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DIPP – New Secretary catalyzing the past efforts, for Startup Ecosystem.

Mr. Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary of DIPP in a learning-session with iSPIRT.
He formerly headed the Forwards Market Commission and has subsequently served as the secretary of performance management at the Cabinet Secretariat. He has been the key driver behind several reforms including the FMC being merged with SEBI. Mr. Ramesh Abhishek, is the new Secretary of DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion), following his senior Mr. Amitabh Kant. Mr. Ramesh is now also in charge of Invest India, National Investment Promotion Agency, as well as Startup India campaign. He met up with iSPIRT, on Friday, 10th June, at 91Springboard in Bangalore, participating in a learning-session to understand the plethora of Technological Break-throughs and Policy Transformations that iSPIRT is facilitating for the benefit of the Startup Community. He provided some very useful advice by participating in an interactive learning session for close to 4 hours.
Below are some of the key highlights of the Learning Session.

 

iSPIRT Show-case – INDIA Going from Data Poor To Data RICH
The session started with a presentation by Sanjay Jain on the iSPIRT’s jobs perspective. He explained that while new-age startups won’t create many jobs they will build platforms which will drive formalization of the Indian economy. This will materially expand the economy and create millions of jobs. IndiaStack is enabling this transformation of the economy. HouseJoy, NinjaCart and CapitalFloat CEOs shared their own perspective on this change and added to the discussion.
DIPP-secyThe follow-on session, by Shekhar Kirani, presented how INDIA is becoming a major player in the GLOBAL Software Product Industry and how Startups from INDIA are disrupting some major players. Subsequently Unbxd, ShieldSquare and Hotellogix discussed their own journeys and added depth to this discussion..
The most intense session was when Mr. Venkatesh Hariharan presented the Patent & IPR Policy Details, If we have to unleash India’s true innovation potential, India needs to remain a no-software-patenting jurisdiction. Only then can it capitalize on its mathematical foundations, and keep away the patent-trolls.
This last session was by Sanjay Khan and covered the progress around the Stay-in-India Checklist. Mr. Abhishek was very impressed by the progress that has been made and reiterated his commitment to get the remaining items on the Checklist resolved. He agreed that stopping exodus of new-age startups is very critical to the success of the software product ecosystem.
DIPP-2ndSession-2Insights and Advise from Mr. Ramesh Abhishek
Government wants to make a big difference with our Startup Movement. Mr. Ramesh felt that we should make it the biggest, so that it will leapfrog the West. He was immensely supportive to all policy efforts of iSPIRT and, in fact, extended immediate help for on a particular issue that had come up in the discussions. He had 3 important pieces of advice:
  • Startup-Hub as part of the Invest India program, should be supported and adopted with good ideas from the Startup Community.
  • DIPP will address Startup challenges quickly in aget time-bound manner.
  • DIPP wants to so much more, so iSPIRT should continuously engage with it.
Mr. Ramesh later proceeded to visit some Hardware and software Incubators in and around Bangalore.
DIPP-2ndSession-3Conclusion
Mr. Ramesh Abhishek went away with a deep understanding of the forces changing India and the landscape that is emerging. was very impressed with the body of work presented to him. He stressed that this Government wants to go much more.  iSPIRT on its part is fostering and facilitating many such learning-sessions to nudge Policy Makers help the ecosystem, and bridge the gap of Intellectual distance between Delhi and Bangalore. Let us all move-the-needle with collective vigor to catalyze the effort of building India into a Product Nation.

 

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Bill Gates meets with iSPIRT

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

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

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

the panel with BillGuest Post by Saurabh Panjwani, iSPIRT

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iSPIRT Meeting at PMO – Stay in India Checklist

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

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

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

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

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

Jpeg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SEBI & iSPIRT Discuss Modernized Online Platform with Tech Startups and Securities Market Intermediaries.

On 15th October, Mr. U.K. Sinha, honorable chairman of SEBI, had a more than 4 hour meeting with iSPIRT. The goal was to lay the ground-work for a new approach to Paperless and Presence-less Distribution Model enabling a 10X growth in the number of people buying Mutual Funds.

The iSPIRT team was chaired by Nandan Nilekani and included key members of its Open API Expert Team – Sanjay Jain, Pramod Varma and Sharad Sharma. Several Tech Startups like Scripbox, FundsIndia, Perfios, Eko, PolicyBazaar, BankBazaar, Flipkart and Eko participated in this interactive session. Many Securities Market Intermediaries comprising of representatives from HDFC Mutual Fund, Birla Sunlife MF, Quantum MF, CAMS and KARVY also attended the meeting. Nakul Saxena, Fellow Policy Initatives, coordinated the meeting on the iSPIRT side. From SEBI’s side Mr. Amarjeet Singh, Mr. Sujit Prasad, Mr. Ravi Kumar, Mr. Rajesh Gujjar and Mr. Vimal Bhatter also participated.

