ProductNation

26/12/201326/12/2013

CricketNation to ProductNation

Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement was a event marked with a great outpouring for the man and for Indian Cricket. Our cricket team has come a long way and we are both the commercial power and in many format ; the leader.

Sanjay Anandaram shared an article which has a more balanced take on Tendulkar.

It is useful for us to be realistic in our appreciation as well as criticisms. Infosys a former darling is getting the harsher treatment these days and that too for plunging into “non-linear-growth-strategy” a tad early!!

Product business is a marathon race and odds of having a difficult time getting growth are fairly high. But with the right ecosystem and preparation and teamwork we can make a difference.

I would invite comments on what we can learn from Cricket. There are many. One that I wanted to pull out is the expanded team. In modern cricket a whole ecosystem is needed. It is interesting to see the support staff for limited over’s Cricket . See Mumbai Indians

Chief mentor: Anil Kumble

Head Coach: John Wright

Assistant Coach : Robin Singh

Fielding Coach : Jonty Rhods

PhysioTherapist: Nitin Patel

Trainer: Paul Chapman

Video Analyst: N Harishankar

Team Manager: Rahul Sanghvi

The #PNCamp promises to be a good addition to the support system for Product companies.

However the defining change is the “can do” attitude and ability to fight back. In my younger days We thought of the Indian team as snatching-defeat-from-jaws-of-victory as they crumbled one too many times. A mischievous observation is the changing nature of our cricket icons:

Nobility : Tiger Pataudi
Diplomat: Gaveskar

Fine Guy : Sachin
Gentelman: Dravid

Rustic agression: MS Dhoni

BadAss ( Attitude) : Virat Kohli

Lets watch the poster boys of India’s Product Community to see the evolution….

Guest Post by Arvind Tiwari, Founder at SangEnnovate

24/12/201323/12/2013

The Emergence of a Product Nation

In the last ten years, IBM, perhaps the world’s most iconic maker of the personal computer did two things that made people sit up and take notice. First, in 2004, it sold its PC division to China-based Lenovo Group in a deal valued at $1.75 billion. Then, around nine years later, it sold Daksh, its voice-based BPO to Synnex Corp. Both sales had one glaring similarity: They both involved flogging commoditized businesses with increasingly low margins and a questionable future.

Today, both the computer hardware business as well as the voice-based BPO business is in peril. Computer sales have flattened while smartphones and tablets are experiencing scorching growth rates in excess of 150% in Asia. Meanwhile, the BPO business continues to face the twin challenge of rising costs in India and new, competitive destinations like the Philippines who continue to place more downward pressure on prices for voice services.

IBM’s experience is a crucial one to internalize, as the kind of upheaval that has taken place in the PC industry and the BPO one is going to inevitably rock the foundations of yet another which leverages cheaper labour as its core competitive advantage—namely, software services. The one harbinger of this change: The rise of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), also known as ‘the cloud’ that has revolutionized how we use software today.

Much like India churned out world-class software services firms in the 1990s and 2000s, it is already proving to be a major generator of globally competitive SaaS companies across all spheres—in the enterprise space, the B2C arena as well as those targeting SMBs. These are companies with small teams and unique products sold under their own brand—strikingly dissimilar from their IT services predecessors that have dominated the technology space so far.

In other words, these are companies that have climbed up the value chain where their core offerings are not so easily disrupted by a cheaper wage rate. Here, the elegance of the product, the stability and novelty of its solution and, most importantly, the unvarnished benefit that allows the customer to become infinitely more efficient for as little a cost as possible through enterprise software is what is making this revolution a reality. And India, with its legions of technology graduates, a vibrant app developer community and a coterie of battle-hardened entrepreneurs is pushing the envelope even further. Suddenly, a 40-member team can churn out a platform or a service that can compete on the global stage with the likes of an Oracle or an IBM.

This is a brave new world for buying and selling things. For one thing, the internet has become a dominant channel used to either sell products or attract and engage new customers. This means that marketers need to widen their net through plug-and-play IT solutions that are at their fingertips rather than waiting for their IT department to weigh in. They now have to deal with new ways of managing customer relationships, orchestrating cross channel marketing, and implementing digital advertising

Then, there is the aspect of nimbleness. Winners and losers today are determined by solutions that have as quick a time to market as possible, with unlimited scalability and access to reports on the mobile. Enabling this imperative are sophisticated tools to mine and analyze volumes of data arising from these activities to improve decision-making. Therefore, embedding technology in every business process is more than just an effort to stay competitive—it’s a basic survival ploy that allows for faster turnaround, better customer service and improved monitoring of the health of the organization.

Till now, though, being able to do all of this meant heavy in-house customization and up-front capex spends. The ‘pay as you’ go and ‘rent versus buy’ approach of SaaS has upended that reliance on customization, making even the most complex operations available on the net and easily integrated with other tools and apps for a fraction of the price. A company can now also try as many tools as possible rather than be handcuffed to a single one.

In a product revolution sweeping the country unlike no other, the makers of many of the world’s most innovative products are right here in India. Whether it is the collaboration space, enterprise applications or business intelligence in the cloud, for the first time in India’s history, software products are being made for the global audience and widely appreciated and used by global consumers.

Here’s a snapshot at some of the players who are leading this charge:

23/12/201321/12/2013

Deepinder Goyal of Zomato on “ethics, respect, attitude and skill”

Deepinder Goyal is the founder and CEO of Zomato, India’s first online food guide to go global. Founded in 2008, Zomato recently raised Rs. 227 crore from Sequoia Capital and InfoEdge in one of the largest funding rounds for a consumer internet company in India. This deal values the company at over Rs 900 crore ($150 million) and has “best positioned” Goyal “to build a formidable global internet company out of India.” Prior to founding Zomato, Goyal was a management consultant at Bain and Company. He holds an integrated masters in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Delhi.

This post was conducted by Innovate Delhi, a three-week long academy that works with aspiring entrepreneurs to hone their skills in innovation, team-building, and strategy. Applications are due on 1st February at innovatedelhi.com/apply

[Innovate Delhi] What prompted you to start Zomato? What made a graduate from one of the most prestigious colleges in the country working at one of the prestigious companies in the world start a restaurant discovery website and mobile app?

[Deepinder Goyal] Back in 2008, I was working at Bain and Company, one of the largest management consulting firms in the world. At Bain, I noticed that my colleagues used to line up to view the stack of restaurant menu cards in the cafeteria during lunch hour. There was a rule that you cannot take the menus to your desk since people generally ended up losing these menus causing inconvenience for everyone. Looking at the queue, and to save the trouble for everyone, I just scanned these menus cards and put them online for everyone to use. This small intranet website started getting a substantial number of hits from people within Bain. That is when we realized that we can build a business out of scanned menus. That is how Zomato was born.

You told your parents about your decision to quit Bain only after quitting. What was their initial reaction? As an entrepreneur, how important is having family on your side?
My parents don’t really think about things once they have happened. So when I told them that I had quit my job, their reaction was “Ok, whatever”. They asked me to tell them if things get difficult for me financially. My wife Kanchan has supported me right through – she is a big believer in Zomato. It is important having family’s support in your entrepreneurial pursuits. If one is focused on their goals, everything eventually falls into plan.

To preview out next interview with P Rajasekharan of v-shesh, we found out that he frequently brings his daughter to his office. Do you see yourself bringing your daughter to Zomato and blending your personal and professional lives?
I don’t know. I don’t plan such things. If it does happen, it will not be because I planned it to be that way. It will be because it has to be that way.

