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Innovation Leaders coming from the US #InTech50

We are a few days away from InTech50 – a very warm welcome to CIOs and technology leaders from all parts the world to Bangalore. These leaders are responsible for bringing about Innovation in their corporate environments and are congregating in Bangalore to see the 50 best Enterprise Indian startups – the InTech50 list!

This gathering is a huge step for the Indian product ecosystem because it brings, for the first time, CIOs and technology leaders to India to see the early stages of broad spread software product innovation. The smartest CIOs already leverage product startups to infuse innovation in their business. I congratulate the top 40 companies who are picked already and look forward to the announcement of the remaining 10.

These have been carefully selected by the Advisory Board from the 200+ Indian Enterprise product companies that applied. Below is a list of luminaries who are going to be present for the occasion. Let’s all welcome them to InTech50:

➢ PATRICK FUNCK SVP, CIO Accretive Health Company Vertical: Hospital & Health Care Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ DAWN PAGE, Managing Director, Citibank Company Vertical: Financial Services Company Size: 10,001+

➢ JAY JAYARAMAN, Vice President, Global Strategic Innovation &Technology Alliances Colgate-Palmolive Company Company Vertical: Consumer Goods Company Size: 10,001+

➢ CHANDRA VENKATARAMANI, Chief Information Officer, Convergys Corporation Company Vertical: Outsourcing/Offshoring. Company Size: 10,001+ Employees.

➢ JACK PRESSMAN, Executive Managing Director, Cyber Innovation Labs, LLC (“CIL”) Company Vertical: Information Technology and Services. Company Size: 51-200 employees.

➢ CHRISTOPHER T. HJELM, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Offier, The Kroger Co. Company Vertical: Retail. Company Size: 10,001+

➢ ANUP NAIR, Senior Vice President and CIO Vantiv Company Vertical: Financial Services. Company Size: 1001-5000 ➢ Damon Frost Director at P&G Company Vertical: Consumer Goods. Company Size: 10001+

➢ KSHITIJ MULAY, India IT Leader (GBS) Procter & Gamble Company Vertical: Consumer Goods. Company Size: 10001+ employees

➢ TARUN SAREEN, Head, EMC IT – APJ COE and APJ Theater Lead EMC Corporation Company Vertical: Information Technology and Services Company Size: 10001+ employees

➢ PARTHA SRINIVASA, SVP and Group CIO, HCC Company Vertical: Insurance. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees ➢ Piyush Singh Sr. VP and Chief Information Officer Location: Cincinnati Area Company Vertical: Insurance. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ GREG TOEBBE, Sr. Vice President Great American Insurance Company Vertical: Insurance. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ KETAN MEHTA,  CEO of MajescoMastek Co-founder and Board member of Mastek Company Vertical: Information Technology and Services. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ STEFAN VAN OVERTVELDT, CTO of MajescoMastek Location: Mumbai Area, India Company Vertical: Information Technology and Services. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ GEOFF SMITH, IT Strategy/Leadership CIO Roundtable Company Vertical: Management Consulting

➢ MAHENDRA VORA, Deals and Partnerships Vora Ventures LLC Company Vertical: Management Consulting

➢ ROB HEIMANN, Director River Cities Capital Funds Company Vertical: Venture Capital & Private Equity Company Size: 11-50 employees

➢ RAVI KOKA, Head of Insurance Products Polaris Software Labs Inc. Company Vertical: Management Consulting Company Size: 51-200 employees

➢ PHANENDRA BABU GARIMELLA, VP of Engineering, Aurea Software Company Vertical: Computer Software Company Size: 201-500 employees

➢ KARTHIK SUNDARAM, President & CEO, Purplepatch Services LLC Company Vertical: Marketing and Advertising Company Size: 11-50 employees

➢ MARK A. BUNCH, AVP and Enterprise Architect, Great American Insurance Group Company Vertical: Insurance. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

We will soon be sharing another list of Innovators who will be participating at InTech50

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Next 20 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products from India

After announcing the first 20 companies, we are pleased to announce the next 20 finalists for InTech50 – Most Innovative Products from India.

Picking just 50 finalists from over two hundred wonderful products was one of the most challenging jobs for our iSPIRT panel of selectors this year. We have been narrowing and narrowing the choice until we got down to 50 great products.  