The discussion focused on three tracks:
1. Regulatory track for simplifying the various processes for Investor participation. There was intense discussion around simplifying or re-engineering the Onboarding process of Retail Investors. It noted several ideas to remove IPVs/wet signatures, speeding up the KYC processes via KRAs’ (KYC Registration Agencies).
2. Technology track focused on providing a paperless and presence-less Online Technology Infrastructure. This was about leveraging the “India Stack” for lowering the onboarding costs almost 100X.
3. Market track focused on enabling streamlining the Distribution Model for increasing the Retail Mutual Fund Investor base. Several ideas around how to increase Investor trust, lower cost of customer acquisition and provide for an Online Only Distribution model were discussed.

Conclusion
It was a very productive working session. There were many learnings for all participating including Tech Startups and Securities Intermediaries. Pilots will now be undertaken starting mid-November.

Its now becoming even more apparent that INDIA will leap-frog the WEST in its Digital Platforms particularly in the Banking and Finance sector. Brace yourself, as we might be entering an ERA of hyper-growth fuelled by JAM (Jandhan, Aaadhar and Mobile) that is powered by the “India Stack”. iSPIRT will talk more about this impending change in the coming months.

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India Innovation Session with Jeff Immelt, CEO, GE

GE

Every sector has a long period of evolutionary change that is only occasionally interrupted by a short (5-10 year) period of intense non-linear change. Global corporates like GE are able to position themselves to successfully embrace the evolutionary change. However, to leverage the period of non-linear change, a new kind of partnering model is needed.

Keeping in mind this theme, iSPIRT, India’s software product think tank, spent an hour with Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, and his team, to discuss the implications of such non-linear change to GE and the larger global ecosystem. To drive home the point, six inspiring startups showcased their respective cutting-edge innovations that are helping drive change in their individual sectors. Their stories are captured, in brief, below.

Team IndusTeamIndus

Infrastructure for NextGen Apps

Team Indus, a highly qualified group of ex-ISRO scientists and systems engineers, spoke to GE of two moonshots they are attempting. Literally. The first is landing a privately funded spacecraft on the moon by 2017. As part of this mission, they India’s only entry, and top 3 of 16 global teams, in the Google Lunar XPrize Competition.

The second is a derivative of the first, where they aim to put up a high-altitude long-endurance platform to deliver payload to stratospheric orbits. In laymen’s terms, they are enabling wide-area connectivity for terrestrial applications, essentially disrupting satellites as they’ve been known and used. And at the current pace of progress, they are on track to be the leader in Asia by 2021.

Nimble WirelessNimble

Cold Chain Monitoring

Nimble Wireless’ pioneering IoT solution is built on top of the future of pervasive connectivity that TeamIndus is working towards. Their platform helps enterprises connect, control and manage their business critical assets to enable greater efficiencies and savings. A great use case is in helping leading food/cold chain companies ensure food safety and reduce wastage, especially important in a country that has 33% malnourished children but wastes nearly a third of its dairy products. Here, Nimble deploys real time temperature monitoring and alert management systems to help ensure food safety, eliminate wastages and attain visible RoI for food and logistics companies.

SavariSavari

V2X: Connecting Vehicles to Everything

Moving beyond the world of cold chain to the world of automobiles is Savari’s technology that connects vehicles to everything – each other, smartphones and road infrastructure. There is a battle ensuing between Silicon Valley’s revolutionary approach in favor of self-driving cars and the auto industry’s evolutionary approach in favor of connected cars. Savari’s patented middleware software is enabling the auto industry to realize the gradual, incremental change they believe is the way forward in connecting vehicles. Their technology is pushing forward safety, fuel savings and automation and ensuring auto companies don’t become ‘the Foxconn of Apple’.

Julia ComputingJulia

An Open Platform for Brilliant Machines

The consistent theme emerging is that machines are all going to be connected in not too distant a future. All well and good, but there’s a small problem. Today the programming language for machines (iron) is different from that of the cloud (silicon), where software and analytics reside. That means large time and cost investments are needed in translating algorithms between the languages to connect the machines.

