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Product Company OR Services Company?

My name is Rajan Chandi, a technologist who likes to build software products, experiment and have fun. I was particularly fascinated by Google, Facebook and Tech Innovation. The reason why I quit my job was to be able to explore tech entrepreneurship and build awesome things.

It has been a great ride building, launching and monetizing 3 software products to various degrees with small teams and limited resources. I am using this blog­post as a medium to express my personal views on whether a company is a product company or a services company.

The Reason for Existence

If someone who has started to create a ‘search engine’ while doing their PhDs or someone who is building a social network to extract personal information of Harvard students, they are starting­off as a product built to serve a purpose of its users. Google renders ‘web search’ as a service to its users or Facebook renders ‘social relationship management’ as a service to it’s users. Even Evernote advertises itself as a ‘Note Taking Service’ but they’re all products built to serve a particular purpose. If a company is starting off with a great product to serve a large market, they’re definitely a ‘Products Company’.

Important factors that set apart a product company from their service company counterparts:

  • In case of product companies, they EXIST because their product exists.
  • In case of services companies (trying to build a product), they exist DESPITE the existence of their product.
  • If people care about a company because of it’s product, it’s a product company. (e.g. Ola or UberApps or Flipkart/Amazon app/site).
  • If people love a company primarily because of it’s customization/support, it’s a services company.
  • If a company’s business model can scale without adding a proportionate amount of people to its payroll, its a product company.

Automated Recurring Source of Revenue

How the company makes money? is an important question. The answer tells us a lot about what their users value, what ‘sells’, how does it sell, how can they make more etc. If a company is making most of it’s money because of their awesome product then they’re definitely a Products Company. e.g. Ola Cabs came off as an App while Meru Cabs was still popular in Bangalore. Meru cabs had an army of cabs, trained drivers and all the booking/communication apparatus.

How did Ola manage to exist?

They came up with an app that connects customers with existing drivers, leverages their cabs and manages to do a transaction with minimal human intervention. They may be known as a ‘Cab Hailing Service’ but they’re definitely a product company because they generate revenue due to existence of their product. People care about them because their app works and their prices are competitive!

Product Division: Profit Center or Cost Center?

There are a number of companies with IT/Products departments to serve the ‘business’. It you need an IT division mostly to serve the business, you’re probably tilting towards a services company. If you have an IT/Products department to serve (directly) either consumers or customers, you’re tilting towards being a product company. If allocating more money in tech/product/design division of the company will boost sales, you’re clearly a products company.

If allocating more money to product/tech/design will NOT boost you sales or grow the number of customers, you’re probably a ‘services’ company losing money in the ‘Product’. If you’re investing into a product with clear growth goals, you’re likely to be a product company.

‘What’ do they do it? ‘How’ do they deliver or render their service?

Every company has to sell something to be able to exist. ‘What’ they sell is important but ‘How’ do they ‘do it’ is far more important. For example, Google sells ‘Web Search’ as a service to people, it works. They’re a product company because of the ‘How’. They do it by building a high­tech product which indexes the web and makes the information available to users.

There exist a number of ‘Market Research’ companies. They also search things for you and put together a report. They do something similar to Google in the ‘What’ division by providing you information that you requested but they’re very different in ‘How’ division. Market research company has to put manual effort behind every ‘research’ they do which is far­less scalable model because they’ve no product to do it.

If a company offers a specific (non­democratized) offering which others find it impossible (or very hard) to offer at that price­point, it’s a product company.

The Solutions Company

There’s a thin­line when it comes to selling a product+customization in case of software products. Let’s call it “solutions company” which offers software solutions of specific problems which are customized as per customer’s needs. Automating these solutions (to a SAAS) will convert these companies into a Product company. Extreme customization necessity will turn these companies into services companies.

The Extremes of Automation

The key theme with all product company is existence of a great product which is hard to be replaced by off­the­market solutions. As a personal example, my last start­up Classmint.com operates today without putting more than 4 hours of my time on a monthly basis. It still has 30,000 monthly active users and around 500­1000 study notes are created on a daily basis. Classmint exist because the product (website) exists and does it’s job of providing a tool to create the best study notes online. If a system is built and is useful (offers a service), it’s clearly a product company. If you’re building a company, think about amount of automation that will exist.

The Litmus Test

Quick way to classify a company is to ask a question: Will this company still exist if we take down their product or replace it with commodity software? If the answer is a clear yes, It’s a services company. Otherwise, it’s a product company with their product as a differentiator.

Special Thanks to Amar, Sharad and Ravi. Amar Prabhu contributed to this article by editing it. Sharad Sharma and Ravi Trivedi contributed to this article by reviewing it.

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What you need to know while hiring an Image consultant?

Every startup originates with a dream and a vision to make their ideas come to life and be instrumental in providing real life solutions; addressing critical problems, bringing innovation and delivering better user experience. A startup boost of entrepreneurial spirit with great zeal and enthusiasm coupled with determination, commitment and challenges.

Growing a business in today’s fast evolving environment is an overwhelming experience.

Rise- fall -Rise of startups:

Entrepreneurs know that a good idea can perish if it is lacking or not aligned with the current requirement of the market. While they have the passion and commitment, they are not able to reach to the right market and the target audience whereas, their competitors are prospering and gorging the limelight, and this is one of the main reasons, some Entrepreneurs are unsuccessful or doomed to failure.

Having said that, no matter how innovative and new your product line is, if you are not able to position your product in the market right and stay ahead of your competitors, The chances are quite bleak that your business will sustain over a period of uncertainty.

“If you don’t tell your story, someone else will.” – Unknown

Thankfully, that scenario is slowly changing as new entrepreneurs now understand the importance of building the Image and brand of their organization by adopting uniformed methods of communication. This creates a niche for themselves. However, even though more and more startups are aware about the need for ‘to be seen and heard’, they are not very clear about right channels, timings and people to address for attaining the ultimate outcome.

So, before a startup plans to hire an Image consultant, they need to seriously consider the following aspects, after all, engaging any form of communication, be it marketing, social or digital media or Public Relations services; will be an expense that requires an investment not only monetarily, but in terms of time and readiness to be present in the market

Answering the unanswered: The sole objective of Image creation of a startup

Most of the successful brands have recognition and therefore are continuously in the news. This plays a vital role as they thrive on attention, which a startup might not have, therefore it is imperative to outline a strategy that will not only keep the emerging brand in the media spotlight but also maintaining the level of consistency.

Keeping a tab on what competitors are doing and recognize the current trends in the respective segment will assist in structuring the goals and accomplish the desired results.

An Image consultant who is constantly in touch with the media and understands your product domain will help differentiate the brand from its competitors.

Identifying your market and your needs:

In this age of fast paced communication, when opinions & feedbacks are exchanged freely using various social and media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, TV etc… Image and reputation management plays indisputably an important role and requires a new level of engagement on the part of companies and entrepreneurs. While aiming for the moon and stars is good in the long run –it is not advisable to do so during an early stage of a startup, instead adopting a focused approach will reap benefits for entrepreneurs. A smart and coherent consultant understands this and help create a lasting impact on your target audience by telling compelling stories about your business thereby building strong relationships with your audience.

Identifying leads and converting them into relationships

A good Image consultant or consulting agency knows that “communications is an art” and they are the catalyst between the brand and the media to reach out to the consumers. So, when hiring a communications specialist evaluate them on the basis of their ability to tell you succinctly, who they have worked with and notice how well they summarize each company and what they did. Having existing relationships, their ability to create new ones and identify potential consumers to resonate with the brand.

People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic. – Seth Godin

Invest not in what comes cheap but what will add value

Speaking of brands and building up a recognizable brand identity is perhaps one of the most significant responsibility, so it might as well be shouldered by someone who will be able to manage it well. The value of an experienced Image consultant or a team shows in its ability to bring your message to target audiences in the areas most important to your business.

