third batch of our accelerator program (time flies!).

As before, the 100 day program helps founders in the early stages of their startup do these things:

  • Build products their customers will love
  • Accelerate their progress; and
  • Become investible faster.

If you’re a startup building a technology enabled startup in one of the areas we like, and want to solve big problems, what are you waiting for? Apply now. Applications close on March 4th, 2016.

Here’s some more detail on how this works:

Axilor Call for applications Summer 2016

 

Guest Post by Udhay Shankar, Axilor

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SaaS Pricing and Value Metrics – Lessons from the Top Seeds

Two libraries. One charges you based on the number of books that you pick, while for the other, the rental period forms the basis of its prices.

Now, which one would you prefer to get your books from?

There’s no right or wrong answer in this scenario. What matters here is how you were able to make your choice, with a single criteria.

Both libraries cater to the same audience, with the same service, and the single element that tells them apart (besides their librarians’ temperaments) is their pricing strategy. And this one aspect is enough to determine if the libraries will make a fortune or fall headlong.

Your pricing model and strategy could make-or-break your SaaS business; apart from the tangible monetary consequences, it is one of those intangible yardsticks that have a major share of influence on your customer’s/prospect’s perception of your business.

An article published by the Harvard Business Review in 1992 states that a 1% improvement in pricing leads to a whopping 11.1% hike in the operating profit.

”..in SaaS, pricing is tightly coupled to the product itself, which is different from other types of software and non-tech products where the price is decoupled from the product.” – Lincoln Murphy, Customer Success Evangelist

It is that one thread that’s intertwined with every other facet of your business, right from the product, the marketing strategy, the sales strategy, to the company’s bottom line.

Many SaaS ventures who’ve acknowledged its worth have taken the reins to constantly innovate, experiment, and uncover the ideal pricing strategy for their business models. And among the many differentingredients that they employ in putting together a SaaS pricing model, is the “Value Metric”, which is also the protagonist of this post.

Why it’s worth talking about (and why you should keep reading further):

A value metric (also called a pricing dimension or a pricing axis) is basically the foundation of your pricing model – it is the metric depending on which you set your prices. In our earlier illustration of the two libraries, the number of books and the rental period are the metrics of the corresponding libraries.

Looks effortless, huh? There’s more to it than meets the eye.

The value metric literally decides your pricing strategy. It conveys the value each plan proposes to offer your customers, and gives them a valid reason to fork out money for your product. According to Patrick Campbell (the CEO and co-founder of Price Intelligently), the perfect metric should align with your customers’ needs, grow with them and be easy to wrap one’s mind around.

Select the wrong metric and you risk devaluing your offering. Opt for the right one – your customers would actually be happy to upgrade to the next level, as they understand the value that they’ll be receiving by doing so.

“If you are running a SaaS business (or any other kind of software business), it pays to spend some time thinking about your pricing axes. This represents one of the very powerful levers that are available to you to grow your business. (I am surprised by how often I find this has been ignored.)” – David Skok, five-time entrepreneur and General Partner at Matrix Partners

So let’s give this factor the importance that it deserves, and learn a few tricks from these SaaS guys who got it right.

Lesson 1- The Deceptively Simple Pricing Model:

Take a look at Hubspot’s pricing for instance.

They have segmented their plans according to the number of contacts – a deceptively simple move.

This is why. The metric they’ve resorted to is simple and straightforward – no ifs and buts; no little asterisk marks that point to a list of conditions. And yet, the way it works is nowhere close to simple.

Think about it – with its pricing, Hubspot brings more1 value to its customers (who are essentially marketers and salespeople – leads/contacts are the bread and butter for these folks) by letting them manage more contacts, and in the process, it gets a share of the value generated. Even if a customer doesn’t want to upgrade, their growth still benefits Hubspot through the overage charges (based on the extra contacts). In essence, this model allows for a smooth transition of customers from one pricing level to a higher one.

The customer receives value for what they’re paying, a value that the product had promised to give them in the first place. So for a customer, paying more translates to handling more contacts and making more conversions. Hubspot grows, as the customer’s business grows. A win-win!

Lesson 2 – The Aspirational Quotient and the Unambiguous Metric:

Here’s what Freshdesk’s pricing looks like:

Basically, they have a user-based pricing, “users” referring to customer support agents. And they start with a freemium tier, which encompasses almost all the basic features, but with a tiny tweak.