One thing that sets apart an Indian company from US-based companies is that Indians are willing to work harder. People here can and would work 24×7 to accomplish something. That’s the sort of advantage we have here in India in terms of people.

You believe in hiring “good people.” What has been the best and worst hiring decision you have made?
We look for qualities like ethics, respect, attitude and skill – in that order. Looking back, all the people that we have asked to leave have either failed at Level 1 (Ethics) or Level 3 (Attitude). Mostly at Level 3. Similarly, the best hiring decisions we have made have been in being able to identify people with energy, focus and persistence.

Deep Kalra, our first interview for the Innovate Delhi blog, told us that an entrepreneur should be ready to do anything and everything in the initial years. What have been some memorably crazy challenges that you have met and not met?
The major challenge we have faced so far has been making sure that we have covered each and every street in the cities where we launch and have information for each restaurant in the city. Ideas can sometimes matter less than the execution. Hiring the right people has also been a major challenge. When we hire, we try our best to ensure that people are cultural fits – skill alone does not cut it for us.

For global internet corporations too, India is now the preferred choice for new investments.

In your corporate and entrepreneurial journey, how do you think the Indian entrepreneurial space has evolved and what are the most promising trends today?
A lot has changed in India over the past few years. Let’s look at three things first: Start ups, venture capitalists (VCs) and the market. There are a lot of good start ups that we see nowadays. We have many role model firms and entrepreneurs today and people are looking up to these role models to build up their companies. The ecosystem has evolved quite a lot, though it still needs to do much more. In terms of VCs, there are many entry-stage and growth funds coming in and they are more willing now to take risks with their money than they were earlier. Thirdly, the local market has changed a lot. Earlier, consumers were very rare to find. But now, it’s relatively easy to hit scale.

One thing that sets apart an Indian company from US-based companies is that Indians are willing to work harder. People here can and would work 24×7 to accomplish something. That’s the sort of advantage we have here in India in terms of people.

Now with the growth of internet penetration with over 200 million Indians logging onto the internet, there is a huge opportunity for web-based start-ups in the consumer space. VC money flows to markets which have large problems to be solved with start ups solving them, India is one such market. For global internet corporations too, India is now the preferred choice for new investments.

One of our key goals for Innovate Delhi is to build a community of like-minded entrepreneurial individuals. To that end, how have you fostered and maintained your professional relationships throughout your career? How has the changed or evolved since you started Zomato?
Networking and building strong professional relationships is important for any entrepreneur. I have built a strong network over the years that has been very helpful. It always starts with alumni networks and grows from there.

If you were a judge at our program, what would be the top three qualities you will look for in an aspiring entrepreneur?
Focus and clarity on what needs to be achieved. It has been the one principle we have followed in everything at Zomato right from product to sales to hiring. Well, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’. Persistence and consistent effort are required in order to translate an idea into a business. Also, to follow through is important – to deliver on what you set out to do.

Well, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’. Persistence and consistent effort are required in order to translate an idea into a business.

This blog post was written by Sonal J Goyal for Innovate Delhi Entrepreneurship Academy. Innovate Delhi is a three-week long academy that works with aspiring entrepreneurs to hone their skills in innovation, team-building, and strategy. Applications are due on 1st February at innovatedelhi.com/apply

12/12/201312/12/2013

Breaking the Status Quo: Takeaways from a Revolution Taking Wings #PNCamp

It’s not often I find myself in a roomful of people driven by a shared vision. Inspiration was inevitably seeping in. It took me not more than a couple of minutes to realise that I should count myself lucky as I was in the same room as the bravehearts who were changing the world one product at a time.

The inaugural ProductNation Camp at Pune was a movement taking shape. More than 120 startups were brought together in the most unique of formats resulting in 2 days of high-quality discussions, learnings and mindshare.

The message behind the format was loud and clear. “No sage on stage”. Entrepreneurs never learn based on a pre-defined syllabi structure. They love to disrupt, destroy and re-build. The 2 days were filled with gems of knowledge, actionable insights and conversations from the heart.

What follows are some which hit me hard:

Pick your battle and fight it out: A product can’t solve all the problems of the world. Shashank ND, Co-founder at Practo emphasised the fact that a startup needs to focus on a single problem to solve first and fight it out in the market with that one product. This approach ensures a laser sharp focus and allows for the best of resources to be spent towards creating value for the customer.

Tell your own story, avoid drawing an analogy: I heard few founders introduce themselves saying “I run a startup ____ which is like ____ but with ____. Think of it as Dropbox meets YouTube meets Facebook.” Such a narrow vision or outlook of one’s own product has huge ramifications in the way people react. Not the best way to build trust and confidence. Write your own story, be proud of it and build on it.

Build an experience, delight the user: The most successful of web products have delightful and simple design at their centre. Harshit Desai insisted that designer(s) and developers should work closely in a team to build the product. Have an inclusive design, avoid focussing too narrowly on a set user profile.

Being shameless is truly being human: Entrepreneurs are not a differentiated human race. They are brought up in the same systems, and often many of them carry the “What will others think” baggage. “Self-doubt and fear of failure take many down”, said Kunal, Founder at Freecharge.in. Being true to your product and your vision is about losing the baggage and being ‘shameless’. Perhaps a sales attitude often overlooked.

Two wheels and an engine, the sales hack: Shashank led perhaps the best session of the camp as he dived into the sales philosophy and concepts which he believes in. A photograph of his bike was up on a slide (he still uses it to reach customers). Hit the ground running, talk to customers, no one refuses a cup of coffee. “Spend a lot of time with the end-user of your product and convince them that it’s THE solution they seek.”

An engaging story comes before a good copy: “Good storytellers, writers are born, not trained”, said Girish, Founder at Freshdesk. Experience counts for little if you are looking to create content as a marketing strategy. Don’t just talk about your product, share your ideas, opinions and learnings with a broader context. With content, be there out-to-educate, not out-sell.

Technologists are great sellers by-the-way: Ashish Gupta, Senior MD at Helion Ventures is a technologist to the core and he took upon himself to convince us that selling is a challenge and not a handicap. Look around… Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs! Something common? – all techies who rose up to the challenge of selling products (isn’t it about that at the end of the day?).

If I can speak up for many like me, we couldn’t believe that we were in a room of like-minded individuals who shared similar challenges, had fought through and risen up with their head held high. I guess that was the vision behind the format. These startups are sure to change the world in their own little/big ways. As the camp drew to its inevitable close, I was invigorated by the inherited treasure house of learnings, experiences and friendships. The team behind the initiative should be proud and I hope the movement only gets stronger by the day.

Guest Post by Tejaswi Raghurama who is helping build Entrepreneur Academy at the National Entrepreneurship Network.

11/12/201311/12/2013

Three Waves of Indian Software

When I started JamBuster with Suneeta in 2004, I wanted to build a technology management software products company in India. Little did I know, that we would be part of a three-wave phenomena in software industry in India.

