Category: iSPIRT

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Taxes on Imported Services

Tax on Services procured from foreign service providers

Startups and SMEs in a digital world use many services from across the world. Skype, Google ADwords and hosting services from foreign hosting providers are some examples. So also are the online services of consultants, designers, content writers and developers etc.

There is a service tax required that apply on many such services. Many people confuse on when a service tax applies or advised that there is no service tax. We also come across an opinion floating around that we can circumvent the service tax by paying using personal cards.

Yet, another confusion is on online advertisements. This got complicated further with the addition of equalization levy introduced in budget 2016-17. In some extreme cases entrepreneurs were advised that only 6% equalization levy is to paid when buying from foreign providers. So, we talked to some local consultants. And, to our dismay we found the confusions was equally prevalent among them, on equalization levy on online advertisements..

There is lot of material present on Internet on equalization levy (introduced in finance bill 2016). So, also are articles on service tax on import of service and online  online advertisements. Most of these articles are in very legal language. Also, they are not presented at one place to clear the confusion for young entrepreneurs.

This article is aimed at clearing the confusions and helping small companies in understanding the issues involved, to enable them in right compliance. Let us understand the issues in following order:

  1. Provisions of service tax on import of service
  2. Service tax on online advertisement services
  3. Equalization levy on online advertisements

Service tax on import of services

A service tax is payable on all ‘taxable services’ in India. Present rate as on date is 15% (14% Basic, 0.5% Swatch Bharat Cess, 0.5% Krishi Layan Cess).

What are taxable services

To know if a service is taxable or not, one has to refer to provisions of Service tax act and the negative list. The negative is the list of items excluded from service tax. Usually all services that do not fall in negative list are ‘taxable services’.

The most common services that startups use are:

  • Consulting or professional services – Designers, Coders etc.
  • Services like Skype
  • Online advertisement services (google add words/ADSense)
  • Hosting or cloud services etc.

Please note that the Software is a service, unless it is physically imported on a media through a port of entry. This means the downloaded packaged Software and Software in SaaS model are ‘taxable service’. So also are other digital goods (pdfs, eBooks, music, video etc) downloaded.

Who is liable for Service tax on import of service?

Generally, the liability to pay service tax is on the ‘service provider’. Since it is an indirect tax, the service providers bills the service tax to service receiver, collects tax from service receiver and deposits it to the service tax department. However, in case of imported services it is different.

An import of service occurs when a ‘service receiver’ located in taxable territory of India receives a service from a ‘service provider’ located in nontaxable territory i.e. from outside borders of India.

Since, in case of import of service the ‘service provider’ is not located in the taxable territory of India, the responsibility of service tax lies on ‘service receiver’. This is known as reverse charge mechanism, in service tax act parlance.

The reverse charge mechanism (RCM) is applicable vide Notification No. 30/2012-ST dated 20.06.2012. This RCM notification prescribes that, “in respect of any taxable services provided or agreed to be provided by any person who is located in a nontaxable territory and received by any person located in the taxable territory”, 100% of service tax shall be payable by the person receiving the service.

This provision is not applicable in case of ‘individuals’ who have received such service other than for the purpose of use in business or commerce (Provisions made under section 66A of the Finance Act, 1994).

In view of above let use answer following two questions.

Am I liable to pay Service tax?

A business receiving services from a service provider located outside India, is liable to pay service tax at prescribed rate and as per rules in force at the time.

Can I pay from my personal credit card and get reimbursed from my company?

An individual can receive services for a consideration paid to a service provider located outside India, without a liability to pay service tax, provide the services received are not for business or commercial consumption.

This means, you should not buy services on your personal credit card and use for business. Small amounts may go unnoticed or not enforced by service tax department. But, substantial amounts of such transactions can put you in trouble at later date.

Using online advertisements from foreign suppliers

In case of online advertisements, we come across following two provisions:

  1. a)      Service tax on online advertisement services
  2. b)      Equalization levy on online advertisements

As mentioned above we came across some entrepreneurs confused on weather both of applies or one of them apply.

Service tax on online advertisement services

Finance act 2014 brought in changes to negative list to broaden the tax base. It now includes provision of online advertisement space on Internet as a taxable service.

Hence, a 15% tax will apply on service of advertisement.

Some people confuse on payment of service tax when they buy from companies like Google and Microsoft. At times, such companies provide some selective services from Indian subsidiary. And, they provide other services from their parent company or a subsidiary outside India.

One should be watchful on where the billing of services is being done from. If this is Google India (e.g. for ADwords), the service tax will be billed to you. The service recipient can see the service tax in the bill. E.g. Google provides Adwords from Google, India.

Many a times when you buy a service using a card online, you buy it from foreign entity. This may go unnoticed as the payment happens in Indian rupees. This happens because of real time conversion from US$ to Indian rupees by the payment gateway.

The transaction is so seamless that the buyer of service does not realize that she actually bought from a foreign company. This happens quite often in case of companies like Google and Microsoft. You buy in Indian Rupees but the transaction may be done by Google, Ireland.

You should be careful about such transactions and your liability to pay service tax. Check is the service tax is mentioned in bill as an item. If not and your billing party is foreign entity or person the service tax is your responsibility.

Special case of ADsense (or similar services)

As per common knowledge ADsense services is presently provided by Google Inc. USA. Hence, the advertisement space revenue received by the Indian websites is in US$. There is an argument that this being export of service is not subject to service tax.

The ADsense issue is not straight forward. clear. The advance ruling issued by service tax department says it is subject to Service tax. Since the agreement is between the Indian website company and Google, INC, some experts treat this as export of service. Thus not falling under service tax net.

However, there is a warning here as per service tax place of business rules. If one is able to establish the end use of service being done by an India company i.e. the advertiser is Indian company, then the situation is complex. The service tax department can call for scrutiny of cases to prove that there was not use of service by any Indian company.

So, ADsense case is not crystal clear and there is needs for caution to be exercised.

Equalization levy

The finance bill 2016 introduced an equalization levy of 6%. This is a type of withholding tax on income of non-resident (foreign service providers) from their sales in India.

The first important point to be noted here is that this is not linked to service tax at all. Service tax is an indirect tax on consumption of service, administered by service tax department. The equalization levy is a type of a direct tax levy on income and administered by Income Tax department.

What is covered under Equalization levy?

The equalization levy is applicable at a rate of 6% on the gross consideration payable for a ‘specified service’. It is applicable if the aggregate value of consideration in a year exceeds Rs. 1 lakh (approximately US$1,500). At present, the ‘specified service’ as defined in the provision are:

  • Online advertisement
  • Any provision for digital advertising space or any facility/service for the purpose of online advertisement

In addition, the notification also says more services can be added in future.

Who needs to comply?

As in case of service tax individual consumers are exempted. So, the levy is currently applicable only on B2B transactions.

Every resident person and foreign company (having a PE in India) is required to withhold the equalization levy when making payment to a non-resident (individual or business) service provider.

It is not applicable to non-resident service providers having a PE in India, because they will be subject to regular taxation as a PE in India e.g. Google Inc, USA having a PE in India (Google India Pvt. Ltd) is exempted from equalization levy.

Who bears the burden?

The equalization levy is designed as a withholding tax to be deducted by Indian service recipient from payments to be made to foreign service provider and deposited with Income tax department. The foreign service provider can take the tax credit in home country as per procedure.

However, there are apprehensions that some service provider will not agree to these deductions and finally the Indian companies will bear this as cost.

In any case, the responsibility to deposit the tax with Government lies with Indian service recipients.

Why was equalization levy applied?

The background of equalization levy lies in a ongoing hot debate on subject of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) Action Plan. BESP has been under discussion at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In digital world, companies from one country can sell online across their borders without having a presence in that geography. This can cause profit erosion in these geographies across borders.

OECD does not favour proactive use of equalization levey. But, they agreed that countries could introduce one in their domestic laws as an additional safeguard against BEPS, provided they respect existing treaty obligations, or include them in their bilateral tax treaties.

It is a tax to equalize the tax burden on remote and domestic suppliers of similar goods and services in a digital world and a safe guard against BEPS.

It has been introduced in in India through Finance bill 2016, by inserting a new chapter titled Equalization Levy.

