Posted on

Playing with the new Electricity – AI/ML Playbook Sessions [March Update]

[Update 29-Mar] New April Session Dates – Symposium RT is being scheduled for Bangalore & Chennai (21st & 28th April). 

“Tectonic” market shifts happen every few years creating a change in landscape, market and opportunity. The most recent “tectonic” shift is the emergence of the Artificial Intelligence era. In just the same way electrification in the early 1900s transformed major industries globally, AI, Machine Learning & Deep Learning are poised to transform a multitude of industries, services & products.

It took 100 years from the discovery of electrical generator to electrification of industries. AI is doing this in a span of 70 years (from the time of the Turing Test).

AI/ML has gone through many winters and is now in its eternal spring. It portents a new framework for startups to navigate and evolve from an internet era startup into an AI era startup.


Every new era shift begins with a lot of smoke and hype before it is well understood. iSPIRT ProductNation & Julia are launching a set of AI/ML playbook roundtable & workshop sessions to dispel the hype around AI, and help bring a pragmatic mindset & process change necessary for product startups to leverage AI/ML. We believe AI is not just a technology shift. It is a combination of product, business, and technology shift. Adapting to it requires a new paradigm of thinking to build a viable value strategy. This needs to be done mindfully and in context of the value you offer to the customer, do not rush in with the AI hype.

These multi-step playbooks are for all categories of startups regardless whether they are AI-First or SaaS, and MarTech, FinTech, HealthTech or any other <Domain>Tech category, startups who are looking to deliver a higher order value to their customers by leveraging and applying AI models with their data.

Since AI/ML is still in its early years there aren’t any proven success playbooks. Hence these deep sessions will bring together AI experts, AI Mavens (entrepreneurs who are more ahead in their AI journey), iSPIRT Mavens, and selected startups, to discuss & share their insights, challenges & learnings on the mindset shifts outlined above and best practices adopted. The 2-step playbook roundtable sessions focused on founders (+1 typically CXO) and a hands-on lab workshop are a sequence of:

    • AI/ML Symposium RT (step 1) – An invite-only 3 hour mini-symposium playbook with AI/ML experts, first mover AI leaders & Mavens from our startup community and 10-15 invited startups, focusing on Why AI/ML? What was the higher order value being created? How to identify the opportunities to leverage AI? What do you need to get started with AI (if not already running)? Data needs for AI/ML investments… The shared awareness created in this session, combined with the commitment by startups to articulate their AI/ML opportunity, and detail their approach will lead to the next AI/ML roundtable.
    • AI/ML Playbook RT (step 2) – Startups at similar AI readiness from the Symposium will be invited for a 5-hour deep-dive roundtable discussion on the AI/ML challenges in the context of the startup domain, effectively going through their AI/ML readiness & approach (a review & teardown). Topics would emerge from the Symposium RT and could cover data collection & modeling strategy, AI transformation algorithms, Business model innovation, Success metrics… This session is restricted to 5-6 startups (having similar AI needs) per roundtable and an AI Maven to facilitate the topics & discussion. Possible outcomes for each startup would be to develop an action plan/checklist for next few months of execution. Additionally, startups can identify a tiger tech team to go to the AI/ML Training Lab to get traction for their checklist…
    • AI/ML Training Lab with Julia Sandbox (optional) – A 3+ day workshop intended for the 3-4 person tiger tech teams (CTO, Engg, Data guy, PM…) from each startup. The workshop will help focus on building competency, getting traction & executing implementations related to the checklist developed at the roundtable.

For the first set of these playbooks, we are inviting nominations/applications for startup founders (+CXOs) who are either directly focusing on AI-based opportunity or have started integrating AI/ML as a core strategy for their product growth/success. Please provide your nomination for startups you believe should be part of the first series of the AI/ML playbooks. If you are a startup and interested to be part of this please register below. On final approval, an invite confirmation will be sent via email.

Please submit your nominations here. A registration link will be sent to your nominee.

Dates & Venue for the first of the series:

AI/ML Symposium RT #1 – 10th Mar (Sat) 2p – 5p Done
AI/ML Symposium RT #2 – 21st Apr (Sat) 11a – 2p @ Bangalore TBD
AI/ML Symposium RT #3– 28th Apr (Sat) 10a – 1p @ Chennai TBD
AI/ML Playbook RT – Apr-TBD (Sat) 11a – 5pm @ Bangalore TBD
AI/ML Training Lab w/ Julia – Apr-TBD @ TBD (Bangalore)

While the sessions are in Chennai/Bangalore, we believe this topic is of emergent interest to startups across the country and would invite all to register.

AI Mavens

Ashwin Ramasamy – PipeCandy
Manish Singhal – pi Ventures
Nishith Rastogi – Locus.sh
Shrikanth Jagannathan – PipeCandy

Cost

All iSPIRT roundtables are pro-bono (read below for how that works)

This series of playbooks is being setup by active support from our Mavens & Volunteers – Ankit Singh, Deepak Vinchhi, Karthik KS, Praveen Hari, Ravindra Krishnappa, Sandeep Todi.

P.S. Some great material for pre-reading

I strongly recommend all to go through many of these.

* All iSPIRT playbooks are pro-bono, closed room, founder-level, invite-only sessions. The only thing we require is a strong commitment to attend all sessions completely and to come prepared, to be open to learning & unlearning, and to share your context within a trusted environment. All key learnings are public goods & the sessions are governed by the Chatham House Rule.

* The Julia team is on a social mission to train a large number of people in India to develop grassroot skills and competency with AI & ML.

+Feature image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/gleonhard/34046647175/

Posted on

Software Exporters claim your GST Refunds

GST regime has brought a new dimension to treatment of Indirect taxation in Exports.

Prior to GST era, the export invoice had no Indirect tax mentions. So also, the indirect tax returns had nothing to do with Exports.

After GST implementation, to make the GST truly value added and consumption-based tax a concept of Zero-Rate supply was introduced. This made it necessary for exporters to account for indirect tax (GST) at time of exports.

An exporter has to adopt either of the two below given methods.

  1. Export with IGST Paid – include and pay IGST at time of export to Govt. on invoice value and later get refund or
  2. Export under LUT without payment of IGST – File a letter of Undertaking (LUT) with GST department and raise zero IGST export invoices and get refund of GST paid on inputs at later date.

Note: Before October 2017 there was also a requirement to sign a Bond (backed by bank Guarantee) if the value of exports for an enterprise in previous years were less than Rs. 1 Crore and sign a LUT if previous year exports were more than Rs. 1 crore. The requirement to sign a BOND has been done away with and all the BONDS signed until October 2017 will be treated as LUT, format and paper work being almost similar.

As working capital gets blocked if the IGST route is adopted (exporter pays IGST and then file for refund again and again on each billing cycle), not many may have adopted this route. Hence, A good number of Software exporters filed Bonds or LUTs with GST department early at start of GST regime.