If you look closer, you’ll notice that the freemium plan limits the number of users to 3. This means that a customer who initially signs up for the free scheme would automatically be moved to a paid plan as soon as their user count goes beyond 3. A changeover that’s as smooth as silk.

Another point to make note of, is how they’ve infused an aspirational quotient in their pricing, so that a lower-tier user looks at the higher tiers with an “I want that!” gaze in their eyes.

Let’s say a startup founder signs up for the Sprout plan, a good place to begin with. Once their customer base starts to scale, they start receiving more support questions, and consequently their help desk requirements start increasing as well.

The first demand would obviously be to accommodate more than 3 support staffs. Apart from that, they would also realise the necessity of certain plan-exclusive features. For example the “Agent Collision Detection” feature (which shows a support agent if another agent is working on a ticket) plays a major role in avoiding embarrassment in front of your customers, and in turn improves the team’s efficiency. So in an effort to equip their customer support soldiers with the best possible ammo, the company automatically moves to the pricier plan.

As you can see, Freshdesk has worked out a simple approach to show the users what they’re missing out on and how they would be gaining more from an upgrade.

Another common value metric for customer support and help desk softwares is the number of support tickets. A customer would never be able to pinpoint the exact number of tickets that would be generated for a given period, and they wouldn’t really be pleased to pay for a metric that’s ambiguous.

The key is to have a pricing strategy that works in the interest of the customers as well as that of the business. Groove’s pricing experimentvalidates this fact. They initially grouped their pricing bundles based on the ticket count (with no limit on users), and it clearly didn’t turn out well. They finally settled with the simplest per user pricing model, and this time, they were right with their strategy.

“If our uniqueness comes from being the simplest, easiest app, then our pricing has to reflect that, too.” – Alex Turnbull, CEO & Founder of Groove

Lesson 3 – The Multi-dimensional pricing and the Choice Paradox:

A similar pattern can be found in the Electronic Signature Software segment as well. There’s Adobe’s eSign, where the pricing is hinged on the number of “seats”, or “users” in the common tongue.

Then there’s DocuSign, which bases its pricing bundles on the number of users and at the same time, restricts the number of documents for the two smaller plans. This way, the customer will move up the pricing ladder when the number of documents exceeds the specified limit. And that’s where the deceptively simple pricing comes into play.

Also, both of these pricing slabs have one other common characteristic: plan-specific features. What’s going on here, is that they’ve added another “dimension” or value metric to their pricing model. Freshdesk’s model belongs to this category as well – by making their plans both user and volume driven, they flaunt a multi-dimensional pricing model.

In a one-dimensional model, by focussing on a single dimension, you’re only narrowing your scope, rendering the other differentiating dimensions useless. In other words, you fail to unearth the full revenue potential of your product.

Chargebee’s earlier pricing model was established on just the number of invoices, with all the features available for all the plans. We then realised the flaw in our approach, and what we were losing out on because of this. Subsequently, we’re working on making certain prominent features exclusive for specific packages, and thus making our pricing model a multi-dimensional one.

A word of caution: Multi-dimensional pricing is good. But overdoing it and incorporating a lot of value metrics in your pricing strategy would only backfire, leading to a “Choice Paradox”, where the prospect gets too confused to decide. Use dimensions that are clear, concise and comprehensible, and know where to stop – keep in mind that the buyer’s decision process has to be as frictionless as possible. David Skok recommends a maximum of 3 pricing axes and suggests 2 axes to be the optimal choice.

Lesson 4 – A few other short pointers:

Among the umpteen slip-ups that companies make while arriving at a pricing strategy, is the fixing on the wrong metric(s); this is one error that could lead to critical damage. A research conducted by PWC showed that SaaS pricing leaders have two things in common when it came to their pricing strategy:

  • Their value metrics are derived from their customers’ perceptions
  • Their strategy is easily intelligible, measurable, and workable

In one of our previous posts, we delved deep into the enigmatic question of “What is the right approach to SaaS pricing?”, which led us to some rather interesting conclusions. This was one of them:

There are two interesting rules to SaaS pricing –

  • NEVER break your promises, stick to what you’ve committed.
  • No pricing strategy is perfect. Always be testing.