Which is where Julia, an open-source language being built out of MIT, fits in. Their solution, a language with a strong mathematical foundation, serves as a common language for machines and the cloud, so the same engineers can write analytics that run on sensors and scale to the cloud. The language has visible use cases across machines (air collision avoidance algorithms, 3D printing) and cloud applications (predictive analytics, pricing algorithms), enabling immense savings in time and complexity. The industrial world until now only had proprietary platforms to choose from but now Julia provides an alternative that is open and neutral, where firms can retain strategic control of their products.

LogistimoLogistimo

Open-source supply chain

Continuing with the theme of improved efficiency is Logistimo, an open-source supply chain software enabling manufacturers, distributors and after-sales partners to better reach and serve frontier markets.  There are unique challenges of implementing such systems in low-resource settings of rural India, where nearly 70% of Indians live. But Logistimo’s nuanced methodologies to manage this low-resource context is what has helped reduce infant mortality, electrify villages, and improve the overall quality of life for citizens of the hinterland.

India StackiSPIRT

Impact on Service Delivery

Tying this all together was the final session about a pioneering initiative, the first of its kind globally, being spearheaded in India towards a cashless, paperless and presence-less service delivery. The India Stack ties together the Identity Layer (Adhaar), a Paperless Layer (eSign, eKYC), a frictionless Payments Layer, a Transaction Layer (GSTn) and finally a privacy/data-sharing Consent Layer to revolutionize the Indian landscape in not too distant a future.

 

Lots going on, lots more to come. And this is just the beginning of the excitement for India and the non-linear change that the startup ecosystem is enabling.

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SBI and iSPIRT discuss future of banking in India

iSPIRT and SBI had a 4-hour meeting on the future of banking. 30+ seniormost officers of SBI – including all the MDs, DMDs, CGMs, and GMs – participated. Two SBI Board members were also present. Nandan Nilekani chaired the session from iSPIRT side.
DSC_2148The first session was about understanding the technology trends that are shaping banking. There was special focus on understanding implications of eKYC, Aadhaar, new payment infrastructure and GST Network. There was also a good discussion how point-solutions by startups are changing banking.
The second session showcased 7 Fintech software product companies (Novopay, Happay,Vote4Cash, CapitalFloat, CustomerXPS, ProbeEquity, Enstage) and 2 non-FinTech product companies(InMobi, TeamIndus). The third session session was about SBI strategy. This was a very productive discussion. We can’t share the details as it was confidential.
This meeting brought together two threads within iSPIRT. One thread was related to its Policy work related to Open APIs (that is shaping the technology infrastructure of banking and finance in India) and the push for Cashless India. The other thread was InTech50, which is a market catalyst that helps big companies leverage software products startups to drive innovation throughout their business.
DSC_2150iSPIRT is fostering many such dialogs with not just banking giants like SBI, but with Regulatory institutions like SEBI, RBI and others, to fashion a new India.
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SEBI Startup Listing Exchange – Nasdaq of the East

Efforts of iSPIRT’s List-in-India Policy Expert Team have reaped the desired results. The securities market regulator, SEBI, has announced relaxed norms for a separate platform to allow “new-age companies” having an innovative business model and belonging to the knowledge-based technology sector to list in the country.

The existing legal framework has considerable challenges for a successful listing, including the mandatory track record of distribution of profits for 3 years. Consequently, Indian technology startups (with their usually disruptive business models) have been increasingly looking to list overseas in view of the less stringent regulatory hurdles. It is hoped that the relaxed regulatory regime will provide software product companies with an opportunity to raise capital through listing onthe proposed platform, and give them a viable alternative to offshore listings. The new platform is also expected to provide an exit opportunity to the investors who have invested in such startups, thereby generating further cycle of investment in the economy.

The iSPIRT List-in-India Policy Expert Team is very happy with this outcome. Things have moved really quickly after we kicked off the effort on Dec 19th in Blr. Mohandas Pai has been an excellent mentor and driver of this effort. We are now working hard to address issues that drive exodus at the Seed and Series A stages of software product startups.
More details of the SEBI Policy can be taken from here. Some of the coverage we have got from LiveMint, Business Standard and Economic Times are here.

 Guest Post by Sanjay Khan, Khaitan & Co

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Chief Economic Advisor is Infected Positively by the Irrational Exuberance of Indian Product Startups.

Mr. Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of INDIA, has been named as one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. After stepping into the shoes of Dr. Raghuram Rajan as Chief Economic Advisor, he is also a widely cited expert on the changing Balance of Global Economic power, as it pertains to INDIA & China. He is also the author of “INDIA’s TURN: Understanding the Economic Transformation“. Mr. Arvind specially travelled to Bangalore to interact with software product industry and discuss policy with the the policy team of iSPIRT Think tank.