Situation in GST transition

The clarity on all aspects has still to come in GST. Yet, concepts like reverse charge mechanism (RCM) will apply. Software or all intangibles will be treated as ‘services’ as per model law. We from iSPIRT are arguing against it and wants Software products treated as ‘digital goods’. The rate of service tax will further go up. States will also be charging service tax. Hence, there will be two services tax that will be payable in GST. The state GST (SGST) and center GST (CGST).

Equalization levy has nothing to do with GST. It is going to stay and may be extended to other e-commerce in cross border trade, in future.

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Instant, Automated, Remote: An Introduction to Digital Credit

There is today in many countries a proliferation of new digital credit services. These have been especially prominent in mobile money markets in sub Saharan Africa. The poster child has been M-Shwari out of Kenya; though there are a burgeoning array of new varied services in many places. The signals of deep interest from India are strong and India Stack may well position this market for an exciting ride.

At CGAP we have come to use the term “Digital Credit” to describe this new kind of service; though there may well be other terms. We hold that digital credit has three attributes that distinguish it from conventional credit:

  1. instant – decisions and transactions happen fast from application to disbursement to collections
  2. automated – while lending decisions are carefully calibrated each individual decision happens within a decision tree framework along a set of (evolving) algorithms, and
  3. remote – the services are delivered without relying on in-person interactions.

As we have examined nearly a dozen digital credit deployments in the past year, we saw many exciting innovations but also many early stumbles. To help new entrants get up the learning curve faster we developed, delivered and tested a set of training materials. These materials have been refined thorugh more than half a dozen deliveries with a wide array of banks, fintech firms, analytics firms and mobile money operators. We have put these materials together into An Introduction to Digital Credit. .

The introductory course is available for wide public dissemination and use. We built it around five main sections:

  1. An introductory session describes what digital credit is and distinguishes between two key models. One is new products – like M-Shwari – that are direct to individuals. As contrasted with new digital credit services that are delivered via a merchant or value chain aggregator. These two approaches entail quite different risks and business models.
  2. A second sections covers credit scoring and uses of new alternative data, such as mobile phone call records, are often part of the new innovation in digital credit. There is an introductory session for those new to credit scoring that describes how scoring is developed, how to tell if scorecards work, and an introduction to various kinds of data for scorecard building.
  3. A third section covers some of the product and service design considerations. This includes product details such as tenor, loan size, and initial pricing. There is in particular some very early research on consumer protection concepts pioneered by CGAP – a particularly important issue where given how fast digital credit can be delivered.
  4. A fourth section covers some of the financial considerations. While digital credit can be extremely low on branch and staff costs, often requiring no physical infrastructure to reach clients, it still incurs other costs. This section details a basic financial model for how digital credit business models can be built and highlights some of the unique financial dynamics.
  5. The final section is on partnerships. This is often the biggest source of failure is around partnership and blockage to experimentation. This concluding section on partnership highlights critical roles and provides a basic tool for how interested parties can consider and build out potential partnerships.

Whether you are already operating a digital credit service or planning to do one, the course aims to provide a structured high level view based on real deployments. It is a starting place to benefit from others that have tested and tried the idea.

At CGAP, we are excited about the potential of digital credit to expand access and also realistic about what more we need to do to make lending responsible amid the speed new technology. India’s fast moving changes in digital finance will provide a new array of opportunities and we can’t wait to watch and learn from what happens next.

Guest post by Gregory Chen, Regional Lead for Asia at CGAP, a resource center on financial inclusion housed at the World Bank.

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Through the Effectual Looking Glass

I began my entrepreneurial journey in December 2014. The incidents of 2014, when several cases of child molestations were reported in Bangalore’s schools, had spurred me into trying to do “something” about it. The key to keeping children safe in schools is to ensure that the people who work with them have a good track record. In the past, this was ensured by word of mouth. But Indian cities today are teeming with floating populations and there is no easy way of verifying a person’s history and credentials.

The idea was to build a digital platform where schools and their employees would participate in a simple process to build employee history and credibility. This would create a white-list of people who can be trusted to take care of children. The platform would optionally use Aadhaar for identity verification. We called it Staff You Trust.

My initial attempts at trying to get this incubated somewhere came to nought, so I took stock of what I could do with what I had. These were:

  • Time (oodles of it, because I had quit my job)
  • A technical mind that I hoped had not rusted after years in management roles!
  • Access to the wonderful world of open-source software

A friend introduced me to Django, a Python-based web application framework, and I took the plunge. I built a prototype, and got some early feedback from a few schools. There was definitely interest, but the conversations were quite theoretical. I thought that I should build the product and then come back to them. (An experienced entrepreneur would probably have got some commitment from schools first. But that’s hindsight now.)

I talked to a classmate who runs a software development firm, and he arranged for an Android engineer to build the app. I drew wireframes, learnt how to expose REST APIs from the server, how to install and run the server on a Linux VM in the cloud. It was a year of complete bliss. So much so, that I got myself into a new comfort zone that I was reluctant to leave!

For a while, I kept procrastinating, adding a link here and a button there, and telling myself that these were all-important features! The truth was that I was afraid of venturing out and facing rejection.

Around this time I heard about iKen, a bootcamp for early entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs, which could help in my journey. I applied, and got accepted for the batch starting in April 2016. The program doesn’t waste time – the first very assignment teaches you to face rejection. It rips off any band-aids that you may have placed around your ego and forces you to step out of your comfort zone. I had thought that my lack of sales experience would be a handicap. But I was told not to worry about that, because the past is no indication of the future.

My other obstacle was that I knew just a handful of people who had anything to do with schools. By now, I’d done my Bird-in-Hand audit at iKen – that included creating an inventory of ‘Who I am’, ‘What I know’ and ‘Who I know’. I approached friends, and got introductions through them to school owners. At each meeting, I would try to get a few more contacts, and so on. I built a 4-week-4-month plan with goals and metrics and religiously updated that spreadsheet every week, recording the outcomes of this week and planning the appointments for the next.

Gradually, I overcame my discomfort of doing ‘sales calls’ and started thinking of them as relationship-building conversations. And there were many wonderful conversations – with people (mainly women) who are passionate about education and have started their own preschools in pursuit of this vocation. Whether or not they agreed to sign-up on my platform immediately, my network was growing.

One day, I was surfing the web, looking for information on preschools in my neighbourhood, when I came across an article by Shweta Sharan, a content developer at the Buzzing Bubs publication, a digital publication targeted at parents. She is also the Founder of the Bangalore Schools Facebook Community that has more than 11000 members. I reached out to her over LinkedIn. A couple of days later, I received an enthusiastic response, with a request for a meeting.

We met in a café in HSR Layout on a Thursday, and I showed her my app. She was super-excited and filled a page from her notebook with a list of schools where she had contacts. Sitting opposite her, I felt exhilarated – I didn’t have to do this alone!

By that evening, I had joined the Facebook forum, and emailed her a blurb about my product, asking for beta trial customers. On Friday morning, she posted it, and vigorously set about tagging parents and school owners. She called/emailed school owners to arrange meetings for me. Those emails are still coming in.

On Friday afternoon, I got a call from Sarayu Srinivasan, a journalist at The News Minute, asking for an interview. On Saturday morning, Sarayu and I met and talked for over an hour. She reviewed the app in depth, asked a lot of questions, examined different scenarios, and asked for some screenshots. The next morning, the article was live, and being shared in different fora! Sarayu has also promised to introduce me to other people who might be able to help.

This was the principle of Crazy Quilt in action! You reach out to people, and when new connections are forged, you suddenly have more means at your disposal. It was now going to be about ‘Who we are’, ‘What we know’ and ‘Who we know’.

My plan now is to run pilots in schools of different sizes and categories – stand-alone preschools, preschool chains, large schools, child activity centres – and iterate based on user feedback. We need to quickly scale the user base across Bangalore’s schools so as to build a sustainable solution for a very pressing social problem. This should then be taken to other cities and regions, so that in the future, if an employee moves from Kolkata to Bangalore or Chennai to Chandigarh, his/her reputation travels intact.

Tanuka Dutta has an extensive background in computer networking, having worked at Cisco Systems and Motorola in various engineering and management roles. In her last role at Cisco, she was Director of an 80-member engineering team. She is currently on her first entrepreneurial journey, working toward increasing safety measures in schools and pre-schools. Tanuka holds a B.Tech in Electronics & Communication and M.Tech in Telecommunication Systems from IIT Kharagpur.

