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Bharat Goenka(Tally Solutions) talks to us about the company’s ‘stubborn’ decision to stay focussed on products

Bharat Goenka is the architect of what is arguably India’s most successful business solution — Tally.  Co-Founder and Managing Director of Tally Solutions, Mr. Goenka developed the famous accounting solution under the guidance of his father, the late Sri S S Goenka. Today, the product is the de facto accounting solution for many SMEs and Mr. Goenka serves as an inspiration for many aspiring software product entrepreneurs. In an interview with pn.ispirt.in, Mr. Goenka talks to us about the company’s ‘stubborn’ decision to stay focussed on products, the non-DIY nature of the Indian SME and the necessity for product companies to stay focussed on the product mentality.

Tally is one of India’s most successful product stories, and it definitely appears to have ticked all the right product story boxes: responded to a genuine market need, stayed focused and evolved with the needs of users. Given the benefit of 20:20 hindsight, would you have done anything differently?

The reality is that one doesn’t really learn from the past. We continue to do audacious things, we continue to get some success out of that as well as failure. Over our 25 year history, this has happened multiple times. Multiple times, we have taken a decision and it has gone wrong — but if the circumstance arose again would I take the same decision? In all likelihood, yes — I would have no reason to expect success, but I’d still have the optimism and think just because it went wrong in the past doesn’t mean it also has to go wrong this time. So although I would say it’s unlikely that one would have really done anything different, I can give you an example of a decision not working out for us. In 2004-2005, we changed the price of the software from 22,000 to 4,950 thinking that we would be able to sell software as a commodity. The reality was that for that time, it was difficult to sell software as a commodity in India in the B2B space. And so we suffered, massively. That proved our belief that we couldn’t sell software as a commodity, but it didn’t stop us from trying. We lost almost 50 crores in those one and half – two years, so I would say our single biggest mistake was that.

Tally – or rather Peutronics — was founded in 1986 at a time when much of the Indian software industry’s focus was on services. The decision to remain a product company when the tide seemed to be going the other way couldn’t have been easy – why did you make this decision?

Actually when we started off, virtually every company had a product. Whether it was TCS, Wipro or Mastek — everyone had a business product.  The shift to services took place in the mid-90s, particularly towards the edge of the Y2K environment. We were one of the few stubborn companies who believed that while there was a lot of money to be made in services, we would never be able to address a lot of customers. So the mandate with which my father and I started the company in 1986 was that we were going to change the way millions of people do their business. We were clear that by moving to services, we would never be able to achieve the objective.  We were unclear how long it would take us to get to a million — 25 years later, we are still trying to reach even the  1 million mark. But in 1986 we were clear that we want to be able to touch millions of customers. Therefore we remained focussed on our product line.

So what was that inspiring moment for you? Did you wake up one morning and decide that this was what what you wanted to do — to change the way these millions of customer did their business, or was it a gradual evolution?

In the months before we got the product Tally out, one was into the product mindset but for developing systems related products like compilers and operating systems. So I was preparing myself to do those kind of products. At that time, my father was searching for a business product for our our own small-scale industry business. He examined multiple products, but couldn’t make sense of any of them. He very famously said: “When I’m buying a car I want to be a driver and not a mechanic.” Similarly, he was looking for a product that would help him run his business — not his computer! Every product that he was looking at required him to change the way he thought about his business.   So because I was interested in software, he said these guys can’t do anything can you do something? So I was trying to solve his problem. After six months of development, I would say that it was his inspiration and thinking that formed the idea and belief that the product should be something that the country should also use.

The belief is that Indian SME’s need to be “sold to” – the job that’s conventionally handled by IT resellers who are critical to Tally’s business model. What are your thoughts on the changes that Cloud technology might bring to this scenario, with the whole “self-service” angle coming into play?

India is not a DIY country, and this is unlikely to change in the SME sector.

