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Scaling Revenue Roundtable

Enterprise Sales, Marketing & Inside Sales Team Build Out, First International Customers Acquisition, Enterprise Pricing etc. I understand, we have heard these topics in multiple events & conferences, so why this round table be different? The difference is gyan vs hearing from real person with real experience which sometimes exactly what you want to hear, even reading 10 books will not help compared to one line coming from a CEO who has done it over and over again and seen the success.

AiAfOYoopNK2-JpnERWxOZdUFD5vPYd5ajC8OOkJg_tPIn this Round table, Aneesh was leading and moderating the discussion. He leveraged the experience of other founders which made the most out of few hrs of interaction. The participants are founders of mid-stage startups, who have good-size customers and have decent ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue), growing and scaling.

This blog narrates the learning in the form of Q&A.

How to establish a meaningful and sustaining Partnership for your B2B enterprise business and grow your business?

  • Partner are those who have done similar product sales in medium/large scale before, so ask them for their sales targets (region wise) and their profile of B2B partnership in their existing set up. That is a good validation point for partnership. {It is like validating by their current and past experience in partnership}
  • Partners could be the companies who are into services (in your industry vertical like healthcare or retail etc) and likes to have monthly revenues.
  • If your product sit on top of other product and integrates then go for a partnership program to the base product. For instance, if your product complements or built on top of Salesforce, then you can enroll in Salesforce has AppExchange program wherein you can list your product and generate good visibility and leads. Partners, could be the product that your software compliments or built upon it.
  • Partners could be the implementation companies of the product that your product built on or compliment. Say your software built on Salesforce, then the service companies who are implementing Salesforce solution could be your partners.
  • You could also go for two-way partnership, like I push your product and you push mine, sometimes one partner performs a lot better than the other, in that case, be open and refine the terms as you go in the journey.
  • If you are enrolling in partnership programs from large companies like IBM, Salesforce etc and see if you can use their promotion events and brand your product, many gives a free offer for promotion. You might end up in getting leads worth a lot that might seems impossible to generate by the solo marketing you do on your own.  These large companies also have paid outreach which has high outreach and see if it is worth investing.
  • Incubator and Accelerator, if you are part of any incubation center or accelerator that helps a lot in getting the right partnership e.g  Microsoft accelerator
  • How to bring transparency in partnership? You might also want to try “Lead Protection Program” which creates 100% transparency in the leads generated, let your partners enter the leads in your CRM & both of you can track the status and you can also make sure that right analytics are coming out.
  • If the partners are asking for exclusivity, ask for minimum guarantee e.g 30 qualified leads per quarter per area
  • Partnership takes time to achieve, so keep experimenting, be conservative and go slow, do a some sort of pilot before you sign larger partnership contract. And ready to fail as it takes time to get into right partnership.

AtT1H_5g3UkqxqIvC6jRlOknnwXUZPnMjQ0GkhyzAymFHow to acquire customers in new international market?

  • You can go with the existing customers and if they have business overseas then you can approach them for the initial open door to international market.
  • Another suggestion is to participate in events and have a booth or something so your product gets exposure and you might end-up in getting partners or customers
  • LinkedIn is a great source to find first few pilot customers in that region.
  • Overseas partnership also you can explore using LinkedIn or Quora, but it is not that easy to find viable partnership
  • And also cold calling for opening doors also worked for few startups.
  • If your product is like B2C then publishing in appstore, Appstore marketing, google adwords would be a good start, but if you are in B2B and enterprise sales, then the steps mentioned in the beginning are the way to go.
  • Once you have handful of customers internationally, select a country where you could open a small sales team may be start with one or two guys and these guys need not be very senior like VP level, 2 yrs to 5 yrs exp and they have to work with India Sales team parallaly. You might need to travel and stay there for a while for initial years to establish a sales pattern oversees.

Ar3dOzl_O6w-FGfJzAg_J7VarpANJbdP-uJ4bFiora6FHow is to do pricing for your product?