The first wave of this is the software outsourcing, now a bit old story, but still the legend by itself. By different accounts, the outsourcing of software development by global multinational companies started in mid-1980s. This trend while definite was still very slow, but steady as seen by the fact that Infosys, the iconic harbinger started in 1981 had grown to only $20 MM by mid-1995 with about 900 people. The Y2K fears fueled an unprecedented growth, so much that by March 2000, the revenues grew to more than $200 MM – a ten-fold growth in 5 years. The exponential part of the S curve has just begin. By 2005, revenues grow from $200 MM to more than $2 B. The Infosys employee population grew from 20,000 in 2005 to more than 100,000 by 2010. The break necking growth created it challenges and by 2010, it was clear that the Software Industry has entered the final leg of the S curve, with growth tempering off.

By 2010, Indian software outsourcing pioneers of 1980s, Infosys, Wipro and TCS had become multi-billion dollar giants, each with more than $4Billion+ in annual revenues, 100,000+ employees and ADRs on global prestigious stock exchanges. The Indian Software Outsourcing Wave that started in an apartment in 1981, now has turned into a $100B+ IT outsourcing industry. The Indian Software Revolution, however, was just starting with the second wave.

The pioneering success of Citibank and GE in leveraging India for business process back office work, paved the path for global in-house (GIC) or captive India Software Centers. GE was one of the first multinational companies to outsource back-office work, data center and call center operations to a subsidiary in India, and its outsourcing operation, with a staff of 17,000 by 2004, is one of the largest set up in the country by a multinational company.

Next wave was just beginning to gather the steam- the multinationals opening their captive R&D centers for software and other expertise. By year 2000, thus global giants were starting not only to look at India for outsourcing, but also for permanent resources for in-house software development. Between 1995 to 2000, more than 50 companies had opened their dedicated software development center in India. More than 500 companies had opened captive software offshore development centers in India by 2005.

According to NASSCOM, by 2012, 750+ Indian Captives of multi-nationals had reached annual revenues of USD 13.9 Billion. With more than 450,000 employees, it is now 21% of IT export revenues and 1% of India’s total GDP in FY 2012. Of the 750+ captives, about 28% of them have multiple locations in India. NASSCOM reports that by category, 50% are Engineering R&D, 40% hybrid, 5% BPO and about 5% IT. What is staggering that in last two years about 200+ Engineering R&D captives.

What started as maintenance or testing jobs, Y2K fear, had permanently opened India as a key resource destination for multi nations. The focus to use these resources to get better value means that with over 700 software captives that employ 400,000 employees, India houses critical technology hubs for some of the largest corporations in the world.

These centers have evolved into doing more IP-driven work, including product architecture and complete design, apart from fully owning the product or product line. Their contributions to global parent is getting recognized from a recent trend. Global in-house centers (GICs) or captive units in India of major multinational companies such as Target, Bank of America and HSBC are starting to shift lower-end services such as application maintenance and testing to vendors, and are focusing on more complex product development projects, according to industry experts.

It is therefore not a surprise that by 2010, next wave was starting to gather steam. Having tried outsourcing and built software captives, true software techno-entrepreneurs were starting to look at a new challenge. This time, it was nothing less than the holy-grail of any company calling itself a technology company – the product R&D.

Today, more than 1000 software product start-ups are trying their luck in India that are looking to leverage software in their core offering. Indian software product companies like Quick Heal, Tally, FusionCharts, Zoho have made their mark with their products and productized services, each in their own way!

Quick Heal was essentially a customer focused PC maintenance services company, when its owner Kailash Katkar realized that the customer PCs needed more maintenance due to growing spread of viruses from internet. Quick Heal’s story could have been legendary just on how Kailash saw an opportunity for an Indian made anti-virus software, given the high cost of imported Symantec and Norton offerings at that time, and that his brother Sanjay developed not only the initial versions of their anti-virus but also the innovation that followed, and it became a huge success. But it is their decision to go head-to-head with global giants, get them to reduce price in India and then Quick Heal to start moving on to their global competitors’ backyard, is what seals its leadership place in this third wave of Indian Software Revolution.

Tally has grown from an accounting package for SME’s to a complete business software for all types and sizes of businesses. Today, the company providing innovative and easy to use business solutions to more than 20,00,000 businesses across 94 countries. Pallav Nadhani’s FusionCharts is a story still in making in that the wonder kid’s charts for grown-ups continues to grow their share of the market segment worldwide. These early examples demonstrate that Indian Software Product makers are capable to build some of the most technically complex software for local customers and then take them global.

With the experience of outsourcing, knowledge from the captives, Indian Software Industry is getting its the third wind, propelling it into this third wave – Indian Software Product Companies with product R&D done in their backyard. If Bill’s Microsoft was disruptive to brick and mortar global giants, Kailash’s Quick Heal and Bharat’s Tally are providing a preview of how Indian Software Product wave is about to disrupt the world again. Get ready for the software products and productized services from India.

Guest Post by Satish Kamat, Jambuster Technologies

07/12/201307/12/2013

Approaching Mobile UX – A Product Manager’s Perspective

When building the mobile interface for their existing products, Product Owners are faced with quite a few perplexing questions, especially related to the user experience on mobile. A report from ZDNet says UX is one of the most critical concerns for enterprises looking to develop mobile apps while another study points out that users prefer usability and good user experience over brand names.

Before we start discussing about Mobile UX, let us first understand what User Experience is. User Experience is not only about visual design. It is actually much broader — it involves the scientific research of users and can answer important questions about the audience for both new and existing products. These include:

• Who are your real users and what do these real users care about?

• How do they actually interact with your existing product?

• How will users interact with a new version or new feature?

While there are several UX design best practices from the desktop world that can be brought to mobile, this piece focuses on mobile specific issues.

The foremost thing to remember when building a mobile interface for your product is that while mobile UX design has similarities with web and software design, simply stripping down your desktop or web experience is not going to do it. While drilling down is fine on the Web, mobile users tend to act more linearly a mobile application. To design a good app, you need to start from grounds up, identifying the customer experience you want, and enhancing it with the right features of your existing product. Great mobile apps are uniquely mobile, they couldn’t be done the same way anywhere else.

When choosing whether to design for brand or device, put your preference on device. Your users have been using the device much before they start using your application. Developing custom interfaces will confuse users, slow down adoption, and put a significant obstacle in the way of engagement. Instead, take the principles of the OS-native interface kit, and subtly style your interface elements without altering the underlying functions.

A classic example is the Password Engine iPhone app. iPhone users are used to certain ways to access settings or placement of the Back button. By not following them, the app increases the learning curve for users.

Mobile apps will always be subjected to interruption, whether by an incoming call or the user’s station arriving. Design your applications such that it is easy for users to pick up from where they left off – save states, break larger tasks down into smaller chunks, and put context throughout. Usually users on mobile will on the move, and hence subjected to lots of distractions. Organize content in a way so that it is easy for consumers to browse through. Take the example of the Gmail iPhone app.

All the fields and Call to Action (CTA) are vertically aligned on the left side and thus the user’s eye needs to move in one consistent direction.

While the iPhone app from eFileCabinet forces the user’s eye to scan all around the screen. It has less CTA’s and hence a lot of the real estate on phone screen that could have been used.

Mobile devices generate a lot of information about the user apart from the traditional data generated from a web solution. This includes things like movement, location, sensor data etc. Think about using this data intelligently to pleasantly surprise the user. Customer satisfaction is great but customer delight is even better.

Yelp has recently updated its Nearby feature that now offers suggestions based on user’s location, previous Yelp check-ins and reviews, and Yelp friends as well as other data like the time of day and even the weather. This is a great update because it allows Yelp recommendations to be truly contextual. On a cold morning, it can recommend a good coffee shop while on a sunny day it can point to ice-cream parlours near you.