The way the market works in India is like this : SME’s expect people to come and sell something to them, even if it’s bottled water. You expect it to be delivered, and you expect to pay for it in a different way. In India, SME’s behave identical to the way enterprises behave abroad. Abroad, SME’s behave identical to consumers.  That’s why in most MNCs, you see that the SME and SO/HO market being handled by a common head while the enterprise head is separate, because they need to be sold to. In India — actually, in all developing markets — the SME and the enterprise behave similarly. In the west, the cost arbitrage of selling to a business is so high that the small business has no other option but to behave like a consumer. In developing markets, the cost arbitrage is low enough to send people to do the sales. And therefore, the buyer expects someone to come and do the sales. It is not about whether the visit is required because of the software complexity or the commercial complexity — it is an expected visit.

In your opinion, what are the three most common things that mislead or cause the downfall of Indian product companies today? What advice would you give them to overcome these?

I think it would boil down to one — which is to be clear about which business you’re in. Most people believe they are in the business of making money. Okay, even I am in the business of making money but my point is this: you can never be in the business of making money, you have to be in a business — money is an outcome of that. To explain it better, imagine that you are a software developer who wants to start your own product company. Capital costs are not very high — a single computer will cost about 20k, and assuming you develop the skill, it will some months to develop a software, and you’ll get your software out. You might put together an infrastructure, sales people etc and you’ll put up a monthly expenditure of about 25 – 30k. You start seeking customers — you  find me. You sell me your product for say 10k. In all likelihood, I bought your product because I like your software development style and perhaps your product solved two or three problems I had — but I still have twenty more. Now because I like your software development style, I’ll ask you to do more work for me. I might ask you to expand the product features, solve some HR problem that I have which this software doesn’t solve and I’m willing to pay you for it.

Your first ten customers will give you so much work, you won’t have time to go out and find your next 100. Or even if you find your next 100, they will give you so much work that you won’t be able to look for your next 1000.

So ultimately, you will still continue to successfully make money, but you will never be able to create a successful product company. This is the single trap that I see almost all product companies fall into today. They all make money, and that’s why they’re still in the business but they stop eyeing the fact that they were supposed to be in the product business and not the services business. Now imagine taking a strategic decision like this in the early days when there was no competition in the market– today you can take a decision to change over night. But in the early days, while we did do services for companies (if someone asked you to do something extra, you did do it) we refused to take a single penny for any services that we did. That forced us to focus on selling new licenses. Otherwise once you’re able to get money from services, there’s no requirement to sell new licenses!

In your opinion, what’s the reason behind Tally’s popularity? At the risk of being politically incorrect, is it because of its “accessibility” due to piracy? Or is it largely because it’s simple and user-friendly?

Pirated software doesn’t become popular — popular software gets pirated. We strongly believe in one thing: if my software is not valuable to you, your money is not valuable to me. So customers are able to see tangible value in our software after they’ve paid for it, and therefore they tell their friends to also buy our software. Word of mouth has been the principle pivot of popularity, and we’ve told people on a number of occasions that if our software has not been of value to them, we would return their money. Even after three years, people have returned and we have returned their money. In 25 years, this has happened nine times to us. But fundamentally, if our software doesn’t work for them, their money doesn’t work for us.

We see a lot of product start-ups coming up in both the enterprise and consumer space. What would be your advice to start-ups — where do you think they are lacking, and how should they go about correcting these issues?

I would ask them this: are they solving the problem for someone else vs are they solving the problem for themselves? If they are unable to be the most prolific users of their own solutions, they will find it difficult to put it elsewhere. It’s the problem of architects, right? The architect is building for you — so they build and go away, but you have to live in the mess. I think as a company we had the privilege of this insight from my father. My most famous depiction of his words was in this context: in the early days, I had asked me a question against a certain context and when I was trying to explain to him that it was very difficult to solve the problem in that manner in software, which was why it was done in a particular way he asked me “Are you writing programs to make the life of the programmer easier or the life of the user easier?”. The general tendency I have seen is that very few start-ups are willing to take the challenge of solving the complexity of the product themselves so that they give simplicity to the end-customer — and this is a fundamental requirement of the product.