The tax refunds can be claimed every month. However, for most small exporters it may be useful to file tax refund claims once at end of financial year. This will keep administrative burden low and also the cost of tax management low, while seeing a handsome refund amount in one go.

This write-up is meant to simplify issues of GST refund in exports for entrepreneurs i startups including SaaS and Software products.

Why is refund applicable on Exports?

First thing to understand is that under GST regime (unlike previous VAT and service tax) exports and imports are subject to IGST (in lieu of CGST+SGST), which is a tax applicable on Inter-state supplies. GST law treats exports and imports at par with inter-state trade to make exporters account for IGST.

Second thing to understand is whereas exports are covered under IGST (inter-state supplies), the exports are treated as “Zero Rates” supplies i.e. such supplies will have zero indirect tax incidence finally. The tax incidence of Indirect tax is normally on the final consumer of goods and services. Since, in exports the final consumer of goods or services is located outside India, the consumption happens outside the country. To maintain competitiveness of exports from country and to align with tariff structures in place before GST implementation, the indirect tax has to be zero (excepting a list of goods that are subject to tax). The exports and supplies to SEZ (deemed exports) have been treated as Zero-rate supplies.

Third thing to understand is the GST is a value added tax. This can be understood from old VAT regime, also. A supply of goods or service when passes from original manufacturer to end consumer through various trading channels, it’s value increases at every point. If A sales a good for Rs. 100 and charges GST of Rs. 18 the cost becomes Rs.118 to B, now B may sale same at Rs. 125 to C the final consumer. The GST will now be Rs. 22.5 and final cost to C will be Rs. 147.50. B however gets an input credit of Rs. 18 and pays Rs. 4.5 tax (Rs. 22.5- Rs. 18).

Now, if B is an exporter and C is a client abroad, B has an option to adopt one of the two routes described above.

Route 1 – B can raise an export invoice with IGST paid of Rs. 22.5. Client C is charged Rs. 125 (in equivalent foreign currency) but IGST of 22.5 is paid to GST department in India.  B then files for a claim of entire GST amount of Rs. 22.5.

Route 2 – B can file a LUT with GST department and raise an invoice with IGST zero and Rs. 125 (in equivalent foreign currency). Now either at month end or within a period of 2 years B can ask for refund of IGST that B has paid when procuring supplies from A of Rs. 18. This Rs. 18 is called unutilised input credit.

Refund of unutilised input is available as the final goods are consumer by client C in foreign territory and C is not subject to payment of indirect tax. Hence the tax accumulated by exporter B from his previous suppliers (can’t be born by the exporter) and should be refunded.

Had the consumer C been in domestic tariff area i.e. within the territory of India, the final value added tax on supplies would have been born by the consumer.

An exporter can claim unutilized input credit on all the inputs required in production of final product or service exported.

How can exporters claim utilised tax credit (GST) refund?

As per Section 54(3) of the CGST Act, 2017, refund can be claim of unutilised input tax credit can be done at the end of any tax period (tax return period) i.e. a taxpayer can claim refund on monthly basis.

As per the provisions of GST Law, Refunds to be granted to the dealer electronically on the basis of application in RFD-01. However, due to the non-availability online process, as per notification No.39/2017-Central Tax, dt. 13-10-2017 exporters can file manual refund claims to the jurisdictional officers.

A New form RFD-01A introduced to be filed manually by the exporters to facilitate early Refunds vide Circular no.17/2017 dated 15-11-2017.

For those adopting IGST paid route, the processes is more simpler and 90% of tax is supposed refunded within 7 days of filing. This writeup assume most exports barring petty exporters have adopted LUT route.

This write-up is not meant to describe a detailed process, but highlight the need to file for refunds by exporters if not filed yet, instead of letting the input tax credit to be passed on to next year. This will help channelize funds recouped in to business cycle for next year.

In order to file for refund an exporter needs to have filed all required returns on GST portal and should have records of all purchase invoices, export invoices raised, and the bank certificates of remittances received against export invoices.

For those who are suppling to Special economic Zones (SEZs) the process is similar to exports, except there will be documents and certification to be sought from SEZ units and local jurisdictional officer.

For a detailed understanding on these refunds one can refer to CBEC article given here on Refund of unutilised Input Tax Credit (ITC)

Conclusion

As the financial year end closes, all such exporters who have filed a LUT or BOND should be gearing up to seek GST refunds, if not done already.

GST regime started with lot of confusion for small exporter. Many issues have been resolved and many are yet to be resolved. GST is a much better regime in terms of taxation. However, a fully featured matured and fully digital GST regime will be much more beneficial for exporters. We hope in next financial year we can see roll out of a fully digital GST with near zero interference from officials and manual applications.

Posted on

The History and Future of Angel Tax

“I propose a series of measures to deter the generation and use of unaccounted money. To this end, I propose:

Increasing the onus of proof on closely held companies for funds received from shareholders as well as taxing share premium in excess of fair market value.”

When ex-Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee introduced angel tax in 2012, it created an uproar in the fledgeling startup and angel investor community. While the purpose of this section was to reduce money laundering by imposing the hefty tax rate of 30.9 percent, it had several inadvertent consequences.

There were several cases of money laundering by Jaganmohan Reddy that were caught by the Enforcement Directorate, who revealed that people had “paid bribes to Reddy in the form of investments at exorbitant premiums in his various companies to the tune of Rs 779.50 crores apart from making payment of Rs 57 crores to him in the guise of secondary purchase of shares and donation of Rs 7 crores to the YSR Foundation”.

To prevent such abuses of the law, the government clamped down and stated that any unjustified share premium given by a private company would be taxed as income in their hands. But to catch one culprit, they threw the book at many innocents. The relevant law known as section 56(2)(viib) of the Income Tax Act came to be known as the angel tax section. Many startups which are private companies and had issued shares at a premium to angel investors ended up facing notices from the tax authorities under this section. This premium is treated as income in their hands, classified as “income from other sources” and taxed at the maximum marginal rate of tax.

The ‘Startup India’ initiative changed all that. Under the stewardship of the Honourable Prime Minister, startups became a focus area. As per the ten points in the Action Plan, if a startup was registered post- April 1, 2016, then the angel tax was not applicable to the startups. The move had helped startups operating in that area, but a problem still existed for startups that were incorporated before 2016. In fact, in December 2017, many startups received notices and orders for the Financial Year 2013-14. A few entrepreneurs who faced income tax notice hassles launched an e-petition called Change.org in January 2018 so that the government could take some concrete action in Budget 2018.

iSPIRT has taken up the matter with MoF and DIPP on the same. We had made some representations to MoF specifically before the budget. In the budget, the Finance Minister made a statement on continued assistance to the Angel Ecosystem. Due to rigorous efforts that went into sharing of information by these startups, we have recently seen MoF making the welcome announcement.