Although selecting 50 was really daunting, yet it was greatly satisfying to appreciate so many innovative products from young and innovative startups. The names of the next 20 finalists (in alphabetical order) are:

  • a-mantra is a web based integrated facility management software that is developed in a modular architecture by Satnav Technologies. Asset Management controls the assets and its location. Fixed assets, IT assets and consumable assets can be managed using asset management.
  • Aujas Networks: Digital technology makes informative content easier to find, access, manipulate and remix, and to disseminate. Aujas’ Secure Digital Content Solution helps companies prevent unauthorized usage of digital content.
  • BrandIdea Enterprise Market Analytics™ is a SaaS-based, self-service, Business Intelligence enterprise tool for the FMCG vertical, aimed at the business user. It is powered with in-built granular information on Demographics, Income, Economic, Category and Micro data. It overlays the Client’s internal data to drive insights across – Market Potential, Media, Distribution & Sales for any geographical area in India.
  • Capillary Technologies’ suite of Intelligent Customer Engagement™ solutions enables businesses to capture and analyze data on customer behavior and shopping preferences through digital and mobile channels. Capillary’s customer engagement solutions enable merchants to provide real-time personalized recommendations to shoppers and allow merchants to offer relevant promotions across any channel of choice.
  • CloudByte offers solutions built for cloud and virtualized environments. CloudByteElastiStorTM is a full-featured storage software product that provides dynamically selectable performance to each application or tenant by continuously monitoring and adjusting key storage performance characteristics including IOPS, throughput, and latency.
  • The Ezetap solution is an end-to-end service that includes a mobile card-reader, a configurable mobile application and a flexible platform that allows Ezetap or any third party to build and turn on value-added services that are tightly integrated to its core payment service.
  • Hoverr.me is a native advertising platform that leverages eyeballs over celebrity photographs in the content publisher websites and redirect it to the E-commerce stores. The computer vision technology fetches similar looking clothes from e-commerce stores and provides it when someone hovers over the celebrity image and encourages instant buy option.
  • iViZ is the first company in the world to take ethical hacking to the cloud. iViZ has built a unique Artificial Intelligence based technology to simulate a human hacker which shows all the permutations and combinations of possible attacks and defenses against a hacker. The technology has already received a patent in USPTO and multiple other patents are under review.
  • LocoBuzz is an award winning Social Media Analytics and engagement platform, which offers unparalleled workflows along with insightful visualization of the digital chatter. LocoBuzz is a tool for brand reputation management, Lead Generation Analytics and Infographics.
  • Nanobi Analytics is a next generation analytics platform built with a highly scalable cloud based architecture. The nanobi analytics platform enables end-to-end capabilities for delivering analytics starting from push/pull data through a variety of interfaces, through to quick/instant data visualization. Its REST architecture enables a seamless API based connect to any other cloud platform or data source, for easy integration and data interface.
  • Ozonetel Systems: CloudAgent is India’s first Multi-Channel Cloud Contact Center which enables SMEs to set up their sales/support agents on a plug & play basis. It is a browser based system which operates on PSTN Cloud and calls for zero hardware and software installation at agent side.
  • ShieldSquare: For online business (classifieds,news/content portals, Ecommerce/marketplaces, Travel Sites), scraping of content by un-authorized bots is becoming a major concern that is affecting the competitiveness of the business. ShieldSquare uses big data analytics to block bots/scrapers in real-time there by increasing the traffic, revenues of the online business as well as cut costs in terms of infrastructure, resources.
  • Stelae Technologies: It offers content transformation software, creating structured, indexed, searchable and enriched output from unstructured content in multiple formats like PDF, ASCII, Word, HTML etc. This enables customers to re-utilize the information on multiple supports like print, web, hand-held devices etc. and store in easy to retrieve archives and make it readily available to their users, cost effectively and rapidly.
  • Pawaa has built a technology platform that secures files and documents. The technology can be seamlessly integrated with any application or use case and allows exchange of files securely. The platform is unique as it overcomes the limitations of encryption on enterprise, mobile and cloud.
  • Qubole Data Service (QDS) provides a Big Data Platform in the AWS and GCE clouds. Our award-winning cloud-optimized and auto-scaling Hadoop technology allows customers to run Hadoop in a cost-effective manner in the Cloud. Its user Interface make it simple for data analysts to use big data technologies like Hive, Pig and Sqoop, Presto and Oozie to integrate and analyze data from a variety of sources.
  • Thinkflow Software: Available on-cloud and on-premise, Thinkflow apps platform is helping enterprise app developers build business applications faster. The platform has modules to create process flows, create alerts, configure business rules, design forms, digitize documents and an inbuilt module for business process analytics.
  • Thinxtream: It offers PrintJinni – Consumer Printing Apps on iOS, Android, RIM platforms offering great quality, accuracy, wireless printing to any vendor’s printer. It also supports email, photos, PDF files, Microsoft® Office docs, Webpages and more. It is available in all major languages worldwide.
  • TouchMagix: MotionMagix™ Interactive wall/floor, a gesture based tracking technology lends any wall or floor the qualities of motion-sensing. The vibrant and customizable high resolution content responds to the consumer movements and encourages further interaction. A wall/floor projected advertisement/game can react as and when customers approach the zone.
  • Unmetric: Its product offers the ability to collect, interpret and take action on information – regardless of business field. Its offering are focused on providing social media teams. This provides the ability to understand and distill insights from competitive and complementary brands that are active on social channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc.
  • VoxApp is a mobile survey product used by brands and research companies to get consumer feedback and on-ground market information in real time. In India, of the data collected for brand tracking, retail audits, stock/sales tracking, the bulk are executed on paper/ laptops with issues of data quality and turnaround time that are solved by using VoxApp’s mobile data collection platform.