And finally, understand the limitations of mobile devices – constrained hardware resources, screen size and network bandwidth. Consuming too much power or designing buttons for cursors rather than fingers and thumb will lead users to delete your application. Prioritize and present core features from other channels that have especial relevance in a mobile environment and enable mobile users to navigate to the most important content and functionality in as few taps or key presses as possible.

Measuring UX performance

Like any product feature, you need to constantly measure UX and keep improving. A couple of ways to measure UX are:

1. Data

Identify some of the key KPIs for your app. Example of some of the common ones are:

Adoption: Track data such as DAU or 7 day actives
Retention: Analyze the users who are coming back
Engagement: Number of visits or time spent are good indicators of engagement
Task Success: Use the funnel analysis to figure out dropouts

2. Usability Test

Observe users using the product. Ideally, you would compare these usability tests to ones done on your prior product. Does the new design achieve the intended goals, such as being more intuitive and driving users towards specific actions?

Resources

A great resource to start learning about the UX principles for mobile is the iOS Human Interface Guidelines. Another great resource for learning the basics of iOS UX and UI is Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps: Josh Clark. Android too has a few Design Guidelines, and it is always good to have a look at them when developing apps for Android.

Conclusions

The mobile user experience encompasses the user’s perceptions and feelings before, during and after their interaction with your mobile presence. Creating mobile user experiences that delights a user forces us to rethink a lot of what we have taken for granted so far with desktop design. Mobile user experience is still a developing field, and opportunities for improvement continue to emerge. But dissecting the mobile user experience into its key components, and placing the user’s expectations at the centre, gives us a conceptual framework for building and evaluating good mobile experiences.

Guest Post by Rajat Harlalka at PlayApps Inc He has over 8 years of experience in the mobile industry in different roles – technology, strategy and product management. He has worked with companies such as Marvell, ST Ericsson and Exicon etc. and is currently a Product Manager developing mobile educational games and apps. You can find him on Twitter @RajatHarlalka

25/11/201324/11/2013

MakeMyTrip’s Deep Kalra on bowling, resilience and going against common sense

Deep Kalra is the founder and CEO of India’s leading online travel company MakeMyTrip.com. Founded in 2000, the company is now the largest e-commerce business in the country and listed its shares on NASDAQ in August 2010. Prior to founding MakeMyTrip.com, Mr. Kalra has had corporate stints with GE Capital, AMF Bowling Inc. and ABN AMRO Bank. He holds an MBA (PGDM) degree from IIM, Ahmedabad and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

Read on to find out about the true test of an entrepreneur, the importance of knowing dhanda at a startup and going against common sense.

[Innovate Delhi] You believe in turning what one loves doing into a business model. How did you figure out what you love and turned that into India’s leading online travel company?

[Deep Kalra] For all entrepreneurs you have to focus on something that you love. But it definitely took me three jobs to figure out what I loved – I worked in banking, I worked in a very entrepreneurial role at AMF Bowling and I worked for GE Capital. Between these three roles, I figured out that I enjoyed the untrodden path. I was excited by stuff that had not been done before or at least not been done before in this part of the world. My second role was very entrepreneurial and I enjoyed that the most despite the fact that it was not financially a success. But I really had the time of my life which made me realize that I rather be doing my own thing.

What did the failure at AMF bowling teach you? How important do you think failure is in an entrepreneur’s journey?

AMF Bowling was a game changer in my own mind in terms of approaching different problems. Here was a problem that had not been thought about – How do you sell a family entertainment center around bowling which had not existed before? Addressing this problem was a learning curve in doing dhandha which is different from corporate business. Overall, it was a good learning experience in terms of a start up and solving problems that had not been solved before. It was also very personally fulfilling to me and I didn’t want to give it up. In hindsight, common sense would have dictated that I called quits within a couple of years but I worked with AMF Bowling for four years. So it also taught me that I can keep my head and chin up during a period when things are not working.

How is doing dhanda a unique challenge in itself? I read that you have bribed repairmen with bottles of rum to fix rat chewed cables. What challenges does the Indian entrepreneurial space pose and how do you deal with them while ensuring that you don’t lose sight of your larger goals?

I didn’t make a habit of bribing repairmen with alcohol but did so some unconventional stuff! The important lesson is that in the first many many years an entrepreneur should be ready to do anything and everything. And a lot of people are not. It’s better to start your entrepreneurial journey earlier than later because you have lesser hangups. At the same time, there is something to be said about good work experience. I don’t know what is a good amount. For me it was 8 years. But some entrepreneurs have never worked for someone else. I would recommend, especially in the Indian context, to work for a couple of years in a good company. It will help you later in life- you want to hire good people, you want to keep them motivated, you want to do the right things. I don’t think any amount of education prepares you for those kind of decisions.

In the initial years, an entrepreneur spends most of the time doing non-core business because you don’t have a team. And in India, things take longer. But hopefully with more interest and infrastructure in this space, the processes will get shorter. For instance, its getting easier to hire good talent. A startup is no longer a very unusual career. As an entrepreneur you have to be an excellent seller because you are selling all the time. Even if you are not doing the traditional selling of your product, in the early stage you are selling to get good talent. You are selling your story, your company all the time. You have to convince people to give up their great job at GE Capital or a think tank or Unilever etc to join one’s company. And then you need to sell to raise money. Each time you go out to meet current investors and potential investors, you are selling without realizing. And you have to work harder to sell your story in India because there are fewer startup success stories here.

You have clearly done a great job of selling to potential hires, MakeMyTrip has consistently been ranked amongst the the Top 10 “Great Places to Work for in India” by The Economic Times in the last four years. What is the culture at MakeMyTrip that make it such a great place to work?

The culture at an organization is related to the founding team or founder. One of the titles that the founder carries through life is Head of Culture. The founder has to walk the talk. I think it really comes down to passion and personal values of the founding team. Because then you end up hiring people for values. Then you start percolating down those values among similar minded people into a “culture” or whatever you want to call it. Over time it becomes established and you can talk about it.

In your corporate and entrepreneurial journey, how do you think the Indian entrepreneurial space has evolved and what are the most promising trends today?

There has been tremendous change in the last 3-4 years. The quality of entrepreneurs is improving. People have a much better overall view of what they want to do and what they need. There are lesser and lesser people who want to do something that’s cool. So folks are coming in for the right reasons. I love that there has been a great increase in the amount of angel funding that is available but there is big gap between angel and early and Series A and Series D deals. You can get your first round of capital fairly easily if you are an individual with a good plan but you have to be ready to perform in the next 12 months to get your Series A.

Do you think entrepreneurship can be taught or are entrepreneurs born?

I think its largely inherent. When things are going well, anyone would rather work for themselves everything else be equal. But that is typically not the case. Everything else is not equal. Let’s say you are going to make 50% of the money. Then what is it that you really want to do. And I think that is the test for if you want to be an entrepreneur or not. And yes, entrepreneurship can be taught but I think entrepreneurship has to be learnt more than it can be taught. And you learn it on the job. Ultimately, if you are happy being on the job, everything will work out.

If you were a judge at Innovate Delhi, what would be the top three qualities you will look for in an entrepreneur?