As per the latest announcement, angel tax would not be applicable on startups which are incorporated before 2016, fulfil the criteria under Startup India Policy and have been granted angel funding up to Rs10 crores. It is believed that at least 300 startups will get a breather from angel tax. The government is also likely to establish a separate committee for the recognition of startups that meet these criteria.

In a further relief to startups, the Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia also announced that income tax officers would not take precipitate action and will proceed only after the first set of appeals decided in appellate cases. The exact phrase they used was “no coercive action”, which helped many startups heave a collective sigh of relief. All pending appeals by March 31, 2018, will be quickly addressed.

If you are a startup and need further guidance on angel tax, you should follow the steps below:

  1. Register at DIPP for a startup even if you were incorporated before 2016 and currently are still a startup as defined by DIPP by logging onto this site and filling up the form at https://www.startupindia.gov.in/registration.php.
  2. If you are a startup as per DIPP definition, then get your DIPP certification. All startups which may have raised funding post-April 2016 and are registered with DIPP will not have angel tax applicable to them.
  3. If you are a startup which has received income tax notices for years before 2016 and is still eligible to register as a startup, then please register yourself with DIPP. You can share the registration certificate and relevant notifications with the assessing income tax officer to get an exemption from angel tax.
  4. If you are a startup which has received income tax notices for years after 2016, then please repeat step 2 mentioned above and then appeal against the order. It is important that due process is followed so that the redressal measures taken by the tax authorities can come into effect.

These startups do not have to pay 20% of the tax order at the time of appeal as this has been a one-time exception granted till 31st March 2018 to avoid hurting the sentiments of the startup ecosystem. You can share the order with iSPIRT.

Also, pursuant to our meeting with MoF, we have been assured that the income tax officers in the various jurisdictions have been directed to exercise leniency on this till the new taxation regime for angel and venture capital investors comes into place, as announced by the Finance minister in his budget speech. The officers are aware of the hardships that startups now face and are doing their best to mitigate this within the ambit of the current law.

DIPP and MoF are also in the process of allowing a waiver to the earlier startups facing the angel tax issue, provided the investment made is under Rs 10 crores and subject to an Inter-Ministry board approving the same. This should happen in the next 5-10 days.

We will encourage all startups which have received notices and orders under Section 56 to follow the above steps to chart their way across the new announcements.  

Please forward your orders to [email protected] enabling us to use these orders to take a strategic view to policy to help with this issue in the long term.

Start up India.

Stand up India.

This post is co-authored by Nakul Saxena and Siddarth Pai, Policy Expert Council Members, iSPIRT Foundation

Posted on

iSPIRT’s Response to Justice SriKrishna committee’s White Paper on Data Protection Framework for India

Read more about the Data Protection Law here: https://pn.ispirt.in/india-in-a-digital-world co-authored by Shrikant Karwa and Sarika Mendu.
For any query, Feel free to write to us: [email protected]
Posted on

While Well-Intentioned, Budget 2018 Falls Short of Expectations

Starting nine years ago, Aadhaar, eKYC, UPI and the rest of India Stack laid the foundation for a formalization of the Indian MSME sector. With the introduction of Aadhaar for Business and the unlocking of GST data for lenders, we are poised to see an explosion in flow-based lending to MSMEs, ultimately having a multiplier effect on jobs and economic growth. This is great news for MSME focused digital lenders and the product startups serving them. Therefore, a significant digital dividend for the Bharat economy is finally in sight.

It is heartening to see government adopt the same digital-first approach when it comes to health and education. While this is a great start, much work remains. Laying the policy foundation alongside an India Stack inspired technology spine will ensure the rise of the Bharat focused tech-entrepreneur. We need India’s entrepreneurs to lift outcomes for patients and students not adequately served by our existing system.

On the startup and investor fronts, this budget is a missed opportunity to address the important near-term issues. We had hoped to see the resolution for Angel Tax and other such Stay-in-India Checklist issues. Slapping a Long-Term Capital Gains Tax on the previously untaxed sale of listed equities will adversely affect the List-in-India initiative. Additionally, the compliance overhang of listing will no longer be tempered by the promise of tax-free gains. The promised tax regime must incentivize and protect foundational (angel and domestic investors) as opposed to fleeting capital.

While well-intentioned, this budget falls short of our expectations. India’s complexity and diversity call for a much more responsive and action-oriented policy-making approach. Only then can we harness our entrepreneurial energy to address India’s most pressing challenges.

About iSPIRT
iSPIRT is a non-profit technology think tank that builds public goods for Indian product startup to thrive and grow. Learn more: www.ispirt.in

Sanjay Jain, Nakul Saxena, Sudhir Singh and Sanjay Khan Nagra Fellows from our policy team have issued a press release on 1st February 2018, a copy of it is here. Reach out to Sanjay Jain in case you would like to know more details.

Special thanks to our volunteers Sharad Sharma, Siddarth Pai, Tanuj Bhojwani, Sarika Mendu, Anukriti Chaudhari, Karthik KS. 

Posted on

Economic Survey coverage on IT Sector and Exports

Every year we have two events in financial year end which attracts every one right from Industry, Agriculture to common man of this country. These are annual budget of Govt. of India and preceding the budget the Economic survey. The Chief economic adviser who keeps an eye on the Economy of the country round the year and advises the Govt. on right policy formulation, presents the Economic Survey year, which is both the stock of performance of the Economy as well as a guide to investigate future, especially setting the thought process for the budget.

This year’s Economic survey was very important from the perspective of having come after two consecutive events in short term, the Demonetization effect + GST. This year’s economic survey also moved ahead from “digital economy” theme. The word digital finds only a lip service in certain places in volume II.

The information technology sector has been an important sector of Indian economy for last 2 decades. This write up is a synopsis view of how Economic survey has projected the performance of this sector vis-à-vis the rest of economy.

On overall terms, Chief Economic Advisor(CEA) is very optimistic and has projected a 7+% growth in GDP in next one-year time frame. He has rightly quoted the positive indicators from International rating agencies of Moody’s upgrade of India’s ranking and a jump in world banks ranking on Ease of doing business.

The “Software” and IT is covered under “services” as the balance of payment accounting accounts “Software” under services and non-factor services balance. This accounting entry in current account balance has consistently performed for years for India. The following chart is self-explanatory on this.

Almost every Government record uses the terminology IT-BPM to aggregate both IT services and ITeS exports. Software forms part of IT exports and it is difficult to estimate the Software product exports in this category as it includes mix of various reporting.

In India there are two sources of data for Software exports. One from a RBI data based on remittances reported under specified codes and secondly from data and analysis reported by NASSCOM, STPI and Jurisdictional SEZ commissioners.

The interesting difference in this year’s Economic survey is the data reported by RBI and NASSCOM is in two different directions. Usually both do not match. This year RBI reported a negative (-)0.7% in 2016-17 growth in exports, whereas NASSCOM registered a 7.6% growth in exports.