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On Independence Day, India’s budding product entrepreneurs get the freedom to choose: Introducing the Product Nation Founders Hub(PNFh)

On Independence Day, we at Product Nation have an important announcement to make. This one was a long time coming, as we tried to classify, clear up, and target our efforts for the product ecosystem better. This update is mainly focused on the Playbook pillar, one of iSPIRT’s key initiatives, and will have effects on other fronts as well.

We are reviving some of the initiatives; to others we have added more rigour and form.

Depending on what stage(Discovery, Happy Confused) you are in as a founder you can leverage the iSPIRT programs accordingly. We now have a mailing list we call the PNFT (Product Nation Founders Tribe), where we will update subscribers on the Playbook and other iSPIRT initiatives. If you are not part of iSPIRT, but still want to receive our updates, please fill up the form.

This won’t make you a part of iSPIRT, though, and we reserve the right to extend invitations for smaller, more pointed events only to our members. Our programs like the RoundTables, PNcamp, and PNgrowth, are oversubscribed to, and therefore we extend invites only to curated startups.

Why on Independence Day, though? One, for purely sentimental reasons: our mission, after all is to make India a Product Nation. And two, we’d like to say that will better clarity, entrepreneurs now will have the freedom to choose which iSPIRT programs they want to be part of.

iSPIRT-Playbook LandscapeSharing some of the initiatives classified based on stages:

Pre Entrepreneurship – iKen
This is a boot camp aimed at folks planning a startup or who are in the early stages of their startup. It is based on a ‘by entrepreneur-for entrepreneur’ model and on the effectuation model put forth by Professor Saras Saraswathi. This is a 10-week exercise/task oriented course designed at gaining clarity and action. The participants do most of the work during the week and review happens at a 2-hour meet every weekend. Once they graduate, the community continues to meet to help each other through the journeys.
More details can be seen at ikenstartup.org
City: Bangalore

Discovery – PNcamp(8th October 2016)
This is a boot camp for product people, by product people. It is a day-long coming together of doers: ones who have been there, done that; and ones in the journey of getting there. Orchestrated by hand-picked facilitators, it promises focused, interactive, deep conversations within small, curated groups. PNcamp is a surefire avenue to find inspiration, insights and tips, and connections for life to tangibly get ahead in your product journey.  The 2nd edition of PNcamp is in Pune on 8th October. More details can be seen here.
City: Pune

Happy Confused – Playbook Roundtables
Playbook-RoundTable is one of iSPIRT’s most sought after community events. It’s a gathering of 12 like-minded product startups who are beyond the early stage. RoundTables are facilitated by an iSPIRT maven who is an accomplished practitioner of that particular theme. All RoundTables are conducted on a pay-it-forward basis. The only payment you have to make is to provide your undivided attention and active involvement in the process. Playbook-RoundTables are a dialogue and there’s no monologue. None.
Cities: Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad & Bangalore

Happy Confused – PNgrowth(25-27th November 2016)
#PNgrowth camp is a long term mentorship/peer learning program that is focussed and has only one one aim – category leadership. The second edition is being planned for 25-27th November and only 50 founders will get to be part of it. The theme for this year’s PNgrowth is “Achieving Good Scale”. We will be curating around 50 startups for PNgrowth this year. We have around 14 mentors who will be working with 50 curated startups for the next 12 months.
City: Bangalore

Product Tear Down sessions (Happy Confused & Discovery stage)
Product Tear Down session where SaaS founders offered their product to be teared down by expert SaaS founders and audience. The experienced SaaS founders publish guideline templates based on which they will provide feedback to brave startups. We hope to start this series on a monthly basis. Check details here
City: Bangalore, Chennai & Pune

Growth Stage – F6
A group of six founders whose startups are already making over $25 million in annual revenues, and are hungry to learn from peers about challenges unique to their life stage: namely, hiring sales professionals for tapping global markets and avoiding the mistakes that others have made. This group meets once in a quarter and is a closed group.

SaaS Community – SaaSx
SaaSx brings together best-in-breed SaaS entrepreneurs across India to celebrate, inspire & spark up the spirit of start-up ecosystem. It’s an exclusive invite-only bootcamp, created by SaaS entrepreneurs for SaaS entrepreneurs, as an opportunity to network, learn, and engage with the most passionate individuals in India’s startup ecosystem. We have done three editions and the next one is scheduled in the month of October.
City: Chennai

ProductNation Blog
We have an active blog where there is lot of information for Founders. Lots of learnings from PlaybookRTs have been captured here.

The key mavens who drive some of the Playbook Initiatives at iSPIRT are.

  • Aneesh Reddy, Capillary Technologies (Anchor for Sales Playbooks)
  • Girish Mathrubootham, Freshdesk (Co-Anchor for SaaSx/SaaS playbooks)
  • Manav Garg, Eka Software (Anchor for F6)
  • Pallav Nadhani, FusionCharts (Co-Anchor for PNgrowth)
  • Samir Palnitkar, ShopSocially (Anchor for PNcamp)
  • Shankar Maruwada, EkStep, (Anchor for PNgrowth)
  • Shekhar Kirani, Accel Partners (Anchor for Product Tear own session)
  • Suresh Sambandam, Orangescape Technologies (Co-Anchor for SaaSx/SaaS playbooks)
  • See a complete list of Mavens here

If you would like to apply for any of the initiatives at iSPIRT, please apply at http://pn.ispirt.in/apply

Amal Tiwari helped in designing the infographic & Sairam Krishnan assisted in editing this blog post. 

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UPI – The Revolution in Payment Industry

Japan introduced ‘Zengin’, a real-time money transfer mechanism in 1973. Thirty Seven years later, NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) introduced IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) in 2010 as the first real-time 24*7 money transfer mechanism in the country.

In-between PayPal launched money transfer by just knowing a person’s email ID in 1999 and now in 2016, India is about to make UPI (Unified Payment Interface) live in few weeks. It will enable real-time transfer of money 24*7 just by knowing a person’s virtual address.

These two comparisons above need to be looked at with different lenses, one from the laying of groundwork and the other ease of usage. It took some time but NPCI setup IMPS which has performed very well with IMPS transactions growing at a staggering pace, over 100% every year. In May 2016 alone, USD 3.4 Billion were transferred on it.

However, these transactions have not really been very easy to carry out for Indian consumers. Whether with account numbers and IFSC codes or with MMID, the friction has curtailed the full potential of this behemoth on rise. This is where UPI comes in, abstracting the payments on top of existing robust IMPS to the degree that Indian consumers can now carry out transactions in few taps with just a virtual address. It is India’s PayPal moment for consumer payments bringing it to that parity in terms of end user convenience that will only lead to further digitisation of cash in the country.

This moment is also an inflexion point for us. Bill Gates recently said that “India will lead the world in digital financial inclusion”.

Few key things have led to this point.

The Indian consumer has adopted smartphones and internet very well. In 2015, the internet user-base in India recorded an impressive 40% growth over the past year and the smartphone shipments in India is estimated to grow by 29% in 2016. Stepping few years back, it has been a remarkable journey starting with paying for a train ticket on IRCTC website to small mobile recharges to e-commerce payments, Indian consumer got a taste of online payments and got comfortable with it and now slowly like it panned out in West, the demarcation of high touch and low touch products is diminishing with users now purchasing anything online.

Consumer trends aside, policy-making and the work of bodies such as RBI, NPCI, iSPIRT (Indian Software Product Industry Round Table), IAMAI and many more has helped in information collection, dissemination and laying of frameworks to provide a solid ground to build up Indian mobile payments story.

Apart from peer to peer payments, IMPS can now carry out PULL based transactions as well so that a user can now make merchant payments seamlessly with just an MPIN in a ‘Single Touch, 2 Factor Authentication’ method where a user’s device ID is being treated as the first factor of authentication.

Like any new system, it will take some time to set up and grow. The merchants will have to come on-board quickly to accept payments with UPI and users will need to be educated. For merchants, it will have a low TDR (Transaction Discount Rate), comparable to low Debit Card rates and higher conversion in transactions as multiple intermediaries and hops for an online payment to take place successfully will get out of the way. For the paying customer, it will allow payments in one tap and money will get debited directly from their bank account.