While there are many more measures a startup or an entrepreneur can evaluate the image consultants or consultancies they plan to work with, these above listed tools will help you in finalizing the most suitable consultant or consultancy to manage your brand. However, there is always this thing you would need to consider when deciding between your options, it’s important to realize that the practice of a solid Image building campaign will take few months before you see results.

Guest Post by Juhee Bagri

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Making the Future

What we see in theMaker addiction, is that a relatively small amount of people can have a big impact. You don’t necessarily need the world’s largest company behind you. – Dale Dougherty- Founder, Make Magazine

4 years ago, I walked out of the elevator onto the 4th floor of NYU’s TISCH building, home to the Interactive Telecommunications program that brought together some of the most diverse bunch of brilliant misfits from around the world to learn, teach, collaborate and make. The arriving Masters candidates, were an eclectic bunch, which included engineers, designers, lawyers, journalists, artists, architects, a masseur, filmmakers, dancers, fashion buyer, and a former drag queen. I was an actress and TV host, who didn’t know a soldering iron from a glue gun, and who, like many in my incoming class, had never written a line of code in her life. Yet, only a month later, I would strip down an old computer for spare parts to make my own galvanic skin resistor from scratch, and program video outputs to visualize the incoming data. My first wearable prototype –the mood gauge, had involved experimenting with different materials, soldering, electronics, programming, designing, user experience and video, all of which I’d known nothing of when I stepped off the elevator that first day of school. When my first device ‘talked’, I was hooked. The Maker addiction had begun.

The maker era, enabled by the Internet, DIY 3D printing, low cost chips/boards, open-source prototyping platforms like the Arduino, shifting business models and payment options have erased barriers to creation and expression and leveled the playing field. Today, if you want to express an idea, you can choose whether you want to employ sensors or film, an android app, performance or interactive sculpture. The Maker movement is sometimes perceived to be synonymous with geek culture, robotics and gadgets. And there is truth to this. Engineers, with their deep knowledge and a love of taking things apart are no doubt the movement’s most ardent mascots. However, making is more than just about the technology. It is about a cross pollination of ideas, the merging of the boundaries between disciplines and philosophies. At it’s core, the maker ideology is about moving from being a mere consumer to participating, influencing and changing the world you interact with- be it objects, people or experiences. It is also about pushing boundaries and experimenting for the sheer fun of it. And to achieve this, we need a variety of backgrounds and perspectives all playing with each other. Making/tinkering encompasses a dazzling variety of creations- including DIY quadcopters controlled by brainwaves, cloned fig trees, bamboo bicycles, environment-reactive clothing, 3D bio-printed organs. It touches every area of our lives and encompasses many different fields- arts and crafts, engineering, urban planning, architecture, theatre, film, storytelling, psychology, education, gastronomy, relationships, health & medicine.

“Technology is a means to an end; the end is people” – Red Burns, Founder, ITP, NYU

The industrial revolution concentrated the means and power of production in the hands of a few. Even the entertainment and news industry was a one-way street, with a clear delineation between producers and consumers. There was no way of “talking back” or dissenting on a scale that had any sort of impact. The internet and the subsequent democratization of tools and access changed that. Today, a lone individual with a You Tube channel can command more viewers than a major news channel. As an example, PewDiePie’s, a Swedish gamer’s You Tube channel has 32 million subscribers and more than 2 billion views. All he needed for that was a video camera and a subject he was passionate about. The rise of cheap 3D printers means many more people can create physical objects designed by them quickly and cheaply. The most exciting aspect about the maker culture is that it endows the maker with personal power. Where once, we grumbled about the lack of government initiative in solving certain problems, today, we have the means of creating our own solutions.

This is where makerspaces and Maker Faire comes in. Around the world, maker culture has emerged, founded on the ideas of collaboration and learning to learn. Innovation is a happy byproduct of this culture. From the Bay Area to Bogota, Istanbul to Nairobi, maker cultures are blossoming, driven by a spirit of collaboration and learning to learn. In India, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad and Kolkata have their own makerspaces, driven by a global sensibility, but also grounded in locally relevant approaches. One of these spaces, Bangalore’s Workbench Projects, operating out of an inspiring space in the Halasuru metro station, has been at the forefront of some exciting maker initiatives, one of which is the Bengaluru Mini Maker Faire, which it is hosting in collaboration with Nasscom.

Maker Faire describes itself as “the greatest show and tell on earth”. People from all walks of life come to show what they’ve made and to learn from each other. The open, playful nature of these events are deeply conducive to cross-collaborative projects and innovation.

“The Walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds” – Theo Jansen, Dutch artist, creator of kinetic sculptures.

“Maker Faire is primarily designed to be forward-looking, showcasing makers who are exploring new forms and new technologies. But it’s not just for the novel in technical fields; Maker Faire features innovation and experimentation across the spectrum of science, engineering, art, performance and craft” – Maker Faire website

The First Maker Faire was held in 2006 at San Mateo and attracted 20,000 people. Today, Maker Faires are held all over the world, with 151 events taking place in 2015 alone. Aware of the global shifts towards a maker driven economy, and eager to maintain their innovative edge, bigger corporations are now increasingly part of the Maker Faires. Companies like General Electric, Autodesk sponsor and, as in the case of Motorola, even collaborate with hardware startups like Makerbot.

The Bangalore Mini Maker Faire aims to be a community based learning event celebrating the Indian maker culture, with it’s unique perspectives, aesthetics and challenges. Be it robotics, games, gastronomical innovation, sustainability, textiles, apps or video, the Mini Maker Faire is a chance to climb aboard the Indian maker bandwagon and be a part of a global movement, one that Kevin Kelley has dubbed the “Third Industrial Revolution”.

If previous industrial movements were about creating silos and competition, the maker movement emphasizes and engenders collaboration. A fashion designer collaborates with an engineer to create a responsive dress, a homemaker and a 12 year old biology enthusiast work on bio-fabrication projects, the local police team up with security specialists, designers and android developers to create apps and devices for a safer city. The possibilities are endless.

If you’re a maker or think you might like to try your hand at being one, apply to participate before the 15th of September by sending an email to info(at)workbenchpojects.com

If you would like to support the maker community as a volunteer, sponsor (be it individual/ organization) feel free to email to info(at)workbenchprojects.com.

The Bengaluru Mini Maker Faire will take place on the 15th of October 2015 at the Taj Vivanta, Yeshwantpur.

Guest Post by Suvarchala Narayanan

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Open Source leaders discuss innovation, entrepreneurship and software patents.

Rohini Lakshané attended “Open Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Our Digital Culture” in Bangalore on August 13, 2015. Major takeaways from the event are documented in this post.

Prof. Eben Moglen on FOSS and entrepreneurship

  • The culture of business in the 21st century needs open source software or free software because there is one Internet governed by one set of rules, protocols and APIs that make it possible for us to interact with each another. The Internet made everybody interdependent on everybody else. Startup culture needs free and open source software (FOSS) because startups are an insurgency, a guerrilla activity in business. The incumbents in a capitalistic world dislikes competition and detests that existing resources, such as FOSS, enable insurgents to circumvent some of the steep curve that they had to climb in order to become incumbents.
  • Hardware is developing in ways that make the idea of proprietary development of software obsolete. There is no large producer of proprietary software that isn’t also dependent on FOSS. Microsoft Cloud is based on deployments that do not use Windows but are based on FOSS. The era of Android as a semi-closed, semi-proprietary form of FOSS is over. Big and small companies around the world are exploiting the open source nature of Android.
  • Free software is a renewable resource not a commodity. Management is needed to avoid over-consumption or destruction of the FOSS ecosystem. Software is to the 21st century economic life what coal, steel, and rare earth metals were at the end of the previous century.
  • FOSS turned out to be about developing human brains. It turned out to be about using human intelligence in software better. Earlier universities, engineering colleges and research institutions were the greatest manufacturers and users of FOSS. Now businesses of all sizes are.
  • When Richard Stallman and Prof. Eben Moglen set out to make GPL free, they initiated a large public discussion process, the primary goal of which was to ensure that individual developers have as much right to talk and to be heard as loudly as the largest firms in the world. At the end of the negotiation process, 35 or 36 of the largest patent holders in the IT industry accepted the basic agreement to be a part of the commons. — Incumbents like people to pay for a seat at the table. Paying to have an opinion is a pretty serious part of the landscape of the patent system.

