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What it’ll take to make ‘Smart Cities’ ‘smart’ in the truest spirit

What the BJP is touting proudly as its Smart City development of hundred shortlisted cities across the country, the Congress had initiated during its rule by the name Urban Clusters. The ultimate objective was to judiciously use technology for intelligent planning and efficient running of urban centers in India.

This subject has been discussed by various eminent people in the field ranging from town planners to architects to civic authorities. Most are of the view that injecting technology in a contrived manner was not desirable and the need was for sustainable cities rather than ‘smart’ one’s, where the approach is more outcome based. Infrastructure by itself is of little value unless it is complemented by systems, which are efficient. The approach has to be holistic and should be in tandem with other related programs such as AMRUT and Swacch Bharat.

All such mega ventures with huge capital outlays come with their own set of impediments. To begin with, there are three bureaucratic layers to contend with, the Central Government, that holds the purse strings, the State Government where the Chief Minister could be the gateway to fund distribution and the Civic body where the implementation will be finally done. As things stand today, the CM of the state will be the overriding authority in decision making, but then political equations and differences could at times influence decisions. Also, politicians have short tenures, whereas planning and execution could be a slow laborious process.

For most major cities in the world, the city mayor is a powerful and influential authority as far as the planning and systems are concerned. Some of them have managed their cities so well that they have gone on to become national leaders. In India, mayors are but figure heads with minimal powers, at least as far spending is concerned. Should we then think of a separate body or authority to decide on city matters, especially for the metro cities of India? For instance, like the NCR region around Delhi, can we have a State Capital Authority for all the capital cities of our states?

Then, there is the tricky issue of procurement and purchase. With the proposed top down approach where the Centre releases the funds, this issue could hit road blocks. Who would decide on what and from where to procure the material? For instance, if a city needs 100 CCTV cameras for security, does one go for wired ones to stay within budget or go for wireless ones? Should purchases be made from local sources?

It will become desirable to make it a more democratized process with active citizen participation, where smart cities are run BY the citizens rather than FOR them. More involvement of citizens in varying degrees at the various stages of decision making would become a norm for the future. For this to happen, data which is under layers of bureaucratic stops is freed for the general public. The use of active API’s as envisaged by iSpirt could be put to good use. For specific problems of certain spots within a large city, accessing such data could enable residents to come up with solutions. The India Stack is a good example to follow for smart cities.

All major towns have authorities assigned with the task of systematic planning and infrastructure layout with the of 1917 serving almost as a bible; a 100 year old but meticulous document. Cities today are in disarray because vested interests, together with the collusion of authorities at times, have got away with violations in spite of a firm legislation. Smart cities could help curb such acts to a great extent since all planning has to be based on metrics and accountability and as we move to a ‘presence-less approach’ with the use of technology, the roles of these vested interests could diminish greatly.

So yes, a lot is possible with the use of technology towards the making and running of our cities, but for that a lot needs to be done other than earmarking funds and selecting cities to me made ‘smart’. From the dissolving of ward boundaries to accessing of geospatial data to free use of active API’s smart city development needs a concerted effort from more than one source.

Guest Post by Ranga Raj, Thinxtream Technologies

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Bill Gates meets with iSPIRT

Bill Gates met with members of iSPIRT in Bangalore in December to learn about the organization and its volunteers’ efforts to solve India’s hardest problems through the use of technology.  Nandan Nilekani played host to the event and also present in the room were Sharad Sharma (iSPIRT co-founder), Nachiket More (former Board member of RBI, now senior advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)), and various senior members of BMGF.

Bill-Gates1There were three broad themes that were covered — finance, healthcare and education — each of which forms an important part of the Gates Foundation’s work in philanthropy. Product demos included the IndiaStack, a suite of technology services currently being developed around identity, payments and personal data management for all Indian citizens; three of the leading startups in the healthcare space — Practo, Logistimo, and Swasthya Slate; and EkStep, an education-focused nonprofit that focuses on facilitated learning.

Shashank presenting to BillBill Gates observed that India is producing cutting-edge work and there are few countries which can boast of a digital infrastructure as sophisticated as we are producing here. With such positive encouragement from one of the most accomplished individuals in the world, the vision of transforming India at large through application of technology has received a new impetus.

the panel with BillGuest Post by Saurabh Panjwani, iSPIRT

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Bhukkad is moving towards becoming McDonalds of natural fast food in Bangalore

“Start it first and everything will follow”, says Aruj Garg, CEO aka Chief Bhukkad and founder at Bhukkad. In an exclusive interview with Ashutosh Ranjan and Ragavendra Prasath of iSPIRT, Aruj shares how he identified the unhealthy junk food problem and created natural fast food chain. Here are the edited excerpts from the interview.

Q. What was your eureka moment to come out with Bhukkad? How do you evaluate your idea?

A. First Bhukkad started as there were very few good food options in and around college for food. During my college years, I ran Bhukkad like that. Post that, in 2013, when I graduated, I found that I had a high cholesterol problem and I couldn’t find places to eat. Whatever options were available, were very expensive and were available in a very formal niche environment. Hence the new bhukkad version was born to make food which is fast and also good for the consumers.

Q. How do you select menu or items to be served through Bhukkad?

A. We have our food philosophy how we want to do it. Whatever food items fits this food philosophy we will do it. We follow natural fast food philosophy which basically means that whatever we serve is actually made up of natural sources as much as possible. Making food from natural sources is very challenging because raw materials are not available or it is too costly.

So, there are two things we focus on:

  1. How we can make a product in natural way
  2. In our operation how premium quality and food safety is ensured.

Q. What are the other new varieties of food items when can expect from Bhukkad? Apart from Sandwiches, salads, burgers, beverages, sweet treats.

A. We recently launched the Main course meals. The idea is that how you create hot and natural main course meals with same kind of philosophy and enthusiasm. We are getting some good feedback on it. We are improving it every day. Whenever we get any feedback we try to incorporate and improve it further.Are you a still a bootstrapped or funded startup? Currently, how big is your team? What are your plans to scale it up?

Q. Are you a still a bootstrapped or funded startup? Currently, how big is your team? What are your plans to scale it up?

A. We are funded startup. We are looking for more funds to expand our business in other parts of Bangalore then to other cities as well. We are about 35 people now. This involves people in different area of operations including senior team as well. Delivery is not run by us, it is outsourced to different logistic partner.

Our presence is mostly in the south side of Bangalore. However we are planning to cover rest of Bangalore pretty soon.

Q. Start up is a lot about sacrifice. So what about your family and hobbies?

A. There is nothing called work life balance and its fine. Work is equivalent to life and that is what is happening. These are no efforts to make balance right now because this is what I have and I will continue to do it for long time. My parents live in Mumbai and I live in Bangalore. They are very supportive of everything.