The second problem that I find with product start-ups in the country is that most people design the software as if they are going to be present when the software is going to be used. It makes great sense for them to explain to someone how to use it, but if you want to be a software product company you have to design a product that can be used when you are not there. So, from a technical viewpoint fundamentally I would say that it is about being able to sit back and reflect upon these issues that impact your design. From a operational viewpoint, from day one you have to design as if you are not selling. It’s easy for you to design a product and for you to go sell it, because you’ll design your sales processes which are centered around your ability to sell. And this ability, because of your intimate knowledge of the product, will always be higher than someone else. So be able to design sales and service processes that are not operated by you will truly bring the product into the product category

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Top 10 mistakes Product Entrepreneurs Make

Inspired from Pallav Nadhani’s interview – this infographic is meant for all those entrepreneurs who dream of building a global product.  From delegating to hiring a sales team and to putting an end to customizing products – these tips are invaluable. Pallav, you rock! and thanks for sharing these precious jewels of entrepreneurship! 

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Announcing the angel investor office hours in Bangalore

Following up on this post by Mukund Mohan, the first session of the office hours will be held on 8th January (Tuesday) at the Microsoft Accelerator (Lavelle Road, Bangalore) from 3PM – 5PM.

4 startups that apply on a first come first serve basis will be given a chance to meet, pitch and take feedback from Anil Joshi from Mumbai Angels or if you are really good, Anil might agree to fund you right there!
Each startup will be given 30 mins, 10 mins for pitching and 20 mins for discussions.
So fill in this form if you are interested!
Volunteered by Brijesh Bharadwaj, TunePatrol
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A Platform Thinking Approach to Problem Solving

Business is about solving customer problems. It’s been claimed that business is primarily about beating the competition or about maximizing shareholder returns but if the successes (and failures) of the past decade are anything to go by, the primary goal of business is solving customer problems. If you think about the approach that businesses take to solving these problems, three broad patterns emerge.

THE ‘STUFF’ APPROACH

The approach of the industrial age to solving customer problems has been to create more stuff. If there’s a customer problem out there, you set up factories and build some stuff. And once consumers have got their needs satisfied but you’ve still got all this excess production capacity, you put in some marketing and convince consumers that they want more stuff. The default model for solving business problems has been the ‘stuff’ approach. If you’re dealing with goods, you’re churning out more goods while if you’re a services-based company, you’re putting more people on the job. The approach to scaling a solution has been creating more.

Most problems do not need to be solved by throwing stuff at them. Most problems are, actually, information problems. In reality, most problems are currently solved inefficiently because of a lack of information needed to make a decision. We’ve been solving problems by creating more stuff largely because we didn’t optimize distribution and access to the stuff that already existed.

THE ‘OPTIMIZATION’ APPROACH

Enter algorithms. You have stuff out there which is sub-optimally distributed. Here’s a two-step approach to solving the problem:

1. Aggregate all the information on the stuff out there

2. Leverage algorithms to optimally match the right stuff with a consumer’s desire

Google built one of the fastest growing companies of all time applying the optimization approach to the world’s information problem. Most internet businesses create value through optimization. Computer science, as a field of study, is itself based on solving optimization problems.

THE ‘PLATFORM’ APPROACH

Platform Thinking adds one more step to the optimization approach. Instead of merely aggregating information on stuff out there (Step 1 above), it enables creation of more inventory without creating more stuff. That sounds paradoxical but that is exactly what Twitter does to news. The media industry has a limited number of journalists. Twitter enables anyone out there to become a source of news without having to become a journalist. YouTube increases the inventory of content without setting up new media houses. eLance allows companies to get work done without having to hire people to do the job.

The ‘stuff’ approach creates supply, the ‘platform’ approach uncovers new sources of supply. The goal in this case is not only to optimize but also to redefine the input (inventory) that you are optimizing.

IN ESSENCE…

Every consumer problem out there can be solved in one of three ways:

The ‘stuff’ approach: How can we create more stuff whenever the problem crops up?

The ‘optimization’ approach: How can we better distribute the stuff already created to minimize waste?

The ‘platform’ approach: How can we redefine ‘stuff’ and find new ways of solving the same problem?

THE ACCOMMODATION PROBLEM

Problem: I’m traveling to city X and I need to end myself some accommodation.