Prof. Eben Moglen on Digital India

  • Every e-governance project that the Indian government buys should use FOSS. The very nature of the way the citizens and governments interact can come to be mediated by software that people can read, understand, modify, and improve. An enormous ecosystem will come up — a kind of public–private partnership (PPP) in the improvement of governance and government services, which is far more useful than most other forms of PPP conceptualised in the developed world in the 20th century.
  • Everybody has a stake in the success of this policy. Several corporations are working against this policy as they once stated that they do not need FOSS.
  • The biggest market for both making and consuming software in the world is in India, because the science done here will dominate global software making, which in turn will define how the Internet works, which in turn will define society. One can’t develop the largest society on earth by reinventing the wheel. The government is going to understand that only the sharing of knowledge and the sharing of forms of inventing would enable the largest society in the world to develop itself freely and take its place in the forefront of digital humanity.
  • If every state government’s data centre across India is going to be turned into a cloud, one state might have VMWare, another might have AWS, and so on, it would be disastrous. To prevent this, all e-governance activities of every state government and federal agency in India could be conducted in one, big, homogeneous Indian cloud. This would enable utility computing across the country for all citizens, which would also make room for citizen computing to happen. When one moves towards architectures of omnipresent utility computing with large amounts of memory flatly available to everybody, one is going to be describing a national computing environment for a billion people. We can’t even begin to model it until we start accomplishing it.
  • Prof. Eben Moglen’s ambition is that there comes a time not very long from now when basic data science is taught in Indian secondary schools. The software is free and all the big data sets are public. A nation of a 100 million data scientists rules the world.

Keith Bergelt on the Open Invention Network

    • Over the past 10 years, Open Invention Network (OIN) has emerged as the largest patent non-aggression community in the history of technology. It has around 1,700 participants and is adding almost 2 participants every day. In the last quarter, OIN had approximately 200 licensees.
    • There is now a cultural transformation where companies are recognising that where OIN members collaborate, they shouldn’t use patents to stop or slow down progress. Where members compete, they choose to invent while utilising defensive patents publications. What we are doing is a patent collaboration and a technical collaboration that exists in major projects around the world.
    • OIN has been making a major effort since January 2015 to spend more time in India and China to be able to ensure that the technological might and expertise represented in the two countries can be a part of the global community, and that global projects can start here. “We can expect to leverage the expertise of the community to be able to drive innovation from here [India and China]. It’s not about IBM investing a billion dollars a year since 1999 and having some birthright to driving the open source initiatives around the world or about Google or Red Hat or anyone else. You have the ability to impact major changes and we want to be able to support you in the name of freedom of action as participants.”

Panel Discussion

Patent Wars and Innovation

  • In the past 5 to 7 years, patent wars in the handset segment of the information technology (IT) market have wasted tens of billions of dollars on litigation, and on raising the price of patent armaments. This patent litigation was purely an economic loss to the IT industry and it contributed nothing. If the patent system strangles invention, non-profit groups, non-commercial bodies, free software makers, and start-ups cannot invent freely.
  • Defensive patent publications, such as those made by IBM, lead to the gross underestimation of the inventive power and output of the company. People are struggling to find something to evaluate the productive output of an entity – startup, micro-industry or macro-industry. Patents are being used inappropriately and it’s part of the corruption of the patent system. Any venture capitalist (VC) who believes that either the innovative capacities or the potential success factors of a start-up are tied to its patents should know that there are only a minuscule number of cases where patents are the differentiator. The differentiators required in order to sustain business are how smart the people are, how quickly they innovate, and how quickly they are able to adapt to complex situations. We see a trend in the US of not equating patents with innovation. The core-developer and hacker communities are largely anti-patent.
  • However, the flip side is that if the FOSS communities do not patent defensively, i.e., acquire and publish patents for their inventions in order to prevent others from getting patents in one jurisdiction or another, patent trolls will eventually encroach on the communities’ inventive output. The only people making money out of this whole process are lawyers. It is slowing down the uptake of technology by creating fears and doubts in the system.
  • FOSS communities didn’t qualify everything produced in the 23 years of (Linus’) Linux, which would have let the service serve as stable prior art, preventing other people from filing patents. We can debate what is patentable subject matter in general or whether software should be patentable, but in the meantime if we can be proactive and file everything that we have in defensive publications and make it accessible to the patent and trademark offices here and around the world, we will have far fewer patents. We need to be activists in making sure that people can’t file patents that are representative of the creativity of a community.
  • The Chinese government has instituted a programme designed to produce defensive publications in order to capture all the inventiveness across their industries, to be able to ensure that the quality of what ultimately gets patented is at least as high.
  • The US has a massive repository called ip.com, which is with every patent examiner of the USPTO.
  • India does not grant software patents as per section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act, but that doesn’t mean that no software patents are being granted. One of the empirical studies conducted by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) in India shows that 98.3% of the [telecom and computing technology] patents granted till 2013 went to multinational corporations. Almost none of the assignees are Indian.
  • In the context of the ongoing patent infringement law suits filed in the Delhi High Court by Ericsson [link]: The Delhi High Court has had a reputation of being very pro-intellectual property from the beginning.
  • Also, there is pressure from trade organisations. In August 2015, Ericsson along with ASSOCHAM invited the Director General of the Competition Commission of India to present a paper about why patents are good. It is essential to determine how the rules of conflict of interest apply here. This is exactly what the pharmaceutical industry would do. The only bodies who would object are Doctors Without Borders (MSF) or some local organisations who realise that high priced patented drugs is not what India needs and that we do not need to have the same IP policy as the US or Japan. We only need a different policy.
  • The Special 301 Report of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is a big sham, and it suggests that India doesn’t have strict enforcement of IP law. India does, unlike China.
  • Accenture has been granted a software patent in India. The patent is about an expert present in a remote location transferring knowledge to somebody who is listening in another location. Universities offering MOOCs, BPOs, and many other services would fall under such a patent. SFLC spent four years trying to fight this patent. The first defence of Accenture’s battery of lawyers was that they won’t use the patent.
  • Patents of very low quality are being bought at very high prices. The tax system or the subsidy system for innovation regards all patents as equal. This is a pricing failure and that should be corrected by other forms of intervention. The pendulum has already begun to swing the other way. Alice Corp was the third consecutive and unanimous ruling by the US Supreme Court that abstract ideas are not patentable. Patent applications pertaining to business methods and algorithms are increasingly being rejected by the USPTO after the ruling.

Prof. Eben Moglen on Facebook:

Facebook is a badly designed technology because there is one Man in the Middle who keeps all the logs. The privacy problem with Facebook is not just about what people post. It’s about surveillance and data mining of web reading behaviour. It is a social danger that ought not to exist. I have said since 2010 is that we can’t forbid it; let’s replace it. It means bringing the web back as a writeable medium for people in an easy way. What I see as next-generation architecture could just as well be described as Tim Burners Lee’s previous generation architecture.

You have to be able to trust the Internet. If you can’t, you are going to be living in the shadow of govt surveillance, corporate surveillance, the fear of identity theft, and so on. We need to be able to explain to people what kind of software they can trust and what kind they can’t. Distributed social networking will happen; it’s not that difficult a problem.

An example of federated networking is Freedombox, a cheap hardware doing router jobs using free software in ways that encourage privacy. The pilot project for Freedombox has been deployed in little villages in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. These routers don’t deliver logs to a thug in a hoodie in Menlo Park.