About InTech:  InTech50, a joint initiative by iSPIRT and Terrene Global Leadership Network that recognizes most promising software products by India’s entrepreneurs.

The elected products that represent inspirational and pioneering concepts in software will be showcased at InTech50, a two-day event to be held at Bangalore from April 9 -10, 2014, where global CIOs and transformation leaders will be present.

(Check out the First 20 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products from India. Stay tuned for the last 10 companies which we plan to announce shortly.)

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Second 10 of the 50 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products from India

InTech50, a joint initiative by iSPIRT and Terrene Global Leadership Network, that recognizes most promising software products by India’s entrepreneurs, is pleased to confirm the Second set of 10 selected products from over 200 nominations. Check out the First 10 of the 50 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products.

InTech50 logoThe elected products that represent inspirational and pioneering concepts in software will be showcased at InTech50 , a two-day event to be held at Bangalore from April 9 -10, 2014, where global CIOs and transformation leaders will be present. 

How we picked out the Top 10 showcase products:

It is quite an honor to be in the InTech50  considering there was an overwhelming response for product nominations.

An esteemed panel of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), venture capitalists, and product leaders from previous successes have evaluated the nominated products.

The products have been selected based on their capabilities and uniqueness, while having the potential to transform the world around us.

The Second 10 finalists for InTech50 2014 Most Innovative Products (in alphabetical order) are:

  1. Contify is a Web Intelligence application for enterprise and teams. The product mines virtually all relevant online sources for information and converts it into easily accessible qualitative and quantitative insights on customers, competitors, and markets.
  2. i7 Networks is a 100% Agentless-way (ZERO-Touch) of detecting all personal devices, secure quadrupled fingerprinting (US patent-pending) of devices and apps etc. and provides network behavioural analysis. It then denies access to infected and compromised personal devices connecting to the network.
  3. KiSSFLOW is business process automation software that is deeply integrated with Google Apps environment. KiSSFLOW is the #1 app in the Google Marketplace in its category and has more than 5000 organizations and active users spread across 120 countries.
  4. Kreeo is a “Collective Intelligence & Unification Platform” for Companies which addresses three important aspects of effective information/knowledge management – Expression, Organization and Discovery (EOD). It provides a unified platform where information is shared/aggregated in various contexts and is intelligently organized around various concepts of relevance.
  5. MindTickle is a cloud based learning platform which enables businesses to create, deliver, manage and track online courses. It is easy to create courses on MindTickle by uploading or embedding existing content (videos, PPTs, PDFs, quizzes, etc.).
  6. RazorFlow Dashboard Framework helps you build interactive dashboards in HTML5 that work well on all modern devices. You can configure components of the dashboard using an intuitive API, which will intelligently render the dashboard according to the capabilities and form-factor of your user’s device.
  7. RippleHire is a technology product that gamifies employee referrals and enables social recruiting. By empowering the most effective way you hire (Employee Referrals), it reduces your hiring cost and effort and unlocks the multiplier in your employee social networks.
  8. Sapience is an innovative, patent-pending software solution that delivers over 20% increase in Work Output, from the existing team. Sapience achieves this through Automated Work Visibility, without requiring any change in process or extra management effort.
  9. SignEasy is a simple and convenient app for businesses and professionals to sign and fill documents from smart phones and tablets. You do not need a printer, scanner or fax machine. SignEasy is currently available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry.
  10. Seclore FileSecure is an Information Rights Management (IRM) solution which allows unstructured information (documents, emails, drawings, images,) to be remote controlled. It is possible to share information but have control: WHO can access the information, WHAT can each person do and WHEN does each person use the information.