Q. What are the key milestones for the 6 – 12 months for the company to be achieved?

A. In next 6 months we have to be serving more parts of Bangalore, also make sure that we are consistence, keep pushing our agenda how food should be to more people, make more people try our food and make them understand what we do in good and effective way.

Q. What are the potential challenges you expect?

A. For us one of the biggest roadblocks is that to communicate what we do in effective manner to masses. It is a big challenge for us. Second important thing is that we always have enough capital to grow and use that capital effectively and judiciously. Third is to make sure business runs smoothly because there are so many moving parts in this business. I think last challenge is to figure out a way to use more technologies and make it more data oriented than what are we right now.

Q. Finally, what is your vision for Bhukkad?

A. I want to Bhukkad to become the McDonalds of natural fast food.

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Traction Trumps Everything – How to get traction for your SaaS product

A wise and successful entrepreneur once said, “Traction trumps everything”.

Indeed, traction is the only thing that brings you customers, VCs, and energy to keep going.

iSPIRT in partnership with PuneConnect & SEAP organized a playbook roundtable on “Getting traction for your product startup”. It was focused on peer to peer learning and taking away real feedback, rather than just typical “general gyaan”. The playbook roundtable was moderated by two very successful SaaS product entrepreneurs Niraj Rout of Hiver (earlier known as GrexIt), and Rushabh Mehta of ERPNext. Both are building highly successful SaaS products bringing very different approaches/strategies yet finding great synergy in their thought processes. Hiver is a simple-to-use product for business workflows, fast growing, young, funded and profitable startup whereas ERPNext is a highly complex, very stable, bootstrapped, profitable, world’s second opensource Saas ERP product.

The RT discussion was attended by founders building SaaS products in Innovation, eCommerce, business communication, personal customer loyalty, education, personal finance, recruitment, fashion and technology domain.

SaaS Valley of Death: Rushabh got our attention right away by asking “Do you know SaaS Valley of Death?” Its like your product is complex to use and cheap at price. Its very very difficult to sale. You can be either very simple to use and cheap or you can be highly complicated and pricey. You can’t be cheap and complicated. But ERPNext falls in that category. Rushabh briefly shared his long haul journey of 8 years of building a product out of his own need and making it open source for people to use/modify it. ERPNext gives it at fairly low price to host it and charges additional for product consultancy.

Open-Source strategy: Rushabh realised that if such a complex product has to have innovation, then hiring talent is quite difficult. Instead making it open-source brings immediate advantages such as your users brings innovation, it is easy to hire from the developers community which already knows your product code, less efforts needed to support the product as your community is your biggest support structure. Recently, this trend has started by major tech companies like facebook, google and others by making their api’s open-source for community to play around and bring true innovation. Also interesting to say here that open source is more than a marketing strategy, you have to believe in it to work. Also companies are open sourcing not just APIs but also entire projects (Apple just joined with Swift)

User Onboarding:  It is very easy to get signups, but what happens after signup is the crucial one. The real game begins from sign up onwards. Rushabh at ERPNext created a great user onboarding workflow for various categories of users. At signup, ERPNext asks its user several questions to understand user and his/her needs. Accordingly, it customises the rest of the onboarding flow. This “personalized” flow helps user to connect and understand ERPNext quite easily. There are several videos created for user to educate about product features and uncover true benefits. “Founding/Core team has to take product to a initial revenue level, until then one should not make a mistake of hiring a sales person”, insisted Rushabh. This helps you build and quickly tweak/change onboarding flow as your know your users better. This also helps in positioning and marketing the product better.

Product Market fit:  Niraj of Hiver (GrexIt) shared his journey of conceptualising the product as knowledge management place (for enterprises) to pivoting to tap a SME segment where quick workflow matters. Its all about finding a product-market fit. On a lean methodology which suggests to work with your customers and tune the product, Niraj shared a good observation. If you talk to your customers, they will always suggest small incremental improvements/suggestions, customers can never give you extraordinary (or 10X) innovation. Its your vision that defines what your product could actually do. However it’s essential to understand how users are using the product and what key activities they are doing repeatedly.

Buyer’s mindset:  For a product, you have to understand whether it helps user generate money or save money. Does your product falls into cost center or revenue center, accordingly you have to create your marketing campaigns and positioning.

Simple Growth hacks:  Startups don’t have big pockets to spend on marketing/sales. Simple techniques like Your domain specific keywords, Search Engine Optimization, Influential bloggers write about your product, your customers talking and referring your product are a few simple growth hacks every startup can try. Always get real customer’s/brand’s testimonials and showcase them on key pages.

Critical choices:  In the initial days when you don’t have traction, its an important call whether you want to give it to a few people and learn and tweak the product or you just throw it in the space for thousands to use and let them figure out. Both have their own pros-cons.

Post Lunch session, Niraj and Rushabh encouraged every startup to showcase their product’s landing page and quick onboarding workflow. Duo and other founders provided critical feedback to individual founders with immediate actionable takeaway. It was a great peer-to-peer learning exercise. Below is a summary of what came out of the discussion that generically applies to most SaaS product startups.

Landing page:  Product’s landing page is the most critical real estate. Be innovative and build it wisely with new/current trends. A few examples of well designed landing pages were discussed. Products from 37Signals (Basecamp and KnowYourCompany) were highlighted for their innovative approaches. Like Steve Jobs once said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal”, you need not to always reinvent the wheel, just see the best products in your category and steal (find inspiration)!

A few tips for a well designed landing page –

1) The main image and punchline should be appropriate for user to understand your product quickly. Thats where user decides whether I should scroll down (to know more).

2) Always talk about benefits user will get, nobody cares about features.

3) More than 3-4 scroll is overdone. Have only essential information upfront so that user is not overwhelmed with information overdose.

4) Testimonials from real user/brands works great, people feel more comfortable.

5) Less verbose, more visual is always better.

After Signup (User onboarding):  Engaging with user for first few days and making personalized communication helps build rapport as well as improve stickiness.

1) Build a user friendly Quick tour with an option to quit and restart

2) Let user experience your product as quickly as possible

3) Videos or user guides “How to” are essential and helpful

4) Website and user behavior analytics tools like Google analytics, KissMetrics, Mixpanel provide good data know your users better and make appropriate changes in your product

5) Intercom like products helps you build user behavioral based engagement

6) Provide triggers/incentives to appeal user to perform certain actions. Nir Eyal’s HOOK framework  (Trigger, Action, Reward, Investment) was briefly mentioned to emphasise the point.

7) Your product is a leaky bucket, user may fall off anytime. Identify such holes and fill them up with creative solutions

7) You don’t have to be too generous with free plan. Start asking for money (plan upgrade) for valuable/exclusive features

8) Track analytics daily to know traffic to trial to paid customers journey

9) Always do A/B testing of every change/tweak you make to understand how its working.