Agility and flexibility is one. There is a fine line between stubbornness and resilience. You have to believe in your idea but also be practical enough to make changes as you go along. You have to be wired analytically. I don’t know of any other way to run business. Creativity is important but if you are not fundamentally analytical then you will end up making decisions that are sub-optimal. And the third one is being a very good people’s person. It goes back to culture and teambuilding and it is something that comes to entrepreneurs naturally.

This blog post was written by Sonal J Goyal for Innovate Delhi Entrepreneurship Academy. Innovate Delhi is a three-week long academy that works with aspiring entrepreneurs to hone their skills in innovation, team-building, and strategy. Applications are due on 1st February. Apply at http://www.innovatedelhi.com/apply/

24/11/201324/11/2013

RickShaw Rising: Submit your Innovative Ideas to Transform the Auto-Rickshaw business

We are pleased to support an initiative led by EMBARQ which focuses on sustainable transport. They are expanding their work to engage with entrepreneurs in this space. EMBARQ has launched an initiative – RickshawRising Challenge in partnership with Shell foundation.

The Rickshaw Rising Challenge 2013 recognises that the auto-rickshaw sector is ripe with the opportunity to implement innovative business solutions that can create large-scale change.

India’s rapidly growing cities demand safe, reliable and efficient public transport. The humble auto-rickshaw serves the mobility needs of millions of city folk. Yet the sector remains largely unorganised, with poor quality of service, poor safety and environmental performance, and low earnings for drivers.

The organisation is inviting applications from early-stage businesses that can bring large-scale change to the unorganized rickshaw sector in India. The challenge offers upto $50,000 and six months business support for winners. Last date for application is 20^th Dec 2013. You can find more details about it on http://www.rickshawrising.com

13/11/201312/11/2013

Cross-Border Alliances: Strengthening India’s Cyber-Entrepreneurs

India’s product-thinkers in the cyber-domain are a unique breed of cyber-warriors that could significantly benefit through cross-border partnerships. Credited with being one of the first nations to possess an IT road map, India has devoted additional focus to create a secure IT road map. Cybersecurity remains a critical concern for not only governments or businesses, but also for individuals.

Our increased connectivity has produced increased vulnerabilities, and has subsequently amplified cyber-attacks. Grey and Black-hat hackers choose targets indiscriminately, and are not necessarily loyal to specific foreign governments, competing corporations, or other organizations. On the contrary, India’s cyber-entrepreneurs are capable of demonstrating undying commitment to a vision – a vision to secure India’s cybersecurity ecosystem.

The Indian government has repeatedly underscored the significance of public-private partnerships (PPP), and conception of international governmental partnerships. However, our cybersecurity ecosystem seems unable to intensify active cyber-partnerships within the private sector itself. Undoubtedly, the government has proven to be instrumental in recognizing cybersecurity as a challenge, but, the private sector must spearhead change through global partnerships.

India’s modern cyber-entrepreneurs are our nation’s cyber-warriors; individuals who exceedingly need innovation and an exchange of ideas from foreign counterparts to secure our cyberspace. Indian cyber-thinkers must focus on formulating cross-border partnerships to engage in revolutionary activities such as joint-product development, formulation of joint ventures, and other forms of high-impact cooperation.

India’s cyber-entrepreneurs have undoubtedly developed a handful of world-class cybersecurity solutions, but clearly, the emphasis seems to be more on delivering services rather than creating innovative products. Living up to India’s reputation of being a leader of IT services; Indian cybersecurity companies continue to successfully service needs of various governmental, corporate, and academic entities. Nevertheless, this trend must not be viewed as a problem, but as an opportunity to reflect on the massive scope to conduct more meaningful activity!

Most product-based Indian cybersecurity companies primarily contribute to defense of our cyberspace by providing indigenous products/solutions for hardware and software entities. However, our cyberspace is an arena where deploying offensive cyber-tools is easier than conduct of cyber-defense. Increased collaboration with foreign counterparts could be a rewarding venture to enhance existing products, or develop new products to address multiple cyber-threats.

Such cross-border collaborative activity by India’s product-thinkers in the cyber-domain can stimulate productivity for respective cybersecurity organizations. More importantly, creating cross-border ties with capable cybersecurity firms will serve as a catalyst in enhancing India’s existing cybersecurity ecosystem.

Vishal Dharmadhikari is the Founder and CEO of India Cyber Connect, an organization that envisions filling gaps in India’s cyberspace through formulation of cross-border ties for the conduct of meaningful collaboration. Vishal is also the concept initiator of a business-event – India-Israel Cybersecurity Connect (IICC), an event featuring governmental and corporate leaders along with start-ups to promote Indo-Israeli cybersecurity cooperation

26/10/201321/10/2013

Agility Flexibility For Software Product

[ There is an interesting discussion in ProductNation on Customizable Product : An oxymoron which triggered me to write this post]

I find many people use these words interchangeably. However the distinction is important and source of value. Agility can be engineered with proven techniques and best practices. With advancement in software engineering there is convergence on the tools and techniques to achieve agility and it may no longer be a source of differentiation but a necessary feature. Flexibility on the other hand requires deep insight into diverse needs and types of usage and done imaginatively can provide great value to users and be a source of competitive advantage.

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary offers the following definitions:

Flexible: characterized by a ready capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements.

Agile: marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace.

In Software product context it may be more appropriate to define agility as the ability to change things quickly and Flexibility as the ability to achieve a (higher) goal by different means. So ability to value Inventory by different methods like FIFO or LIFO or Standard cost is flexibility. The ability to change commission rate or sales tax rate quickly (generally by changing a parameter in a table of a file and avoiding need to make code changes) is agility.

There is a range or scale ( 1 ..10) of agility. Making changes in code esp 3^rd generation languages like Java, C# is the baseline. Using a scripting language like Javascript , Python may be less demanding then compiled language but it is still not as agile as most users expect. Most users would rate it simpler to update a parameter in a file or a simple user interface like a Excel type spreadsheet as simpler and faster. Changing logic by using a If-Then type of rule base is in-between. Simpler then coding but more complex then table updates.

You should have picked up some inter-related themes here. Complexity or need for skill in making changes to a scripting or Rule engine . Need for easy to use interface to make the changes. Need for relatively easy and error free method of making changes. If you need to update ten parameters in ten different places or change 17 rules in a If-Then rule base it may not be as simple and is less agile .

Most modern Software products are fairly agile with scripting, table based parameters and rule driven execution engine. The use of style sheets in generating personalized User interface, specialized components like Workflow or process management engines etc also provide agility.

Flexibility is a different beast. Layered architectures and specialized components for workflow, rule execution and User experience can make it easier to accommodate different ways to do the same things. They make it easier to make the necessary changes but they do not provide flexibility as such. End users do not value the potential flexibility of architecture but the delivered functionality. This is a major problem. Even Analysts from Gartner , Forrester do not have a good way to measure flexibility and use proxy measures like number of installations or types of users ( Life Insurers and Health Insurers or Make to order or Make to Stock business).