By Rohini L, Reblogged from the The Centre for Internet and Society Blog.

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Show Me The Money

Who doesn’t remember the famous four words of the 1996 film Jerry Maguire? The relevance of these words encompasses all generations. We look at the rich and mighty with a hint of jealousy, sometimes incredulously , some other times in awe, yet other times perturbed. On the other hand, the poor and downtrodden are subjugated to our pity, dissidence, even repulsion.

Now that makes one thing very clear- more or less or none, but money has the power to trigger our insides.

My husband and I abide by our morning ritual of reading the good,the bad and the ugly, hidden in the dull text of black ink, spread accurately on those beautifully blending 20 crisp peachy pages; unravelling the mystery of this world layer by layer with every sip of our invigorating morning tea. A ritual so intellectually stimulating , consequential in further bonding, has now become a regular phenomenon. Every morning, the message is the same– business ecosystem in its finest form, the mood of the start-ups at its optimistic best. Such positive reinforcements does uplift our spirits but it bewilders us too.

Modi Ji’s “Make In India” mantra began to unfold with the conception of India’s biggest e-commerce space- FLIPKART, by the Bansal duo. And with it started a revolution that took the entire nation by surprise. Since the beginning of last year, every other day(if not every day) ET reflects such a luminous picture of our economy. And the chunk of this positivity comes from the exhilarating news of one start-up after another. Either they have raised a colossal amount in funding, or they have had a path-breaking M&A, or they have been subjected to overwhelming(read ‘obnoxious) valuations.

These recurrent success stories have given birth to a new breed of entrepreneurs- the “COPY CATS” who are mindlessly jumping the bandwagon. They think they have cracked the code behind the success of these new age companies. The keywords are countable- IIT, IIM , e-commerce, m-commerce, angel investor- blend one element with another or all, and your magical potion is ready. And this potion is so potent that it affirms success against all odds. Zomato, TaxiForSure, Flipkart, Snapdeal, ZoRooms- all have been founded by IIT/IIM alumni.

The “me-too” entrepreneurs have a flawless design ready to trap potential investors. The code is a no-brainer though; project a high traction metamorphosing into more investors, subsequently larger funds, perfectly ending into higher valuation.

The silver lining,however, is that crony capitalism is fading and a new crop of optimistic entrepreneurs is mushrooming. No longer you need to be a TATA or an AMBANI to dream big. The new age start-ups and their success stories have infused a new confidence in today’s generation. They can dare to dream, and that too big. Now that’s one promising change in our country’s antediluvian thinking where a farmer’s son could only dream of becoming a farmer, a teacher’s son only a teacher. It is this promising environment that allowed the 18 year old college drop-out from Orissa in 2011 to venture into an unknown territory and build today’s famous OYO rooms in 2013. He’s been in limelight recently for having raised an elephantine amount($100 million) from Japan’s Soft Bank. This definitely is an extremely positive outcome of this start-up culture where no longer fears detain you in realising your truest potential.

Have the zeal, And crack the deal.

The definition of success is,however, very unique to this breed. Ideally a successful business should generate large revenues, handsome profits,employ large no: of people and make a social impact. While a few of these new age start-ups fulfil most of these criteria, the most profound aspect of running any business is not met. Yes, I am talking about PROFIT(in BOLD letters).

Flipkart, Snapdeal, Zomato, are few such organisations worthy of enviable valuations with no profits. If I may elaborate no profits as “million dollar losses”.

SP-CP=Profit, a formula that even my 10 year old understands is of no consequence to the companies of the likes of Flipkart or Snapdeal. We have grown up in an era of brick-and-motor companies. Making purchases online is still an alien concept to me. But what exists pan any business, culture, economy,era is one and only one thing- Profitability. In the quest for scale, profitability is taking a beating. Achieving traction by offering tantalising discounts doesn’t suffice zero profitability.

This is where Media plays the devil’s advocate. It craftily masks the “no-profit” feature of these companies and celebrates their “valuations” (all on paper). It shrewdly creates a larger than life image of these new-age entrepreneurs. It chooses to present to the audience what it wishes them to see and read; featuring them on cover page of leading business papers and magazines. As a result it creates a superficial success story that revolves around raising funds and basking in multi-million valuations. The bigger the funding, the bigger the legend-like stature, the crazier the media frenzy. This creates an environment where these “real” heroes are worshipped by the aspirational youth who are totally smitten by their relentless journey.

What everyone overlooks,however, is the sustainability of these companies who are riding on investor’s money and the dubious mechanism of discounts. And when these companies start to decline in their valuations, it this media that will rip them apart so brutally, so mercilessly.

So does that mean that media shouldn’t give credit where its due? That it shouldn’t encourage and celebrate those who dared to dream, who dared to give a form to their entrepreneurial spirit? Of course it should. It must applaud those took the risks, it must boost their morale, it must glorify their achievements. But it should refrain from painting a picture so perfect.

VCs who today are messiahs to these burgeoning start-ups are enjoying the spectacle with much aplomb. Every time they agree to fund, they gain significant media attention which heightens the public interests manifolds. These VCs are the ultimate gainers in this entire game plan as they create such a promising and utopian environment, thereby painting a surreal picture for these companies, while on an alert all through to making opportunistic exits. They are clever enough to bathe by the bank of this crocodile pond but will never swim in it. An entrepreneur is so enamoured by the VC culture that he fails to read between the lines and accepts the terms so faithfully; in most cases ends up getting short end of the stick. A recent example of this would be when Lane Becker and two of his co-founders sold their $50 million customer service company ‘GetSatisfaction’ to Sprinklr. He unabashedly claimed how the arrangement was nothing short of a fire sale where the VCs happily devoured the chunk of the pie leaving a tiny morsel for the founders.

My learning:”Get investor at your own risk”.

The sharp drop in valuations of new-age ventures in the US and China should be a wake up call for the Indian counterparts. Yelp, a US based restaurant search and review venture, lost its valuation by $5.9 billion from a year ago. The survival of its Indian “me-too” company Zomato which is barely 4% of Yelp’s revenues but a whooping 58% of its valuation, worries me aplenty. Market is going to correct soon and when it does it will take all these new-found companies by storm.

Who has seen tomorrow? How can these valuations be based on what will happen 10 years hence? The promise of tomorrow does not take into account future disruptions or new competition entering the marketplace.As Peter Thiel rightly captures the essence in his book-‘Zero To One’ by stating that companies may create a lot of value, without becoming valuable itself. In same breath he also states that most of a tech company’s value will come only in 10-15 years in future. Mystery of what lies ahead coupled with a loss-making present is indeed alarming. The prime objective of any business is Profit, and it should be given a rightful significance and not allow these insane valuations to steal the show. All this boils down to one and only one understanding-

Business is in profitability,

not in valuations…

Its in sustainability,

not discount mechanisms…

On paper all seems rosy,

But somebody has got to ‘SHOW ME THE MONEY’!!!!

Guest Post by Megha Chopra, Director/Board Member, Rategain

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Next BIG Idea Contest – Your Gateway to North America

Most of the tech businesses today, look at a global reach and expansion. However, it is difficult to achieve this without a strong network, and finances. Also, it does not help if you are an early stage technology startup from India, with a limited customer base – no matter however great the product is. The Next BIG Idea Contest provides an opportunity to tech startups from India, to tap into the most tech-savvy economy i.e, North America. While the US is always the big dream of several entrepreneurs, it is difficult to get there. At the same time, Toronto, Ontario, Canada presents an easier gateway to the larger North American market – being at the heart of the 300 Million strong Mid-West region. Being multi-cultural at heart, Ontario, Canada is open to businesses and entrepreneurs. Also, the cost of doing business is much lower. Abundant with talent, and having a strong pool of tech companies and startup incubators in the Greater Toronto Area, the region provides a great support ecosystem for tech startups to scale.