10) Understand, there is always a churn. Account for that

11) Always promote long term (annual payment) plans, it gives you better visibility on your revenue. 

As traction book says, “Almost every failed startup has a product, what failed products don’t have are enough customers (traction)” and “Traction is growth. The pursuit of traction is what defines the startup”.

This playbook RT was first of its kind where only real stuff was discussed and critical feedback was provided to every startup on their product traction leaky bucket. All startup founders walked out with several actionable takeaways.

There are great SaaS product startups coming from India. The successful entrepreneurs like Niraj and Rushabh have vigor to share their learnings and help budding entrepreneurs to avoid mistakes and leapfrog their journey. This is a movement to build a product nation, one roundtable at a time.

Guest post by Abhijit Mhetre founder at Canvazify – a structured innovation platform for teams to collect, brainstorm, and act on ideas. Abhijit is passionate about startups and collaborative innovation. Follow Abhijit @abmhetre

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Disruptive Blue Oceans and India to the world!

In this article, we brief on what the architect of disruptive innovation Clayton Christensen explained in his seminal work called disruptive theory. This contains the edited excerpts of ‘What is disruptive innovation’ article published in Harvard Business Review. We also considered the tools, frameworks and concepts from Blue Ocean Strategy developed by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, as we feel that the Indian companies adopt the essence of both the Disruptive Innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy ideas.

Clayton clarifies Disruption is a process where by a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses. Specifically, as incumbents focus on improving their product and services for the most demanding customers, new entrants prove disruptive by successfully targeting those overlooked segments and by delivering more suitable functionality frequently at lower price. And any product or service to be considered as disruptive innovation must actually fit into the two important criteria below.

  1. Low-end footholds
  2. New market footholds

Low-end footholds

Value-InnovationLow-end footholds exist; when an established or large organization focuses only on the prime customers or most profitable customers and overlook their needs and fail to fulfil the needs of the least profitable or low-end customers. New entrants seize the white space by servicing to these low-end segments with ‘good enough’ product. The performances of the new entrants are ever improving when compared to those established incumbents. However, the quality of their offerings increases over the period of time. New entrants create unprecedented value to the customers by adopting Value Innovation. Value Innovation is created in the region where a company’s actions favourably affect both its cost structure and its value proposition to buyers.

 

Cost savings are made by eliminating and reducing the factors industry competes on and buyer value is lifted by raising and creating the elements industry has never offered. Kim and Mauborgne call it ‘4 Action Framework’ in their book titled ‘Blue Ocean Strategy, 2005.’

3nethra capturing Low-end segments through Value Innovation in India.

3nethra, eye pre-screening device, a product of Forus Healthcare, has made a significant impact in the eye care industry, in private clinics as well as in large eye hospitals. A significant contribution of 3nethra to eye care is the fast screening made possible by this device. Quick, yet accurate, screening translates into shorter waiting periods for patients. In a domino effect, quick screening also means that the eye doctor can devote more time to patients that need immediate attention. The simplicity of usage of 3nethra results in minimal training to operate the device. While, most eye pre screening devices cost between Rs 18 and 20 lakh, 3nethra costs just about Rs 5 lakh. 3nethra is also being used in community healthcare services and CSR initiatives. Forus, has conducted over 100 eye check-up camps all over India and screened over 2,50,000 people so far. Additionally, 3nethra can be installed in kiosks in places with high footfalls like airports, railway stations and even malls, where one can walk in and get fast, affordable and accurate screening for common eye diseases for their entire family.

new value curve

New market footholds

In new-market footholds, disruptors get into the uncontested market place and make the competition irrelevant. They find ways to convert non-customers to customer. In Blue Ocean Strategy, Kim and Mauborgne delineate as ‘the three tiers of non customers’ who can be transformed into customers.

First Tier: ‘Soon to be’ noncustomers who are on the edge of your market. They minimally use current market offerings to get by as they search for something better. Upon finding better alternative they will jump ship.

Second Tier: ‘Refusing’ noncustomers who consciously choose against your market because they find the offerings unacceptable or beyond their means.

Third Tier: ‘Unexplored’ noncustomers who are in markets distant from yours. They are the ones who have not been targeted or thought as potential customers by any existing incumbents.

Harboring these noncustomers is an ocean of untapped demand waiting to be released.

Paytm transforming noncustomers to customers

marketDigital wallet and mobile commerce marketplace Paytm is creating huge market by enabling more than 80,000 merchants to do the transactions on its platform. Paytm is an Indian e-commerce shopping website launched in 2010, owned by One97 Communications which initially focused on Mobile and DTH Recharging. The company is headquartered in Noida, India. It gradually provided recharging and bill payment of various portals including electricity bills, gas bills, as well as telephone bills. Paytm entered India’s e-commerce market in 2014, providing facilities and products similar to businesses such as Flipkart, Amazon.com, Snapdeal. In 2015, it added booking bus travel. In July 2015, it included industrial supplies such as power tools, safety and security equipment, test & measurement apparatuses, machines, lab supplies, abrasives etc on its platform. Paytm states that the initiative will help SMEs get in touch with different suppliers for different needs. Currently, it claims to have crossed over 100 million users in the country in a very short span. It also declares that more than 75 million transactions are made through their platform. In 2014, the company launched Paytm Wallet, India’s largest mobile payment service platform with over 40 million wallets. The service became the preferred mode of payment across leading consumer internet companies such as Uber, BookMyShow, MakeMyTrip and many more.

Bibliography

  1. What is disruptive innovation by Clayton Christensen, http://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation
  2. Book titled Blue Ocean Strategy, 2005, by W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
  3. Forushealth.com, http://forushealth.com/forus/Implementation.html

Paytm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paytm

This writeup is complied and created by R Ragavendra Prasath; volunteer for iSPIRT.

Disclaimer

Disruptive Innovation and Blue Ocean strategy are two distinctive thinking by itself and broad as it is deep. Adopted these thinking together for learning and understanding purposes only.

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Welcome to DrupalCon Asia!

It was in 2011 that Srijan spearheaded the first ever Drupal Camp in Delhi. A few meetups had happened before this. There were barely 50­-60 of us at the Camp, but the interest in Drupal was high. Some of us even dared to think that one day we could have Drupal’s global conference, DrupalCon, right here in India.

Cut to today. We have the very first DrupalCon of the continent being hosted in Mumbai in Feb 2016. And when we look back, as a community we have grown and come a long way!

Drupal started off as blogging platform in 2001, today Drupal is recognized as a robust enterprise-ready web content management. The latest release, Drupal 8, has a modern development framework and technical improvements to help us build multilingual, mobile and highly personalized experiences of the future. But technical wizardry aside, the best feature of Drupal is the community. With over 1,000,000 passionate developers, designers, strategists and architects, Drupal has one of the largest open source communities in the world.