An inference from that second point right there – “There’s no one-size-fits-all pricing strategy”.

So there you have it.

Choose the metric that would mean something to your customers, and would justify the price that you’re charging them.

Choose the metric that is tied to the core value of your entire offering/promise.

Choose the metric that would set the scene for a win-win situation. Evaluate, rinse, repeat.

Maybe your best possible value metric (and pricing strategy) is just a turn away.

Guest Post by Sadhana Balaji, ChargeBee

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3 Years of Volunteering to enable hundreds of experiments to blossom

AnHRA0C0tF4mI0qO-9WAwf-AXl383SqEDMGC9He_wzNoOn Saturday, I was going to attend 3rd year anniversary event of iSPIRT On the way on my bus to meeting, my mind was filled with varied thoughts about 2010 or earlier, when I was outsourced product start-up employee. Looks like little time ago, 6 years has passed from 2010 when I met the volunteers of NPC. Sharing comments to volunteers (Avinash, Rajan, Vijay, Manju, Suresh) on lack of “Made in India” products, I learnt that their thoughts were similar and more advanced. In addition, while I was talking, they had larger dream to create ecosystem where tech geeks are proud of creating products and the first baby step to create pride to come with products was NPC event.

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For a regular visitor in technical meetups of BLR and volunteer for education and health activities in the weekends, their volunteering style spoke more about the volunteer’s real intent. More interaction made me realize that contribution mattered more than the person’s experience or position. This was firs time I heard people work selflessly as part of industry forum and became curious to understand their concept better, leading to a sense of respect for volunteers, motivating myself to volunteer for NPC 2013. In 2013, iSPIRT was formed as new initiative with focus to create a product nation and volunteers drive the vision of iSPIRT. Today, I continue to see the volunteering spirt even today to be similar or better than my experience in early 2010. Hence I have planned to spend whole day to attend 3 In 2013, iSPIRT was formed as new initiative with focus to create a product nation and volunteers drive the vision of iSPIRT. Today, I continue to see the volunteering spirt even today to be similar or better than my experience in early 2010. Hence I have planned to spend whole day to attend 3rd year anniversary function of iSpirit. This blog represents what I learnt about growth of iSPIRT in 3 years. When the first session on “PlayBooks” started, I started to recall that iSPIRT had started to offer Playbooks as first learning program. Playbooks used to represent all programs offered to start-up entrepreneurs. Targeted entrepreneurs on application were invited to participate in playbooks based on specific stage of their start-up. Being in the ecosystem, I am aware of

      • All programs and events are free for participants. Participants apply to attend program or event with details about their startup and applicant registration is approved based on their suitability to programs theme and approved participants attend event for free.

 

 

    • Programs and events focus to impart learning for a category of start-ups that are present in specific stage of their journey namely start-up enthusiasts, Discovery, Product Market Fit and finally Scale To Grow.

 

6The session shared that iSPIRT is offering 3 learning programs and 3 knowledge events. I did not realize that I myself have been attending some of these events. I still see absence of programs and events for the Discovery stage yet, difficult and tricky stage to cross.

iSPIRT has come with a matured structure around programs and events termed KASH Playbook Framework. Playbook are no more a program and had become umbrella representation for all programs. What does KASH represents?

  • K – Knowledge
  • A – Attitude (Mindset)
  • S – Skills
  • H – Habit

Been an entrepreneur, I can relate with KASH as learning theme for programs offered to entrepreneur’s because all programs aims to impart entrepreneur to gain knowledge, develop a mindset, learn skills, identify habits and practice the same to empowers entrepreneur in current stage to create/generate KASH leading to transition from current stage to next stage.

First pic - 3 years

My view of RoundTable is to help happy & confused startups with product market to scale business. I learnt RoundTable (K, S) continues to be an informal closed door interaction (~4 hour) among entrepreneurs and practitioners facilitated by saddle entrepreneur to learn tacit knowledge & skill. Roundtable started as first program of iSPIRT in 2013.