NBI 2015The Next BIG Idea Contest is a joint initiative of the Government of Ontario, Canada and Ryerson University, Toronto. The contest was conceptualized in 2013, with the objective of identifying promising tech startups from India, and showcasing them in Toronto; largely to provide a platform in North America for these startups, as well as to change the perception that India produces only IT services companies.

The contest is an application based process, where entries are evaluated on the basis of clarity of concept, innovativeness of the idea, development feasibility and the marketability of the product. The winners get selected based on 2 rounds of screening, further to which they are provided a soft-landing in North America, by spending 2 weeks at the DMZ, Canada’s No.1 startup incubator. The winners get exposed to Toronto’s startup ecosystem, get to meet potential partners, do corporate visits, interact with the investor community, business development support, and of-course a lot of startup meets.

The first year saw a minimal outreach, which led to only 23 entries coming in. While the competition was meagre, the winners we got were really good. CitrusPay was then a 15 member team, and was yet to raise its first round. Today, they stand at 180 employees and have raised a couple of rounds of venture funding from renowned firms. The other winners included Sokrati, an ad-tech startup from Pune (which incidentally chose not to go at the last minute), and Digital Ingenuity, a video-indexing startup from Ahmedabad. So, CitrusPay and Digital Ingenuity spent We didn’t even have a back-up for Sokrati because the entries were so poor! This was a massive learning for the contest, going forward.

In the 2nd year, having realised shortcomings from the previous edition, the contest adopted a strategy to work with partners. After all, it is an initiative for the ecosystem – so, collaboration was the way forward. We got great partners in CIIE-IIM Ahmedabad, Kyron Accelerator (Bangalore) and InvestoPad (Gurgaon). Additionally, IBM Global Entrepreneur Program coming on-board as a sponsor partner and the alliance with the NASSCOM 10,000 Startups Program & YourStory, made it a very strongly branded contest. The contest was launched in Mumbai, and roadshows were held at all partner locations. The results were there to see – 227 applications! A 10X jump over the previous edition. After 3 rounds of evaluation, we were left with the top 20 startups, and it was extremely difficult to choose the top-5. The ones that eventually made the cut were AdSparx (Pune), ShieldSquare (Bangalore), Konotor (Chennai), Flip Technologies (Kochi) and Vidooly (NCR). A really great bunch of promising startups. Vidooly recently raised $2.2Million from Bessemer Venture Partners, while AdSparx, ShieldSquare and Konotor have jointly raised in excess of $1.5Million. Flip Technologies went on to get selected by a hardware accelerator in Abu Dhabi. They are fantastic ambassadors for the Next BIG Idea Contest.

In 2015, Next BIG Idea Contest is back bigger than the last year. From 3 partners in 2014, the contest will be launched across 9 cities, with 7 city-based accelerator partners this year. The city-partners are CIIE (Ahmedabad & Pune), Microsoft Ventures (Bangalore), PayPal Start Tank (Chennai), IIIT-H (Hyderabad), Startup Village (Kochi), CIBA (Goa) and 91 Springboard (NCR). NASSCOM 10,000 Startups continues to remain the ecosystem partner, and YourStory as the startup media partner. AWS has replaced IBM as the sponsor partner.

This year, we look forward to an even stronger response from the startup ecosystem in India, and a multifold increase in the entries coming-in. We are excited to showcase the great talent and products emerging from India’s startup ecosystem, to North America; and become the contest to look out for, to startups wanting to enter the North American market.

Oh yeah, and by the way, the contest and the winners trip is fully sponsored. You just need to apply, and show up for the visit, if your startup is selected as a winner.

Guest blog post by Ajay Ramasubramaniam, Zone Startups

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India innovated and celebrated @Inno_fest #IndiaCanInnovate

With whatever little humility we can garner, we created a platform for showcasing, inspiring, and celebrating innovation in India – in less than 27 days!!

20931485302_e541c3daaf_bWith the awesome support from our partners, sponsors, believers, dreamers, creators, speakers, patrons, volunteers and each and every one who was a part of InnoFest – we rocked it J

You asked us – Why the focus on Innovation?

Well, the trigger for this innovating idea was a little report that caught our eye. Our entrepreneurship deficit has grown while our innovation deficit is slipping. If we don’t build our innovation capability, two things will happen. First, we will not be able to solve the myriad problems that are specific to India. Second, our current national winners like Flipkart and Ola might lose out to their global competitors over time.

And how do we address the Innovation deficit?

There is no shortage of imagination and creativity in India. We need to build our skills where this imagination and creativity is applied to generate unique solutions to local problems. To give innovation scale – to make it grow; to inspire young minds to innovate…

Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder of iSPIRT and Co-Convenor of Innofest, said that “If companies can innovate and transform their functioning and performance radically, why can’t countries? The idea of Innofest is to distil the best ideas in enterprise and inspire individuals, corporates and Government organizations to take innovation to the common man. We are delighted that the Government has stepped in, in a big way to enable this transformation and this cooperation between public bodies and private enterprises will lay the foundation for radical transformation in the country.”

And… we were pleasantly shocked (that is not a phrase, I know :).

From robots and cars to 3D chocolates: we saw it all !!! (Click here for the complete array of displays that were a part of innovation).

Innofest was a phenomenal success. We reached the message via TV (CNBC Awaaz), RadioCity, Hoardings, and most importantly social media to over half a million individuals across the country. Over 1200 participants attended Innofest and immersed themselves into activities like maker-space, experience zone, young innovator’s zone, etc. The team curated and showcased over 75+ innovations from across India that ranged from an 11-year boy who had developed a mobile charger to Team Indus who are building a spacecraft that will go to the moon. The main session with our patrons – Nandan Nilekani, Mohandas Pai, Jayant Sinha, and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw was a huge hit with some of the most inspiring speeches one could experience(Videos shared below). Of course, Minister Babul Supriyo’s singing and dancing was just the finale that Innofest deserved.

A team of 10 committed and highly enthused volunteers – spread across 5 Indian cities – worked remotely and delivered Innofest 2015. And how…

The craziness of schedules, deadlines, and record turn-around times was exhausting yet exhilarating to the core… From media, sponsorships and venue discussions to the unlikely innovations that we experienced – it was indeed an unforgettable experience for each one of us.

And not surprisingly, we have been flooded with requests from all parts of the country – from individuals/companies/cities, offering to host the next Innofest – and it feels good and satisfying …

20948742491_2e3fe98f8e_bWhile we go about thinking what to do – this is a call for volunteers for our next. We anticipate it to only get bigger and better and we will need all the help that we can… because we cannot create this magic without YOU.

Do let us know how you can help us. Think.Innovate.

#IndiaCanInnovate.

Just let us know 🙂

Guest Post contributed by Ritika Singh, Proud Volunteer for Innofest

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As somebody rightly said “it was all a notion but hey, its innovation now”

What’s more, when you give this notion a Woodstock fever! That would be Innofest’2015. My participation was courtesy iSPIRT and Avinash, with whom I was interacting for my startup. One thing lead to another, and like a typical startup guy, I asked for a discount. Voila, got a free pass.

So, the day was 22nd August, a Saturday; excitement was there in the air, I am still at home but the thought of meeting fellow entrepreneurs along with rockstars of the startup world was good enough a reason to put that extra zeal on my steps.

And then, I reached the Venue – IISc, one of the best campuses to have a Woodstock for Innovation. One could get a glimpse of what’s- in-store – we see a band tuning-up their instruments center stage; the batmobile; the crew in their black T-shirts going about giving a final touch to the venue. But the black T-shirts were for real and they were the volunteers who had put the InnoFest event together and I was told – in less than 27 days!!. True startup spirit this J

The registration was smooth – go to the designated counter, pick your tag, go online.