The ‘stuff’ approach (Sheraton): Create more stuff. Build more hotels, set up more BnBs. If there are fewer rooms than tourists, buy some land, put up a  hotel and create more rooms.

The ‘optimization’ approach (Kayak): There are a lot of hotels out there but travelers do not necessarily have all the information to make the choice they want to. Let’s aggregate this inventory and create a reliable search engine. Let’s build review sites to help make the right decision.

The ‘platform’ approach (AirBnB): How can we redefine travelers’ accommodation? How about enabling anyone with a spare room and mattress to run their own BnB?

THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM

Problem: I need to figure out a reliable and safe way of getting from point A to point B whenever I want to.

The ‘stuff’ approach (GM, Toyota): Create more cars. The greater the number of people with this problem, the more cars you need to create.

The ‘optimization’ approach (Avis, Cab Aggregators): There are many taxi operators but consumers aren’t aware of all the choices. Let’s create a search engine and help them figure the best route to their destination and the modes of public transport that will take them there.

The ‘platform’ approach (Lyft, ZipCar, ZipRide): Let’s redefine the problem space. What if we drastically expand the number of cars available to choose from for commuting from point A to point B?

Interesting aside: Avis is acquiring ZipCar, announced a few minutes back.

THE COMPUTING PROBLEM

Problem: I need a mobile phone with all the bells and whistles but every mobile phone has a different feature set and I can’t figure the best one for myself.

The ‘stuff’ approach (Nokia): Create more phones and more models. Conduct your market research, figure out what consumers want, bucket them into groups and design new models for these groups.

The ‘optimization’ approach (Comparison shopping): There are a lot of phones out there. Why don’t you enter your parameters and we will spew out the best phone models that satisfy your needs.

The ‘platform’ approach (Apple): Let’s rethink the phone. We can’t build everything. What if we just built out the tools that others could use to build apps that consumers could then use to extend the functionality of their phone?

THE NEWS PROBLEM

Problem: I need to know about what’s happening around the world.

The ‘stuff’ approach (NY Times): Put more journalists on the job, churn out more content and get the news out to more channels.

The ‘optimization’ approach (Google News): Rank news stories and serve readers with the matches closest to what they’re looking for.

The ‘platform’ approach (Twitter): Redefine the journalist. Everyone can create and distribute news now.

CHALLENGES

The platform approach is new. Much of this problem solving has come up only in the last five years and few solutions have demonstrated the kind of success that the ‘stuff’ approach and the ‘optimization’ approach have. Hence, one might be tempted to dismiss this as a fad.

While execution challenges continue to exist, they are, by all means, solvable.

Inventory: When you redefine inventory as AirBnB or oDesk does, you need to ensure you have a clear strategy for encouraging users to create the inventory. This often leads to a chicken and egg problem as producers won’t create inventory unless there’s a ready market of consumers and consumers won’t participate without inventory to consume. I’ve written a lot about how to solve this problem in earlier posts.

Quality: When an entirely new set of producers gets created, quality control can be a problem. Platforms need to have robust quality control mechanisms to separate the good from the bad.

External forces: We need new regulations for these new models. Über has already had problems with regulations. We need to solve for trust in the virtual world. Airbnb has already come under the scanner on this count.

Platforms, though, are here to stay and redefine the way business is conducted.

Wish you all a successful 2013! More power to you and your business as you leverage the power of platforms to change the world!

This blog was first published at Plaformed.info

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iCalibrator – Bridging the Knowledge Gap

The product – iCalib aims to automate the process of practical learning during the training programmes. Trainees are given exercises to practice the skills they are expected to learn. In a typical classroom model, the trainer is not able to evaluate all trainees individually (sometimes the trainers are not capable of it also). The system would provide individual feedback, and also enable the trainees to re-attempt the exercises till they are able to achieve the desired objectives.

Pramod Saini started iCalibrator after gathering valuable experience from the industry. Having done his BTech & MS from IIT Madras and spent 10 years at Wipro in Global R&D role. In 1997, he left Wipro and Co Founded Momentum Technologies, which later on got acquired by Sopra, a French group.