In the 4 hour meeting, the energy that emerging companies brought out with each presentation was amplified as the discussion progressed. In the end, I must admit that there was a euphoric feeling that this movement of creating public goods with the Social Commons model is really on-to-something BIG!

Not all elements of the session can be reproduced here, but this article is an effort to provide you the important highlights.

2015-05-28 17.36.55What was so Infectious? Its the Mirror Neurons, Stupid! 

In the first session, as it has become customary, about 8 carefully curated product startups which started in INDIA, with audacious aspirations, and which have already made significant GLOBAL impact while still retaining their Indian-ness, presented their stories. Almost every story was about Product Entrepreneur’s who dared to dream BIG, not just from themselves but for leap-frogging INDIA and the world. The Goal set out for the session was to show-case the behind-the-scenes transformation that is taking place in the software Product Industry landscape.

The Irrational choices of many Entrepreneurs were show-cased in their business avatars, as NowFloats, Uniken, Tally, Forus Health, Team Indus, FreeCharge, SnapBizz & Ezetap. While the strategy choices seemed Irrational, the success these business are having today, and the impact they can have tomorrow to reclaim India’s glory was self-evident. The outcome of the session was remarkably different from the goal the session set-out to achieve. What became apparent as the session progressed was the infectious effect it was having on each participant in the room. It was as if the Mirror Neurons from these passionate Entrepreneurs was affecting not just the minds, but it was affecting our Inner Spirit. The Infectious nature of the session’s outcome in many ways mirrored the outcome of these businesses.

2015-05-28 17.37.06What is the Cure? More Infection. Make India Go Cashless.

In a thoughtful next session the discussion moved toward more earthy and material realization of how Technology & Infectious energy of the startups can be leveraged to leapfrog INDIA. This discussion was about how to make India Go Cashless in 4 years. The benefits of going cashless are many. It can expand micro-credit to small businesses in a big way, for even street-hawkers (Thelewalas) to be able to digitally get credit and also seamlessly receive money from customers. Sanjay Jain (iSPIRT Open API Expert Team member, former Chief Product Officer of Aadhaar) and Abhishek (iSPIRT Colunteer, CEO Eko) presented a comprehensive approach and suggested a new Program, Jan Samridhi, for the Government. This builds on the Open API work that iSPIRT has already done (in eSign, UPI and GTSN) and proposed specific and inter-related policy and regulatory changes. The only real way of achieving this is to have more agencies in the Government, the Regulatory institutions and people to participate. So in effect, the cure really is to infect more people with the Spirit of Social Commons. The discussion clearly bridged some the intellectual distance between Delhi and Bangalore.

Advice from the Chief Economic Advisor

Mr Arvind, in his own-words was blown-away with the enthusiastic zeal and business performance of the Product Startup Ecosystem. He however was also clearly in his elements as he carefully constructed the broader picture by taking the various elements from the Individual presentations. Some of his suggestions and advice to the Startup community were as follows.

  • How soon can we marry the Private Entrepreneurial zeal & Public Goods created by such movements?
  • Can we use and leverage the existing products automating, say, Govt Fair Price shops?
  • While mildly chiding Product Entrepreneurs to dream even bigger by including Government, he asked if we can help realize other broader over-reaching goals like Government Technology Platforms for Expenditure tracking?

He even offered to visit Bangalore and participate 2-3 times a month in various such initiatives to enable routine conversations with Policy Makers and Entrepreneurs.

2015-05-28 18.27.33Conclusion

The entire program was highly Interactive, Infectious & Confidence building. It gave a sense that may-be within 4 years we can Make India go cashless. It also re-affirmed the new Paradigm of creating Public Goods with a Social Commons approach (Open source approach). It is important to co-create a digital INDIA, not just with the Entrepreneurial zeal, but by getting Government and Institutional bodies involved as well. These Infectious power-packed dialogs that iSPIRT is fostering will help us rewrite the script of our Nation, and will help us reclaim its lost Glory. We will become a Product Nation soon, it seems inevitable. Be a part of it now. Go ahead, spread the INFECTION, not just the word.

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Finance Secretary – interacts with Product Industry in Bangalore.

Mr. Rajiv Mehrishi promises deeper Institutional Reforms

Mr. Rajiv Mehrishi, Finance Secretary, Ministry of Finance for Government of INDIA, is a pro-reforms, vocal advocate of institutional transformation of the Financial System in INDIA. Additionally, he is also  the Secretary, Department of Economic affairs. Mr. Mehrishi and his team – Mr. Manoj Joshi (Jt. Secretary), Mr. Ajay Shah (Head, Macro/Finance Group, NIPFP), Ms. Ila Patnaik (Principal Economic Advisor) and Mr. CKG Nair (Advisor, Capital Markets) – specially traveled to Bangalore to understand the software product industry landscape and discuss ways to make India go cashless.