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My view of PNGrowth is to help scaled startups with product market fit to grow leaps and bounds. I learnt PNGrowth (A) is 3 day bootcamp to shake up and instill ‘Panga’ Mindset requisite for category leadership, followed by a 1 year community support. The first program was in 2016 at Mysore The 3 learning events Innofest, SaaSx, InTech50 are focused on large participants. My view of Innofest is to help creators to explore possibility to transform their creation/hobby in to business. I attended the first I attended the first Innofest (A) that happened in Aug 2015 in Bangalore and nice to hear the event travelled to Hyderabad. I wish that sure more cities are eager to conduct event to help innovators take pride in their products and show case them, get feedback of their application in reality. This is “No copy paste entrepreneurship”. My view of SaaSx is that new entrants gain insights in to the tribal knowledge of experienced SaaS folks which helps them to make their offering better more efficient. SaaSx(K) event is to create & nurture community of SaaS entrepreneurs in India at the SaaS capital of India – Chennai. The first event happened in Chennai in 2014, followed in 2015, which I attended and can vouch for the fact that SaaS entrepreneur’s shared their deep intimate learning with others. My view of InTech50 is as experiment with difference. Instead of startups working hard to engage and partner with large corporates with their product offerings, can we make corporates to come together and engage with startups and share feedback and evolve in to partnership. Reversing approach of startup Push model to build relationship and engagement to Corporate Pull model.  InTech50 showcases software products created by Indian entrepreneurs, with aim to help software product companies to enter global markets via our network of early adopters, partners, co-innovators and investors. Companies apply and Chosen companies receive advice, on-going mentoring, product marketing support, and funding to scale in the global markets. This program comes with a cost cover expenses for two attendees and event logistics. 13
Another session I focused was on “India Stack: Powering thousands of experiments”. Before jumping to understand India Stack and session contents, it is good to start with some history in India of how absence of legacy era in telecom and internet has become Indian advantage over time. With absence of telecom legacy, India skipped analog era and leapfrog to digital era of STDs, leading to leapfrog to mobile usage. With absence of internet legacy, India skipped PC based internet and had leapfrog to era where internet technology is available to every Indian via mobile (computing device of choice). Look at the money savings for India from not having to spend to build legacy infrastructure that becomes obsolete with advent of new technologies and money goes waste.

This enables every Indian to access and consume service offered by internet software and mobile apps over internet. It is time to dream and create experiments to leverage this leapfrog benefit to enable Indians to leapfrog to make use of digital applications and the Indian government has jumped in to same with Digital India campaign. One see two fundamental changes happening.

  1. Every Indian can access and use mobile apps, with mobile phones in hands of every Indian.
  2. Every Indian is getting used to electronic banking and payments fueled by e-commerce players.

iSPIRT wants to dreams along with Indian government with belief that this is right time that Indian entrepreneur’s need to leverage Digital explosion wave expected in India soon. One can dream in terms of how technology can be leveraged to create financial inclusion, how apps can create positive interventions in areas of education and health care. When you dream, you are motivated with the potential to leapfrog tech-starved Indians to tech- savvy Indian.
12Dreams are ideas to start with. Dreams need to follow with action to reality. For such a dream to happen, iSPIRT has seen itself a role to contribute to seamless working between entrepreneurs and with government agencies and regulators and has started to proactively engage with government. This joint engagement with stakeholders of Indian government enabled iSPIRT to propose 4 recommendation to serve as backbone for Indian government to realize the dream of Digital India.

          • OpenAPI Policy objectives recommended for Digital India programs

 

      • 7 key principles for to be adhered for implementing Digital India programs.

 

      • Technology Stack to serve as baseline for developing apps for Digital India

 

      • India Stack to serve as baseline for implementing Digital India.

 

              iSPIRT has recommended these OpenAPI policy objectives

          1. Software interoperability: APIs are recommended for all e-governance applications and systems, enabling quick and transparent integration across these applications and systems.

 

        • No Government Silos: Information and data shall be shared through a secure and reliable sharing mechanism across various e-Governance applications and systems.

 

        • Data available to public: Make people’s data public. Provide APIs to enable people to view data.

 

        • Baseline guidelines for Implementers Provide guidance to Government Organizations to develop, publish and use these Open APIs

 

  iSPIRT has recommended these 7 key principles to be followed in developing application by government and integration layer with government applications. 3
The 3 learning programs IKEN, RoundTable and PNGrowth are focused on limited participants.