Increasing number of Drupalers: India has over 70,000 registered ‘Drupalers’ and is  the second highest source of traffic on Drupal.org, the global community portal

Huge contributions to Drupal code: Developers from various Drupal agencies and IT companies in India have committed their time and skill into resolving critical issues for Drupal. In fact, India had the second largest number of contributors working on the Drupal 8 core.

Camps to encourage Drupal talent: All this has been made possible because of the efforts of Drupal agencies, and their efforts to build the community by conducting Drupal Camps in various cities. Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai and many other cities have been conducting Camps, and it is heartening to see the Camps getting bigger each year.

Global events, the DrupalCons: DrupalCons are mega events for the community, drawing Drupalers from across the globe. These are held across the US and Europe and give the community a chance to come together and participate in learning sessions, talks, code sprints and social events. Indian companies have been regular participants at DrupalCon events in Los Angeles, Austin, Barcelona, London, Munich and more.

IIT, Mumbai will be the venue for the first Drupal Con in Asia: That India is avenue for a DrupalCon speaks volumes about the strength and passion of the Drupal community in India. DrupalCon Asia has lined up top speakers from the Drupal community across the world to present valuable tech and business sessions. A key highlight of the event is the one­day Business Summit, where Drupal agencies will discuss trends and challenges for their businesses today.

Engage with DrupalCon: We would like to invite the Indian IT community to engage with DrupalCon. There are many ways one can do that. IT companies can send their Drupal and PHP developers to attend the event and keep abreast with the latest in code. Companies seeking Drupal development, and Drupal agencies will find the one­day Business Summit very insightful. Companies can also be sponsors for the event, details of which are here.

DrupalCon Asia 2016 is going to be an exciting event, and pathbreaking for the Indian Drupal community. Come, be a part of it!

Contributed by Rahul Dewan an entrepreneur, open source and agile evangelist, blogger, green activist and yoga & meditation practitioner. He is the founder of Srijan Technologies, a 13­ year­old consulting company with expertise in building high­traffic websites and building online business applications.

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iSPIRT Meeting at PMO – Stay in India Checklist

An important policy agenda for iSPIRT is to reverse the exodus of technology startups. About 75% of the funded technology startups are redomiciling outside India due to regulatory irritants.

iSPIRT has a Policy Expert Team – called Stay-and-List-in-India – working only on this area since December 2014. This is the policy team that worked closely with SEBI on the “startup bourse” that was notified earlier this year. Mr. Mohandas Pai has been an important guide and mentor to this team.

The Stay-and-List-in-India Policy Expert Team has developed a Stay-in-India checklist. This has 36 items that need to be addressed by Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, RBI and DIPP.

After PM Modi’s Silicon Valley visit, Mr. Amitabh Kant, Secretary DIPP, has been pushing hard to make progress on the Stay-in-India checklist. Towards this end, he had organized a cross-ministerial meeting with iSPIRT that was chaired by Mr. Nripendra Misra, Principal Secretary – PMO. The meeting was attended by Secretaries including Mr Madhav Lal, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; Mr Ashok Lavasa, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; Dr. Hasmukh Adhia, Department of Revenue, Mr Shaktikanta Das Department of Economic Affairs, both from Ministry of Finance; Mr. Tapan Ray, Ministry of Corporate Affairs; Mr Ashutosh Sharma, Department of Science & Technology and Mr Krishnaswamy Vijayraghavan, Department of Biotechnology both from Ministry of Science & Technology.

Others present included, Mr Shatrughna Singh, Additional Secretary, DIPP; Ms Snehlata Shrivastava, Additional Secretary, Department of Financial Services, Dr. Renu Swarup, Sr. Advisor, Department of Biotechnology, Mr U S Paliwal, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India, Mr Hemang Jani, OSD to PM and Operations Officer from the World Bank.

Jpeg

There were three parts in the meeting. The first part was a showcase of 6 technology startups. This was curated, as usual, by Shekhar Kirani, Fellow, iSPIRT (Accel Partners) and Avinash Raghava. The purpose of this session was to highlight that tech startups are key to transforming India at large. They are setup by entrepreneurs from middle class backgrounds who parley their skills into sweat equity to build valuable businesses. The showcased companies included CRMNext, Foradian Technologies, Eko India Financial Services, Snapdeal, Uniken, ForusHealth and Team Indus. They all made carefully prepared 3 min presentations and answered questions.

The Stay-in-India Checklist was discussed in the second part of the meeting. Sanjay Khan (Khaitan Associates) of the Policy Expert Team made the presentation. This was a technical discussion on specific issues. At times, it was very detailed.

In particular, Mr. Shaktikanta Das, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance and Mr. Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) were very proactive in taking suggestions. Mr. Kant did say that they are trying to create a single window to deal with startups.

In the third part of the meeting, there was short discussion about teaching entrepreneurship as a minor in engineering education. This was led by Sanjay Vijaykumar of Startup Village. His talk was very passionate and impactful.

It was cleart that all the officials were determined to make quick progress and were truly concerned by the exodus of tech startups from India. We all ended the meeting with a group photo. One of the senior officials remarked that this moment is important to capture so that we can look back and remember where it all started!

Guest Post by Abhishek Sinha, CEO, Eko India Financial Services 

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“How to position your product” is the biggest question.

“No matter how many times you explain, customer just doesn’t get it”

“We expect user to use our product in X way, but they use it in Y way”

We do ‘this’, but they think we do ‘that’ and starts comparing us with something ‘that’.

If this is your Kaifiyat (frustration), then you are not alone. Most of the startup entrepreneurs and marketers face this challenge every day.

“How to position your product” is the biggest question.

Shankar Maruwada, brand builder for Aadhar (UDAI project) and P&G products ran a very intensive round table discussion at TouchMagix office Pune. With Twelve entrepreneurs, primarily building global standard technology products to solve business and/or consumer problems echoing same problem – How to position my product without ambiguity.

Beginning of the session, Shankar made it clear that its not a “Gyaan” session, no checklist, best practices or a formula. There is no one pill to solve everybody’s problem. Infact, Shankar insisted, “You’ll walk away with more questions than any answers.”

Bob’s Story: Very first thing Shankar asked all the participants to write a brief story of our “Bob – The Customer”.

Imagine Bob is your most prominent customer. Bob has a problem, Bob uses your product, your product improves Bob’s life.

Rest of the day, Shankar used the “Story” as a base to have each participant pitch/sale their product to everybody in the room. As a participant pitches his/her product, rest of the group critiqued it as a customer. Since most entrepreneurs come from a background and/or experience where they could imagine a use of the pitched products, they were able to provide valuable inputs.