The 4 hour interaction was at ITC Windsor Manor. It was chaired by iSPIRT Mentor Mohandas Pai.  iSPIRT Governing Council members Bharat Goenka (Tally), Vishnu Dusad (Nucleus) and Sharad Sharma (BrandSigma) were also there along with Fellows Avinash Raghava, Nakul Saxena and Sudhir Singh. Shekhar Kirani who had planned the industry landscape showcase had to skip the meeting to be at his daughter’s music recital.

Showcasing behind the scenes transformation of India

The first session focused on bringing the software product industry landscape to life through a carefully curated showcase of 10 product startups. Each startup is a story of dreaming big about transforming India and the world. The goal of this session was to showcase India’s under appreciated prowess to shape industries and tackle deep rooted problems through its tech startups. The companies that participated in this carefully curated showcase were Ezetap, Instamojo, Capillary, PeelWorks, InMobi, Foradian, Team Indus, Forus Health, OlaCabs and Practo. The session went well and was an eye-opener to the policy makers. It helped them understand the breadth and depth of the emerging software product industry in India. One of them remarked that this was “one of the most awesome afternoons of his life”. They found the session to be “revealing and energizing”.  Everybody felt more optimistic about India’s future after this session.

Making India go Cashless

The next session was a thoughtful discussion on how to make India go cashless in 4 years. It was led by Bharat Goenka and Sanjay Jain (iSPIRT Open API Expert Team member, former Chief Product Officer of Aadhaar). They presented a comprehensive approach and suggested a new Program, Jan Samridhi, for the Government. This builds on the Open API work that iSPIRT has already done (in eSign, UPI and GTSN) and proposes specific and inter-related policy and regulatory changes. This benefits of going cashless are many. It’ll curb black money but will also expands micro-credit to small businesses in a big way.

Tax Friction for Product Startups

The final session was about tax friction for software product companies. Most of these are arise from poor definition of software products within the Finance Ministry. Mr. Mehrishi promised a quick resolution of these issues.

Conclusion

It was a very collaborative and interactive session. It showcased how India has emerged as the 2nd largest software product startup ecosystem in the world. It also brought attention to this new paradigm of creating Public Goods with a Social Commons model (open source model) and how this approach would be instrumental in India going cashless in a short period of time. Mr. Mehrishi and team suggested that deeper institutional mechanisms are required to bridge the intellectual distance between Delhi and Bangalore.

These powerful dialogs that iSPIRT is fostering with key policy makers (e.g. SEBI’s UK Sinha, RBIs Raghuram Rajan) are making a difference. They are helping us rewrite the script of the nation. And they are taking us closer to making India a Product Nation! So go ahead, spread the word.

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RBI Governor Dr. Raghuram Rajan meets Product Startups.

He is a maverick, a reformer, a decision maker and above all the Governor of Reserve Bank of India. The country’s foremost authority in Economics met with Product startups in Bangalore to understand their challenges and also provide useful advise by participating in interactive sessions for close to 3 hours.

2015-02-27 10.23.43
Yesterday, at ITC Windsor Manor, Dr Raghuram Rajan, honorable governor of RBI, along with Industry stalwarts Mohan Das Pai, Sudhir Sethi, MD of IDG Ventures, Shekar Kirani, Accel Partners, Sharad Sharma (iSPIRT), Bharat Goenka (Tally) and many other industry leaders heard the stories of about 10 Indian startups. The idea was to understand the following challenges of the startup Ecosystem

  1. Startups from India Competing with Global Giants with Capital Markets Challenges (like raising capital from Domestic FIIs, listing for IPOs, and other book building challenges)
  2. Startups from India building Software and Technology Products and solving local and domestic problems with the new & developing landscape of Consumer Market Challenges (like changing landscape of payments, pre-payments, recurring payments, etc)
  3. Product Companies like Tally and others from India, empowering small and medium businesses in INDIA to become Digital SMEs for leap-frogging the Indian Economy.

Dr. Rajan, was very forthcoming with his following admissions and suggestions.