Flexibility is derived from matching the application model to the business model and then generalizing the model. I will illustrate with a concrete example. Most business applications have the concept of person acting as a user ( operator) or manager authorizing a transaction. So a clerk may enter a sales refund transaction and a supervisor may need to log in to authorize this refund. The simplest ( and not so flexibly) way to implement this is to define the user as clerk or supervisor. A more sophisticated model would be to introduce the concept of role. A user may play the role of clerk in a certain transaction and a supervisor in another. Certain roles can authorize certain types of transactions with certain financial limits. So user BBB can approve sales refund up to 100,000 INR as a supervisor. However BBB as manager of a section can initiate a request for additional budget for his section. In this BBB is acting as a clerk and DDD the General Manager who approves the budget extension request is acting as a supervisor. This model is inherently more flexible. It is also not easy to retrofit this feature by making changes to parameters or If-Then rules. If the Application does not model the concept of Role all the agility in the product is of little use. Greater flexibility can be produced by generalizing the concept of user to software programs. So in certain high volume business a “power user” can run a program which can automatically approve a class of transaction under certain set of control parameters. This “virtual user” is recorded as the approver on the transaction. The application keeps a trail of actual control parameters and power user who ran this “batch”.

Flexibility comes from a good understanding into user’s context and insight into their underlying or strategic intent. Business and users will vary the tactic used to meet their intent based on context. Consider a simplistic example to illustrate. I need to urgently communicate some news to a business partner. I try calling his cell but to no use. I would send a SMS ( India) but if a US contact ( who are not as yet fans of SMS or Text) leave a voice message on his phone or send a email. A Smartphone that allows me to type a message and send as SMS or email is more flexible then one where I have to separately write the email or the SMS.

Frequently Software designers and Architects generalize all types of changes as extensions. They are not interested in understanding intent and context of usage and want a horizontal generic solution to all changes. This leads to overly abstract design with extension mechanisms to change logic, screens and database and reports. In essence to develop a 4^th generation programming environment or Rapid Application Development Environment (RAD) . These help by making programming easier and faster but are no substitute for understanding user’s context and designing the application architecture to match and exploit them.

Users relate to a product which speaks their language and seems to understand them. They also get excited and impressed when they see new ways of doing their business and improving their revenue, reducing cost and improving customer satisfaction. Most managers want to make changes incrementally. So ability to “pilot” changes to a smaller segment of users, customers and products while continuing in traditional way with the larger base is of great value. That is ultimate flexibility.

Flexibility is not a mélange of features haphazardly put together. I have seen many service companies developing “Flexible Product” by adding every feature they can see in other offerings. Invariably this leads to a mythical creature which does not work. If you put a Formula 1 Race engine in a Range Rover chassis with a Nano steering and Maruti wheels you have a car which does not drive!! A Formula 1 car is intended for maximum speed and acceleration that is safe while a goods carrying vehicle is intended for maximum load carrying with optimum cost of fuel usage .

Delivering Flexibility requires heavy lifting in developing a good understanding of user’s domain, their intent and context. It adds value by simplifying the feature set and matching users intent and context.. If we can use our imagination and understanding of technology trends and capability to provide more then users have visualized we can lead them to newer ways. Leadership is an important way to differentiate your product. Invest in doing this and reap benefits.

Guest Post by Arvind Tiwary

24/10/201323/10/2013

20th #PlayBookRT at Chennai: Sales war stories from 2 SaaS start-ups

An interesting discussion on the theme of ‘Sales’ happened last weekend at Chennai (Orangescape office) as part of the iSpirt round table. Shashank N D from Practo and Girish Rowjee from Greytip gave engaging presentations on their journey and the ~20 participants responded enthusiastically with several interruptions (read questions :)). [Note: A similar discussion in Bengaluru was covered earlier here]

Shashank wooed the audience by starting off with his story on the origins of Practo – when his dad had to undergo a knee operation and wanted to get 2^nd opinion from another doctor abroad, he couldn’t send out the medical records electronically. Thus began a singular journey of using emerging technologies such as cloud and mobile to enhance patient experience.

Here are some key ‘Sales’ takeaways from his presentation:

Golden Rule: Never build something without making a sale. Practo always got a buy-in from existing or potential customers before actually building new features. This was true even in their early stages.

Selling and Coding should be the only activities.

Practo benefitted heavily from referrals. They did Zero cold calling and focused on delighting existing customers. The doctors who became customers of Practo were so happy with the product that they were happy to evangelize it amongst their peers
It is important that the founders bring on the early adopters. At Practo, the founders got the first 50 customers and in the process achieved Product/Market fit (took about an year). While this number may vary for each company, it is important to note that dedicated sales or marketing should be brought on only after this stage.
Shashank also talked about evolution of the sales team over the years. While founders are the best sales persons in the initial stage, it is important to bring P-salesmen (P for Passionate) at the next stage followed by R-salesmen (R for regular) for mass adoption.
While product-market fit was the focus during the first phase of going from 0 to 50 customers, the next phase focussed on sales culture. Bringing on P-salespeople, providing free trials for instant gratification of customers, value based selling etc were the highlights
Zero discount policy: Practo followed a strict no-discount policy. This actually helped them reduce bargaining behaviour and enabled them to be seen as high-value. But in the ensuing discussion on this topic, most agreed that this is based on the type of product, target market etc. Selling to large customers may not be possible without discounts.
‘Instant Gratification’ was a key customer psychology aspect that Practo focussed on during its sales cycle. Practo provides a feature where the doctor will be able to send an SMS alert to the patient within 30 seconds. This feature became a star-attraction of the product and improved sales
Practo was one of the first companies in India to sell a SaaS product offline. Some blogs even mentioned that this was start-up graveyard but it eventually did work for Practo.
As a matter of principle, Practo did not focus on doctors/hospitals that did not have computer infrastructure. This gave focus to their sales process. Also, they did not target general physicians and focused on specialists such as dentists, dermatologists etc. Thus targeting really helped them
To set up appointments, Practo initially had their own salespeople calling as well as had an inside sales team (with many women!). But what eventually worked for them was to create territories and assigning salespeople to specific territories. Salesmen were then made responsible market intelligence, cold calling etc. Usually the salesperson has to wait at the hospital to meet the doctor in person (like a medical rep) for the first time. But subsequent meetings were all setup through follow-up calls and prior appointments.
Medical reps couldn’t deliver as salespeople. They did not have the mind-set to challenge the doctors. At Practo, the smarter and tech-savvy sales guys were more successful as they were about to demonstrate the value of the product/technology to the doctors.
After various experiments, Practo had a clear separation of hunting salesmen and farming salesmen. Also most sales guys sell one product.
It is important to incentivize salespeople to get maximum yields from them. They have now established something called ‘flyers club’ where top 3 performers can go to a destination of their choice on an annual basis
All new salespeople undergo a 1 week training program and are instilled the Practo way of sales. But they have observed that it takes nearly 3 months for them to reach an efficient state.
There was an interesting discussion on a question on reselling partners. Majority of the participants concluded that resellers cannot solve your sales problems. What they can do is to magnify your sales success story. Resellers also bring in warm leads and act as influencers.

Interestingly and rather ironically, the session concluded with a note that start-ups should not target other start-ups as customers except as early adopters or reference case studies!!

Product Management related takeaways from Practo:

Practo spent inordinate number of hours with doctors. The idea was to understand user behaviour, just seeing them go about doing their work, how they interact with the software etc.
Practo had an interesting philosophy for feature prioritization – their order of importance was product vision, customers, employees and finally investors! Thus even when customers gave multiple feature requests, only those that aligned with the vision got implemented
Practo has lot of focus on analysing product usage, customer data etc. They built in-house tools (eg: epicentre) to monitor usage. Even during early stages when they had just 3 developers, one of them was purely focused on tools. Shashank calls it their ‘secret sauce’ for success.
They had a 30% conversion rate for face-to-face trial to paying customer.