Check out the First 10 of the 50 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products. Stay tuned for the remaining 30 companies which we plan to announce in the next few days.

 

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First 10 of the 50 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products from India

InTech50, a joint initiative by iSPIRT and Terrene Global Leadership Network, that recognizes most promising software products by India’s entrepreneurs, is pleased to confirm the first set of 10 selected products from over 200 nominations.

InTech50 logoThe elected products that represent inspirational and pioneering concepts in software will be showcased at InTech50 , a two-day event to be held at Bangalore from April 9 -10, 2014, where global CIOs and transformation leaders will be present.

How we picked out the Top 10 showcase products:

It is quite an honor to be in the InTech50  considering there was an overwhelming response for product nominations.

An esteemed panel of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), venture capitalists, and product leaders from previous successes have evaluated the nominated products.

The products have been selected based on their capabilities and uniqueness, while having the potential to transform the world around us.

The first 10 finalists for InTech50 2014 Most Innovative Products (in alphabetical order) are:

  •  99tests is a Crowd sourced Testing Marketplace with over 6500 testers from over 20 countries. Software product owners can get their applications tested on different versions of web browsers and various mobile devices to find critical bugs.
  • Cerebra (patent pending), a product from Flutura Solutions is a Machine-to-Machine Big Data Analytics platform that has the capability to unlock signals embedded within cryptic machine logs.
  • CoCubes is India’s largest assessment and campus hiring platform. The company works with 450+ corporate for hiring that provide greater control and transparency, while assisting institutional clients measure and improve employability and helping students move ahead on their career path.
  • Datonis (TM) is a platform from Altizon which helps get any device connected to the internet, manage these connected devices and drive data related to their performance and usage to a cloud based data aggregation and analytical engine to glean operational and consumer insight.
  • Freshdesk is a leading SaaS based customer support software that has more than 16,000 Support Teams across the world using it to deliver exceptional customer service. Freshdesk allows businesses to support customers through email, Twitter, Facebook, chat, phone, forums and other channels.
  • Bizosys’ HSearch is an award winning Hadoop based search and analytics engine to handle several terabytes of data. HSearch has been deployed by clients in Telecom infrastructure, Pharmaceutical R&D, Energy management, online retail, financial analytics industries with the core search engine available as open source.
  • Uniken has developed a path breaking Secure Digital Platform, REL-IDTM – which delivers ubiquitous, rich multi-channel digital experience with military grade security to the customers, employees and partners of an enterprise. Through REL-ID, the end users enjoy a rich and secure digital experience across devices and platforms.
  • Whatfix is a solution for creating interactive support faqs, training and product tours. With Whatfix anyone can create such interactive guides with just a few clicks and integrate them with products, applications & websites.
  • WhistleTalk is a SaaS based referral hiring solution that allows companies to leverage the social network of all their current employees, reach out to their friends and hire them. This unique approach helps organisations to supercharge their referral hiring.
  • ZipDial is a pioneering Mobile Marketing & Analytics platform for emerging markets. Marketers and advertisers utilize ZipDial to transform their brand campaigns into highly interactive and viral user experiences, while building a loyal customer base.

Moving Ahead:  As the evaluation process is still underway, we will announce names of the subsequent finalists as we go along. So stay tuned and share your comments about these innovative companies.

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#InTech50 – Bringing Bold Innovations to Light! Your Last Chance to Seize the Opportunity and Get Discovered!

If you have an Innovative Enterprise software product or a business transforming idea that you want the world to know about, iSPIRT invites you to take part at InTech50 and achieve your bold dreams!

InTech50 is a showcase of some of the most promising software products created by entrepreneurs from India. A panel of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), venture capitalists, and successful product leaders will select the Top 50 companies for the submissions.