Yes, we were provided with wifi, and it helped a lot of participants, especially students. And there were quite a lot of them who had traveled from Pune, Hyderabad and New Delhi just to attend the event. The sheer number of youngsters that participated showed the startup spirit that the country is experiencing. I interacted with few of them; they were 2nd year, 3rd year students. Gone are the days when they were worried about only grades; now they are worried about the next big thing and identify themselves as the ones who can lead it.

Once inside, there were booths showcasing various products, I was particularly interested in hearing the discussions by, as I mentioned “rockstars” of the ecosystem, and that was happening in Hall C. And I was hanging around the venue. But then, you can’t keep your curiosity down when you see an exhibition area and some strange things hanging from the trees. The exhibition area was showcasing some of the best products that the young minds had developed. I didn’t venture inside all the arenas but it was jam packed, felt like I was in a ‘mela’ where the kids are intrigued by everything that they see but here it was students and grownups showing the same spirit and instead of the usual ‘throw the ring,’ it was all about technology. The discussions were very informative and in a different format. It was packed; every inch of the hall was occupied so much so, that the black T-shirts had to become bouncers to get the speakers to the podium. The discussion varied from – where are the cut-copy-paste ventures heading to the scope of product manufacturing in India. Manufacturing would be the next thing that India will experience, fuelled by product innovation. Be it making 60k chapatis in one hour, i.e., a 1000 chapatis a minute by Akshaya Patra or 3D printing of a knee joint. Again as Mr. Shridhar Venkat, CEO- Akshaya Patra, said, it started with a jugaad but now it has become an invention. And Mr. Kunal Shah, CEO-Freecharge, reaffirmed “ a jugaad/ hack becomes an innovation when it works”. Think audacious but be smart.

Through the afternoon, there were different DIY camps around the venue and workshops on crowd funding etc.. Once outside the Hall C, I thought I will explore a little, that’s when I heard someone strumming the guitar and singing the blues. I went in the direction of the sound only to discover that I can have my lunch and listen to him. Perfect. And if you are not into live music there was a Dj mixing up a deep house. Just when I was thinking ‘all in all a good day’, there were people milling about the main auditorium and realized it’s not yet over, the heavy weights who started the startup revolution and put India on the world map were yet to address. Mr. Jayant Sinha, Prof. Anurag Kumar, Mr. Nandan Nilakani, Mr. Mohan Das Pai, Mr. Sharad Sharma, Smt. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Dr. Kshatrapati Shivaji, and Mr. Babul Supriyo. And I expected serious power talk by these gurus, instead it was a combination of power talk, motivation, humor and out right Woodstock when Mr. Babul Supriyo took the auditorium by storm with his songs combining it with witty one liners. One never expected the heavy weights to let their hair down and take a jibe on one another, be it, ‘I was asked to come for one hour a month back to discuss something and I am still here’ or ‘Ministry will work on subsidy for the entrepreneur ecosystem but you will become rich’ or Mr. Babul Supriyo asking Mr. Jayant Sinha ‘are you texting the center that Babul Supriyo is going to sing, again’ !!

Disruption – what they did and that is what innovation is all about.

It was clear from the interactions, events and speakers that India is experiencing a mammoth change in the field of technology innovation and everybody – the policy makers or rock star entrepreneurs or the heavy weights – all of them are supporting it in whichever way they could. Innofest’2015 was one such event to bring all the stakeholders on one platform and celebrate a notion that will become innovation tomorrow.

It was one the best initiatives that I had attended; the only thing that I missed was tasting the ‘3D printed chocolates.’

There’s always a next time J

Guest Post by Rajesh K, ProgrammedV

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Innovation @ Innofest 2015

Here is small write-ups of stalls I visited and could relate better with innovations at stalls@Innofest. Wish that innovation stalls were open for viewing by public,children and youngsters. Captured innovations to share and motivate readers to dream.

Let me start with TeamIndus, prototype design and aerial vehicle. Young guys have been able to innovated on large scale and serve as motivation for all to dream big and achieve.They stand to demonstrate that fundamental innovation can happen in India too.

Kisan Raja , powerAdapter to enable farmers to swtich on motor pumps in the field from his home and save the effort to walk across a long distance.

Visited stalls of 3D printers PRAMAAN and PRAMAAN-Mini. Learnt  what items can be made with 3D printers and raw materials used to create items like keychain, table tops, flower pots. Wish the innovators work to enable audience to relate to product easily, something like create some pre-designed items, make items and share with audience to take home(for charge). Connected auidience has ability to share with more people.

vSkin is a wearable glove to creates a sense of touch on the users’ fingers in a virtual setting.  One can feel the hand movements while working with a digital piano or use glove as part of video conferencing calls to perform remote handshake. The innovators are currently in age group of 19 to 22 years.

Tesseract is a Virtual Reality headset. The prototype headset works with content created or stored on a laptop; new ones work with mobile phones also. Wish Tesseract becomes complimentary item with XBox for customers to think about. They have sourced optics from China, acrylic lens from India and manudactured in China.

RideLogik helps with charging base for the smartphone. Wish they provide more value propositions around the vehicle efficiency and performance. Though they can integrate with any vehicle that runs based on electronic control unit, their focus is 2-Wheelers. They need to develop channels to reach existing 2-wheeler owners.

Found innovation of insulin pen to enable diabetes patients to take care of their health better more connected at ground level.The innovator has patent filed In India.
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Shrishti  has displayed multiple innovative items. Though I am not covering all of them, I would like to cover the chair they have made using old newspaper. This chair can be used for outdoor purpose too and would not spoil in rain.  A means for paperwallas to become furniture makers? Here is my photo on the chair to say that chair was stable with my body weight.
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Plugzee is device to turn any audio speaker system into a Bluetooth speaker. The device plugs into the 3.5 mm audio jack of speaker & lets you stream music wirelessly by Bluetooth pairing with a smartphone. They have leveraged crowsourcing to transform innovation to reality. Already started to ship last week- that is nice.

For more innovative items present in the stall, please check Madan article Passion and policy – startups and ministers at InnoFest 2015!

Guest Post contributed by Srinivasan

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Promote innovation and entrepreneurship to achieve sustainable economic growth

We are at a profound moment in India’s history. We have a young and energetic workforce, a robust macroeconomy and a strong leadership at the Centre. This is our chance to power India forward. A key aspect for achieving sustainable economic growth and providing jobs to our youth is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to do more to enable our young people to think creatively, create innovative solutions, and take them to market and achieve global scale.

The government is committed to creating a supportive environment for innovators and entrepreneurs. Major initiatives such as smart cities, direct benefits transfer and ‘Digital India’ will create a large, domestic market for innovative products and services. Additionally, streamlined policies, new infrastructure and an overall thrust on fast-tracking innovative ideas through public, private and public-private initiatives will see more innovations hitting the market.

Indians are known for their ingenuity. Our creative thinking, when applied to problem-solving using meagre and locally available resources, Jugaad, is universally recognised.

The number of innovations highlighted by the National Innovation Foundation are an eye-opener to the innovative thinking that Indians bring to play while solving problems. Anumber of these innovations are centred on addressing issues in rural India, which can tremendously impact our economy and society.

Over 750 MNCs have their R&D centres in India. Many of these are creating products and solutions for global markets. India is where the zero, cataract and plastic surgery, high quality crucible steel, buttons, ink, and rulers were invented. So, despite such a rich history, why is India today not Innovation Nation?

Our innovations have largely been about affordability and designing solutions for local problems by making incremental changes in existing products and solutions. We have focused on process and price, not enough on product innovation. Examples of innovation abound: cheaper and faster drug discoveries; faster and better ways of creating software to make air travel safer; modifying existing farm tractors as a rural transportation solution; lowering telecom prices; organising over 3.6 million small milk producers in a cooperative movement and creating a global dairy brand; fighting hunger and malnutrition by using technology and forging strategic partnerships; Mumbai’s ‘dabbawalas’ delivering lakhs of meals to people with a home-grown, un-automated process with precision; and more.