In past, we have seen many financial systems and methods take years before going mainstream but we believe that UPI will get adopted at a faster pace than what we have seen in the past. A lot of macro-trends and unique Indian payments landscape in which masses skipped credit cards altogether and many had a mobile smartphone as their first internet device indicates that things will play out differently here.

That brings us to the question that amidst all of these changes in the ecosystem with all of the above playing their crucial part, what role do we, the startups have? Answer is that as young entrepreneurs, it is our obligation to take this story forward.

Just like Uber used GPS, Google Maps and different facets of established or emerging pieces of technology, we have to use UPI to provide Indian consumers with great experience and delightful products.

In doing so, we will have to educate Indian consumers about what UPI is – what a virtual address is, how safe and secure it is, how they can have a virtual address issued by a bank when they don’t even have a bank account with the bank application (Payment Service Provider) issuing that virtual address and more.

The experience of on-boarding them onto UPI will have to be very simple and delightful.

The old ‘Goldilocks effect’ will have to be brought in where a user should not get too wary of the new yet understand that the whole payments paradigm has changed for good.

We at Mypoolin have spent a great amount of time acquiring tacit knowledge in how consumer payments are made and users behave in various social contexts and settings when it comes to payments. We are of the strong view that UPI brings the great convenience required for payments to be made smoothly and we will build great value on top of it for Indian consumers. We have begun playing our role by education our existing users and more with a UPI specific website and other channels about UPI which has helped us gauge market response to it and get valuable feedback that we can share with the ecosystem at large for the benefit of the market.

The applications of UPI are in many different use-cases and it is upon us startups to recognise it and take it to market.

We can’t blame it on anyone – the system or the current economic downturn to not do our job – UPI is one of the many enablers to follow that will help us build great technology products to make India a ‘Product Nation’

The true mettle of Indian founders to build great products will be tested and it will change the mindset as well to build India specific New from the scratch and set a trend the country needs for future entrepreneurs to follow.

This is our pivotal moment and we must not let it slip away.

Guest post By Ankit Singh, Co-Founder, Mypoolin

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Company Incorporation further Simplified by MCA

Ease of doing business – Some new additions in Company Incorporation rules

Ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has announced the Companies (Incorporation) Third Amendment Rules,2016. The set of announcements made will replace or change the the Companies (Incorporation) Rules, 2014.

There are about 12 changes announced in the notification published at MCA website here. However, the simplifying impact is well associated with few clauses with reasonable clarity.

Mr. Sanjay Khan Nagra, iSPIRT volunteer explains the new announcements in below the embedded video.

Rule 13(2) of Companies (Incorporation) Rules, 2014 following explanation has been added

2014 notification: Following provisions existed

i) The memorandum and articles of association of the company shall be signed by each subscriber to the memorandum, who shall add his name, address, description and occupation, if any, in the presence of at least one witness.

ii) Where a subscriber to the memorandum is illiterate, he shall affix his thumb impression or mark which shall be described as such by the person, writing for him, who shall place the name of the subscriber against or below the mark and authenticate it by his own signature

2016 notification: Now the type written or printed particulars of all the subscriber and witnesses shall be allowed.

Rule 16(1)(m) – of Companies (Incorporation) Rules, 2014 following explanation has been added

2014 notification : Every subscriber to the memorandum was required to submit and file Proof of Identity with the jurisdictional Registrar of companies.

2016 notification: If the subscriber is holding a valid Director Identification Number (DIN), and the same  have been updated as on the date of application and the declaration on this effect is given in the application, the proof of identity and residence need not be attached.

For other changes in the rules we suggest you refer to the Notification given at MCA website. Access this link here.

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ESOP provisions get a booster from MCA for Startups

ESOP another Stay-in-India checklist item gets MCA nod

Ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has recently relaxed sweat equity issuance norms for startups. These new relaxations are for limited to Startups recognized by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).  The announcement will immensely help startups. For startups not recognized under DIPP, there is not change.

The new announcement is  – Companies (Share Capital and Debentures) Third Amendment Rules, 2016 (Amendment Rules). It amends the Rule 8 governing sweat equity shares issuance and Rule 12 of Rules 2014 that pertains to issue of shares under ESOP. The other rules to draw out an ESOP plans remains same.

This blog explains the new announcement and some basic concepts for those who may not be aware of terms like ESOPS and Sweat Equity and how they benefit the startups.

Mr. Sanjay Khan Nagra, iSPIRT volunteer explains the new announcements in below the embedded video.

There is lot of material on internet on examples and ESOPS plans and how they benefit the entrepreneur and the employee both. The objective of this blog is to set a background and describe new announcement.

An ESOP plan effects the basic capital structure of the company. It also has long term legal or tax implications. A good ESOP plan can maximizing the benefits from the existing and new provisions. Hence, we suggest startups interested in drawing up an Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP) should seek a professional advice.

What is an ESOP?

An Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP) is a benefit plan for employees which makes them owners of stocks in the company. ESOPs have several features which make them unique compared to other employee benefit plans. Most companies, both at home and abroad, are utilising this scheme as an essential tool to reward and retain their employees. Currently, this form of restructuring is most prevalent in IT companies where manpower is the main asset. (Definition Source: The Economic Times).

How ESOPS benefit Startups

ESOPs are a proven tool for startups to succeed and grow. There are many ways that ESOPS can be beneficial for startups.

Some of the ways this helps are as given below:

  • Promoters or founders who can’t contribute capital but bring knowledge and dedication to startup can be have access to equity.
  • Startups can attract experience and talent with sweat equity
  • Startups can use ESOPs as a reward to motivate employees
  • It gives sense of ownership to employees and hence act as an employee retainer ship tool

Change made for Startups

MCA has announced two changes. One, that will increas the base of sweat equity that a startup can issue. Two, that will expand the horizon of sweat equity to promoters and director. Both the changes have are described below.

Increase in limit of Sweat equity shares issued by start-ups

The Rule 8(4) of Rules, 2014 restricted companies from issuing sweat equity shares in excess of 25% of the paid up capital at any time. The rule also limits the issuance of sweat equity shares per year to 15% of the paid up capital or issue value of Rs.5 crores whichever is higher.

The amendment in new announcement expressly permits Start-ups to issue sweat equity shares not exceeding 50% of its paid up capital up to 5 years from the date of its incorporation or registration.

The limits of 15% of paid up per year or capital or Rs.5 crores whichever is higher will still need compliance.

Stock options to promoters and shareholder/directors of startups

The new announcement allows Startups to issue the sweat equity under ESOP to their promoters and to directors who hold more than 10% for the first 5 years from the date of their incorporation. The restriction on issuing stock options to promoters and such directors continues for all other companies

In order to provide this benefit MCA has used notification to exempt the startups from application of Clause (i) and (ii) under Explanation C of Section 62 (1)(b) of Act, 2013 that defines the term ‘Employee’. The Explanation in Section 62(1)(b) reads as below.

Explanation:

For the purposes of clause (b) of sub-section (1) of section 62 and this rule ”Employee” means-

(a)   a permanent employee of the company who has been working in India or outside India; or

(b)   a director of the company, whether a whole time director or not but excluding an independent director; or

(c)    an employee as defined in clauses (a) or (b) of a subsidiary, in India or outside India, or of a holding company of the company but does not include-

             (i).   an employee who is a promoter or a person belonging to the promoter group; or

           (ii).   a director who either himself or through his relative or through any body corporate, directly or indirectly, holds more than ten percent of the outstanding equity shares of the company.

[The clauses (i) and (ii) given in blue does not apply on DIPP registered startups for 5 years]

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Cloud Telephony Startups seek support from TRAI

This write-up should be read along with the previous blog – The Value Added Service Providers in Cloud Telephony. These blogs help us to accumulate the progressive development in discourse on policy for this segment of Industry. It is important for our common understanding and help Software product industry innovating in telecom sector in general and cloud telephony in specific terms.

The Startups providing Value Added Services also refereed to as Cloud Telephony submitted their response to Consultation Papers by TRAI on Voice Mail/Audiotex/Unified Messaging Services Licence. 

TRAI also received responses from other service providers (which includes licensed Telecom Operators and ISPs) and Industry Bodies and Individuals. iSPIRT response was also submitted on the due date and can be accessed here from TRAI website.

The responses have been analysed and as required the counter comments have  been filed with TRAI.  Given below is our Response submission.