Seize the opportunity to showcase innovation, get validation of concept and product directions from global CIOs, VC’s and successful product innovators.  If showcased well you never know what might be in your future – pilot at large global company, early stage adoption, investor interest or becoming an add-on to a successful product.

InTech50 is proud and honoured to announce the first list of global CIOs and transformation leaders who have confirmed their participation at the event.  These eminent names include:

Andy Walter – Vice President, Procter and Gamble
Anup Nair, Senior Vice President and CIO, Vantiv
Atul Jayawant, Senior President Group IT and Group Chief Information Officer, Aditya Birla Group
Chandra Venkatarmani, Chief Information Officer, Convergys Corporation
Christopher T. Hjelm, Senior Vice President And Chief Information Officer, The Kroger Co.
Dawn Page, Managing Director, Global Digital Development, Citi Global Consumer Technology
Ed Ossie, Director, Corum Group
Edward L RenneMann, Chief Transformation Officer, Crate and Barrel
Guru Vasudeva, SVP And Enterprise Chief Technology Officer, Nationwide Mutual Insurance
Jay Jayaraman, Vice President, Global Strategic Innovation & Technology Alliances, Colgate-Palmolive Company
Dr. Narayanan (KK) Krishnakumar, Vice President and Chief IT Architect, EMC Corporation
Partha Srinivasa, SVP and Group CIO, HCC
Suren Gupta, Executive Vice President, Allstate Udai Kumar,Chairman and CEO of OHUM Healthcare Solutions Private Ltd

among many others. This list is being continually updated. For more details go to InTech50.com  and stay tuned!

The Advisory Board members look forward to your submissions to evaluate whether you qualify for InTech50.   Seize the opportunity now.  The jury members are now curating the second set of applications and there is a great chance that you could make it. Please do submit your nomination before 15th Feb. Apply Now

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“The day we claim success is the day we fail”– Andy Walter, CIO of Procter & Gamble #InTech50

Andy Walter, CIO of Procter & Gamble strongly believes that the day we claim success is that day we stop innovating and the day we start climbing down. We are very fortunate to have Andy Walter CIO P&G to visit and talk about his experiences in what it takes to be a global enterprise product company and specifically what it takes for an Indian product to break into US enterprises. He is here visiting, speaking and being part of the advisory board to shortlist the 50 Indian enterprise product companies showcasing at InTech50. Have you applied for InTech50, if not, please apply here

Andy WalterAndy is the Vice President, Delivery & MDO Solutions at Procter & Gamble. With 24 years of experience at P&G across the U.S. and Europe Andy’s career has spanned a variety of assignments including Global R&D, Product Supply & Manufacturing, Marketing, and International Sales & Operations. Prior to his current role, Andy also designed and led the industry-leading Business Intelligence / Analytics journey across P&G. Under his leadership, P&G received the first-ever Excellence in Analytics Award by The International Institute of Analytics. His teams have also been recognized with CIO 100 Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012. In 2013, Harvard Business School will add a P&G-based case study to their analytics’ curriculum. Andy credits such recognition to clear “Play to Win” strategy choices, relentless talent development, and breakthrough strategic partnerships. Andy is driven by the belief that people and relationships make the difference—that “The day we claim success is the day we fail.” Execution is the only strategy consumers and retailers see!

Andy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. A native of the city, Andy lives on the West Side of Cincinnati, with his wife, Debbie, and their two sons. Andy believes that “perfect storm” of Talent, Technology, and Leadership (TTL) is required for the success of a company and in particular at P&G. He strongly believes in TTL with TALENT gave it a good nucleus of people who understood analytics and already had a strong program in place. TECHNOLOGY – P&G also saw the technology advance to a point that allowed it to bring together disparate, siloed datasets, and run analytics on stuff it hadn’t been able to previously. Leadership. The third element of P&G’s perfect storm was the vision of GBS President Filippo Passerini that BI and analytics needed to be a “key area of investment and a breakthrough for P&G and Andy was asked to head it.

Andy designed and led the transformation of Consumer Digital Services, and, more recently, the industry-leading Business Intelligence/Analytics journey across P&G. Under his leadership, P&G received the first-ever Excellence in Analytics Award by The International Institute of Analytics. His teams have also been recognized with CIO 100 Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012.