But this innovation is often not apparent to the world, because it is usually localised and not scaled up. We need to encourage innovators to scale up their solutions to global levels, particularly in the developed world. The government’s new policies and programmes are designed to make it easier for innovators to find larger markets for their solutions and products.

Today, we need a two-pronged approach: one, encouraging and enabling more product innovation; two, facilitating innovators to scale up their solutions for commercial success or social good. To that end, we require a grassroots-driven movement that will celebrate and inspire entrepreneurship.

Many ecosystem players, such as the Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable (iSPIRT), the Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi), the department of science and technology (DST), the tech startup accelerator TLabs, the Indian Institute of Science, the 10,000 Startups initiative of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), Paytm, Practo and the Anita Borg Institute, are coming together in Bengaluru on August 22 at Innofest to jumpstart this process.

In tandem with the just-announced ‘Start Up India, Stand up India’, the India Aspiration Fund and the Atal Innovation Mission are encouraging startups like never before.

Guest Post by Sh. Jayant Sinha, Union minister of State for Finance. This article was first published in ET

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India Inc’s Innovators Are Setting The Stage For The Ecosystem

Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple Inc and one of the greatest innovator from the tech world, believed that innovation was the only way to win, and by no means did he just see innovation in making things more complex. An advocate of simplicity, he also reiterated, “Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.” That’s why we, at GHV, believe “Innovation is not just doing something new. Sometimes it means pushing the existing more powerfully and elegantly.”

Innovation or doing things differently is something that has set the momentum of the “startup scene” in India. It is because of thinking differently, the “old wine in a new bottle” syndrome that has revamped and fuelled the success of top startups in the country today. Innovation is all about bringing something new and exciting to the customer. Given the cutthroat competition in the market today, innovative products and ideas are the key to differentiating yourself from others in the race.

Successful businesses often anticipate future trends and develop an idea, product or service that allows them to meet this future demand rapidly and effectively. It is not just about fulfilling the pain points of the consumers, but also being able to preempt the future needs of the consumers before they even feel them. In essence, predicting and fulfilling a future void and working on its solution in the present, staying ahead of the curve. Innovation can help you stay ahead of your competition as markets, technologies or trends shift, thereby giving you a definite edge.

This year, India has slipped 10 places in the Global Innovation Index to a disappointing 76th position. Imagine what we can accomplish as a nation if more people were to focus on innovation. We can easily transition to become a nation of job creators than job seekers.

Renowned global brands like 3M, GE, Lego, Nestlé, Pepsi and Starbucks are all from different industries, but have been constantly innovating their products. These companies have successfully created and supported an internal innovation capability that drives new products into the marketplace year after year with remarkable success. In fact, the very reason behind their success is that they made innovation a critical capability within their organisations. These companies recognised innovation as a key driver for success by enhancing the value that the business was delivering to customers.

With Indians like Nikesh Arora and Sundar Pichai, leading the heavy weight ‘innovating’ companies like SoftBank and Google, we are looking at a complete change in the way India and Indians are perceived globally; whether it is Indra Nooyi, Satya Nadella, Ajay Banga or Shantanu Narayen.

Innovation helps large companies survive challenges. According to Clayton Christensen, disruptive innovation is the key to future success in business. For companies to become market leaders and retain that position, they have no choice but to innovate and disrupt an existing technology or market by recognising opportunities.

For example, Patym had revolutionised mobile commerce in India. Earlier, people were wary of storing their debit or credit card information online. The company created a secure digital wallet where a user can put in a small amount without threat of online and credit card fraud. The payment solutions provider uses an RBI approved semi-closed wallet that is being used everywhere, right from Domino’s Pizza to Zivame to Uber. The company now has over 80 Mn mobile wallets and more than 15 million orders per month.

Innovation is that one thing that all successful businesses worldwide have in common. Innovation is a part of their culture… it’s in their DNA.

To foster a spirit of innovation in today’s youth, iSPIRT is hosting InnoFest, a daylong event focused on kick starting the next wave of innovation in the country. The event to be held at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on 22ndAugust 2015, will offer young innovators a platform to present their ideas and interact with like-minded people from across the country. The daylong fest is meant to celebrate innovation and bring forward ideas that can become game changers for the nation.

Guest Post by Vikram Upadhyaya

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The Secret Sauce Of Networking Success

On a page of the daily, I saw Mr. Obama shaking hands with a young man at the back of a handful of fans hammering into the president. The young man seemed to be at a height of euphoria and the president almost being dragged by his securities away from the crowd. Pragmatically, there is no correlation between sales and a presidential Campaign, but the image made me think of the essence of successful networking. The American president has certainly nothing much to do with a “Metal Freak” looking young man at his twenties, but he took the pain to be dragged by his bodyguards just to shake his hands!

Approach is the Essence

Approach

What approach to take?

Your approach is the basics of networking because it is what that determines how you network. Your aim is not just to make the sale; your aim is to build a relationship — this must be the central theme of your approach to networking. It is the mindset most appropriate to formulate a plan of action, which is the blue print of successful networking. Adopting this mindset will shape up the businessperson in you, while focusing only on short term goals will make you just another “Street-Smart” sales man.

Do not Dismiss Anyone as Unimportant

With a holistic approach towards your responsibility, enlarge your circle of influence. Consider your clients not by what their position is, but by who they are. The best way to attain this is to realize that: You do not know much about them. Therefore, you need to approach every person who can be contacted. Networking is more than a point-to-point connection; it is a Relationship Cloud of accumulated information. Taking with people offers a vantage to reach other potential buyers on their network, even if they themselves might not be interested.

Creating Demand

creating demand

People need you. But do they know how helpful you could be to them?

Creating your demand when you have none is the key to build contextual relationships. I call it Contextual because networking is driven by objective; else, it would be just seeking help from friends. Demand is created by offering something, which is needed by your counterpart. Therefore, before trying to get something from the person, try to give him something that they value. Find out the ways you can be of help to them, there will be just no way to deny your proposal. Asking, “How can I help you?” before closing any deal results in surprising outcomes. Successful Networkers offers more than they receive.

Attitude Matters a Lot!

Emotional intelligence plays a major role in any business relationship. Being emotionally intelligent is about how much you value your client. Offer genuine answers to every question of your client and make transparency your benchmark.

This creates trust, which itself is a “feel good” factor. Your attitude and behavior are the parameters that determine the perceptions about your personality. Be generous and kind, always maintaining a persuasive but mild tone. Be more open, friendly and honest.

In a nutshell, to be successful in networking, one must know how to grow a relationship and build a self brand through your business interaction. A sales person must be such that people just cannot deny what he or she brings. After all, selling starts from building successful relationships.

Guest Post by Ajay Chauhan, co-founder, Salezshark inc.

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Free Open Software and Growing Entrepreneurship Climate in India

“Imagine if Mathematics was owned by corporates and every time you wanted to use it you had to buy some from a corporate!” started Eben Moglan, Founder of Software Freedom Law Centre at the Open Innovation and our Digital Future Lecture series organised by iSPIRT. It was definitely a thought provoking preview of the work that is taking place in India in the space of Free Open Source Software with Moglan emphasising the need to create a viable environment for an alternative legal scenario for the growing start ups in India. If Make in India has to be a success it is pertinent that start ups not only have feasible options of protecting their knowledge but more importantly are not infringing the big corporates patents. For the growing entrepreneurial system the system of patents is not only dampening but also acts as a growth step towards fund raising albeit detrimentally. While corporates file patents to demonstrate hold over knowledge in the past few years this has led to patents over software suits that impacts open source creation adversely.