Counter Comments to responses received on Consultation paper by TRAI on Voice Mail/Audiotex/Unified Messaging Services Licence. Dt. 08/08/2016

After reading the responses to consultation papers, it is evident enough, that there is a clear divide between the Startup or SME players and the Telcos or the industry bodies representing them.

As previously described by us, almost all companies presently providing the services in this (voice mail/Audiotex) space are startups or SME players who have built their own Software products. Unified license operators are already allowed to provide these service. So, there is no barrier for them to enter in to these services, except creating specialisation around these services and building the requisite Software that runs the service.

The licensed Telecom operators in their responses to consultation paper have blindly favoured a license regime in this space, as well as attempted to make the case of revenue loss and breach of license. This is clearly an attempt to hog the telecom sector landscape.

We believe the approach taken by the large players in the Industry is contrary to the direction, thought and objectives of present Government. It confronts the principles of building an innovative society and multiplying growth opportunities for the enterprising youth of our country.

Recognize them as value added Services

We already stated this in our response earlier submitted. However, it seems there is a need to reinforce the point.

The services provided in this space are highly specialised “Value Added Services”. They are by no means either the carriage services or network services. It is a layer on top of the existing mobile and basic telephony that delights the consumer by fulfilling their needs that basic/mobile telephony cannot.

Value Addition is done on the services hired from licenses telecom operators, which have already been subject to revenue share mechanism. Hence, the very claim that these services can be sold at a cheaper rate than the local calls is squarely an imagination. So, also the revenue loss story does not stand any ground.

Therefore, the need to recognize this aspect of “Value Added Service” providers, is primary to any policy framing under consideration on the subject.

Regulate doesn’t imply inevitability of license

There is a serious need to catch up with technological advancements. A large country like India can’t be left to mercy of few companies on this account. This calls for reform and further deregulation of the telecom sector to a degree that it is accommodates the changes from time to time.

In order to allay any doubts of the stakeholders in this sector and better value to the consumer, there may be need to regulate this sub-sector of Value Added Service provider.

Regulation does not always mean “a license”. This value added service sub-sector does not hurt the incumbent licensees in any way. Hence, a simplified regulated regime with lower administrative burden and lowers costs is desirable for suitability to this segment of the telecom sector.

Hence, a registration system with period monitoring and control rather than a license regime has been recommended by us.

Promote Innovation in Digital economy

Indian is entering in to a ‘Digital Economy’ era. Digital India is also not just about connectivity and switching networks. So, a ‘Digital India’ cannot be created by just handful of licensed Telecom players. The consumer in a digital economy is going to consume variety of data and application. Innovative Software products can power up the Digital India to make it a functional ‘Digital Economy’.

Innovation is going to be the lubricant of future digital economies

This segment of the Value Added Service has been born out of innovation of individual entrepreneurs and service provision works on Software products. So, also the commercial part of the service in integrated manner.

At this juncture, when India is wanting to unleash the innovative power by its StartupIndia policy, the license raj or barrier created by large Telcos can be counterproductive to digital economy or the Digital India dream.

Telecom sector and telecom policy at large has to imbibe this need to create friendly promotional environment for innovation to happen. It is not hidden from any one that innovation worldwide is being driven by individuals and small players.

All stakeholders in telecom sector including the licensed telecom operators should contribute to Innovation. Hence, the need to support these small Value Added Service providers and welcome the new ones to emerge.

iSPIRT Request

We seriously feel that growth cannot come from fixing ourselves to status quoist approach. There is a need to further add value to the telecom sector and hence a need to create scope for number of small players to contribute to the overall telecom sector.

There is a huge opportunity for Indian Software industry to innovate and contribute to telecom sector. We from iSPIRT, request that TRAI takes the above points and our earlier response submitted in to consideration and create an enabling environment for India to grow.

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The coming revolution in Indian banking

Increasing penetration of smartphones, Aadhaar-linked bank accounts and a host of powerful open and programmable capabilities is set to create the ‘WhatsApp moment’ for Indian banking.

Once in a while a major disruption or discontinuity happens which has huge consequences. In 2007, the internet and the mobile phone came together in a whole new product called the smartphone. This phone, with its own operating system, such as the iOS or Android, could support over the top (OTT) applications. The messaging solution for the smartphone did not come from the giant telecom or internet companies. Instead, it came from WhatsApp, a start-up. WhatsApp does 30 billion messages a day, whereas all the telecom companies put together do 20 billion SMS messages per day. Such is the power of disruption!

Such a “WhatsApp moment” is now upon us in Indian banking. This discontinuity has been caused by several things coming together. Smartphones are growing dramatically and are expected to reach a penetration of 700 million by 2020. Over 1 billion Indian residents now have Aadhaar, an online biometric identity. The government promoting financial inclusion through the Jhan Dhan Yojana has led to over 200 million new bank accounts being opened. With the RBI giving licences to over 20 new banks, including small banks and payment banks, the competitive intensity of the sector is set to increase. One can visualise a future where every adult Indian has an Aadhaar number, a smartphone and a bank account. Already over 280 million Indian residents have an Aadhaar-linked bank account and around 1 billion direct benefit transfer (DBT) transactions have happened, whose value is in the billions of dollars.

On top of this, a set of powerful open and programmable capabilities, that are collectively referred to as the “India Stack” by the think-tank iSPIRT, has been created over the last seven years. Aadhaar provides online authentication using one’s fingerprint or iris, which can be done from anywhere. This can make transactions “presence less”. The e-KYC (know your customer) feature of Aadhaar enables a bank account to be opened instantly, just by using the Aadhaar number and one’s biometric. The e-sign feature enables online documents to be digitally signed with Aadhaar. The “digital locker” system enables the storage of such electronic documents safely and securely. All this can make the entire banking process “paperless”.

The final two layers of the “India Stack” have great relevance to the future of banking. The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) layer, a product built by the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), a non-profit company collectively owned by banks and set up in 2009, will revolutionise payments and accelerate the move towards a “cashless” economy. So “pushing” or “pulling” money from a smartphone will be as easy as sending or receiving an email. This product from NPCI is the latest in several payment systems that they have developed, from the National Financial Switch, National Automated Clearing House, and RuPay cards, to the Aadhaar Payment Bridge, the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System and IMPS, a real-time payment system.

The move to a “cashless” economy will be accelerated by the Aadhaar-enabled biometric smartphones. So credential checking in banking will move from “proprietary” approaches (debit card and PIN) to “open” approaches (mobile phone and Aadhaar authentication). As such, the holy grail of one-click two-factor authentication, now available only to giants like Apple, will be available to kids in a garage to develop innovative solutions.

Finally, as India goes from being a data-poor to a data-rich economy in the next two to three years, the electronic consent layer of the “India Stack” will enable consumers and businesses to harness the power of their own data to get fast, convenient and affordable credit. Such a use of digital footprints will bring millions of consumers and small businesses (who are in the informal sector) to join the formal economy to avail affordable and reliable credit.

As data becomes the new currency, financial institutions will be willing to forego transaction fees to get rich digital information on their customers. The elimination of these fees will further accelerate the move to a cashless economy as merchant payments will also become digital.

This will also shift the business models in banking from low-volume, high-value, high-cost, and high fees, to high-volume, low-value, low-cost, and no fees. This will lead to a dramatic upsurge in accessibility and affordability, and the market force of customer acquisition and the social purpose of mass inclusion will converge.

These gale winds of disruption and innovation brought upon by technology, regulations and government action, will fundamentally alter the banking industry. Payments, liabilities and assets will undergo a dramatic transformation as switching costs reduce and incumbents are threatened. As the insightful report from Credit-Suisse has so well explained, there is a $ 600 billion market capitalisation opportunity waiting to be created in the next 10 years. This will be shared between existing public and private banks, the new banks and new-age NBFCs. It may even go to non-banking platform players, which use the power of data to fine-tune credit risk and pricing, and make money from customer ownership and risk arbitrage.

The public sector banks, which occupy the commanding heights of the economy with a 70 per cent market share, will be particularly challenged. Even as they deal with the inheritance of their losses, they will have to cope with, and master, enormous digital disruption. This will require their owners, the government, to give them the autonomy and freedom to experiment and innovate.

To quote Shakespeare, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”. The $ 600-billion opportunity is here. The WhatsApp revolution went unnoticed by incumbents. Normally such disruptive changes (like bubbles) are only recognised after they have happened. In this case, the forces of change are evident and can be anticipated. The opportunity for the banking sector has been called, and it is equally accessible to incumbents, both in the public and private sector, to the new banks, to the NBFCs and the tech companies. The future will belong to those who show speed, imagination and the boldness to embrace change.