  • Some of some of the difficulties in moving money in and Out of the Country (FEMA regulations for example), requires a more coherent set of rules, regulations and systems.
  • He also suggested that all Institutions, need to keep pace with the technological advances, and the need was really to have an Inclusive approach to carry everyone forward.
  • He assured full commitment to the Payments Systems Revolution, highlighting that
    • Payment Banks and Small Banks will be in full steam in about 12-18 months
    • Innovative ideas of White-labeling of BCs (Business Correspondents) via Individuals, Corporations or Registered Companies was actively being discussed.
  • His willingness to open up a dialog with Innovative Companies, where Banks are a purchaser of Technology was also evident in his offer to have more follow-on meeting.

Close to 180 minutes of conversation and showcasing of New Product Startups and Business Houses like Tally from Bangalore. Around 8 companies got the opportunity to showcase and highlight their challenges and directly interface with the Dr Rajan himself. Not all elements of the session can be reproduced here, but below are some of the key highlights and learnings.

2015-02-27 10.24.32Home grown Startups share their Stories with RBI

About 10 Indian Startups which started in INDIA, and which have global operations today, presented their stories not just from a valuation and growth standpoint, but from an emotional and proud-to-be an Indian startup viewpoint. To sum it up, almost every story was about Entrepreneur’s who dared to dream something not only for them, but for INDIA, and today want the Indian Systems (Regulators, Government and Institutions) to reciprocate to their needs. They highlighted their list of issues, the below checklist includes, but is not limited, to the following.

  • InMobi’s Naveen Tiwari, believed that INDIA can be the HUB for solving Global problems and with 39 other startups which have spun-off from INMOBI, it was clear that there is a 10x growth that is possible in the Indian startup eco-system.
  • Uniken a Security startup company with solutions for the Hyper-connected world, spoke about how their solutions have been deployed by Global and Indian Banks, including Bynet Communications. They stressed the need for all Indian Banks to adopt the latest solutions from India Solution Providers themselves which are on par or better than many cutting-edge solutions from outside of INDIA.
  • Fintellix highlighted their Software for GRC Intelligence (Governance, Regulation and Compliance), which are today used by both Indian and Global Private Banks, but they cannot get through even the RFP process of many Public Sector Banks, due to archiac processes.
  • Freshdesk presented a crowd sourced Customer Support Platform for Businesses, Tally Spoke about large scale adoption of their Accounting Software by SMEs (in millions), FORUS presented their home-grown medical devices (3nethra) which could be adopted by Indian Hospitals for 1/3 the cost, and how 80% of issues leading to Blindness can be prevented, while SnapBizz showed how even Kirana Store business owners today could gain improved visibility using the SnapBizz cloud platform.
  • Team INDUS and Deck.in showed, how Indian startups are turning world-beaters with their big ambitions in Aerospace and Enterpsie Software solutions.
  • Bharat Goenka and Pramod highlighted the need for Separation of Concerns between Transaction Enablers (Banks) and Technology Providers. Goenka stressed that Velocity of Growth, is dependent directly on the velocity of transactions.

Insights and Learnings from RBI and Dr. Rajan.

There were many learnings for all participating Startup & Business Entrepreneurs. Some of the key ones are

  • Dr. Rajan believes that for Capital availability & Funding Process for Innovators there needs to be a different RISK Framework that needs to adopted. The existing RISK framework was meant to keep the bad-elements away from the System. The new RISK framework should look at being a support system for Good Innovators.
  • Dr. Rajan also was open to look at enabling PUT-OPTIONs which will provide down-side risk protection for atleast the Investment-value like in WESTERN Contracts.
  • Dr. Rajan however, said we must all be cautious of Back-door debt masquerading as Equity and causing Systemic Harm.
  • Dr Rajan, participated enthusiastically on the following topics
    • Payment Banks / Small Banks and their utility for the Indian Business growth
    • NPCI framework and Payment Systems Revolution
    • Working with FEMA (Mr. Padmanabhan) to resolve difficulties in Money Movements.
  • Other most important advise for Startups were also discussed. To note a few,
    • RBI Governor said India has a decent Capital Chest which provides some Immunity to the Global shocks, however we cannot act in Haste.
    • Today, the need for Inclusive growth were the Unsophisticated Audience can also be carried forward, should be an objective for all innovative solutions.
    • Indian Public Sector institutions should welcome tech-savvy and young entrepreneurs as part of some of their committees.
    • Most importantly RBI can play a convening role for adoption of Innovative Products by Indian Banks.

2015-02-27 10.24.03Conclusion

Overall it is apparent that the INDIAN technology/internet product markets, are in a Golden Moment where Aspirational issues are leading to better RISK appetite among INDIAN Entrepreneurs. It is a new Paradigm where not just startups, but all Institutionals bodies with-in INDIA, need to now collaborate and commit, for supporting each other’s RISKs and Needs. RBI on its part has definitely shown keen interest, and to quote from a fine statement made by Girish, Dr. Rajan, believes that RBI interventions may arrive late, but they will definitely be latest. The Entrepreneur hence must be patient and not act in HASTE.