SFLC and OIN are working towards shifting the game and ensuring that start ups have effective legal counsel available to not only create long term strategies but also to have access to defensive patent pool. Keith Berglt, CEO, OIN made a pertinent point when he said that the advantage that a start up needs is access to global patents to work with while they hack new solutions to global problems. With the emerging world of big data and the scope of solution creation from big data analysis is going to lead how Intellectual Property Laws of India are interpreted and eventually amended to feature in the innovative approaches of start ups. While the legal system holds IP close to its chest Mishi Choudhary, Legal Director, SFLC pointed out that the government is keen on defining start up specific legal mandates and modalities.

The realm of possibilities that open up for hackers creating solutions for todays problems is boundless when the team doesn’t have to die a thousand deaths at the hand of protracted patent defence suits! Whether or not big corporations will move towards releasing their grips over knowledge and creations through softwares has to be waited out but open source innovations are going to pave the way for future solutions in India, especially with low cost solutions, and need a better support mechanism. The Digital India mission needs open source creations to fuel remote learning mechanisms which in turn requires a robust structure that allows hacks in the existing software architectures.

It was only befitting that Moglan closed the discussion on how models like facebook need to be replaced with distributed data models equalling it with the power that open sharing contains over capitalist ownership.

Post contributed by Megha Sharma Bhagat

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What I got from the pre-entrepreneur bootcamp called iKEN.

I started this journey with a jolt this January, when I got laid off from my job as a Manager at a big MNC. In the notice period, they did offer me many other roles, one of which got finalized and was about to accept, but something in me kept telling me to use this opportunity to fulfill the startup dream that I was dreaming for a long  time.

First there is a bit of flashback. I came from humble background and during final  stages of engineering had to sustain myself and to get enough money to come to Bangalore. It is during those days I got hold of telephone coin box ads and became a reseller of them in the remote region of Karnataka. Within few months I made enough money to get through engineering and landed up in Bangalore. While the journey in software industry has been great and it provided me a huge exposure, I have often wondered what would have happened, if I had pursued the coin box business. That is the reason; I never brought EMI obligations on myself and kept myself relatively free to startup.

So I quickly connected with a friend with whom I shared a common passion of fitness. Started working on a software product (SaaS) idea for gyms. Our plan was to spend a year building the product and see where it goes. So in a way not a great plan. That is when I heard about the pre-entrepreneur bootcamp called iKEN from iSPIRT and duly signed up.

In the hindsight it was one of the best decisions I took. The program itself was great, I learned a lot, but I was struggling in the class and didn’t/couldn’t complete many tasks specially ones focusing on the customer specs  and asks. Meanwhile things unraveled with my co-founder as well and I realized  that he isn’t ready to quit the job and we parted ways in a civil way. With things  back to square one I started thinking very hard about the whole thing. Everyone in  the batch from anchors (Prasanna, Rajan and Manjula) to fellow batch mates was trying to get me back on the trail.

Finally a hard, blunt discussion with Milindh a fellow batch-mate who asked me really hard questions made me wake up and I started applying the fundamentals that the boot camp tries to focus on.

First one was “What I know, who I know what I have”. I realized building software product with high-end technology is not my strong point and my biggest skill is selling things to folks. My telephone coin box experience was a good memory and  data point for this.

Second was the “bird in the hand principle”. I realized that while the gym software is a viable product, I didn’t really have the money until the product is ready which  could take months and will burn lot of money without a technology person on  board. My “affordable loss” at this time was only the opportunity cost and not  anything more.

So at around 9th week of the program (it is a 10 week program and I didn’t graduate), I simply decided to drop the idea and went back to the drawing board. I realized one of the problems that I was constantly facing was getting a water can delivered to home. There are just too many delays and multiple folks to call to get it  delivered. Most were unorganized and tracking them was very hard. I realized I  could potentially make this process simple smooth and efficient. What’s more? This could be a cash generating business very quickly.

Armed with this theory, I literally hit the road on my two-wheeler, chased down the water delivery guys, met factory folks and many corporates. It was an immense and  exhausting field research but the amount of real data I had convinced me that I am  on the right path, so I sat down and set up a website (www.bookacan.com) and started delivering to my first few customers. There is huge “co-creation” happening  with delivery guys and factories. I am happy to announce I have a steady business  now and lot of new things in the plan.

While I understand it is a long journey before I call it a success, I am happy that I  reached the clarity needed and am up and running. Please check my project at www.bookacan.com and drop me a line if you are interested in collaborating and co-creating.

Contributed by Prabhu Stavarmath, BookACan

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A Day In Radha’s Life @ Innofest ‘15

innofest_logoThe stage is set, I have received my invite to Innofest’15 and look forward to the day with great anticipation. I have just completed my engineering degree from Davanagere, and have received two offers, both through campus interviews. Both seem interesting, and both are in technology, after all thats where everything is today.

And yet! I am not sure if thats where i want to be. You see, i have this dream. I have this idea of creating an instant water purifier pen. You put the pen into a glass or a bottle of water, and electronic pulses instantly destroy all germs in the water, turning it safe. Even a child can drink it. Imagine what it would do to the lives and productivity of all those millions who don’t have access to quality drinking water.

I dearly want to create this product. Do i have all i need to bring it to life? Do i know everything i need to get going? Will my being in Davanagere allow me to reach out to everybody i need to?

Thats when I heard of Innofest, a new grass root movement and festival of innovation. Reverie over, back to the air-conditioned weather of Bengaluru, in an UUla cab from aunty’s home to IISC. Always amazed at how green this city is. And wondering if Bharat, the founder of UUla, uses his own product? Well, i will ask him that as I have signed up for a hands-on workshop with him this morning.

Lots of excited faces. We head to the zone, and are immediately hit by the brilliant arty stuff that decorates the venue. Lovely, innovative, bright stuff, that seems to ring fence the entire venue. There is the torn jeans that Bharat first made his passionate pitch to taxi drivers in Rhennai in.

And that half chewed pencil bears mute testimony to Mansal’s mood as he made the pitch that got him his first 100K in funding. I am pleased to find they seem to be a tapestry of history of entrepreneurship. Hey, they are the kinda cool gang i would love to be a part of. Make a mental note to save all my torn jeans…

See the Showcase zone and the Google Lunar X-Prize contenders, the one and only Team Indus – what a coup it would be if they got the $30Million purse on offer if they put a vehicle on the moon by December 31st? They are the final three shortlisted globally. Who says its all about getting billions of dollars in funding? This is as much about the pride of india as it is the future of India.

A tune. from a flute. Whats that? A youngish dude playing the flute surrounded by ardent fans? Over a steaming kulhar chai with him, I find out his name is Hari Prasad, and he’s trying to create a tourism destination out of every town in india. Do you know each of the 800 districts has its own tourist attractions, customs, food, clothes and artefacts that can be very beautiful? Talk about stimulating conversations, and he’s not too bad looking…

At the UUla workshop- chap sitting next seems interesting, so start talking.. He’s is from Ramgarh- and i immediately ask him, so do you have Gabbar’s autograph?He bursts out laughing…. UUla is so intriguing. Ever heard of a cab company that doesn’t own a single car. I haven’t. So how does it work? Get into the nitty gritties, And guess what, impress Bharat enough to get a meeting with him to present my idea next week. Zowie, things are moving for me.

After the UUla workshop, which clarified a few of my financial thoughts and closed out a few open loops in my mind, i ask Ram what else is there to see. Well, turn out, there’s more, so much more.

For instance, Makerspace which is just behind the main auditorium where I walk towards for the unveiling of the grants. There are some 3D printer demos that seem exciting. I make myself a thunderbolt, like an Indra’s vajra or Zeus- some thing about Innofest makes me feel like “I have the power”.

And the day progresses. And things continue to happen. And i keep getting hit with high after high. Finally, end of day. 100 meetings and 100,000 ideas richer, I head back, abuzz, on a high. Will I be able to sleep? I know not. However, I do know where I am headed. And let me give you a hint. Both of my prospective employers are going to be disappointed.