The presentation on Practo was followed by a short session on Girish’s entrepreneurial journey with a few nuggets on sales related topics. Unlike Practo, Greytip did not have field salesmen and they went the online sales route for their payroll management software. It took them 2 years to realize that this model will not work well in India – not because of any issues on their side – but the market just did not buy without salesmen. Girish added that many of the emails that they send out are never read by the payroll in-charge. In fact, Greytip realized that CEOs may be more interested in such payroll software but the payroll head did not have the vision or mind-set to think of such possibilities. Thus began a journey of attempting to educate the target segment and build credibility in the process. Greytip also built relationships with payroll processors. Since the competition in payroll processing was cut-throat, their pricing was in fact determined by the market.

The following links were highly recommended during the discussion:

Guest Post Contributed by Karthik V, a software product enthusiast with degrees from IIT & IIM

18/10/201322/10/2013

Being Lean: Being Flat: Being Beautiful!

In this blog we look at the ever changing dynamics of organizations today, especially product organizations in India. Implementing lean and agile practices have become common practice across the enterprise, let us look at some examples and see how some organizations are changing.

• In a three year product company somewhere in Bangalore, there were 25 people out of whom 18 were managers.
• In Hyderabad there is a product company of 1000 people where there are 15 levels of management that was found.
• Culturally too Indians often prefer positions of power. The higher you are and the more people that report to you, the more important you are deemed socially and organizationally.

Such organizations over time start collecting waste. The seven wastes as per lean

Defects
Overproduction
 Transportation
 Waiting
 Inventory
 Motion
 Processing

In organizations like the ones above excessive process and meetings cause delays resulting in a lot of waiting. There is no clarity often to people on how what they are doing is fitting the big picture. Hence there is too much inventory of features, too much process overkill. Most product companies end up releasing a typical product over a one year life span.

On the other hand start-ups suffer the reverse syndrome. They often have one person initially who has a dream and one person whose job is to convert the dream to money. In between there are many smart people and they figure out a version one of the product. Very soon most start-ups crumble due to not having any formal structure . This has resulted in newer practices like Lean Startup popularised by Eric Ries.

Organizations in the new era are in the business of delighting customers, are consciously making an effort to move towards shunning the centralized tall hierarchical structures and instead work towards building a structure that’s flatter and decentralized and one that promotes self-organized groups, with interchangeable members, focused on smaller projects. With an objective to get closer to the market and act faster, this change is not just happening to the start-ups but it is being welcomed by some of top companies of the world!

This does not mean complete loss of control. Take the case of Skype a well- known provider of telecom services. As they started growing bigger they got into issues of confusion and waste.
In all these cases lean practices and principles come to make a huge difference to the effectiveness and overall customer satisfaction of and customers and employees. One common mistake organizations do is they do not know when to not add more features to the product. Due to this delays happen and nothing ships.

A Global consulting firm known worldwide for its business consultancy went agile and implemented many of the lean principles. In this organization in New York and New Delhi now there are really large open rooms and no more manager cabins. The director sits opposite to the help desk person often.

An American Bank, one of world’s largest and also having a technology organization, is no different and when we walked into their facility in Chennai you do see an impressive site, where all the senior and junior members are seated together. The team navigated though the organisation challenges and politics to create an award winning cash management/liquidity solution based on agile development and testing practices.

SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services , a leading Agile consulting and development company has an flat structure and everyone sits in a large open room. The company is as flat as it can get and no one tells the members of the organization what to do! There is no micro- management. Instead each member knows the value that he/she will bring as a part of the organization and works at his/her own space and independence and on projects and activities that they like and add value to.

All are encouraged to use titles they like as titles are not what is important here, it is what you know and how you help others to become like you.

These are not tactics or techniques to save costs or make money; it is a way of thinking, it is a way of living and growing as an organization. It is not about building an organization only but also scaling to the next level with lean.

Lean as a practice was popularized by Toyota and has been followed by manufacturing industry for years. Agile practices on the other hand have been popularized by the industry. SolutionsIQ along with many other volunteers across India are hosting a 200 people conference where lean andAgile practitioners from manufacturing, automobile, services and start-ups community are coming together to discuss, debate and learn together the art of building awesome products that create lasting impressions on your customers just like Skype, IPhone or Facebook

Don’t miss your chance to learn, speak and listen to the global experts in Lean and Agile Thinking.
Be there at the Lean India Summit 2013 in Bangalore, on the 15th and 16th of November at Vivanta by Taj, MG Road, Bangalore.

Guest Post by Vibhu Srinivasan

17/10/201314/10/2013

Building products to last – Can it increase your valuation?

The inspiration for this article came up from the animated discussion that’s going on at the Product Nation discussion Forum on ‘Customized Product’ – A true Oxymoron. We all know that customization is bad, and well architected extensions are the way to go. However, I decided to pursue on what ‘well architected’ really means, and what it means for the product business. The answer that came up is that – ‘being built to last’ should logically lead to better valuations. The question is – Does it really?

In the enterprise software world, where one is building large applications, it makes sense to build applications that last. In the consumer app world, it may be better to rewrite when changes occur, but not so in the enterprise world. Some of the best enterprise products out there in the market were built with an underlying framework, with an aim for extensibility and for lasting for long, through decades of change. The underlying product engineering is often proprietary, but aims for certain business goals. All of these goals point to one thing – built to last. Ravages of market focus changes, technology change, functional changes, version changes, and interface changes can still note disrupt the product capability. When products are engineered for this, it allows the business leadership to change their strategies through time, making the product enduring, lasting and hence multiply. Business goals are not derailed by ‘technical surprises’ but actually allow quick leveraging of new paradigms as they keep coming.

From a valuation perspective can you convince your investor to look at a 10 year horizon of returns because you have a ‘built to last’ product, instead of a 4-5 year horizon that is considered based on current market knowledge? Ideal world? Not really. When they say a product is mature, being ‘built to last’ is what it truly means, and there are great products that do these. It takes some more time, effort, cost and vision to architect such products, but the investment is well worth it, if it’s a long term play in a market.

Is it built for functional extendibility?

Functional extendibility is when the product designers know in advance that certain parts of the product always vary by customer, while the core stays the same, and they architect for the changing areas. Here rule builders, formula builders and tax tables enable customer, industry and country specific variations to be handled through ‘meta data’. Changing leave policies, income tax rules, price rules are some good examples where variation is built into good products

Is it built for technical extendibility?

Often, it is difficult to predict the changes that customers need. With an intent to protect the core, and to easily allow consultants to extend the product, extendibility tools are built into many products. View builders, alert builders, email trigger builders, add on extension screens, add on logic builders, and text label changes are some popular extendibility tools available in good products

Built for version upgrades?

Customers and your market expects upgrades. Upgrades are minor and major. Minor upgrades enable installation without the customer knowing. Major upgrades involve data migration. In the Cloud era, one is continuously migrating customers. How can changes be applied and yet allow versions to keep moving seamlessly?

Built for geographical variation?

The initial product may be built for a country and a language, but as time zones, languages, currencies, decimal place handling and other cultural aspects change, can the product easily adapt?

Built for UI diversity?

This was has become exceptionally critical now. How does one use the same product to handle form factors that keep changing. Responsive design is the current flavor of response to changing form factors, but we can expect many more shocks as interface changes innovations in voice recognition, internet of things and 3D interaction start coming in.

Built for maintainability?