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Indian Regulator SEBI meets Software Product Startups.

How often has this happened? An entire team from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) with its Chairman Mr. U.K. Sinha meeting with Software Product startups in Bangalore to understand their challenges and also provide useful advice by participating in interactive sessions for more than 5 hours.

On 19th December, Mr. U.K. Sinha, Chairman of SEBI and his management team, heard the stories of 8 Indian software product startups. The idea was to understand both the Capital Markets Challenges (like raising capital from FIIs, listing for IPOs, and other book building challenges) as well new developing landscape of Consumer Market Challenges (like changing landscape of payments, pre-payments, recurring payments, etc.)

Mr. U.K. Sinha, was very forthcoming with his admission that new age companies require a completely new paradigm of evaluation and approvals. The new paradigm is needed not just for listing purposes, but also for market regulation and growth purposes. He assured full commitment from SEBI’s end to the budding entrepreneurs that SEBI is very keen, and will do everything within its capacity to help develop the markets keeping in mind INDIA’s growth needs.

More than 90 minutes of conversation and showcasing of New Software Product Startups from Bangalore took place. Mohandas Pai chaired the sessions on iSPIRT’s side. Not all elements of the sessions can be reproduced here; below are some of the key highlights.

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Home grown Startups share their Stories with SEBI

About 8 Indian Startups which started in INDIA, and which have global operations today, presented their stories not just from a valuation and growth standpoint, but from an emotional and proud-to-be an Indian startup viewpoint. To sum it up, almost every story was about Entrepreneurs who dared to dream something not only for them, but for INDIA, and today want the Indian System (Regulators, Government and Institutions) to reciprocate to their needs. They highlighted their list of issues which include the following:

  • 8 companies from various sectors (InMobi’s Manish Dugar, Ezetap’s Byas, Exotel’s Shiv Ku, HotelLogix’s Aditya, iViz’s Bikash, Paytm’s Pratyush, QuickHeal’s Rajesh and Deck.in‘s Sumanth) all presenting the journey of their startups.
  • A common hardship that resonated from most of them, was the unwarranted need of setting up subsidiaries or parent companies abroad, just to attract the right Investors and raise capital for growth.
  • Exemplary companies like InMobi, which raised initial money from Angel Investors today has a reach of about 1 billion people. Ezetap which raised initial money from AngelPrime, today has global operations, however it has its manufacturing, done entirely from Electronic city in Bangalore. Both urged that it should be made easy for Indian companies to raise money from Global Investors.
  • The existing regulations and guidelines make it very difficult for companies to get the right people (investors and advisors) on their Board.
  • Exotel, Hotelogix, Paytm and iViz, all stressed the need for modifying the SEBI/RBI guidelines on ESCROW, where Indian shareholders should have similar opportunities like Global Investors.
  • QuickHeal’s Rajesh highlighted how Kailash Katkar, a college drop-out had built one the most successful product companies out of INDIA over the past 25 years. Today QuickHeal is thinking of its IPO and needs to decide where to list.
  • Requirement for the Regulator to understand all stake-holders and their motivations, and provide for fast and timely intervention for Exits (IPO listings, etc.).
  • Need for new models to evaluate the new paradigm of Tech/Internet Product startups in INDIA.

At the end of this open session, Shekhar Kirani (iSPIRT Fellow; Accel) highlighted the fact that the Indian software product markets were entering an era of hyper growth. It is a new paradigm where not just startups, but all Institutional bodies within India, need to now collaborate and commit, for supporting each other’s need. In this context, he appreciated the interest shown by SEBI.

Policy Expert Team Interacts with SEBI

Following this open session, the visiting SEBI team met with iSPIRT’s “List in India” Policy Expert Team for an intense three hour closed door conversation about specific issues and their resolution. This iSPIRT Policy Expert Team is led by Sudhir Sethi of IDG and has Rajiv Khaitan (Khaitan & Co.), Sanjay Khan (Khaitan & Co.), R Natarajan (Helion), Rajesh Ghonasgi (Quick Heal CFO), Manish Dugar (InMobi CFO) and Harish HV (Grant Thornton) as its members. While specific details of this meeting are not available, Mohandas Pai told me that the session had been very productive.