This article was written as foreword to a Credit-Suisse report on the Indian banking sector

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How IndiaStack can bridge country’s digital divide

IndiaStack can enable the government, the citizens and entrepreneurs to interact with each other through an open digital platform.

At a time when financial technology is changing the face of Indian banking, the government is looking to bridge the digital divide.

The biggest hurdle here is paper-based authentication and approvals. To bridge this gap iSpirt is working with various government agencies to develop IndiaStack.

What is IndiaStack?

IndiaStack is a paperless and cashless service delivery system being conceived by a digital think tank iSpirt. It can enable the government, the citizens and entrepreneurs to interact with each other through an open digital platform. It is the largest application programming interface that is being developed in order to enable 1.2 billion Indians to get access to goods and services digitally.

When was it started?

It was conceived by the government of India in 2012 when they realised, in order to help services reach the last mile of the Indian population, it needed private technology solutions to be built on the Aadhaar database. The project is being pedalled forward by Nandan Nilekani the ex-chief of Unique Identification Database Authority of India, who describes it as the “Whatsapp moment for Indian banking”.

Why is it essential?

The government has been striving for a less cash economy to prevent pilferages and last mile connectivity of financial services. While the Aadhaar database allows users to complete all KYC requirements, there is still a gap in getting approvals because of the need for a signature on paper.

IndiaStack will be able to bridge that gap through its digital lockers which will allow for digital signatures and seamless API (Application programming interface) integration for authentication through eKYC.

How will it be designed?

IndiaStack is conceived as a pyramidal structure based on the Aadhaar database as the base and unified payments interface (UPI) that is being developed by NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) as the top. The two middle stacks comprise digital signatures and eKYC.

Nilekani has explained that with the help of digital signatures customers will not need to actually sign a paper document, instead it can digitally sign it by using a smartphone. eKYC will also enable the identity of the customer to be determined digitally as well.

How will it be beneficial?

The biggest benefits could be completely digital payments through the UPI infrastructure for a less cash economy. Also, loan approval through eKYC and digital signatures could be done faster in a paperless fashion. Both these steps can bring people without access to digital payments to come within the digital fold.

Republished from ETTech
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Setting up Inside Sales to sell SaaS into US – Learning’s from iSPIRT #PlaybookRT

Inside Sales was presented as one of the strategic levers for SAAS companies selling to the US market at a recent Google Accel event. no wonder when

iSPIRT arranged for a round table on this topic there was a buzzing interest.

If you are not familiar with the round tables of iSPIRT check them out here. (Highly recommended)

Suresh of kissflow.com who has been successful in cracking the US market with his DIY Self-service workflow product conducted this round table.

Agenda

What was interesting is when the group was setting an agenda. It sort of covered areas from the complete funnel from marketing to Sales. Here are the sections and key learnings that were discussed in each. End of the article we also have links to tools and resources that can help.

Leads/Marketing
This is concerned with generating leads. These might be signups on your free-trial self-service product or request for demos. [Inbound]

These might also be leads that you have gathered by list building/event which you might be nurturing through email marketing or Inside Sales for outbound.

Learning

  • SEO is a must and early start helps
  • Start with a keyword list (Commercial intent) and then keep building backlinks and writing content. In Suresh’s words its do-able and needs discipline and not hacks. [In my own opinion we as Indian entrepreneurs have done a shoddy job in this area and need to learn this fast]
  • Keywords, which you cannot rank on, go with PPC. The typical signup costs discussed were between 50 USD – 200 USD per signup / MQL
  • Data for outbound prospecting is very important; Mass Emailing does work but it is super important to spend time on defining segment well and crafting messaging which is relevant.
    [In my opinion one would actually have to go a step further with personalization if you are not a mass market solution and selling to mid-large markets]
  • Having a strong Web Engineering team which works on Google Analytics and conversion optimization is a must

Inside Sales

Roles

You may be calling this team with different names. In theory the following are possible

  • Lead Development Rep – Qualify Inbound leads
  • Sales Development / Account Development – Generate Qualified meetings from outbound
  • Other names discussed were BDRs (Same as SDRs or some times channel)
  • Account Executive – Someone who closes
  • Product Specialist – Someone who knows product well and closes
  • Should you have a product specialist closing or Account executive?
  • Self-Serve product with low complexity AE (sometimes even an SDR) can close
  • If a product requires mapping use cases configurations (Like KissFlow) then Product specialist are in the best position to close
  • If you selling 50K + ACV then a field Sales or experienced AE in the US is recommended.

Where to Hire Inside Sales

There were different thoughts and opinions on what talent can fit into this role. Typically the options are

  • Someone who has been in a BPO
  • Fresh Graduate who wants to build a career in Sales
  • Experienced Lead Generation in IT Services / SaaS

It was recommended that if you are starting out get someone who is more experienced and can then train new members. Training was an important aspect of Inside Sales and once you have 2-3 members it’s best to invest into training.

One of the learning I have had is that the player coach model does not work. If you are getting someone to manage / coach a team do not have a individual quota for them.

Compensation Structure

  • At one point this became a discussion of Chennai vs RoW ☺
  • SDRs should be compensated and evaluated on meetings / opportunities passed and accepted.
  • AE should be compensated on MRR addition (and may be a bonus on long term contracts)
  • The starting costs of SDRs discussed varied from 4L – 8L [Inbound is far easier than outbound]

Metrics discussed

  • Inbound leads per Rep per month – 200 – 300 this is for ACV <10K kind of deals. Larger deals lesser leads
  • Outbound accounts per SDR per month – 200 – 300 and aim for 1-2 meetings per day
  • Email Open Rates for Cold Emails – 20% – 30%
  • Right party Conversations per Day – 8 – 12

Tools discussed

Resources/Books

Guest Post by Sachin Bhatia, Founder at InsideSalesBox

 

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India’s reverse Brexit: Passing the GST Bill will create millions of formal sector jobs

Imagine a warehouse of more than one crore square feet in Central India – around five times the size of the largest football stadium in the world. It would have an eight lane highway that is connected to all four corners of the country on one side. It would have one of India’s largest railway container terminals for handling enormous goods trains on another side. It would have an all-cargo airport terminal operated by a partner on another side. And on the fourth side would be a cluster of manufacturers supplying the warehouse in real time based on big data analytics of national demand and inventory for their products.

This warehouse is not even on the radar today but can become a reality with the GST Bill. Passing the GST Bill – India’s reverse Brexit moment that will end state-by-state rules and create a national market for goods to be supplied from anywhere to anywhere – will create millions of formal jobs.

Currently, supply chains for e-commerce companies are not optimised but distorted by regulatory cholesterol that prevents us from offering customers the lowest cost or fastest delivery. We are unable to supply goods worth more than Rs 5,000 to UP because our customers have to go to a tax office and complete paperwork. We are unable to keep goods from our 90,000 suppliers in our warehouses across Karnataka due to double taxation. We often face confiscation of goods and cash in Kerala because of their approach to tax domicile, which conflicts with supplying states.

With GST, all of this will be history.

A seamless national supply chain that is agnostic to supply or demand destination is urgent, important and overdue for three reasons. First, it is India’s development trajectory to reduce poverty. Second, it will improve enterprise productivity. Finally, it is about empowering consumers and producers.

Let’s look at each of them in more detail.

We need to evolve very differently from China as we do not have the same global manufacturing and trade opportunity China had in 1978. Plus, democracy imposed some very desirable but real fixed costs on infrastructure building and growth. Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann suggests that the best predictor of sustained prosperity is “economic complexity” and India’s economically complex economy is a great opening balance for building on domestic consumption growth to reduce poverty. Essentially, instead of the traditional formula of large manufacturing, exports and large enterprises, i think India’s destiny lies in services, domestic consumption and small and medium enterprises.

The second point of enterprise productivity is important because poverty can be eliminated by improving productivity. We are thinking hard about individual productivity like skills and education, but we must recognise that India’s problem is not jobs but wages. Our official unemployment rate of 4.2% is not fudged. Everybody who wants a job has one, just not at the wages they want. India’s enterprise stack is largely informal, unproductive and built on self-exploitation. Of our 63 million enterprises 12 million don’t have an office, 12 million work from home, only 8.5 million pay taxes, only 1.5 million pay social security, and most tragically, only 18,000 have a paid-up capital of more than Rs 10 crore.