One can build great products with a spaghetti of code, or one can beautifully architect products using techniques like model based development, or well defined objects designed for reuse. The true test comes when a change is required across the board. Well designed code is easy to change and upgrade.

Is it built for technology and deployment changes?

Flavor of the year programming languages, temporarily successful platforms, and nifty user interfaces keep improving, but when it is not possible to rewrite the core system, what do architects do? They usually ‘layer’. They allow a whole layer to be replaced to do new things with new platforms. A very popular product has kept its core intact as it moved from the mainframe, mini, PC LAN, Web and now the Cloud eras. Amazing engineering!

Built for scalability?

Can it work on a laptop for a demo, on the server for a group and also scalable on the Cloud to a very large number of users on a multi-tenant environment? The scalability capability is usually related to the platform the product is built on, where the engineering allows the scalability features of the underlying platform to be leveraged easily.

Yet not over engineered

Somewhere, the engineering has to stop and the economics has to step in. Every layer of abstraction added to handle change also creates a layer of pre-configuration before a product is customer usage ready. Finally it is a question of balancing the engineering to the business goals and budget.

Having been involved in product management and functional architecture decisions in Ramco’s products in the 90’s, and the KServe range of Enterprise products (www.KServeHRMS.com, www.KServeERP.com ) as an entrepreneur during the past 10 years, I’ve seen that the long range value of being built to last is often not understood or appreciated fully by stakeholders. With valuations and investment return expectations being short, there is merit in not over engineering, but there definitely a merit in the ‘right’ level of being built to last. Finally, you are accountable to satisfy and delight your customer and your market, and yet deliver returns to your stakeholders, and being built to last can be your long term ally through ups and downs of the business environment.

Guest Post by George Vettath, Kallos Solutions

12/10/201309/10/2013

You’re Not Fully Utilizing Social for your Business

Sure, your business has a Facebook fan page and maybe you even have a Twitter handle. Congratulations! You’re now one of hundreds of millions of people using social media and odds are, your business is getting lost in the shuffle.

If you’re not fully utilizing social for your business you’re missing opportunities. Here are a few ways your business is a big Fail Whale (if you don’t understand the reference you’re not fully utilizing social!) and some things you can do to fix it.

Facebook:

Your business has a fan page, not a business page, right? A fan page allows you to be more dynamic in your branding efforts and there are all kinds of cool features your business can use to gain recognition. Not only should you have a page, you should be adding content daily. Whether it’s status updates, photos, or likes, you need to be active on Facebook.

Additionally, you need to be sure you’re giving and not just taking on Facebook. Engage with your fans, “like” other businesses and in general, reach out twice as much as you release new content. The key to effective social media marketing is building an audience slowly, and Facebook has the biggest audience.

Features to use: Promoted Posts, offers, dynamic header image

Twitter:

Your Twitter page should look as polished as possible and you need to spend some time getting more followers. Don’t buy followers – simply start following and engaging with other Twitter users and you’ll slowly add to your numbers.

The worst thing you can do on Twitter is be too promotional. As a rule, keep promotional Tweets to a minimum and concentrate instead of building your brand by Tweeting relevant industry posts, news stories, and editorial opinions. Don’t hesitate to post pictures and remember, you should be Tweeting multiple times a day!

Features to use: Retweet, reply (talk directly to customers), promoted Tweets

Pinterest:

If your customers base skews heavily female, you need to be on Pinterest. Make sure you’re posting photos often and your photos are high quality and show the brand in a professional light! If you’re more into authenticity and grit, use Instagram instead. On Pinterest, your branded content needs to be useful. Offer recipes, tips, and photos of ways people can use your product or service they may not have considered.

Be sure you spend time following other people’s boards, as well as other companies’. And don’t forget to spend time Pinning things to your own account that help fill out your brand identity. Not everything you pin has to be from your own company’s website!

Features to use: Like, repin, “Boards to Follow,” Pinterest app

YouTube:

What do you mean you’re not making YouTube videos? YouTube gets over a billion hits PER DAY. Mobile is big here, so keep your videos short, unpolished, and imminently usable. You should tie your YouTube channel in with your Google+ account to help with overall SEO and you should be posting often, about once a week if you can.

Features to use: Analytics, promoted video, cross-promotion with sites like Buzzfeed

Whatever you’re doing on social, you could be doing more. The more time and effort you put into social media the more benefit your business is going to get out. And remember: social is a two-way street! You’ve got to interact with other people and brands, too, and not expect everyone to come to you. Social only works when you engage.

Guest Post: Ryan is a product manager at BizShark.com, with 5 years experience in online marketing and product development. In addition to web related businesses, he also enjoys the latest news and information on emerging technologies and open source projects.

27/09/201327/09/2013

Clearing The Air: 3 Roles Indian IT Providers See as Product Management

The Indian IT industry is over $100bn, but still struggles in creating global IT products. While there has been the occasional Tally, Ramco, or Finacle, there is not much else. One critical reason I attribute this to is that Indian IT companies do not really understand how Product Management can create long term customer value and business sustainability. While one can argue that there have been more of these companies in the last 5 years (Livemint: Tech Startups), the next 5 years will determine whether India has actually created global products.

Most Indian companies view product management as either of these: Product development, delivery (or project) management, and marketing (or marketing communications).

Role 1: Product Development: Great at problem solving, developers are expected to provide insights on what they believe the customer wants, and create products based on their understanding. Let’s admit, very few developers are comfortable socializing with customers (aka Raj Koothrapalli – awkwardness multiplied a few times). I have often encountered developers spending hours defining products, with limited idea on how the customer environments actually are (a few minutes meeting customers would have saved those hours). The smarter ones are able to engage with customers, but put them in front of a business strategy plan, and things slow down again. BTW, this may work for startups, where the founder often has a clear intuition about the idea, but when they have to scale revenues up (to new customers or increased wallet share of existing customers), most struggle.

Role 2: Delivery (or Project) Management: They engage with customers and internal teams, to co-ordinate schedules and resources. However, expecting them to gather requirements because they are engaged with customers, based on which products are created, is better suited for an IT services delivery, not for sustainable product IP creation. Today, most Indian SI companies are struggling as they attempt to create product IP and value, because of this belief and expectation from delivery managers to “productize” based on customer specific projects.

Delivery and Services Approach

Role 3: Marketing (or Marketing Communications): Marketing teams are definitely engaged with the market, but most are focused on lead generation and marketing communications, and the execution of those plans, rather than gather actual feedback. Thus, what we get are customer leads, with very little investment in market research aligned with direct customer engagement. Recall the last time you attended an IT vendor’s event, and exchanged business cards with their marketing person – I can’t!

As long as Indian IT companies continue to depend solely on one of the above to help create long term products, they are going to struggle in creating global products, and building the valuations that Apple / Microsoft / Google / Salesforce (and many others) have.

I end with my definition of Product Management – engagement with the market and customers, through multiple channels, to understand stated and unstated needs, analyze the potential opportunities, align with corporate strategy, and work with sales, marketing, and development teams, to translate the needs into a multi year product roadmap, eventually creating products that customers desire (read Apple, though the approach may have been slightly different 🙂 )

If your current teams are geared and empowered to do this effectively, time and again, then you maybe in the right direction to be hailed as an Indian product company (if not already) soon.

Guest Post by Angira Agrawal, AVP and Country Head – Cloud atNEC India Pvt. Ltd