Problem Identification : The Ideation
Every organisation begins with an idea. An idea is basically a solution to a specific problem which the founders are trying to address. In this case, in the year 2000, what was observed was the poor quality of software professionals in employment. The number of “professionals” flooding the market but with no control on quality whatsoever. Especially on the quality of input. The Students coming out of Engineering colleges, fell short on quality. This problem was identified years back and would find resonance much later as various studies were to indicate. In other parts of the world, especially in countries like US & Canada, a fresher would be able to write good software, within 2– 3 months of their first programming job. In India, this period would stretch to almost a year, and even more at times. The problem was much deep-rooted. Poor students were a direct result of poor
teachers, who were themselves all at sea, technically.

The Delivery Mechanism:
The approach was to impart training, through mentoring. To create an environment which wouldenable students through self-learning modules based on Practical exercises and projects. Mentors from the industry would assist trainees in writing good software, something on the lines of what was prevalent in Europe – Teacher & Assistant. Progressively, it was getting difficult for organisations to make freshers project-ready. It put additional pressure on resources and even then, the outcome was not always desirable.

Mentors, of course came with a cost. The effectiveness of this model would ultimately depend on the quality of mentors, which in many ways was a costly proposition and hence a challenge on scalability. This challenge would be addressed by reducing the dependence on mentors and leveraging technology to take up the same role. In due course, the product became very good and
the effectiveness was unparalleled. There was another challenge – to position the company in tech space, rather than as a training institute. The automation of solution would help position them as enablers to e-learning companies.

Challenges in selling this product

  1. Selling a complex idea is always tough and so is the positioning. The processes were pretty complex so not so easily reproducible by rival organisations.
  2. Selling to the target market in India. Decision-making is a slow process and there is some inertia which takes ages to overcome.
  3. Indian Product mindset, in the end-consumer’s mind. If it’s Indian, it isn’t good. Very difficult to break this mindset.
  4. Companies started putting their potent recruits though these tests and the results were disastrous. Not that the tests were exceptionally difficult but the aspirants were below par : The whole problem that was being addressed.

Expectations from the eco-system.
I guess, by eco-system, you refer to the whole learning industry. I hope that the Indian Software service providers actually put in effort to increase the quality of their software personnel. The problem of low quality is very well understood, but I believe that the organisations do not put in additional effort to improve quality because: (1) A large number of jobs are actually software maintenance jobs, and organisations believe that very high quality is not required. (2) Some senior management members believe that they do not want to invest in training personnel who might leave them and change a job immediately after. However, I think that this is a short-sighted approach that is detrimental to the overall industry and the value that we bring to the end customer.

Next 12 months for iCalibrator
In the next 12 months, we expect to raise some funds, and utilise them to enhance our product as well as focus on sales/marketing activities so that we can put our message across to the potential clients. We may be required to do some pilots, where the additional funds will help. We also plan to enhance our product so that it could be easily integrated into the training processes of any eLearning provider. Therefore, we see ourselves becoming a totally technical company, providing various automated aides to enhance the effectiveness of eLearning models.

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5 Key Considerations for Platform Approach

Platform mean different things to different people depending on who you ask. It is not just related to software or computer hardware industry but is also very relevant and prevalent in other industries also. It is an entity that bring things together, mask complexities, is a enabler to build/create on top of it, help foster innovation and is a ecosystem enabler. Over the period governments, companies and individuals have used it to energize economy, create a long term competitive advantage, growth opportunities, etc.   In software context some relevant examples are operating systems, virtual machines, Apple iTune, App Stores,  Google Apps, IBM Websphere, Programming Tools, Database platforms, Cloud Platforms (IAAS, PAAS) and so on. Many organizations have leveraged these technology platforms to created niche, domain and vertical market platforms for their market segments like ERP, CRM, Data Quality, Financial and others. Advent of new technology platforms bring opportunities to create platforms to solve current business problems in a new way and also solve new business as well as consumers problem.