Drying this swamp is key. The US economy is nine times our size but only has 22 million enterprises. Ninety per cent of India works informally (this is the same number as 1991 and means that 100% of net jobs in the last 20 years have been created in informal enterprises). Many factors go into enterprise productivity but the main one is market access: connecting with buyers.

The final point is about consumer and producer empowerment. The majority of India’s 600-million-strong transacting consumers do not have access to quality products at affordable rates. Similarly, lakhs of producers are denied market access. Because of geographical constraints and artificial restrictions placed by the current tax regime, quality products are expensive and affordable products suffer from poor quality.

Here technology can come to the rescue post-GST. The ‘India stack’ framework for transactions (paperless, presenceless and cashless) is being first applied magnificently to finance but has huge implications for production and consumption once GST is passed. An unintended consequence of implementing the India stack across supply chains will be big data analytics for government that will not only improve compliance but greatly expand formal economic activity and create a virtuous cycle for credit, employment and wage rises.

One of the most remarkable books about India is The Integration of Indian States by V P Menon. It describes wonderfully how the 562 maharajas that administered more than 40% of India’s land and 25% of our population in 1947 were brought into the Indian state by 1951 in a project led by Sardar Patel, which secured the political unity of India. Passing GST will have similar impact on our economic unity. It will be a gift to first-generation entrepreneurs who don’t have connections or money but just the courage of their hearts, the sweat of their brow and the strength of their back.

Coming soon after Brexit – the UK’s economically baffling decision to leave the European Union – passing GST would also signal to the world that India’s economic ambitions have new rocket fuel. India’s regulatory cholesterol has been hostile to small entrepreneurs. GST rights that wrong and makes a new appointment with India’s missed tryst with destiny. This is one that she must keep.

Guest Post by Sachin Bansal, Co-founder & Executive Chairman of Flipkart

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The Value Added Service Providers in Cloud Telephony

Industry discussion on response to Consultation Papers by TRAI on Voice Mail/Audiotex/Unified Messaging Services Licence

TRAI floated a consultation paper to review the license of Voice Mail/Audiotex/Unified Messaging Services. The consultation paper throws light along with an in-depth analysis of various issues involved.

Many call these companies as Cloud telephony companies. Cloud telephony is a wider terms. Plus its creates confusion on switching happening from cloud. This can be problematic for a dialog with TRAI or DOT. Hence, We have called them as Value Added Service Providers. This argument is justified in this discussion below.

For iSPIRT this sector is important as

  1. Most of these companies have a Software product at the core developed by them
  2. They are mostly startups and
  3. There is enough scope in  this sector for more innovation to happen.

iSPIRT conducted a discussion on important issues of this segment of the Industry. The discussion was to touch on important aspects of the consultation papers of TRAI. The discussion is organized in 4 parts as follows:

  1. License issues
    • License v/s no license, separate licenses Technology and license mapping
    • Entry Fees, Revenue Share, License Period
  2. Issues like conferencing, dial out, point-to-point conferencing
  3. Unified License – how to tackle this
  4. Focus on innovation, Startups, Ease of Business (compliance)

Following people from Industry joined the Discussion:

  1. Ambarish Gupta, Sandeep Upadhyay and Sriram from Knowlarity
  2. Gurumurthy Konduri from Ozonetel
  3. Shivakumar Ganesan – Exotel
  4. Anik Jain – Myoperator
  5. Ujwal Makhija  – Phonon

Those interested can watch the video embedded here. Also the text below the video describes the common points and agreements of the essence of the discussion.

License issues

There are several questions asked in consultation paper on, What kind of licensing is required for various services. (Q1 to Q8)

At iSPIRT we feel most of these providers fall under one category. And they all should get recognition under one category name. This will include all, those who provide Voice mail, Audiotex, Audio Conferencing service etc. They can focus on one set of service or the entire suit of services.

Nomenclature – Call them Value Added Service providers

Cloud Telephony means a telephony service provided from cloud hosted infrastructure. simple reason that the service offered from cloud. Present policy regime of India calls them content providers. Now this may be difficult to digest for remaining IT industry. This include  provider licensed under the Voice Mail/Audiotex/Unified Messaging Services License.

Application service provider (ASP) and Communication application service provider (CaaS) are other nomenclatuers ascribed.

These providers are not supposed to carry telecom traffic or provide switching of telephony. In essence these providers are “Value Added Service” (VAS) providers. These value added services can range from be voice mail box, an IVR, a virtual PABX, a virtual call center to analytics based services.  There can be lot of innovative ways to deliver services. The VAS operator charges for their value added part. The VAS operator does not have its own network but relies on network resources of the Telcos for the basic or mobile telephony.

Weather a license or a simple Registration process

Everyone in the panel agreed that licensing cumbersome and costly. There is no need for a license and that there should be a simplified registration process.

The registration should be under one category e.g. Value Added Service Providers. This can cover all Voicemail, Audiotex along with Audio conferencing and the Unified messaging.

The registration helps DOT to keep track of fair use of the policy, with complete neutrality and level playing field. DOT can keep watch the registered VAS providers through a simple compliance process.

License issues – Entry Fees, Revenue Share, License Period

There was common agreement in the discussion on fees and charges. Presently there is a bank guarantee of 3 lakhs for Voice Mail/Audiotex licenses. A policy to either keep it at same level or evolve to simplify further is welcome.

License/registration period of 10 or 20 years are good enough.

Issues like conferencing, dial out, point-to-point conferencing

The consultation paper deals at length these issues. For the industry they are of high importance as most confusions arise from them. Often the threats of inspection and service disruption from TERM cell arise from these provisions. There is always a doubt that the VAS operator may be involved in routing call traffic for business motives or running a switching service clandestinely.

In such a dubious doubtful environment this budding segment of Industry cannot grow. The VAS operators addes lot of value to both their suppliers and clients. The customer pays for the value they add not for the telephone calls. For suppliers (Telcos), the VAS operator is a bulk service customer

The common agreement was that this area needs a serious look from TRAI and DOT.

When industry is complying with all required prohibited clauses of the policy such as

  1. No VOPI integration
  2. No toll bypass
  3. No number masking

When the Call deail record (CDR) are all tapped in the Telco’s network;

AND

When there are further detail logs and records that are avaialable from VAS provider;

there does not arise a chance of

  1. Security  breach by VAS operators and
  2. Revenue loss to Telcos

The revenue of Telcos increase happen to increase even when they VAS providers buy from Telcos at a discounted rate. VAS operators increase the size of Pie.

In view of above, the common agreement in the discussion was that

  1. There should be clarity on conferencing, bridging call out provisions
  2. There is nothing like point to point conferencing
  3. The policy should allow VAS operators to use telecom resources from multiple operators. The limiting principle should be dial out to same operator from where incoming call comes.  Multiple operators are the need for reliability or redundancy.

OSP like provisions or OSP should be allowed for VAS providers?

There was an opinion on OSP being allowed to VAS operators. This will give them more flexibility to operate and grow their presence. The opinion attempts to justify the OSP based on analogy of large Captive call center operators allowed OSP with network spanning country wide with a central logic running.

iSPIRT’s opinion is that this may create conflict with other areas of policy under TRAI and also face sever resistance. It is advisable to take up this issue in a phased manner. May be first limiting OSP to one telecom circle at a time. Plus it advisable to approach it, after due consultative interactions with TRAI and DOT.

Unified License – how to tackle this

There are number of questions on Telcos operating under unified license to offer VAS. The questions also point to inclusion of “Voice Mail/Audiotex/Unified Messaging Services” in unified license.

The common opinion that emerges out from discussion is that the Value Added Services is a different ball game. The market should be free for all. Eventually there is a unique Software Product existing behind these services. The quality of service is highly dependent on this core product.

There does not seem to be any apposition to Unified license getting extended to the value added service suit.

Focus on innovation, Startups, Ease of Business (compliance)

This fourth part got truncated from the recording, perhaps for time limit getting crossed unnoticeably.

For benefit of the community. A very short discussion on how this small industry could further be boosted by perhaps giving more access to domestic market through promotional policy measures.