P&G’s transformation into a data-driven, analytically-rich culture happened quickly. And Walter said, “because we made the courageous choice at that time that we weren’t going to wait until the data, infrastructure, and core systems were perfect before we started doing analytics or visualization.”

Andy shares that P&G adapted new technology at the right and that is the risk they took and today they proudly say and No doubt, P&G deserves recognition as an analytical innovator.

Let’s all welcome Andy Walter to InTech50 and we are all very fortunate to have him here!!

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The trouble of selling to BigB

I was talking to one of the CEOs of an enterprise product company who sells to CIOs of enterprise. The typical industry classification for them would be B2B, a business selling to business.  When you read it that way it seems like a fairly balanced relationship between the two.  However as we discussed his situation further and I learnt about the realities of what he has to go through I realized that it was not just a simple B2B but it was SmallB to BigB. He wanted to target big enterprises with at least 1000+ people, as a result he was selling to IT departments and CIO’s had to sign off on the purchase on business value basis.

In his mind my friend had a innovative product, it would lead to significant business value and cost savings and there should be a desire to make the paradigm shift.  As he explained his value proposition I was convinced of the same and the thought that struck me was that  he must be  very successful and for sure is raking in huge bucks.  To my surprise he hardly had any POC candidates let alone real customers. I was shell-shocked.  After more conversations over a few beers I realized that it doesn’t matter what product or value proposition you are selling to large enterprises when it comes to SmallB selling to BigB is a huge challenge.  The major reasons why it is a challenge (definitely not an exhaustive list) are:

    • Getting to meet CIOs is a herculean task and to be able to navigate the murky waters of the organization before you get to them is very time consuming(and expensive). From an experience basis in most situations getting to meet them at a client’s place for start-up solutions has a 1 in 20 probability.
    • There are not even a handful of events that have Indian CIO’s focused on Innovation, Most of them are very expensive when you calculate the total costs incurred by start-ups. Entry itself is north of Rs 50,000, then to add a stall and have staff there to man it and put up collateral costs upwards of Rupees. If you do not have a stall then one is left chasing people and handing them business cards – that surely does not lead to sale. You add travel and other costs to it, the costs go up so much that it is impossible for a startup like ours to participate (most events happen in Mumbai, Delhi or Goa)
    • There are many other inexpensive smaller events and they promise CIOs as part of their promotion. However the reality is that mostIndian CIOs never turn up for such events and in tune they send their IT folks who generally don’t have the decision making powers.
    • Assume somehow you did make contact to these CIOs and you were able to mention the value proposition and they liked it, you later need to do several trips to their head office to meet several stake holders, get all their approvals and finally get a nod to do a pilot; all such trips add up huge to your expenses
    • Worse inspite of the value propositions you show, remember the tag line – you can never lose your job if you go with IBM. Even when you manage to get through that almost insurmountable barrier the progress of pilots is slow. One ends up making trips to demonstrate commitment and to push for progress on the the Pilot. Unfortunately sometimes the start-ups get play to justify other purchases as they will never pass the smell test of strong financials or references for procurement departments of large enterprises..
    • On the other hand big brands have deep pockets, large sales force, strong reseller base and reach out to these clients easily. The clients find it easier to trust them due to their relationships and safety trumps agility and foundation of innovation of startups.

 

If these are a sample of challenegs that you have to go through to try to get a Pilot then imagine the travails of having international clients take you seriously. Imagine trying to do all of the above for potential Global customers.  Also one of the situations he ran across was people in the Indian IT departments advising him to try and get some global customers for credibility.. It seems contrary to the saying that says win at home first to win outside! –To be able to do the same would require significant funding or leap of faith!  Interestingly some of the VC’s loved his product and were ready to invest but with a caveat – they say can you possibly get some Pilots in US and demonstrate success there –  – WHAT????

Just a return ticket to Mumbai and a couple of days stay costs me more than 25K and these people are talking about attending CIO events in USA and then doing pilots in the US market.  Interestingly attending CIO events in USA is not cheap and most of the big ones there (Evanta, HMS, CIO Summit etc.) require vendors to pay hefty sponsorships (starting at US$20,000 to attend)Does this mean that SmallB with small budgets should just not have the vision to build enterprise products even if they have the ideas to solve some of the pressing problems?