While one entrepreneur pitched his enterprise communication product, while someone else pitched their idea to implementation services business. Rest of the group found it difficult to understand “what exactly does it do”. Thats when Shankar helped with his expert probing questions to highlight the core problem these entrepreneurs are trying to solve. The group also helped highlight a critical situation where the product could make the most impact.

This exercise helped to understand “Although your product might be solving 10 problems or your may have 10 different features, it is important to understand which is THE MOST BURNING PAIN/PROBLEM your product help solve. Focus only and only on that. This helps creating a “Good positioning” in customer’s mind as he is looking for a solution for the same.

DSC_4659Curse of Knowledge

At this point, Shankar introduced a concept of “Curse of knowledge” which works in both ways. To prove a simple yet profound point, Shankar made us perform a group exercise. (I won’t reveal the details as it will spoil the fun and learning if you happen attend the session in future)

This exercise helped realize two things –

  1. What you think is easy for customers to understand, may not be that easy. So work hard at it.
  2. Once you “Know” something, it is difficult to Not know it. – Curse of knowledge.

Curse of knowledge may work in two ways. Based on what words you are saying in your pitch, your customer starts connecting dots in his own mind with his pre-knowledge and starts comparing your products against it. If your pitch helps tap into right knowledge, customer quickly gets the point. However, if your pitch distracts him on different line, then you face a challenge of not being able to convince him. Most importantly if your product is expecting to change his existing habits, then you face a real challenge as customer (in his mind) will always try to defend his own working habits and will be reluctant to accept/understand what your product does. Here Shankar gave an example of if someone try to change our deep rooted email behavior, will face a significant challenge unless you bring a real value proposition that customer cares about. Here one of the participants shared his experience of how people are looking at website updates as a “job to be done” whereas same users are perfectly comfortable in updating their status on social media.

“The hook” and “The Golden Circle”

At this point Shankar introduced the “Hook or Nail” concept by showing DropBox Product video. In this video, Lee Lefever has identified a common hook from day to day real life of need to organize things in one place. How this hook helps in relating to the need of organizing your digital assets in one place accessible anytime, anywhere. Followed by this Siman Senek’s Golden Circle emphasising on importance of “WHY” and how order of WHY-HOW-WHAT of could change the way people perceive you. The key message here was that “People dont buy what you do, people buy why you do it” and how this is at core of Apple’s success. Shankar also showed another video where complex concept of differential gear was explained with simple analogy of pared bike riders.

Now was a time for us to re-write our Bob’s story by identifying “Hook” and techno-jargon less clear messaging. A few more pitches/product-videos were reviewed and critiqued. This time, Shankar steered the discussion to gain more clarity by drawing mind map of every pitch. With his expertise in digging deep into core emotions, he helped participants to identify keywords that could help them refine their pitch to drive clarity. In this exercise, you want to identify all objectives, emotions, and needs related to your product. Now, arrange them in their priority, connect them with relevance, and eliminate those that add no value or create confusion. Here, asking “Why” is an important aspect of finding the truth and getting clarity. To supplement his point, Shankar shared couple of stories from his efforts while establishing Aadhar brand. How interactions with rural population simplified Aadhar’s positioning (“Pehechaan hi Jindagi ka Aadhar hai”) and help achieve massive adoption.

Framework to think: In the last spell, Shankar summed it all in a simple framework. Every concept has three parts.

Mindset (Belief) – A mindset or accepted/known beliefs of your customer

Benefit – The solution or value your product creates

Support – Social proof or reason to believe

Example: Afraid of wearing a black suit (Mindset) in a party as dandruff could expose you? Worry not, use our solution to get rid of (real benefit) stubborn dandruff and be confident (emotional benefit). Endorsed by these celebrities (Social proof), our dandruff solution builds the confidence to make you hero.

In five hours of intense group discussion, all of us had good understanding of what might be going wrong. Everyone has different product, different customer mindset, different challenges and different situations; but each one will be searching for one “Hook” around which a pitch can be built.

Product positioning starts in Customer’s mind. You need to find a hook where you could position the product with utmost clarity. Next time you struggle with “How come they don’t get it”, ask yourself – Did I find the right hook or have I tapped into wrong zone of knowledge?

 

Useful videos:

Guest post by Abhijit Mhetre founder at Canvazify – visual platform that helps entrepreneurs and design thinkers drive innovation through collaborative ideation. Abhijit is passionate about collaborative innovation and loves everything about running a startup.  

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From India… and going global

Over the last two decades, India has created a number of world leading companies of global scale. Many first scaled in India before taking the first international flight and now many of them are focussing on global markets right from the start – Day One Global.

“Gravity” defying Prime Focus is now Hollywood’s VFX powerhouse and a world leader in the media and entertainment industry. Gurgaon based Zomato is now present in over 22 countries with million plus restaurants in their kitty. Google Capital funded Freshdesk has customers in 145 countries with over 50,000 customers and is closing the gap with its larger peers like Zendesk and Salesforce (Desk.com), InMobi is the world’s largest independent mobile ad network serving its clients across over 200 countries. Starting from its Indian base in 2001, VFS Global ( part of Kuoni Group), the industry pioneer and world’s leading visa services provider, works for 45 governments, operates over 1700 application centres in 121 countries and holds an estimated 50% market share of the global outsourced applications market.

All the above companies are considered pioneers in their market segments globally and are either already the world leaders or are challenging them. Over the next couple of decades hundreds more world leaders are likely to emerge from India.

India Emerging 20 – A Turbocharger for companies looking at global scale

India Emerging 20 aims to discover the 20 most promising global Indian companies and provide them the visibility and that platform to make a mark in the global arena.

This unique programme is led by London & Partners, the Mayor of London’s inward investment company which has a proven track record working with over 2000 international businesses. The inaugural edition of this programme is supported by British Airways, BDO, Newland Chase and UK Trade and Investment.

Program Qualifiers

  • Companies registered in India OR companies registered outside of India having a majority Indian management.
  • Companies should have worked with global clients, and/ or products suited for global markets. Having an international presence isn’t necessary.
  • Established after year 2000 and should have global ambitions.

Selection process and Benefits

The selection process spanning over a period of 20 weeks would assess companies on the basis of three broad parameters- Global Scalability, Innovation+Differentiation and Performance. Companies need to nominate themselves in the programme using the nomination form (link). Valuenotes, the knowledge partner will be using their 3 stage rigorous assessment framework and a robust rating model to ensure a high quality selection of top 50 companies. Once the top 50 companies are selected, each of them will need to submit a brief presentation to a jury panel who would then come out with the final list of 20 companies. The Jury round would be held in Mumbai ( Dec 14th 2015), Bangalore ( Dec 16th)and Delhi ( Dec 18th)

The selected 20 companies will be felicitated and awarded in London besides helping them gain international recognition – critical to global expansion. The awards programme will also offer opportunities to network with investors, business heads, thought leaders and mentors of global repute. Courtesy British Airways, all 20 companies would be flown down to London in World Traveller Plus – Premium Economy Cabin to participate in this special award ceremony in February 2016.