Certainly there is agreement that there is lot of scope to innovate and do more within this segment of the Industry.

The discussion ended by a Thank you note.

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Learnings from “Running Inside Sales for US, from India” – iSPIRT Playbook Roundtable

It is an exciting phase for the Indian SaaS eco-system. There are a lot of companies from India trying to build products for the global market. Some of them have been able to scale to tens of thousands of customers and millions of dollars in revenue. Many others are just getting started or want to step up their game. In both cases, there are trying to figure things out, sort of solving a jigsaw puzzle. Sales is a big part of the puzzle. There are many questions to be answered – how to generate leads, how to sell, whom to sell, how to hire for sales etc.

To get answers to some of these questions and more, iSPIRT organized a playbook roundtable – “Running Inside Sales for US, from India”. It was moderated by Suresh Sambandam, CEO, KiSSFLOW and I was fortunate to be part of it.

Running Inside Sales for US, from India

This blog aims to highlight some of the key learnings from the discussion.

Product-Market fit

This may sound cliched but getting Product-Market fit right is critical before you begin your sales process. Without getting this right you are just shooting in the dark.

Branding and positioning needs to be aligned to what the customer thinks/needs. Customers won’t be thinking the way we are – brand needs to solve that. One way to achieve this is to start by having your product / company name synonymous with what your potential customer is looking for. There are plenty of examples out there – Recruiterbox – Recruitment software, Freshdesk & Zendesk – Help desk software, SalesForce & InsideSalesBox – Sales/CRM software, KiSSFLOW – Workflow management software.

Marketing / Demand generation

Most early stages startups work on an inbound lead generation model. This means, getting SEO right and having a website that looks great & conveys the right message to your prospect is a no-brainer.

One point that came up during the discussion about SEO was content marketing. Invest in building great content for your users and they can prove to be a good source of inbound leads. Also important to remember is the role of distribution of content. No point in having great content if it doesn’t reach the right audience.

Interestingly, Quora was mentioned a good source of leads if answers point to content you have generated.

Other lead generation strategies that were discussed

  • Adwords : important to make a list of primary and secondary keywords and bid for them so that you end up in the first page of search
  • Listing on business app marketplaces – Google Apps, Capterra
  • Outbound lead generation : Some tools to get a database of companies – Discovery.org, DataGuru, Datanyze, Rainking. Use tools like Sendee or Amazon SES for outbound email campaigns to get better open, response rates.
  • Doing Paid webinars at domain specific sites : need significant effort and money.
  • Analyst relations : KiSSFLOW has used Capterra, G2CrowdSource, Gartner and Forrester, TrustRadius. Getting listed is not difficult. Improving ratings needs time and effort

Inside Sales Team Roles

Sales team structure

Before setting up the sales team, it is essential for the founders to map the entire sales process. This sets the tone for the sales team to follow.

Suresh raised an important question – Is your product complex enough to necessitate two roles – SDR & AE.

Sales Development Rep (SDR)

  • Should be good with talking and selling and need to do the bulk of talking and writing to customers
  • Generally have about 300-400 leads to work on and set demos for AEs .
  • Incentives – At KiSSFLOW, it is composite – based on email opens (they have some metrics), completed demos and a small portion of booked revenue.
  • Qualify leads based on multiple factors including no of active sessions, user-base, profile of signed up user etc.

Account Executive (AE)

  • Typical AEs are prior pre-sales guys with ~4 years of experience
  • Have very good product knowledge
  • Important metric for AEs is “Time to first WOW / Magic moment”
  • They typically floor the customer during the demo by spontaneously configuring everything needed during the session itself.
  • Should be able to figure out whether a discount would help close the deal.
  • Generate leads on their own other than leads from SDRs

Hiring

An interesting suggestion that came up was hiring AIESEC students for sales roles. These students would be foreign nationals visiting India on an exchange programme and are generally available to work for about 6-12 months and would be a good fit.

Some of the companies mentioned, they have a intensive training program to train SDR’s.

Pricing

Important learning – many make the mistake of making quick decisions when it comes to pricing, and not giving it enough thought. Needs to be very simple, but also needs to be constantly worked and improved.

Tools & Resources

Some of the marketing & sales – tools & resources used by the participant companies

  • LeadSquared : Generate landing pages easily for campaigns
  • Sendee / Amazon SES : For email campaigns
  • Discovery.org, DataGuru, Datanyze, Rainking : Lead database
  • FullStory : Recorded video of user actions/activities. Alternative tool, MouseFlow.
  • Moz : to check SEO ranking
  • Pipedrive, SalesForce : CRM
  • Wappalyzer, BuiltWith – technologies used on website – useful for competitor analysis
  • Guide to marketing & selling in SaaS – A Jump Start Guide To Desk Marketing and Selling For SaaS – thanks iSPIRT for this.

Closing thoughts

It was really a insightful and informative session and a great starting point in Sales for many of us.

Thanks to

  • Amarpreet Kalkat, Frrole & Avinash Raghava, iSPIRT for organizing this round table
  • Suresh Sambandam, CEO, KiSSFLOW for moderating the session
  • Other startup founders for sharing your insights
  • And finally, Sumanth, CEO, Deck App for hosting us and for the sumptuous pizzas, tea and biscuits.
Guest Post by Gautham Sheshadhari, RecruiterBox
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Convertible Notes

In this session we take up another announcement by ministry of corporate affairs on convertible notes. This is a step forward to solving the problem of receiving funds as loan from foreign investors as convertible notes.

Sanjay Khan Nagra talks about the issue in the video embedded below.

What is a convertible note?

Convertible notes are debt instruments that converts in to equity, at a later date. The lender initially gives a loan with an understanding that he can convert these in to equity. In most cases, this later date is the date of next valuation of the company. If there is no next round of valuation, the company should return the debt back to lender in a fixed time interval.

Convertible notes are quite popular in startup ecosystems like Silicon Valley in USA. In India, there are other forms of convertible instruments. Such as CCDS/CCPS (compulsorily convertible debenture or preference share). These are not exactly akin to convertible notes prevalent in valley.

Ministry of corporate affairs has announced acceptance of the convertible note as a concept for startups through a circular no. G.S.R. 639(E) New Delhi, dated 29th June, 2016.

What is the new in the recent announcement?

In existing CCD/CCP instruments, company receiving funds upfront enters into an agreement defining the value or a formula at which these will convert in to equity. This value, at which they will convert cannot be lower than the present fair market value. The CCD or CCP are compulsorily convertible if there is a next round of valuation in a specified period. If there is no valuation in that period, then the money raised remains as a simple loan to be repaid.

The convertible note practice in valley is better placed. There also, a convertible note is also a loan given by investor to company. The difference being, the lender gets an advantage to convert debt to equity at a later date at a discounted rate.

So if a Rs.10 share value at later date is Rs. 50, the lender may get a conversion at Rs. 40. Next valuation round may also happen at lower than present fair market value.

So, this seems more of less like similar, what is the problem then?

The anomaly is that the Indian company can raise funds using convertible notes from Indian lenders only, and not from foreign investors.

RBI does not allow valuation linked convertibles notes. iSPIRT approached RBI with this stay-in-India check list item. RBI felt that there has to be an acceptance in company law for the convertible note concept, as akin to the practice in developed world.

iSPIRT approached ministry of corporate affairs (MCA), and the new announcement is a step forward in this direction. We soon expect RBI to follow suit and permit convertible notes from foreign investors.

Are there any conditions in MCA announcement?

MCA has announced a definition for “convertible notes” under G.S.R. 639(E) by amending the Companies (Acceptance of Deposits) Rules, 2014. You can read the complete circular here.

The limitations are:

a) The provision of Convertible note applies only to Startups
b) The amount has to be 25 lakhs or more

As per circular the definition of convertible note is added as follows:
“convertible note” means an instrument evidencing receipt of money initially as a debt, which is repayable at the option of the holder, or which is convertible into such number of equity shares of the start-up company upon occurrence of specified events and as per the other terms and conditions agreed to and indicated in the instrument.

iSPIRT stand

iSPIRT will actively pursue this further with RBI.

DIPP and MCA have taken an appreciable step forward, in getting the regulation relaxed for DIPP registered Startups.

However, in order to bring the Indian startup ecosystem at par with developed world, the limitation to DIPP registered Startups should not exist. These measures are to be adopted for all startups/companies across country.