  • See your competitor price and product features and how much it solves the customer problem, how your product makes them dependable, this combination will help you to arrive at pricing.
  • If your product a lot better than your competitor, do not lower your price to compete, you need to stay at a price tag for the right product.
  • If your product does not have India based competitor, see the US pricing and create some kind of benchmark value to arrive your pricing.
  • You can have different packaging but not too many, max 3 to 4.
  • You kind of have to experiment with pricing, for e.g one of the enterprise product was priced it 5k for the first few customer during pilot (initial years) and when they need to sell the product in the second year to a bigger organization, they tried quoting 1L and end up in selling at 60k.  So you need to try and see how market is reacting for your new pricing, first few year keep experimenting, you will be able to arrive at pricing between 1 to 3 yrs if not before.
  • When you sell enterprise product, make the price attractive in the pilot stage and after showing the desired results, you can go for high price and the customers would not mind paying it as they have seen the results which impacted their top line.
  • The pricing could be geography based and can be different. And again, find the right pricing by seeing your competitor and demand in that market.
  • If you want to give freemium version, give it free but let the customer give you some kind of asset that you can use for your business like marketing or brand building. For e.g refer 2 friends to get the free version or share in your facebook page to get the access. Some kind of exchange of benefits for freemium version.

What is the most painful growth in the entire journey of the startup?

  • 1M to 5M growth is the most painful where you are likely to make mistakes
  • While growing fast, you need to be careful when reaching to new markets, not all regions works great for your product. US need not be the best market for all products. If you have invested in one region and seems like it is not working, then shutdown and alternate your sales strategy in overseas.
  • Please refer “acquiring customers in new international market” for more details.

How to upsell and cross-sell to your existing customers?

  • There are two ways, first upsell more apps/ additional features to the same customer
  • Second is find out other departments or other sister organization and do a cross sell
  • An customer account is usually handled by an account manager, the upsell/cross sell need be done by different person say group account manager.
  • Every group account manager handles multiple accounts, like 5 to 10 accounts, is responsible for upselling. The account manager finds opportunities for upsell. Do not mix up the account manager dealing with customer on day-to-day basis to do upsell as the negotiation will become very tricky otherwise.

How to give discounts to the customers in SaaS product?

  • The discounts needs to be distributed, do not give them at one go.
  • For instance, do a yearly subscription with 2 months off. Those two months are going to be 11th and 12th month. So incase they leave in 6 months, these discounts does not qualify.
  • Another way you could spread across 3 years like 3rd month, 6th month off, 22th month off for discounts.

How much is the typical yearly renewal increase in ARR for the Enterprise Product?

  • 8 to 10%
  • We need to say 10% increase is very common and if the customer creeps, bring down to 8%

How to get testimonials and referrals?

  • Usually testimonials are done after building a strong relationship with a customer. Usually after 1 or 2 years. Make sure that the account managers and CXO’s of the company has a good relation built with customers to ask for testimonials. Once you establish those soft links, whenever the customer delightness go very high and initiate the process. e.g Release of product feature which solves one of their pain point which the customer demanded for a while.
  • Another idea is to mention this in the subscription or contract time itself. Suppose if the customer is asking for discounts then you can tell him that you can enroll in the “Loyalty Program”  in which you might have to give testimonial & also give 2 referrals and participate in the case study within the first 2 years and you are eligible for this much discounts. This way the customer is well aware of the expectation and also enjoys discounts. Do not give discounts for free, make him have some benefits offered to us.

Does awards and recognizing important for startup?

  • This comes directly into credibility building so it is good to get some recognition
  • The important point is apply for recognition that are credible and genuine with a selection process like boot up awards by ispirit
  • Have some sort of recognition award or have an article or mention in international news & media like Techcrunch, Harvard Business Review, Gartner, Marketing Magazine, Forbes, Wall Street Journal etc.This will help both India & international brand building.
  • You can use a PR agency to reach out these media and appear for the competition or for the product review

Name some books good for Inside Sales and for Complete Sales?

  • Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
  • Sales Acceleration formula by Mark Roberge

Is there any online tests used as a first-cut of sales roles?

AkKzIBAt4w99IJ_Uj2_8mQGs0EyU9dnA03l9hY6xQA1qHow to provide incentives for your IS(Inside sales) team?

  • Incentive are always a motivating factor for the Inside Sales team. We have laid out some numbers as a sample for you to see below.
    • 2% to 3% of Annual Recurring  Revenue(ARR) for new customer acquisition.
    • 2% to 2.5% of annual revenue for UpSell/Cross Sell or  have a fixed amount like 10k for all revenue of 3L to 5L per year, 5K for 2L to 3L etc.
    • You can also say, if you get a referral from a customer then the account manager gets 5% of revenue.
    • You can also include testimonial incentives for e.g Video testimonials 10k, Text testimonial 5k, Case Study like 10% of ARR
  • Even you can add some incentive for first go-live means successful deployment and this is applicable for enterprise products
  • Make sure these numbers are published and you make sure the check is given to him as soon as you receive them from the customer.