Another interesting chart from economic survey reporting from this sector is a report from world bank data base. The chart given below depicts that India, Israel and Philippines as top players in ICT exports to the world. It is common knowledge that Israel’s exports are based on their competitive advantage in Software products, India in IT Services and Philippines in BPO. Israel a small country export levels using product as a base are higher than India’s in IT services. It goes without saying that India needs to shift its strategy in the sector and give emphasis to products in its ICT portfolio.

FDI inception in the sector can not be estimated separately from given data. However, FDI in overall services sector (of top 10 service sector) had a share of 65.8%. in April-October 2017-18.

The survey also reported a robust growth of services sector to 16.2% in April-September 2017 owning to major sectors like travel and Software.

Software services share was 45.2% of overall services exports in 2016-17. (The software however in report means complete IT sector).

GST in Economic Survey

On fiscal policy side, GST is a new entrant in the system. GST also treats every thing that is intangible in IT as service be it is a IT Service or a Software product. As per CEA there is a 50% increase in registration of tax payers after GST introduction. This is a healthy sign for the economy and for digital transformation of economy.

With indirect tax on Software having risen from 15% to 18% there will be a larger gross value addition in Domestic market by the Software sector. Plus, increased digital adoption is expected to boost the overall domestic trade in this sector.

GST system also effects how exports are done. On export front discounting the initial difficulties exporters had, GST is expected to ease the compliance on export front as well as complexities that affected many on Place of supply/provision of services rule.

Other general announcements on Exports

Many of the India’s states are much larger than some developed countries. However, it is for first time that a comparison or detailed data on the international exports of states has been included. Also this data shows a strong correlation between export performance of states and their standard of living and affluence.

A figure from Economic survey is reproduced below.

IT is said that there is no super star exporters in India. According to survey, top 1 percent of Indian firms account for 38 percent of exports; in all other countries, they account for a substantially greater share (72, 68, 67, and 55 percent of exports in Brazil, Germany, Mexico, and USA respectively). And this is true for the top 5 percent, 10 percent, and so on.

This analogy also helps us undertand that in IT sector also there is no superstar that is ruling the globe in international trade from India. Rather in IT the spread is much wider and open. India needs to build a Google is the dream that remains to be realised for this sector, to be a true Software power.

A chat below explains this in the survey.

Conclusion

There is a clear cut challenge on economic front for IT sectors. The share of IT exports in total Services export has also been going down for last few years. Survey says Govt. is taking several steps to boost this. However, the reality is that government has yet to take right steps in changing world scenario both to boost the exports as well as growth of domestic IT industry.

Government has failed to recognize formation of a sub-sector of SaaS products and bring up new programs and schemes for promotion of Software product as a sector with in IT. iSPIRT has been continuously working to influence the policy makers to come up with a Software Product policy which can lead to announcement of a Scheme for SaaS companies and boost morals of Indian Startup entrepreneurs to stay in India and run global business from India.

With this background now we look forward for a Budget 2018.

 

Posted on

List of Startup Issues resolved Stay-in-India Checklist

iSPIRT has taken up a checklist of issues to be resolved for helping Startups stop relocating themselves abroad and stay in India, popularly called as Stay-In-India Checklist. These were taken up with Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) under Ministry of Commerce, Government of India. DIPP is also the administrative department for Startup India Policy.

There are a number of issues that have been resolved, till today.

A list of eight issues that have been resolved until now that directly effects the Startups on company law or their promotion and ease of doing business are given below.

1.  IPR Registration

A scheme for promoting IPR awareness has been brought out by DIPP with an objective of promoting IP awareness, conduct workshops and training to enable an innovation-driven environment. The details of the scheme are given on DIPP site like here.

2.  Conversion process of LLP into company

Conversion of an LLP into a company was allowed with an amendment to Section 366 of the Companies Act, 2013, as notified on 1 April 2014. This has further been simplified by bringing down threshold of member from 7 members to 2 members. Please refer to the amendment in section 266 of THE COMPANIES (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2017, published on 3rd January 2018. Refer the link http://www.mca.gov.in/Ministry/pdf/CAAct2017_05012018.pdf

3.  Incorporation process to be simplified

Rule 38 of Companies (Incorporation) Rules, 2014 provides for SPICe (Simplified Proforma for Incorporating Company electronically) form for incorporating a company. This is considered to be a welcome step as this simplified procedure would save the time of incorporation of a company.

The Fourth amendment rules notified on 1st October 2016 and Fifth amendment notified on 29 Dec 2016 came in to force from 1st January 2017 provides for much simpler SPICe form, now known as E-Form SPICe (Form INC-32).

SPICe now integrates into single application  – reservation of name, allotment of Directors Identification Number (DIN). It can be filled without having DIN already, by maximum three directors.

The company is allotted Permanent Account Number (PAN) and Tax Deduction Account Number (TAN) and Certificate of Incorporation (CIN) on completion of form and processing by ROC. The PAN number is printed on CIN.

For details visit MCA FAQ at http://www.mca.gov.in/MinistryV2/spice_faqs.html

4. Provisions permitting outbound or Cross-Border

MCA has notified Section 234 of the Companies Act 2013 (2013 Act) which permits cross-border mergers with effect from 13 April 2017. MCA has also notified relating amendments to the Companies (Compromises, Arrangements and Amalgamations) Rules 2016 (Merger Rules) by inserting a new Rule 25A to be effective on and from 13 April 2017.

The provisions now permit cross-border mergers both ways.

  1. Inbound – Foreign company merging into Indian company
  2. Outbound – Indian company merge into a foreign company.

This will help the intra-group situations and also open opportunities to raise capital, diversify ownership base and achieve other strategic objectives

5.  Regulation on Insider trading on private companies

Section 195 of the Companies Act, 2013 has been omitted by way of Companies (Amendment) Act, 2017 as it was deemed that the SEBI regulations on the same are wide enough to cover such instances. Currently, there is no provision under the Companies Act, 2013 which deals with insider trading in private companies

 6. Regulations governing TDS to be rationalized

Thresholds limits for TDS deductions under various sections has been increased and also the rate of tax rationalized in some cases in the Budget 2016. We may see some more changes coming in future.

7.  Single window agency for closure of failed startups

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016, is a single legislation clubbing together the processes for resolution or liquidation of corporate persons.

Sec 12 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 provides for closure of failed startups within 180 days, which can be extended by another 90 days.

This provision removes the hindrance of long drawn procedures and timelines when it comes to the closure of such failed startups by capping the process at 180 days.

8. External commercial borrowing guidelines to be relaxed

A startup can borrow up to US$ 3 million or equivalent per financial year under ECB framework, either in Indian rupee or any convertible foreign currency or a combination of both. In case of borrowing in INR, the non-resident lender should mobilize INR through swaps/outright sale undertaken through an AD Category-I bank in India.

We have already covered this announcement in detail on our blog at https://pn.ispirt.in/external-commercial-borrowing-norms-for-startup-ecb/

iSPIRT will be further pursuing with DIPP and other Departments and Ministries of Govt. of India on the additional items in Ease of Doing Business for starts ups and furthering its agenda of Stay in India.