My view of IKEN to help startup enthusiasts aware of challenges to enable self-assess of their strengths and to identify needed self-improvements. I learnt IKEN (S, H) is a 10 weekend boot-camp for early/Novice entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts and focuses on life skills of an Entrepreneur along with business skills. The first program was created in 2015 in consultation with effectuation with Prof Saras and happened multiple times in Bangalore.

Picture 2 - three years

Based on OpenAPI Policy and guideline principles, here is robust technology stack recommended for creating innovative solutions to India’s hard problems.

Picture 3

With payments being accelerated by regulatory Innovation and a continuous rise of smart phones, here is robust solution stack recommended for developing Digital India applications.

Picture 4

What I liked about iSPIRT is

  • Supporting entrepreneur’s with learning that they need and that is not easily available.
  • Focus to get feedback for their initiatives and working to bring a structure to their work.
  • Contribute by promoting and facilitating the use of IndiaStack creating curiosity and real interest.

If APIs are made open, secure and available for developers (through sandbox), I am sure iSpirt would jump to volunteer to evangelize IndiaStack APIs and promote IndiaStack APIs through Hackathons and developer Events.

To end with, Saturday meeting made me realize that iSpirt has matured from an unstructured volunteer initiative for entrepreneurs and is on the path to become think tank to create product nation.
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Guest Post by G. Srinivasan, 

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Planting the Start-up Gene in Enterprise IT

Every company in its inception is a start-up. However, excelling and remaining relevant in an ever changing, competitive market eventually transforms ‘start-ups’ into enterprises that follow a set of conventional/’safe’ methods of doing business in order for them to become profitable and remain so in the long run.  Conversely, the current start-up buzz is posing fundamental questions to the enterprise. Can enterprises imbibe innovation, agility & turn ideas into products or solutions in  a short period of time?  Can enterprises showcase the DNA that kept them ahead of the pack when they started their operations?

Times have changed, and so have the methods of doing business and there is much to learn from start-ups today.

PM Narendra Modi’s ‘Start-up’ India movement has provided a much needed impetus to budding entrepreneurs and encourage them to establish their own businesses. With tax exemption of first three years and faster patent registrations, this is just the start to a whole new business environment. The DNA of start-ups is booming with innovation. Leaders and thinkers across the world have pondered the subject but what got my attention is this one by Rorie Devine whose view is that three things that Corporate IT can learn from Start-ups 1. The right attitude, 2. The ability   to constantly test and measure, and 3. To not think like a dinosaur. This last, in my view is key. Rorie says and I quote ‘To be agile and survive, big companies need to organize themselves as a collection of small, independent, self-organizing teams doing the right thing at the right time.’

Innovation is only possible when the organization and each member of the organization is committed and passionate to the idea of breaking through the clutter and to shine above. I can well argue that for most part Enterprise IT has imploded (into itself?) as a result of the very size, complexity and process adherence that has made it enterprise quality in the first place. That said, there are a large number of enterprises that continue to break boundaries at the technology infrastructure level in order to deliver noteworthy innovation for business. The theme for NetApp’s annual innovation awards this year is ‘Planting the Start-up Gene in Enterprise IT: Accelerating Innovation’ celebrates this breakthrough spirit every year, but we believe that there is a new urgency driven by, but not limited to, shrinking budgets and increased competition. We at NetApp want to recognize the efforts and risks taken by start-ups to out think the ecosystem. There are definite insights to be gained from India’s successful Start-ups, particularly around how they have engineered their technology backbone to plan for innovation and mushrooming growth – within the new business ecosystem.

This takes us to the idea of organizing oneself for growth and innovation. We at NetApp tell Start-ups to plan for growth, and to therefore organize their IT infrastructure into easily expandable additive blocks that can scale up or down easily. The value of using a set of smaller parts for best performance and efficiency is not new. Advance planning is critical to their survival as unlike larger organizations they cannot afford to make errors and see themselves going into a dark abyss. Trust forms a valuable component to their success which comes with the assurance of providing quality products and services to customers.

And for the enterprise, it is important for us to break ourselves into small competitive groups within – to build, create & spur disruptions in the market place – accelerate innovation and become a platform for new ideas like the start-ups.