Insights from SEBI

Mr. U.K Sinha, Chairman of SEBI, has an unbeatable track-record. In his past life, he was the chairman of UTI, and was instrumental in transforming UTI from a 1.2k crore institution to 12k crore institution. Many insights were shared by Mr. Sinha with all the participating Startup Entrepreneurs. Some of the key ones are:

  • Mr. Sinha and his team gracefully acknowledged that they were not just a Controller or Monitor of Capital issues, but they were equally keen to Develop Markets for businesses to thrive.
  • Further, Mr. Sinha highlighted the introduction of SME-ITP platform to facilitate capital raising by SMEs including start-ups which are in their early stages of growth and to provide for easier exit options for informed investors like angel investors, VCFs and PEs etc.
  • He also indicated that SEBI is exploring putting in place a framework for crowd-funding which will provide a much needed new mode of financing for start-ups and SME sector and increase flow of credit to SMEs and other users in the real economy. In this mode, SMEs and start-ups will be able to raise funds at a lower cost of capital without going through rigorous procedures.
  • It was indicated that SEBI is keen to facilitate capital raising by such companies to help them achieve their full potential.

2014-12-19 16.56.19
New Wind is Blowing

I saw a collaborative approach to problem solving that I haven’t seen before. iSPIRT’s policy approach is refreshing different from the traditional lobbying mindset that one sees in trade bodies. And SEBI is clearly open to listening and learning. It was amazing to see how SEBI as a regulator and iSPIRT as a think tank were both focused on the same national goal. I came away from the meeting with optimism and a spring in my step.

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How We Got The IT Minister Excited About Indian Product Startups & Made Him Our Spokesperson #UnleashTheEnergy

A behind the scenes account of how a showcase of 11 disruptive startups was put together in just 100 hours!

If you’re reading this, I’m sure  you are a part of the Indian product startup community in one way or the other. And unless you were living under a rock (which is fine, if you were busy hacking away or traveling to sell your product), you wouldn’t have missed that our Hon. IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad was in Bangalore on Tuesday meeting with the product startup community. iSPIRT hosted  the “Conclave for India as Product Nation #1″, an open dialogue between the Product industry and the IT Minister.

What made it all the more special was that the he was the first IT Minister to meet with startups and also that he first met with the startups first before meeting officials from his ministry! The Minister met with the industry leaders, gave a patient hearing to the needs of the product startups and also saw presentations from 11 disruptive startups.

And here’s what the minister had to say after meeting with the startups!

So how did we pull this off? And what if I told you that it was all put together in 100 hours. We ourselves cannot quite understand how everything fell into place! But as Sharad often says, when a bunch of passionate volunteers come together towards a common cause, magic just happens. At iSPIRT, we take our volunteering quite seriously. No wonder then, that we actually have open sourced our volunteer model through a whitepaper to help other communities benefit from it!

 

A text message from Rajan on Saturday morning got me involved. Could we get on a call, he asked. There’s an iSPIRT event scheduled on Tuesday and some help was needed. We spoke and I got to know that there’s an interaction with the IT Minister scheduled on the coming Tuesday. As part of the interaction, we needed to put together a showcase of disruptive product startups to help the Minister get a sense of the kind of impactful work being done and the opportunities ahead. There was list of companies drawn from across various segments and stages, with whom we’d need to connect and get their availability for the event on Tuesday. Tapping into our network of volunteers (many of whom are themselves startup founders and industry leaders), we gathered the contact details of these companies and started reaching out to the companies. These were companies spread across the country and we checked with their founders if they’d be available to present. Based on the availability of teams and the some intense discussion and debate among the Program Managers for the showcase, a short list of the companies presenting on stage was drawn up. The thought process behind the selection of companies was to give the Minister a good view of the breadth (sectors where product startups are making an impact), the depth (companies that have achieved global market/tech leadership) and how far they can grow with sound support from the ecosystem, which includes the government as well. We were immensely privileged to have Mr. Mohandas Pai spare his valuable time for multiple meetings through the whole process and share his inputs on what kind of stories would make the maximum impact.

Product Leaders with the IT MinisterArriving at the shortlist was surely a good beginning. They say well begun is half done. But the tougher half lay ahead! We were already at Monday morning, and within the next 24 hours we had prep up the presenters. Each of the companies were to have a short, crisp presentation with the key points to be covered in under 4 minutes! Shekhar went about this with the precision of a toolmaker, thoroughness of a scientist and the strictness of a school teacher! From putting together notes on what points to cover, iterating multiple times with the presenting companies on their presentations over a sleepless night, to conducting the actual showcase in front of the minister, Shekhar was always on.

(That’s me on the left  trying to get the slides up!)

The event received some very good coverage in the media. Below are some links:

Here’s hoping that achchhe din are indeed ahead for the Indian software product industry!