We would be writing another blog on a related & demanding topic “How to set up a Inside Sales Team from scratch & generates Leads?” in the upcoming week.Stay Tuned and Happy Reading!

Contributed by Asha Satapathy, DocEngage

 

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Selling tips from America’s greatest salesman – Elmer Wheeler

In this article, we see about some of the proven selling techniques developed and adopted by Elmer Wheeler and how it has been applied in selling various goods. The techniques mentioned here are referred from Elmer Wheeler’s book titled ‘Tested sentences that sell’. Mr. Wheeler’s purpose in this book to help the salesman by showing him how to add powerful sales words and techniques so that he will always have complete command over any selling situation. The insights he shares and describes are the result of his 10 year study of and thinking about what successful salesmen, of all kinds are saying and doing to make more sales. The rules shared here are based on ‘5 Wheelerpoints’; it is explained to you in relation to whatever you are selling.

5 Wheelerpoints are

  1. Don’t sell the steak – sell the sizzle.
  2. Don’t write – Telegraph
  3. Say it with Flowers
  4. Don’t ask if – ask which!
  5. Watch your bark!

Don’t sell the steak – sell the sizzle

The ‘sizzle’ is the biggest selling point in your proposition. The main reasons why your potential customers will want to buy your product. The sizzling of the steak starts the sale more than the cow ever did, though cow is very necessary.

For example, the insurance man sells protection, not cost per week. The vacuum cleaner salesman sells ‘less backache’ not price. He sells comfort not the motor.

While selling the sizzles, use ‘You-ability’ i.e. the ability to get on to the other side of the fence and see your product through the eyes of the customer. You-ability is the ability to say ‘You’ and not ‘I’ in the order that the customer considers important.

TIP: Sell the big reasons called ‘sizzles’ with the You-ability in mind.

Don’t write – Telegraph

Get your potential customers immediate and favorable attention with fewest possible words. Mr. Wheeler says if you don’t make your first message ‘click’, the prospect will leave you mentally, if not physically. Because, people form ‘snap judgments’. They make-up their opinions about you in the first ten seconds. So, use the 10 seconds telegram to attract your prospects. In the case of vacuum cleaners, follow the below phrases.

  1. The grit removers take out your dirt you never you had
  2. You may forget to clean the bag, but the time-to-empty signal won’t forget to remind you

TIP: First 10 words are more important than the next ten thousand.

Say it with flowers

Say it with flowers means prove your statement with the physical object or with your product. The flowers in the right hand as he proposes, tell her more than the mere words from his lips.

  1. In the case of vacuum cleaner, run the cleaner under table, point a dirt finder, turn switch on and off to dramatize the light and say ‘it sees where to clean – and it’s clean where it’s been’.
  2. Push the cleaner away from you, maintaining your hold on the cord. Then pull it back to you, saying ‘it has ball bearing action – a child can move it’.

TIP: Use ‘Showmanship’.

Don’t ask if… ask which

It means frame your words (especially at close) so that you give the prospect a choice between something and something; never something and nothing.

Do not be a ‘how about it’ salesman or ‘would you be interested in’ or ‘could you afford the better priced one?’ salesman. Because these questions won’t get the reply you want. Eliminate these from your vocabulary. Being a question mark instead of an exclamation mark salesman is an important difference between a winner and a loser in salesmanship. Perhaps, these are the winning statements.

  1. Which of these do you prefer?
  2. How do you prefer paying, weekly or monthly?
  • Where do you plan on using it, here or over there?

TIP: Ask the right questions that get you the answers you want.

Watch your bark!

The last point in 5 Wheelerpoints is ‘Watch your bark’. That is, your voice is the carrier of your message. How much your sales words will succeed or fail depends on the delivery of your message.

The finest sizzle that you telegraph in 10 words in 10 seconds, with a huge bouquet of flowers and lot of which, where and how flops if the voice is flat.

Smile when you say these

  1. This will shorten your cleaning time by hours.
  2. You have only one back – one life to live.

TIP: If you fail to smile, you are signalling the prospect to beware. But don’t be ever insincere.