Posted on

Deep Learning Session with Julia Computing

robot-2167836_640

An evening with Julia

iSPIRT, in association with Julia Computing, is proud to announce an open-session with Prof. Alan Edelman and Dr. Viral Shah, co-creators of Julia, an open source programming language, and co-founders of Julia Computing Inc.

The event will be hosted in Koramangala, Bangalore, on the 22nd of January 2018, from 5 – 7pm. Register now for an invite to the session or to join the live cast (venue details will be shared along with the invite).

What is Julia?

Julia is a modern, high-level, high-performance programming language for numerical computing, data science and AI. With syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments, Julia solves the eternal two language problem, by providing productivity similar to Matlab or R, and performance similar to C for writing mathematical and statistical software. Julia is open source, its research is anchored at MIT since 2009 and is growing very rapidly in its adoption across industries, from Finance to Life Sciences.

Julia … can even be used by those who aren’t programmers by training

Why Should You Care?

Julia’s deep mathematical roots and comprehensive customizability make it very friendly to work with for data scientists, who are generally limited with popular Machine Learning approaches due to their issues with customizability and efficiency.

This 90 minute session will cover a quick introduction to Julia, showcase a few challenging and compute-intensive case studies that Julia has helped solve across domains, and demonstrate how Julia as a framework is used to enable nextgen AI & ML modeling & computing with the AI tools of your choice, including popular libraries like Mocha, MXNet and TensorFlow. This will be a great opportunity to interact with Prof Alan and Dr. Viral on best ways to approach an AI/ML strategy.

About the Speakers:

Prof. Alan Edelman is a Professor of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science and AI at MIT. He is a co-creator of Julia language, and a Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Julia Computing, Inc.

Dr. Viral Shah is a co-creator of Julia language, and a Co-founder and CEO of of Julia Computing, Inc. He has been an important part of Aadhaar team from 2009 to 2014, and has co-authored a book called Rebooting India with Nandan Nilekani.

Julia Computing was founded in 2015 by the creators of the open source Julia language to develop products and provide support for businesses and researchers who use Julia.

Register now for an invite to the session or join the live cast.

Also, Workshop will be streamed on Youtube live for those who can join us virtually. The Invite will be shared on 21st Jan 2018 with the registered participants.

Posted on

Is your SaaS product ready for GDPR?

What is GDPR you ask? and Why should you care?

Some of you may know about the upcoming rollout in EU of the General Data Protection Regulation. GDPR is a regulation that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. GDPR implementation date is 25 May 2018, but do not get complacent by the date, it requires reasonable effort and time for companies to become ready & compliant. And there are significant penalties for not being compliant.

If you are operating in the EU or if any of your customers are operating in the EU, GDPR applies to you.

Who?

  • Customers in EU – YES
  • Employees in EU – YES
  • Vendors or partners in EU – YES

GDPR Workshop / Webinar

iSPIRT and Microsoft are conducting a GDPR workshop for founders to demystify the GDPR and help understand the steps required towards compliance. This will be a mix of in-person and webinar session (choose when you register).

The session will cover among many topics, clarity on the impact of GDPR, application to organizations in India, additional responsibility about controls, notifications and data governance for managing and tracking personal data, and how organizations need to start thinking about GDPR compliance. There will be presentations by both Legal teams from Microsoft India and the CTO of Microsoft Accelerator.

Apply here using the Registration Form

Date & time: 16-Nov, 3-5pm

In-person Venue: Microsoft Accelerator – JNR City Centre, IBIS Hotel Annexe ,Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road, Bangalore.

Webinar: Link will be sent to those who choose to attend the webinar.

Session Scope:

  • GDPR & Data Privacy, and its growing importance
  • A Risk assessment Checklist – Go to https://www.gdprbenchmark.com/ to access a quick, online self-evaluation tool available at no cost to help your organization review its overall level of readiness to comply with the GDPR
  • Data Privacy Business Scenarios – Technical Demos

Registration

If you are keen to attend the workshop please apply using the Registration Form. Since seats are limited for both in-person and webinar, please register ahead of time. We will confirm with an invite subject to availability. There is no cost to attend. We start sharp at 3 pm.

Strongly recommend going through the Risk Assessment Benchmark Evaluation.

The checklist will help you prep for the workshop and get the most out of it.

Some sources for pre-reading:

What is the GDPR, its requirements and deadlines? – CSO Online

GDPR in the age of SaaS: One SaaS vendor’s journey to compliance …

If You Use SaaS Products, You Need To Prepare For GDPR. Here’s How

Are you ready for the GDPR? A quick, no-cost, readiness self-evaluation tool.

The Global Impact of GDPR on SaaS Providers – Spanning Backup

Home Page of EU GDPR

Coming soon – 2017 SaaS Survey

BTW did you know the new SaaS survey is coming? We are excited to announce that we would be launching the third edition (2017) of the India SaaS Survey in a week from now. This survey is an annual exercise conducted jointly by SignalHill and iSPIRT to gather valuable data for drawing insights which help various stakeholders in the ecosystem understand this space better.

Please click on the following link to access last year’s survey results

Please stay tuned to this space. We will be providing a link to this year’s survey very soon in an upcoming blog post.

Product Teardown Roundtables are coming to your city.

Read more details on the teardown sessions, and preview the teardown format. If interested please apply here (Limited Seats).

Posted on

Product Teardown explained in 10 minutes (well almost!)

Last Saturday we had an awesome teardown roundtable in Chennai moderated by Suresh (KiSSFLOW) and Bharath (FreshDesk) 🙇🏻.. This was my first direct experience with the teardown. Six companies participated (PickYourTrail, FoodEngine, SysCloud, CustomerLabs, Tagalys, and ManageArtworks). While the entire session of 4+ hours was extremely intense, I want to quickly share with you in 10 minutes (almost) of what happens in a Product Teardown.

Teardowns are coming to your city. Please apply here (Limited Seats).

Product Teardown Framework

The iSPIRT product teardown (esp. for SaaS websites) is primarily structured around 5 key principles outlined below.

Idea 💡

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who is your target user? It is critical to have a clear picture of your target user persona, their problem and how your solution solves their pain point. Essentially establish your problem-solution fit and articulate it for the customer journey from Discovery → Conversion.

Discovery 🔍

How do customers find your product? Is it through google search? Is there a channel they frequent? Have you identified your TAM (total addressable market), SAM (serviceable addressable market) and SOM (serviceable obtainable market)? Use this model to help identify strategies to have your SOM discover your product.

Website 🕸

Your website is the first & most important way to establish trust & relationship with your customer. This is true even if you don’t use inside sales. What is your first message or hook for your target user persona? Are they able to connect your product with their problem and the path through which they discovered your product? Are they able to understand how your product solves their problem, and why they should use it? Once they identify with your message and establish trust & credibility the rest becomes easier.