Nomination process has already started and the last day to send your nomination is 20th Nov 2015. For more details visit www.indiaemerging20.com

Guest Post by Gautam Sehgal, London Partners

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Indian Regulators: Let start-up founders and investors worry about Silicon Valley; you try and deliver Delaware. Please.

Indian regulators have, in recent times, been talking a lot about creating a conducive environment for businesses, specifically startups, given the recent exodus of some renowned startups to foreign shores to take advantage of friendlier business policies and regulations.

In order to create a thriving ecosystem, they are taking inspiration from places like Silicon Valley, considered globally to be the Mecca of technology entrepreneurship. I am often asked by budding Indian entrepreneurs and even the successful ones –will Indian regulators be able to give the Indian startups an ecosystem similar to what Silicon Valley has provided?

My answer to this oft-asked question is – Why just look at Silicon Valley when there’s so much more that the Delaware framework can teach us? And trust me, they often get confused.

It is Delaware where most businesses are registered in the US and not Silicon Valley. Reason: the flexible governance framework that allows for ease of doing business, which is all the more crucial for startups.

The first and foremost reason behind this is that the Delaware General Corporation Law, by design, is a simple yet dynamic one. Although it was written in the last decade of the 19th century, it has been constantly fine-tuned since then to suit the ever-changing business environment. Moreover, it has managed to strike the perfect balance by treating both, regulators and business entities at par, with no bias towards either, which is rare to see in other countries. Even the statute permits companies and their shareholders to work with maximum flexibility to ensure they work smoothly.

Then there’s the Delaware legislature that not only gives high priority to corporation law but also has a good expertise over these matters. The state legislature also has an understanding with the bar and it is clear that when proposing corporate legislation, the bar will deal candidly on any matter that involves Corporation Law.

Lawyers too, swear by their courts. The Court of Chancery has developed an exemplary expertise over matters related to Corporation Law. Not only do you see some of the best lawyers practicing in Delaware, you will be pleasantly surprised to see how familiar the judges are with complex business transactions and the kind of insights they have about the inner workings of corporations. Since the court has already dealt with cases that cover almost all aspects of businesses, it more or less has answers to most questions that haunt businesses. This offers them a greater sense of security.

Another feather in the cap is the ultra-modern, user-friendly and absolutely pro-business Delaware Secretary of State Office, which facilitates businesses in the true sense rather than following a bureaucratic approach.

It is difficult to find any other ecosystem that has so much to offer to startups or even half of what Delaware offers. The kind of philosophy, processes and above all, mindset to run businesses there is enviable for even Silicon Valley. If a similar framework can be replicated in India, there will be no looking back for the dreamers in India who are trying to take baby steps in the world of business.

What are your thoughts?

Guest Post contributed by Ravi Kiran.

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When we learned to crack US sales from India

October 24, 2015. A Saturday after Dussehra, and 59th roundtable of awesomeness in lively office of Zapty.

Not only Sanjay (founder of Zapty) was great, offices of Zapty welcomed us with a lot of natural light. Then, introductions happened and people started to get comfortable around each other.

It was Samir, founder of Shop Socially, who flew from Pune a day before, was going to share the things that worked (and didn’t work) for him at ShopSocially when they built a team to sell to US companies from India.

PS: He also has sales people in US, but we will get into that as well.

We were scheduled to start at 11:00 AM, but kinda waited till 11:15 to start. I call this Bangalore Standard Time (not really late, but a little late)

Then I clarified certain things about Round Table and set the context to make sure everyone understands it’s more like a discussion than a lecture session. Also, it was clarified that its a safe place to share and nothing that is sensitive will leave the walls of that room. That made everyone attending it comfortable and also people were ready with their discussion hats on.

Then Samir shared some great processes which he has developed over 20+ years of experience.

Ohh man, if I could only describe it in words, you should have been there to feel the transparency we saw in an Entrepreneur. The goal of each function inside organization was clear, more like crystal clear. Tons and tons of questions were asked and we all shared some great insights.

Well, here is my attempt to put some of the learnings we had in words:

    • Marketing is Lead Generation: From beginning, Samir made it clear. In his business, marketing is Lead Gen. Branding is a byproduct of marketing, but marketing is for one thing and one thing only, Lead Generation. So, all efforts are measured on this parameter.
    • A simple Motto – Get conversations going: Samir pointed this out multiple times during discussion, getting conversation going is the single most important step in a sales cycle. Do whatever it takes to get conversation going, if your prospective customer is not responding to product/service/problem A, show them B, then C. Do anything to get conversation going.
    • 5 min callback to warm leads: So, this is a 2 part lesson. Number one “define” as clearly as you can, what is a “warm” lead. And then making sure 5 minute callback to warm lead. Now, both of these tasks are important, and success of your “sales” department depends on this. You can define “warm” leads too loosely and your sales team would end up wasting a lot of their time. Or you could end up defining your “warm” lead to tightly, and end up leaving a lot of money on the table. So, constant feedback is super necessary and should be part of the process.
    • For a product, IT HAS TO LOOK STUNNING..PERIOD: I don’t think this needs any explanation, but when he said this, he was really clear on one thing. No compromise on this, its HAS to look stunning.
    • Where to start? Email List: We spent quite some time on how to do this in a scalable way and what are great do’s and don’t around it.  
    • Quora and LinkedIn Pulse are great places to start for B2B sales. If you can get one of your articles on LinkedIn Pulse, that can do some wonders in early stages.
    • For inside sales – warm leads only: Samir was very clear on another thing, how anyone in the team spends their time. And inside sales team should be spending their time on “warm” leads only.
    • Text only emails are best: You can surely try more formats, but whole group agreed on this, as pretty much everyone had experience with sending a lot of emails.
    • For calling, make a script: If you get a chance to get on a call with customer, don’t go without a script. It’s like going to war without a plan..don’t do it. Make a script and rehearse it.
    • Optimize lower end of funnel first: Samir made this super clear that it’s super expensive to lose sales at lower end of the funnel, so if you are optimizing start from bottom of the funnel.
    • Case studies, no…Stunning Case Studies, YES: We according to Samir, anything that you put in front of potential customer (PPT’s, Case studies etc.) has to look great, nothing less than “stunning”.
    • Retargeting – FOR EVERYONE: It doesn’t matter what kind of product you are selling, retargeting ads are for everyone..
    • Video testimonials: If you can get video testimonials, they are the best. You can even put them on landing pages..they are expensive, but might be worth it

Tools / Service companies that we discussed:

  • BuiltWith
  • Datanyze
  • DataCall (a company in Bangalore)
  • Benchmark
  • Yesware
  • Pipedrive
  • Localphone
  • Ringo
  • Express Writers – Bangalore
  • Discover.org
  • AgileCRM

Now, it’s quite possible that you want to know more about the process we learned in the RT, but may be that’s the reason you should attend next Round Table in your city..