Wish there was a way to enter bigger markets that were more focused on innovation and were willing to try out new ideas to make a big difference. . Wish there was a way to showcase to Global CIOs in a manner that did not mean dipping into all the savings in one trip. Keep wishing…

Thankfully I got to meet another CEO of a successful product company from India who passed this litmus test.   He was a case in point that a SmallB can actually sell to BigB. Today his revenues are upwards of $100M but it takes time, patience & money.  He achieved it by doing services on the side and investing that money into marketing the product. His mantra is, there is no shortcut for a SmallBto sell into BigB.  You have to spend quality time with CIOs who are willing to see the vision of the start-ups and drive decision making to make things happen.  Face time and getting early customers is the trick and he concluded by saying that SmallB selling to BigB is where the real money is 🙂

That’s when I ran into InTech50.  They are bringing  25 Global CIOs and 25 Indian CIOs , Product M&A folks, VC’s and media all under a single roof.  They are also bringing the entourage to Bangalore and will utilize their skills and knowledge to select the 50 that get to be at the event to present to them.  In effect they have already expressed an interest in your company if you are selected to be there.  There is no cost to apply!

I think we – the enterprise product companies from India should grab this opportunity and make every effort so that we make it to the list.

Would love to hear comments form entrepreneurs who are playing in the enterprise product selling into big enterprises.

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If you have built an Enterprise Software Product, here are 5 reasons why you should apply for #InTech50

If you have built an Enterprise Software Product and have aspirations to take it to a global scale, here are the 5 reasons why you should apply for #InTech50.

  1. An opportunity to showcase, get validation of the concept and product direction, better understanding of business value in the enterprise from Global CIOs.
  2. High probability of being selected by Global CIO’s for pilot or early adoption.
  3. Possibility of being selected by large product companies for add-on/bolt-on value add/partnerships to their large scale product solution sets.
  4. Potential possibility of getting investors attention due to interest/validation from Global CIO’s/large product companies.
  5. Getting selected in the elite #InTech50 list and subsequently getting a high degree of visibility from different stakeholders especially media coverage.

InTech50 logoThe possibility of all this happening without the need to travel out of country is real! This is the 1st and only platform for Enterprise products to showcase their products to Global CIOs.  Only the 50 shortlisted companies will get to attend the event. So what are you waiting for, go ahead and apply, the last date is 31st Jan 2014.

 Read more details here – Announcing InTech50 – A showcase of 50 Innovative Product Companies to Global and Indian CIOs, Product Company executives, Investors and Analysts

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Announcing InTech50 – A showcase of 50 Innovative Product Companies to Global and Indian CIOs, Product Company executives, Investors and Analysts

InTech50 is a showcase of some of the most promising software products created by entrepreneurs from India. A panel of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Venture Capitalists, and Product Leaders from previous successes will decide the fifty companies that make the cut to InTech50 selection criteria. These chosen companies will receive advice, on-going mentoring, product marketing support, and funding to scale their offering to the global markets.

So Why InTech50?

The founders of InTech50 truly believe that the Indian start-up ecosystem is on the cusp of explosive growth—in innovating for the enterprise, society, and for social causes that will alleviate the quality of human life. We bring global experience, wealth of knowledge in dealing with global markets, and true enterprise-level insights to help these companies scale their vision.

InTech50 provides these entrepreneurs with a platform to showcase their innovations to folks who are visionaries in their own way and have the knack of seeing possibilities very quickly. The platform will create possibilities that we can think of but more importantly it will create a network that will evolve in ways that we cannot predict in any way!

Why apply?

InTech50 will help software product companies enter global markets through our network of early adopters, partners, co-innovators and investors. Our platform helps your company with exposure to these powerful members of the ecosystem in your geography—India!

Winners of the InTech50 are acknowledged as the most promising in their space, and receive every effort—from product strategy, UI, product marketing, sales and global partnership—all designed to help them succeed in massive scale.

Please visit www.intech50.com for further details on who can qualify.

When and where will it be held?

Intech50 will be held on Apr 9th and Apr 10th @ Bangalore, India.

How much does it cost?

It is absolutely free for applying. 50 companies will be shortlisted by the Advisory Board comprised of global and Indian CIO’s, product company heads, venture capitalists, and analysts.  The selected companies will need to pay a fee of Rs. 25,000 to cover expenses for two attendees.  Only the 50 shortlisted companies will get to attend the event. So what are you waiting for, go ahead and apply, the last date is 31st Jan 2014.