Sign up 💰

If the customer has understood your solution and found it fit for their needs, the last purchase decision is the cost. As Suresh said

If the cost connects, signup happens!.

WoW! reaction 🌅

Post signup, is there a WoW first experience? Whether it is a try & buy experience or a first purchase onboarding, it is important for customers to experience some instant gratification for the grueling journey they just went through. Believe me, making a purchase decision can be taxing. If you can make this journey pleasant and the final destination fantastic, you have a winning product 🏆.

Do go through the video above and hear Suresh’s simple explanation. And if you like what you hear remember you can apply here for a teardown in your city.

Coming soon – 2017 SaaS Survey

While I still have your attention, we are excited to announce that we would be launching the third edition (2017) of the India SaaS Survey in a week from now. This survey is an annual exercise conducted jointly by SignalHill and iSPIRT to gather valuable data for drawing insights which help various stakeholders in the ecosystem understand this space better.

Please click on the following link to access last year’s survey results

Please stay tuned to this space. We will be providing a link to this year’s survey very soon in an upcoming blog post.

PS

The amount of time & effort Bharath & Suresh provided to review and analyze each product before the actual teardown is simply inspiring. 🙇🏻. to their commitment to the community.

Posted on

Guiding the customer journey from Discovery → Signup → Onboarding for SaaS Startups

Are you ready for the product teardown roundtable in your city

As Diwali marks a Joyous celebration and heralds a Prosperous New Year for all, we kick off a series of Product Teardown Roundtables to help our SaaS startups prepare for a successful year ahead. This series of PlaybookRT will focus on Guiding the customer journey from Discovery to Signup & Onboarding.  The teardowns are being planned across our startup cities in quick succession (see tentative schedule below). We kickoff with a teardown RT in Chennai which will be facilitated by Suresh Sambandan (KiSSFLOW), Bharat Balasubramanian (FreshWorks).

Apply to get your slot here. (Limited seats).

Why are product teardowns important? For Explosive Growth!

Explosive growth is a common pain point for founders across startup stages, be it an early stage startup or a late stage startup. One key attribute to explosive growth is to make your customers market for you. Quoting from the article Six attributes of Explosive Growth Startups,

Nothing parallels word-of-mouth marketing

Why? Because the customers do this work for the startup. If this is to happen for your product it is important for your customers to have a clear-cut understanding of your product proposition, discovering it’s ROI and a WOW no-brainer experience of signing up and using it.

Our product teardown session is focused on exactly this evaluation for your product. Using our community of peers and leading practitioners, you would go through an intense journey and visualize how your potential customer discovers, understands, signs up and connects the product proposition and ROI to their needs. If you do a damn good job about this, you gain a big advantage because you don’t have to work so hard for marketing leads, getting you further on the path to explosive growth.

The teardown model

In this playbook series, we look at how to get your messaging right, and building a website and signup/on-boarding flow that converts with very little human intervention. This roundtable would begin with a deep dive into the company’s Idea, Discovery Process and navigate through the Landing Page, Sign Up, and its “Wow” experience. The format of the playbook is built around quick 10 minute demos, followed by peer-feedback moderated by SAAS founders & experts who have already built successful SAAS businesses.

Past teardowns

You can read some of the previous teardown experiences from the founders who participated.

Registration and Pricing

If you are keen to attend this RoundTable, do let us know by filling in your details here. We will confirm your seat subject to availability. All RoundTables are conducted pro-bono. 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!

Teardown Roundtable Schedule (tentative)

City Date Time Register
Teardown RT in Chennai 4-Nov-2017 (Sat)  11am – 4pm Register
Teardown RT in Bangalore 11-Nov-2017 (Sat)  11am – 4pm Register
Teardown RT in Delhi 18-Nov-2017 (Sat)  TBD Register
Teardown RT in Hyderabad 25-Nov-2017 (Sat)  TBD Register
Teardown RT in Pune TBD (Dec) Register
(if interested please apply)
Teardown RT in Mumbai TBD (Dec) Register
(if interested please apply)


Notes

These are founder invite only events. Date, Time & Venue details will be sent along with the confirmation.
Since there are limited seats, we would request you to kindly apply at the earliest.

Playbook-RoundTable is one of the most sought after community events of iSPIRT. 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 Round-Table theme.

Posted on

Software Exports – GST makes it difficult to do business

The GST was welcomed by all as a revolutionary measure. We had covered one earlier topic, “How GST will work for software exporters”. There have been many changes in last few weeks before GST was launched in the IGST law.

Please note that “GST law” treats Software as “Service”. Hence, there may be a mention on “Software” and “Services” in mixed manner in the write-up. This write-up is just focusing on problems and issues created for exporters by the GST process. On details of process there are many blogs on internet.

After launch of GST since 1st July 2017, we came across many questions and concerns on how GST on Exports. I have been trying to write a piece on how the process works for Software exports under GST. However, the policy and process for export of “Services” was not at all clear. I have myself struggled through,  and it has taken more than 6 weeks to understand the process, raise exports invoices and multiple documentations required.

GST has turned out to be nightmare, especially for Small and medium Software exporters and will continue to do so, unless corrective measures are taken up.

Let us look into how process required to be complied, caused problems.

Exporting Software under IGST law

IGST law on one hand treats exports as “Zero-rated” supplies and on the other hand treats exports as “inter-state” trade instead of “International trade”. These two corollaries of GST law are inherently paradoxical.

Being Zero-rated there is no tax or duty on export. However, being Inter-state trade (rather than being international trade) it requires payment of IGST under IGST law.

If one delves deep in to this application of IGST on exports, it clearly comes from concern of tax policy makers on “Goods”, moving in a container and a compliance assuring good reach port of export and gets exported finally. That this does not apply to services has not been thought over by the GST law makers. (the assumption may be services will adjust in due course of time)

Hence, as per IGST law an exporter is required to either

  1. Pay IGST 18% on Software export and get it refunded

Or Export without IGST by

  1. Filing a Bond if the exports in previous year were less than rupees one crore.
  2. Filing a LUT if the exports in previous year were more than rupees one crore.

Filing a Bond requires submitting a Bank Guarantee to GST department up to 15% of the amount of duty applicable on estimated exports value in a given (say a year). The jurisdictional office of GST has a discretion to decide bank guarantee amount anywhere from Zero to 15%.

If the office approves zero % (or nil) bank Guarantee, the department asks a set of declarations and data of past year.

Anything that is based on discretion in regulation, also brings in corruption with it. Whereas there is news from many places that jurisdictional GST office are waving bank guarantee clause for Software/IT exports. There is also news that GST department is randomly asking for bank guarantees.

Problems created by IGST law

Locking of working capital

A small software exporter or a startup not having more than 1 crore of “export turnover” in past year will have to opt for either option a) Or b) from above choices i.e. either the exporter has to pay duty and get a refund or has to sign a bond with bank guarantee.