PS: Here is another post about Samir’s round table in Pune..

Guest Post Contributed by Natwar, Around.Io

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With 16000+ installations in more than 10 states, in just 3 years. KisanRaja is growing big!

Perseverance or persistence are the 2 most important characteristics for an entrepreneur, says Vijay Bhaskar Reddy Dinnepu, the Chairman and CEO of KisanRaja. In an exclusive interview with Ashutosh Ranjan and Ragavendra Prasath of iSPIRT, Vijay shares how he came out of the monthly salary mania and started working to solve the problem of farmers. Here is the edited excerpts from the interview.

Our first question to you is, how did you come out of the monthly salary mania?

  • Starting Vinfinet Technologies (KisanRaja) was not a sudden decision. In fact, I was doing research for quite some years during my weekends and evenings after work hours on how do we solve the problem of farmers. Before starting KisanRaja, I took an excel and jotted down how much will be my family expense with out my salary for the next 2 or 3 years. How to manage it. I wanted to keep my expenses very minimal.

How many iterations and months have gone into developing KisanRaja?

  • It took 8 iterations to reach our current version of KisanRaja which is very compact. The very first prototype was 8 Kg. We used 2 wheeler battery to power it. Many months have gone into each iteration. One iteration took 2 months and some others took more time.

You get lot of ideas when you start developing products? How did you prioritize Must have and Good to have features in KisanRaja.

  • We use the term Co-Creation. We collaborate, ideate, explore and experiment with farmers who are our customers. We understand what is actually required to them. We note down the conversations with them and work based on those inputs. We learnt that our first version had too many features which are actually not required by the farmers and as I mentioned it was 8 Kg. Even in our IVR to assist farmers, we use local slang. For example, slang used by people who speak Tamil in Chennai is not the same as people speak in Madurai. So took a blend of slang using it in our IVR.

Currently, the world is moving towards smart phones mania. We are a GSM based controller. Do you have any plans to upgrade to App based monitoring?

  • We have an Android App. Farmers can control the motor from their smart phone. So far 100 downloads done. We are working on the UI part to provide better experience.

How currently, how big is your team? (employees)

  • Currently, we are 20 member organization.

Are you a still a bootstrapped or funded startup?

  • We are looking for funding. So far, we have taken bank loans and support from family members. We want to expand in other regions in India. Currently, we have 16000+ installations in more than 10 states through our dealer network.

Any other new products that we expect from Vinfinet Technologies?

  • KisanRaja is our current focus. We are working on similar products lines with some enhanced features.
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Early Stage Start-up? Your Chance to Get Market-Ready and Mentored by the Best Brains in the Business!

Celebrating AnthahPrerana – the deep driving desire and self-motivation of an entrepreneur.

You are what your deep, driving desire is
As your desire is, so is your will
As your will is, so is your deed
As your deed is, so is your destiny

BrihadAranyaka Upanishad (4, 4.5)

AnthahPrerana is a TiE Bangalore initiative that recognises entrepreneurs for their articulation and the path to realising their vision and innovation. It is NOT a business plan competition though the business viability and feasibility will be a factor in this recognition. It is a competition that will acknowledge, and reward, the future potential of the entrepreneur. Think of it as an idea booster. We pick the best unfunded start-ups in commercial and social sectors, mentor them and get them market ready for exponential growth.

Banner SocialWe are partnering with Amazon, Let’s Venture HeadStart and NSRCEL, IIM-Bangalore to deliver personalized help to our winners!  We are assembling another high-powered jury comprising of acclaimed IIM-Bangalore faculty, successful serial entrepreneurs, investors and senior corporate execs at TiE Bangalore to select and mentor a new batch of start-ups.

Selection Criteria:

  • 0-3 years old companies
  • No angel or VC funding
  • Financially viable, for-profit ideas

What Do We Offer?

  • Showcase your idea to investors and start-up gurus on the Awards night
  • Get highlighted on the extensive angel investor platform of our partner Let’s Venture
  • 2-day Bootcamp with renowned mentors at our partner NSRCEL       IIM, Bangalore’s campus
  • Automatic entry into our 90-day TiE-EAP programme with the best mentors in town (Hall of fame: RedBus, Just Eat were mentored at TiE Bangalore)
  • $1000 worth of Amazon Web Services credits
  • Continued hand holding and support from TiE Bangalore network of mentors and charter members.

Key Dates:

  • November 5th, 2015: Deadline for applications (Apply now!)
  • December 1st – 5th, 2015: Top 30 Applicants present to the Jury
  • December 15th, 2015: Awards Night
  • January 2nd week, 2016: 2-day bootcamp at IIM-Bangalore
  • February – April 2016: TiE-Turbo mentorship program

Some of the past winners who have gone on to do well are: Channelyst, HeadOut, Something’s Cooking, Kamal Kisan, Discover Dollar, PParke

For more information, visit: www.anthahprerana.org

Guest Post by Kunal Kashyap, TiE Bangalore

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SaaSx Chennai Express – Board this Train Now!

I am Amit – running a SaaS venture Interview Mocha, a pre-employment skill testing company. In this blog I am sharing my learning from SaaSx and how it helped me achieve product-market fit and grow my company fast.


As they say, “a startup’s life is a roller coaster with ups and downs”, this ride has not been easy for me either. Just to talk in numbers, in the first 1.5 yrs of our existence, we were able to add only 22 customers and that too mostly from Pune, our home-ground. While in last 6 months, we have been able to add over 100 customers from 11 different countries. Needless to say – SaaSx has played a major role in helping us achieve this. Hence, I would like to share my journey and learnings from SaaSx with the larger community of SaaS people out there.

My SaaSx journey started when Prasanna advised me to visit SaaSx-1 in Chennai and Avinash was kind enough to allow me immediately. I had one more reason to visit Chennai – to meet Krish (my mentor).  I am happy to thank SaaSx, Prasanna Microsoft, Suresh  Kissflow, Krish ChargeBee and Girish Freshdesk who are constantly acting as a source of knowledge and guidance for me.

Interestingly, I found something common about all of them and you know what that something is…They are all from “SaaSx” and they are all from “Chennai” .

So now I can say that “SaaSx Chennai Express” is changing my (Interview Mocha) life completely and moreover this Chennai Express journey is a lot safer than Shahrukh Khan’s Chennai Express as there is no Tanghaballi (villain) here, only heroes :-)  and you still get your sweetheart Meenamma (Success).