Studies suggest  accelerating change in the rate of technological progress throughout history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future. If you as an entrepreneur is considering solving customer problem and is interested in taking a platform route, you must consider below mentioned aspects:

  1. It has to be sticky: Build a portfolio of product and solutions around your platform. Create connectors to complimentary and supplementary products, solutions and platforms to both competitors and partners. API and a framework approach is essential to be able to create communities which make your platform sticky with your customer/consumers. Why innovate alone?
  2. Long term (2 to 5 years) prospective: Platform approach is suited when you are sure of building a portfolio of product and solutions around the platform. Take a close look at your current target customer segment and also possible future customers. Also review technology trends, prediction and its adoption in your target market segments. Also, don’t build technology platform, instead choose technology that is right for you. Remember, you are solving customer’s problem.
  3. Agile and Lean approach: Now that you have a set of product and solutions defined around platform, should you build it end to end? Absolutely no. Prioritize the product/solution that you would like to build on the platform. Now define and build the minimum viable product (MVP) workflow that you would take to your customer for feedback. The platform is built in agile fashion as the portfolio of  product and solutions are built.  A solid platform architecture, design constructs definition, right technology selection, generic interfaces, etc. and a skilled team is of paramount importance for success.
  4. Built solution for market not for a customer: Deeply understand the target market and their needs.  In the beginning you may be working with one customer, but don’t get carried away and implement customer specific features in the product/solution, instead focus on building a generic set of capabilities that can easily be consumed in customer environment. Remember, API and framework approach for stickiness with your product portfolio, with products found in customer environment and ability to extend base capabilities.
  5. UX based interaction design for consumer facing interfaces: People interacting with your system are important. Right. Your success depends on how people feel interacting with the system. Does it provide value? Is it easy to use? Is it pleasant to use? How do you draw users’ attention? How to communicate solution value to the users? How can I draw on users’ intuition to get them to the next step? and so on.
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Building Innovative Products Out of India: Lessons from Bell Labs India, CDOT, Cisco, Concept2Silicon and Ittiam

What will it take to build an Apple or Google out of India? This is a question we often ask, and you might recall that I gave one perspective on this in my Outlook Business column some months ago.

Sanjay Nayak of Tejas Networks has devoted the last decade to building high tech telecom products out of India. He is passionate about building a supportive product ecosystem in Bangalore/India. So, when he invited me to moderate a panel discussion on “Fostering an Innovation Economy in India: Issues, Challenges & Recommendations” at the IEEE ANTS 2012 conference at Bangalore last week, I jumped at the opportunity.

We had great participants – Vishy Poosala of Bell Labs, VVR Sastry of CDOT (former CMD of Bharat Electronics), Srini Rajam of Ittiam, Satya Gupta of concept2silicon (and present chair of the Indian Semiconductor Association), and Ishwar Parulkar of Cisco, I had requested each participant to start with a short account of a successful innovation project they had been associated with in India, and what made it work. Since we hear so much about the obstacles to innovation in India, I thought some bright spots may offer ways around these.

And, a real treat followed as we got some insightful examples from all the speakers.

Vishy Poosala – Alcatel Lucent (Bell Labs)

Vishy started by describing an interesting phenomenon his team noticed. Rather than download songs legally available through mobile service providers, mobile owners preferred to buy songs from a corner store. The obvious reason was cost – it’s much more expensive to buy songs “legally.” Why do downloaded songs cost more? His team found out that the reason for this was that the service providers had congested networks, and therefore did not want to promote downloads that would congest their networks further. Bell Labs India proposed a solution to this problem – a “Mango Box” which could push content to users at off peak times when there was no congestion, and hence songs (or other content) could be sold cheaper. While they managed to commercialise this product in India, revenues were never big enough to excite AT&T. Ultimately, “Mango” got traction when it was deployed in the US for use on AT&T’s iphone network. The lessons? Address local problems, but look out for global problems where the same solution can be applied.Vishy mentioned that AL ventures, an internal venturing arm of Alcatel Lucent played a key role in making this cross-fertilization happen.