Guest post by Parag Amalnerkar, Netapp

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2016 iSPIRT Annual Letter

AnHRA0C0tF4mI0qO-9WAwf-AXl383SqEDMGC9He_wzNoSeven years ago a band of volunteers came together to move the Indian software product ecosystem into the next orbit. Three years ago this movement became a think tank, iSPIRT. We pioneered the idea of building public goods without public money in India. Today, India has many software product Unicorns and many more are in the making. We are doing one M&A a month. India Stack is reshaping many sectors especially the financial sector. And, the Government of India recognizes the power of startups and have started changing their systems to enable us. This has been a long and a fun journey for us all. This letter captures what we have been up to, our learnings and our dreams.

Bharat Goenka, Jay Pullur, Naveen Tewari, Sharad Sharma, Vishnu Dusad

Governing Council, iSPIRT Foundation, 4th Feb 2016

 

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Startup India: What Can You Do?

At the Startup India event, our honourable PM shared that government’s impact is highest when it decides, intentionally, to stay away, and I agree with him. But we, as the citizens of India, can play a huge role. And we must.

But as a co-founder of NowFloats, a startup, here are some of my asks to you, my fellow citizens, and you may fall under multiple categories:

To Consumers: Sincerely, kindly adjust.

Like most of you, I have cursed Ola/Uber as much when the driver cannot read the GPS. Many of NowFloats’ over 200,000 customers escalate to me directly. All this is a part of the startup journey. We learn from this and hopefully act fast enough on it. So, please crib to us (speaking for all startups here), act obnoxious, throw a fit, expect the best-in-the-world quality, but don’t give up on us! Because we will fix things, once we get that next round of capital or find more efficient ways to train the drivers or the sales people.

To Enterprises: Startups are a feature, not a bug.

When a startup comes calling, please keep aside your desire to be an entrepreneur. That is a parallel process and highly encouraged, because it will make you adopt the new technology or product. If you are unable to do this, you may be unable to do that startup either (#harsh), where you are required to be a new person every single day (#think). So when a startup approaches you, it’s an opportunity to understand the latest technology, perhaps even get feedback on your own business plan. It’s not the time to feel left-out or ask questions that make you go ‘I could have done this so much better’. BTW, almost all startups are happy to discount their product (or even make it free), if you just agree to adopt (#hint).

To Investors: Stay true to your investment thesis and stage.

An angel investor is (and should be) very different from an institutional seed, and this should be very different from a Series A and so on. Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches, and therefore only the stage-walla investor knows what the entrepreneur needs. Angels will typically give money based on trust and that’s all they should be bothered about. Blume Ventures (for example) is a seed stage investor and they understand their thesis and stage well. They don’t ask for monthly, 10-page reports from all companies but watch out for the ones who are sending these pro-actively. Their support and help is different for each and they will spend significant resources to deliver ‘personalized’ mentoring to each startup. This will not be the case at Series B, when the startup has its resources (now) to find (read pay) for external support. Our Series A investors, Omidyar Network, puts the next stage of pressure on us, helping us with higher growth and velocity.

To Government: Stay hungry, stay away.

In my opinion, the government has already done something that even they don’t realize it, yet! While some of the policy changes expected by startups remain open (refer my pre-event opinion in Mint & iSPIRT’s 34 point asks), but many were awesome starts. And by doing what the government did, they have unleashed a (wonderful) monster. They made the world (to borrow from them), stand-up and take note. This aircraft has taken off and it’s not landing anytime soon, supported by mid-air refuelling of new and relevant policies in future. Things will just have to happen given the velocity on the numbers and stuff we see every single day (see Digital Desh) (#no #choice).

To Family: Stay.

The real entrepreneurs are the families of entrepreneurs’, even though this was forced on them. To them I have to say only two things: Thank you and please stay the course. Pass or fail, this experience is going to change your family for generations. Just take my word, send your partner that home-made food (to save money and health) and… Stay! (#rockstars)

About Me

I am Jasminder Singh Gulati (@GulatiSinghJ), worked at global corporates for over 18 years, including 12 years at Microsoft before co-founding NowFloats in 2012 with Ronak Kumar Samantray, Nitin Jain, and Neeraj Sabharwal. NowFloats helps local businesses get a meaningful digital presence that connects the business with local consumers, resulting in higher revenue & profits. Over the past 3 years, NowFloats has over acquired over 200,000 customers (90% of them in India) and drives over 6M consumers to them every month. NowFloats has 6 patents, all ‘Made in India’.