If the bank guarantee is not waved by the jurisdictional officer, the exporter will have to keep the bank guarantee replenished continuously to support regular exports.

gst-workingcapital

In either of the cases the IGST law locks the working Capital of the start-up or small exporter.

The GST law therefore goes against policy of Government of India to promote startups. It also is going to be regressive measure for large number of small IT companies, IT consultants and freelancers.

Discretion causes corruption on ground

Anything that is based on discretion in regulation, also brings in corruption with it. For those who want to file bond, the jurisdictional office of GST has a discretion to decide bank guarantee amount anywhere from Zero to 15%.

Whereas there is news from many places that jurisdictional GST office are waving bank guarantee clause for Software/IT exports. There is also news that GST department is randomly asking for bank guarantees.

GST department’s manual intervention in Exports

Exports before GST were never allowed to report or get clearance from Indirect tax departments. Now, GST department has become a gateway for every exporter of Goods and Services, thus extending mandate from domestic tariff area to international trade also.

What is cause of concern is this intervention of GST department is manual as against the principle of making entire GST system end-to-end digital. This give power in hands of indirect tax officers to monitor exports.

This perhaps is a fundamental error that Government of India have made, against it’s public stance on “Ease of doing business.”

This is a problem for all exporters including those with “export turnover” more than 1 crore and eligible to sign a LUT with GST.

It is more of less like traffic policing the exports on regular basis and heavily increased compliance.

GST has no focus on Software exports

The entire GST law has been written with physical Goods in mind but applied equally to both Goods and Services. Once again Government of India has made a classical mistake. It is an irony that a nation that is known to be power house of Software has not focus of tax authorities on “Software exports”.

The concept of Bank-Guarantee is detrimental to Startup eco-system and SMEs

Startups and SMEs require removal of regulatory barriers for them to grow. GST law has done just the opposite. It requires small exporters and Startups to furnish Bank Guarantees.

GST for supplying to SEZ

SEZs are deemed to be considered outside the customs territory of India. Hence, supplies to SEZ units by exporters in India i.e. DTA will be treated in same manner as exports to clients located outside the country.

Therefore, if a Startup or a Software product company is selling to an SEZ unit, the process will be same as that of exporting.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Government of India has seriously lost focus on “Ease of doing business” agenda, startup policy, SMEs and supporting self-employed professionals while framing GST/IGST laws.

It is recommended that

  1. Government of India should notify a clearly stated policy for Services and Software exports and not mix or generalize with remaining Goods exports.
  2. The GST department should have no or minimum (limited to Digital medium) only in regulating exports of Services and Software
  3. IGST duty and refund mechanism and also Bank-Guarantee or LUT should be done away for Services and Software export. A quarterly and annual reports is enough on digital platform, regulated digitally. In order to bring or include Services exporter under DGFT regulation, IEC can be made mandatory and used to regulate Services trade. IEC is same as PAN now, hence, IEC can be used by all size of exporters.
Posted on

India must embrace Data Democracy

In May of 2017, the cover of the Economist proclaimed that Data is  “The world’s most valuable resource”. The proof of this proclamation can be seen by the domination of Tech Giants in virtually all major global markets. Moreover, they are quickly gaining ground & unseating incumbents in more traditional industries such as transportation, media, entertainment, advertising and payments. In the talk embedded below, I explain why this is a strategic challenge for India.

Fuelling the rapid growth of tech giants is the Data of users such as you and me. For Data controllers, Data is the ultimate truth about what your customers like, dislike, need, and pay for. With the power of AI, Data knows when, where, and how much their customers will pay, even before they do. This can be seen in all markets disrupted by Data giants, who have consistently outgrown competition and established their dominance. I present some examples in my slides embedded below.

Moreover, the virtuous cycle of data feeds itself. More Data helps create better products. Better products have more users, who in turn, create more Data. This property of Data creates winner-take-all scenarios.

Data controllers understand this new power equation, and have rushed to create platforms. Platforms accelerate the creation of new and engaging products. Other companies, even competitors, are invited to build products on the platform. Large platforms then become the fertile grounds upon which all user interactions take place, and the data of those interactions is captured by the underlying platform alone

Data is being locked into silos, so that the value extracted from the data does not have to be shared with anyone, not even with the users who helped create it. This sort of Data Domination, does not leave any oxygen for challengers to outgrow the giants. For such a powerful resource, that can change the face of $100B+ industries seemingly overnight, we seem to have very few regulations around it.

The problems around Data represent a triple-threat. We need to rethink Anti-Trust, Privacy & Data Colonization in the light of Data Domination. It is clear that the issues around data are not just a technology issue, but also a policy one.

The argument here is not protectionism, it is that under the current regulatory & market conditions, Data accumulates in the hands of a few, and hence, so does power. This holds true equally for foreign as well as domestic firms. The EU is notifying the General Data Protection Regulation, a set of data protection measures placing extensive restrictions and penalties on data controllers. Similar protection as well as anti-trust efforts are underway in US, Japan and even the UK. But these countries don’t share the same socio-economic context as India.

India also managed to jump ahead of the curve in developing digital infrastructure as public goods. We have a billion users on the JAM trinity. We have strong national-level platforms such as GSTN, BBPS and UPI. The government has also developed the India Stack, a set of Open APIs that enable paperless, presenceless and cashless transactions dramatically driving down the cost of transactions. Between Telecom-OTP, Aadhaar Authentication and UPI PIN, we have three unique methods of authentication, that can be mixed and matched to design the level of security and robustness required.

With such a strong digital spine and a growing mobile-first citizenry, India can make a significant departure and develop a unique model for data protection as well as empowerment. We need to proclaim that users have a right to access their own data and should be able to share it in a safe, consented manner with anyone they choose. This is an inversion of the usage and ownership of data.

Inverting the Data is only about giving the user freedom and choice. The freedom to share their data, and the choice of multiple providers. Data portability will empower users to choose what their data is used for. Being able to share a rich data history, increases trust in transactions. This choice of sharing is as relevant for a rural farmer as much for an urban millennial. The more reliable and accurate data you share, the better the interest rates on a loan, whether you’re buying a tractor or a sedan.

To empower users with Data, there are 3 steps India needs to undertake. First, we need to convince the government to open up big public data sets for users to consume. This includes data from national platforms such as GSTN, BBPS, etc. Second, regulators need to open up the data sets in their jurisdiction in a standard, machine-readable format. Third, we need a policy intervention to allow for the free flow of data with user consent in the private, unregulated spheres.

In today’s world, Data is power. History has shown us time and again, that we must not let power accumulate in the hands of the few. Instead we must empower all with their data. Your Data is your vote, and you should be able to choose whom you give it to. With 3 simple steps, India can lead the world in demonstrating a true Data Democracy.

Posted on

A New Tryst with Destiny

On Aug 15th 1947 at the dawn of India’s political Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru delivered his “Tryst with Destiny” midnight speech. In 1991, India gained economic freedom from a clutch of socialist era shackles. In 2017, it is time for India to redeem its “pledge in full measure” towards freedom of the individual and enterprise to achieve its destiny.