Krish has helped us grow our daily leads from 2 to 10 leads a day. Suresh helped me multiply this number by his personal mentorship and playbook on Nuts and Bolts of Marketing & selling SaaS products to US customers from India for First Timers. Girish’s Talks always makes me think – how this poster boy of Indian SaaS knows all my key problems and their solutions. He narrates everything as if he is my personal mentor helping me sharpen my SaaS business skills.

So, here are the key takeaways, learning and some food for thought from my interactions with these SAAS champs:

1. Focus, Focus and Focus.

Focus on customer pain (mother-problem(s) you are solving that customers care about). Focus all your efforts to solve these problems the best way possible.

2. Your Product has to be Superb.

Customer success, Word of mouth and “Mouth of word” are the key for SaaS products and which is not possible without a superb product. Product is the core – keep it in mind.

3. Product Market Fit.

Your product needs to achieve a product market fit for adding customers quickly and scaling further. This is the first good thing that can happen to your start-up. Product/Market Fit is the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. It has been identified as a first step to building a successful venture in which the company meets early adopters, gather feedback and gauges interest.

4. Cold Calling 2.0 doesn’t work.

Cold calling 2.0 won’t suit your economies for B2B companies with less than $ 2,000 annual revenue per customer. Though cold calling 2.0 is a great predictable way for pipeline generation, however it is not suitable to scale when you are charging very less annually.

5. Do not rely only on Email and Chat Support for closures.

Talk to signups/prospects over phone. We are 100% inbound till a person signs up. Talking to users helped us increase engagement with prospects and in turn more closures. Also, you get the insights that your sales team needs to understand.

6. Founders – Change the work timings if you are targeting US.

Analytics do help you understand customers but nothing better than talking to customer themselves. Quicker responses means more business.

7. SEO and Content Marketing are compulsory.

Content is King  & SEO is the way.  One or other traction methods may work, you can refer the list of all traction methods – google “Bullseye framework traction trumps everything”.

8. SaaS is Software as a Service.

Focus highly on support activities and customer success. Get immediate reply policy as a part of company’s DNA. Remember “Fast is Success”.

9. Understand behavior of SOHO, VSB and SMB for sure.

Each customer segment has its typicality and common needs. Understand their pain points, where they hang out over internet, how they buy, what makes them happy. Targeting big deals from enterprises in initial days may not happen. One funny thing, we have a few fortune 500 companies as our customers paying us $49 p.m. these are SaaS enterprises (business units) and not classic enterprises.

10. A/B testing is the way for SaaS companies.

What works and what works better – don’t assume much. Try A/B every now and then.

11. Tools help.

Start exploiting Mixpanel, Intercom, Moz etc.  being a SaaS player, trust and adopt SaaS.  These tools are helping us a lot in reaching, understanding and communicating with customers.

I consider the above points as extremely important for any SaaS business. I strongly recommend becoming a part of SaaSx community, if you are a SaaS startup in India. Chennai Express passengers/ drivers (Prasanna, Krish, Suresh, Girish, Avlesh, Paras, Avinash and many more) are easy to strike a conversation with, ask any question and receive immediate valuable responses.

Recently, I attended SaaSx-2 and acquired a new set of learnings. But I’ll wait to write on those learnings till I execute them successfully. And yes, looking forward to add 500 more customers before I board SaaSx-3 :-)

Thanks SaaSx Chennai Express. Wishing All the Best to all Indian SaaS Start-ups!

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Product Leaders Forum – Anchoring India to Drive Product Leadership Revolution

We are very excited to share that the city of Pearls – Hyderabad will be embarking its journey towards Product Leadership for the first time ever, at a one of a kind Conference – Product Leaders Forum (PLF) on Oct 30th   2015. PLF – a not for profit initiative has partnered with NASCCOM, PMI, HYSEA, ISB and TIE to organize a one day Conference that cultivates and enriches product mindset and transforms India into a hub of Global Product Leaders.

For details and registration – Please visit http://productleadersforum.org/plf2015hyderabad/

PLF is a volunteer driven initiative by the alumni of the Institute of Product Leadership (IPL). This one day Conference is arriving at Hyderabad on the 30th of Oct, 2015 and promises all product enthusiasts and practitioners, a power packed day to indulge in candid conversations with the CXOs, Executives and Visionaries from various realms of industries. The space of Product Leadership has been traditionally perceived as a forbidden kingdom into which entry is available only for a chosen few who hold specific job titles or for the “Product” companies alone. PLF has cleared these ambiguities and shattered the stereotypes associated with certain roles/titles at its incredibly successful past events @ Bengaluru and Pune that hosted 700+ delegates. Whether a product company or a service industry, an MNC or a startup, an Individual contributor or a People Manager, the rapid transformation in the Indian technology space, is touching everyone and is generating needs to Innovate. Service companies are expanding into platforms and products for newer revenue streams, start-ups have a mission to get bigger and the MNC R&D centers known for engineering excellence now aim to transform into think tanks and global business centers.

PLF-Hyd-iSpiritTo meet the needs of all the ambitious souls at Hyderabad searching for avenues to transform themselves and their organizations into ecosystems to thrive product leadership, PLF has designed this Conference with engaging panel discussions, interactive workshops and a platform to network with like-minded practitioners. Ranging from Product marketing to Data Analytics, The Future of Global services industry to Understanding Prod. Mgmt across industries, Intrapreneurship to Managing Politics at Workplace; all the topics are crafted carefully to engage delegates from diverse fields and roles. Be it Architecture, Project Management, Quality Assurance, Development, everyone has a platter to feel rejoiced and rejuvenated at the Conference.

Businesses are realizing that the time has arrived for their delivery centers to move up the value chain; there is a huge demand to create and nurture product leadership mindset as well as skillset among employees. PLF provides an opportunity to listen to the stories of how firms in India achieved it at the Conference key note that hosts a CEO panel discussion. PLF is bringing together leaders and visionaries from organizations like eBay, ADP, SAP, Infosys, Intuit, Broadridge, CA to name a few and hosting a platform for its delegates to get a head start into product leadership.

Again, we are very excited to share that the city of Pearls – Hyderabad will be embarking its journey towards Product Leadership for the first time ever, at a one of a kind Conference – Product Leaders Forum (PLF) on Oct 30th   2015. PLF – a not for profit initiative has partnered with NASCCOM, PMI, HYSEA, ISB and TIE to organize a one day Conference that cultivates and enriches product mindset and transforms India into a hub of Global Product Leaders.

For details and registration – Please visit http://productleadersforum.org/plf2015hyderabad/

Guest Post by Samatha Rani, PLF Volunteer & Product Owner at ADP Pvt Ltd