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Turbocharging #StartupIndia

Maker Culture’ and ‘Make in Universities Programs’ for creating a cultural change in Engineering Graduates; to be job creators rather than job seekers. 

Our nation is faced with an exciting challenge – it needs to create over 1M new jobs every month for the next 20 years to give employment to the 200M youth who will join the work force.

These jobs will have to come from new companies; and therein lays the paramount significance of creating a fundamental shift in our higher education system where the most brilliant minds are trained to be job creators (of new knowledge, employment and wealth) in the society, than be job seekers.

A strong case study – Kerala has been a front-runner in social indices and literacy; but the lack of timely changes in higher education and their inability to be in tune with the industry job requirements, has created a situation where the state has around 25lac unemployed but highly literate youth. The contrast is stark as the state has around 25Lac migrant laborers for blue collared jobs.

As every challenge presents in itself an opportunity, Kerala which had almost no startups and little to show for entrepreneurship culture, took the first step into student entrepreneurship by announcing the Student Entrepreneurship Policy in 2012.

This landmark policy gave engineering students 20% attendance and 4% grace marks every semester. Today, there are more than 200 student startups In Kerala and the promising early signs of a growing startup ecosystem.

The visionary Vice Chancellors of Gujarat Technical University and Kerala Technical University have now come together and are at the forefront of creating the University Student Startup Policies to support these changes across affiliated colleges. With over 1 million students joining the engineering stream every year across India, the education system needs a serious overhaul.

Changes in Curriculum for the Startup Era

The engineering syllabus needs to undergo major changes, in order to be in tune with the national objectives of the ‘Make in India Program.’

Every first year student has to compulsorily take the Practical Workshop classes as a part of the degree certificate. Thus, students in 2016 still learn carpentry, smithy, fitting, plumbing, sheet metal and lathe. We have to move from this system designed for the 1980’s to the Digital Manufacturing Era of 3-D printing, Milling Machines, Laser Cutters, 3-D Modeling and CNC Machines. This change is needed to create world-class hardware and software product designers who can then build and create the next Apple and Google from India.

Professor Neil Gershenfield, the Head of the Center of Bits and Atoms at MIT, Boston teaches a course called “How to make almost anything”. This course is also available online and by upgrading our workshops to Digital Fabrication Labs (Fablabs), we can encourage our engineering students to “make things” rather than learn theory lessons. Around 400 such Fablabs are present around the world, while India today has nine.

Converting Final Year Projects to Startups – A real taste of industry

All Engineering students have to also submit a final year project as part of the degree certificate. Currently, this is a non-imaginative and near repetition of what was done by the previous senior batch.

Instead of a theoretical final year project, creating a startup project allows students to create real products that can be used by customers. Leading Universities such as Stanford allow such programs where undergraduate students can do projects on Facebook or Google, getting a taste of the best in-class technologies that are being used by the industry.

Creating a startup while in college also means that students work together in groups. In the real world, everyone works in teams but we have an education system that is tuned for individual excellence. Student teams can now build prototypes of products every six months and by the time they graduate, they would have worked on 3-4 product ideas.

Along with the Software Product Industry Think-Tank iSPIRT, a program is being planned where young students across Universities in India can be allowed to work with cutting edge startups.

Introducing Online Education from world class Universities.

The lack of adequate faculty has been a key problem in introducing ‘Make in Universities’ till now. With massively open and online courses (MOOC’s), students can now learn cutting edge courses in machine learning and big data from many leading universities around the world.

Almost 95% of startups fail commercially. However, with over 9B USD (58,000Crores) in investments in 2015 alone, the students who are building technically successful products gain real world skills in using next generation technologies and become highly in-demand graduates for startup jobs.

The stage is set for the Prime Minister to convert these early experiments into National Frameworks. By scaling up the blueprint of University Startup Policy at Gujarat and Kerala across the nation as a ‘Make in Universities Program’, it would contribute significantly in creating a great pipeline of skilled talent and innovative ideas, which would help transform India from a ‘developing’ economy to a ‘developed’ economy in the knowledge era.

Guest Post by Sanjay Vijayakumar – Founder of Startup Village, India’s first PPP Model Technology Incubator. He is a part of iSPIRT’s Product Circle. He is also a Member of Board of Governors of APJ Abdul Kalam Kerala Technological University.