Today, as India completes its 70th year, we need to, as is customary, take stock. India is a $2.2trillion consumption-led economy today, growing at about 6.5 percent, with a 250m in the middle-class out of 1.3billion, and at an average of 29years old, the youngest population in the world among major economies. Life expectancy is at about 68 years while literacy is at 79%.  About 31% of India resides in urban areas. India’s forex reserves were at $386billion in June 2017 up from $5.83billion (~3.5months of imports) in 1991. We now have about 799 Universities and 50,994 colleges with about 34million students in higher education.

While very impressive strides have been made in many areas, it is important that we keep in mind the fact that 15% of the world lives in India and over 68%  ie about 700million of our people live on less than US$2 a day. Over 17 million people are born (equivalent to the population of The Netherlands), an estimated 40million are unemployed, 47million youth drop out of school by 10th standard, healthcare related expenses push over 60million people into poverty each year,  500,000 students graduate each year from various colleges and over 12 million join the workforce each year. The investment required to educate, feed, train, and employ these large numbers into gainful jobs is in the lakhs of crores. Where will this money come from if not from economic activity and from creation of millions of jobs?  Where will the water and sanitation, education, travel, housing, electricity, entertainment, banking and financial services that need to be provided to these huge numbers come from?

For far too long, we have been plagued by poverty – of ideas, of ideology and of course economically. Misplaced socialistic policies in the early years of India ensured that poverty was distributed while cronyism ensured that a few made unconscionable amounts of money and enjoyed the trappings of power.

Jobs and solutions are created by entrepreneurs and those who are entrepreneurial in their thinking. Governments are facilitators and regulators to make sure that everyone’s playing fairly and by the rules. Wealth is then created by entrepreneurial actions. Only when wealth is created, can there be investments in creating the support infrastructure and services necessary for India to seriously consider redeeming its pledge in its tryst with destiny.  And a crucial pre-requisite for this is the need for an entrepreneurial mindset among different stakeholders. A mindset that challenges status-quo, propels growth, engenders innovative problem solving, embraces ideas, technology and models, and delivers benefits to people.

Fortunately, India has no shortage of entrepreneurs, of all kinds! There are born entrepreneurs, some become entrepreneurs and others have entrepreneurial thinking thrust on them thanks to circumstances! In 2017, as the landmark $2.5b Softbank-Flipkart deal shows, Indian entrepreneurs have come of age.  The Indian startup entrepreneur is educated, aware, unafraid, confident, assertive and, are unabashedly Indian.  Today, the Indian startup ecosystem is the 3rd largest in the world with over 26,000 startups and with over $90billion in value being created. 

This century will be driven by knowledge based capital with software as engine. India is recognised, regarded and respected for its software prowess built on the success of Indian IT services which deliver over $170billion in revenue and employ over 4million people today. Indian talent runs software giants like Google and Microsoft and powers thousands around the world from Silicon Valley to Singapore, Boston to Bangalore. India’s ability to leverage this talent, create and deploy knowledge based capital will be key.  New technologies, models,  affordability, policies are all helping India rapidly emerge as a key player in the 21st century knowledge economy.

Regulators and governments are waking up to the transformative power of innovation via startups. Policies are being re-worked, technology platforms are being deployed and programmes being launched to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.  Digital India, Startup India, India Stack and other programmes are being co-opted to drive financial inclusion, education, healthcare, and governance.  Startup hubs, incubators and accelerators, entrepreneurship groups, are sprouting across cities and towns in India. Costs of doing business, ease of doing business have to come down dramatically and there’re initiatives underway to make those happen.

In 1929 in Lahore, a call for “Purna Swaraj” a declaration of India’s Independence was given and Gandhiji hoisted the Indian flag.  No one knew how or when this would happen but it was an audacious goal, a call to action that drove the people to achieve their goal in 18 years.  Is it possible, similarly, for us today to set a goal that will galvanise us to action to achieve what seems audacious? Is it possible for startups to enable India to leapfrog and transform itself? Could we have a 10year goal calling for 100,000 startups, benefitting 10million people, impacting 40million people, uplifting 30million MSMEs, creating $500billion in value? Is it possible for us to imagine that each of us, in our lifetimes, creates – either directly or indirectly – a 100 jobs? Can these 100,000 startups – with educated, experienced, entrepreneurial and energetic founders– each  take up this challenge? Ten million jobs can be created by this group, indirectly benefiting 40 million?

If it is possible, it is do-able!

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishada has this to say:

“You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

Do we desire this strongly enough?

Posted on

Build On IndiaStack – Venture Pitch Competition

Announcing ‘Venture Pitch Competition: #BuildOnIndiaStack’

Dalberg and iSPIRT invite applications from early-stage ventures that are tech-
based solutions leveraging the India Stack platform at the core of their business
model to bring financial or transactional services to the underserved in India.
Pitch to some of the leading investors and thinkers in the Indian start-up ecosystem,
including the Bharat Innovations Fund, Omidyar Network and Unitus Seed Fund.
Winners will spend an hour of 'Think Time' – a mentorship session with
technology evangelist Nandan Nilekani.

Who are we looking for?

We are open to all innovations that use the India Stack to unlock new business
models or reach previously underserved new customer segments across sectors
such as financial services, education, healthcare and others. Some core focus areas
for the competition may include digital lending and supporting activities, such as
alternative credit scoring; sector specific affordable digital finance services such as
health insurance or education loans; sector specific digital services such as skilling
and certification, property registration agreements, patient-centric healthcare
management; and SaaS platforms “as a service” that support the development of
other India Stack based innovations such as Digi-locker or e-sign providers.

 

Who is eligible?
All applicants should:
1. Meet the 3-point criteria: tech enabled, leveraging India Stack Platform and
serving the underservedBe

2. Be a part of two (minimum) to four (maximum) members team including the
founder of the companyBe early stage start-ups that have received only seed (or limited angel)

3. Be early stage start-ups that have received only seed (or limited angel)
funding, if at all

 
What is in it for you?
The investor group, comprising of Bharat Innovations Fund, Omidyar Network and
Unitus Seed Fund, is a network of investors and operators, entrepreneurs and
technologists, designers and engineers, academicians and policy makers, with the
singular mission to solve some of India’s toughest problems.

Through this event you have an opportunity to receive:

-Exclusive focus on tech innovations that leverage the India Stack platform
and have the potential to address the underservedFlexible

-Flexible, insight driven, funding of up to Rs. 8 lakhs for early stage, innovative
modelsStrategic

-Strategic business support, through their specialists to support investees in
their strategy and growthA chance to be a part of the India Stack ecosystem through partnerships,

-A chance to be a part of the India Stack ecosystem through partnerships,
pilots, workshops, conferences and network building exercises

Visit www.buildonindiastack.in and send your pitch now.