The above mentioned 5 Wheelerpoints are applied in some products or advertisements which use and see in our day to day life. You may observe these in telebuy shopping.

  1. Orbitrek elite
  2. Ervamatin
  3. Tablemate
  4. Super ladder
  5. Ceramicore ladder
  6. Sewing genie – portable.
  7. Smart mob
  8. Roti queen
  9. No no oil dosa
  10. Super dicer pro.

Guest Post by R Ragavendra Prasath, a volunteer for iSPIRT. An avid reader, wannabe entrepreneur and chocolate enthusiast…! He tweets @ragavendra1

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Fin-Tech: Financial Services To Come

IGIDR Finance Research Group partnered with iSPIRT to help conduct a Fintech Session in their 6th edition of Emerging Markets Finance (EMF) Conference held at Sofitel, BKC – Mumbai. The chosen theme for the Fintech Session was “Financial Services to come”. The session was divided into two parts – (1) inform the disruptions in financial services together with the showcase of select software product companies that are offering products leveraging these disruptive influences, and (2) panel discussions to get thought leaderships on the disruptions in payments, including the role of the regulators.

Mr. Nandan Nilekani delivered the keynote address and he enthralled the audience in his inimitable style. His session started by giving insights into the influences driving the disruptions in financial services, including a real-time demo of one such influence i.e. eKYC using Aadhaar. He then took the audience on a journey of how software product companies are leveraging these influences to introduce innovative business models that would fundamentally change the way financial services are conceived and delivered, laying stress on cashless payments. Nandan, not only, laid stress on the current but also gave the audience a glimpse of the possibilities.

2015-12-18 14.10.18The keynote address was followed by sessions and demos by four select software product companies that have introduced innovative products and / or business models leveraging these influences and making the ‘new’ Fintech happen.

The second half of the Fintech session was designed as panel discussions to engage thought leaders and first movers on their perspectives of these disruptions.

The first panel discussion was on Future of payments, moderated by Sanjay Jain (Volunteer, iSpirt). The discussion was wide ranging, with Mr. A P Hota (MD and CEO, National Payments Corporation of India) providing us the perspective on the infrastructure that has been setup by the NPCI to interconnect banks, which is the basis for payments in India, and Mr. G V Nageswara Rao (MD and CEO, NSDL) on how Payment Banks will bring in technology led business models and change the way payments are done in India. Prof. Bhagwan Chowdhry (Professor, UCLA Anderson School of Management), and David Katz (Deputy Head, Global Govt. Relations at Paypal) brought an international perspective to the panel. The conversation included perspectives on how transaction costs, and the removal of friction play an important role in the growth of digital payments and the move to a cash less society.

2015-12-18 14.47.08The panel where status quo meets disruption was highly animated discussion led by Prof Phatak and with two participants from the startup/VC community – Haresh Chawla from IVFA & Sanjay Swamy from Prime Ventures – Dr Ajay Shah and Anand Bajaj, Head of Innovation at YesBank. Dr Phatak opened by stating the time is ripe for disruption and to move to a cashless and cardless world of mobile only payments. Mr Chawla was of the view that innovations will come once the cost of moving money between accounts is near zero – and the next wave of innovations will be around applications of low cost payments. Dr Shah was of the view that the regulator still needs to encourage disruptions and remains a risk to the innovation ecosystem if they stop innovations. Mr Bajaj, fresh from the signing of the MOU between YesBank and iSpirt to setup a framework for a banking app store reiterated the bank’s desire to partner with the startups as they innovate. Mr Swamy called for the need to remove some of the obstacles in on-boarding customers for electronic payment acceptance, and asked for a framework for piloting new concepts. Overall the panel raised several real issues that were actively debated – questions from the audience also echoed the fact that most of the points raised were relevant and real issues. Over the coming months we hope the banking industry will address these issues head-on and SRT the stage for India to maximize the opportunity of the new disruptive technologies from Aadhaar to biometric authentication to IMPS and the Unified Payment Interface.

2015-12-18 14.47.04This is was the first Fintech event for iSPIRT in Mumbai and it received record registrations. IGIDR FRG event organizers expressed desire to conduct a dedicated event based on the positive feedback received.

Guest Contributed by Surya Kasichainula, 3I Infotech & Volunteer for iSPIRT

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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

Posted on

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.