Srini Rajam – Ittiam

Srini went next. Ittiam has completed a successful decade of a focused IP play. It earns all its revenues from licensing IP it has created. In 2009, Ittiam identified that the then smartphones did not have the capability to play HD video. Creating that capability was non-trivial because it involved change in the software architecture and working with both handset and silicon players. There was a window of opportunityopen, and Ittiam sought to address this by quickly creating the IP, filing a patent and then working with the players to implement it. Not only were 10 million phones incorporating this IP sold in the first year, one of Ittiam’s major clients highlighted the HD video playback in its product marketing collateral. Based on this experience, Srini stressed the importance of innovation as a process – the spark (idea), followed by implementation, and then business impact. Clearly, as in the Alcatel Lucent case, choice of the product is key as well.

VVR Sastry – CDOT

After CDOT’s pioneering efforts on switching for rural exchanges in the 1980s, CDOT disappeared from public imagination. While it has continued to be involved in strategic projects, it’s no longer “visible.” Sastry of CDOT gave one example of how CDOT is trying to change that. Mobile base stations are power guzzlers and are already being targeted by environmentalists for their high carbon footprint. At the same time, rural call rates are not always high, and rural cellular infrastructure is under-utilized. CDOT is trying to solve this problem through shared GSM radio. With the regulators possibly allowing spectrum sharing, this could be a way for better utilization of rural cellular infrastructure. While admittedly a late life cycle product with an emerging market focus, this has the potential to lower costs yet provide multi-operator service in rural locations. Sastry stressed “right product at the right time”, providing a “total product concept” and keeping up the motivation of engineers.

Satya Gupta – Concept2Silicon

Satya Gupta’s company Concept2Silicon is just 3 years old. He encourages innovation through Friday brainstorming sessions. He stressed the importance of aligning new product ideas with needs and timing. In particular, he underlined the importance of aligning products to local conditions and price points. He outlined one important opportunity. Education is rapidly shifting from the traditional classroom to electronic media. But the electronic media used in the classroom are not interactive and don’t allow the teacher to adapt/change content or modify / add comments easily. Interactive whiteboards are available, but they are imported and too expensive. This is an area where Concept2Silicon sees product innovation opportunities.

Ishwar Parulkar – Cisco

Ishwar is the CTO of Cisco’s Provider Access Business Unit in Bangalore. He shared the highlights of the ASR 901 router, the first product developed end-to-end by Cisco in India (see my earlier post on this project for more details). Defining what product to build in India was critical – they chose a router for access providers (= mobile service providers) not only because this was a relevant market in India but also because this was not a core segment addressed by Cisco’s existing products. Scale, reliability and monetization were 3 key criteria for Cisco. To build the product in Bangalore, Ishwar’s team had to persuade vendors to enhance their local capabilities. They also had to transfer knowledge in certain areas like certification. Thus product development efforts involved building a local ecosystem. The third element was creating an appropriate organizational and operational model – there were 3 stages: an incubation stage (under the radar) till a concept could be proved, a stage of scale up with “borrowed resources,” and a third stage of mainstreaming with more funding.Today, ASR 901 has a market not only in India, but across the world.

Fostering an Innovation Economy

In the discussion that followed, several interesting questions came up which addressed the larger theme that Sanjay had identified for the session:

1. Will India be restricted to “late in the life cycle” or niche products, or will we be able to come out with genuinely new products?

2. What needs to be done to improve the innovation ecosystem?

3. How does India compare to China on the innovation front?

4. How can we improve collaboration between academia and industry?

5. How can we enhance the economic dividend to India of innovation activities here?

Most of the comments in response to the first question identified the usual obstacles to creating really innovative products from India: hierarchy in Indian society (vs. the questioning attitude required to do genuine innovation); fear of failure; the education system; and inadequate private sector investment in R&D. There was agreement that many of these things are changing, and the future looks optimistic. But the slow growth of private sector R&D investment continues to be an issue of concern.

Satya Gupta had some very specific and relevant suggestions on improving product innovation. His own experience in his company has been that even the components required for product innovation are not easily available, and often need to be imported with delays of upto 3-4 weeks. This slows down the innovation process, and also demotivates the innovator. He called for the setting up of resource centres – he called them ESDM innovation centres – that are fully equipped and ready-to-use for experimentation. This will help start-up entrepreneurs quickly try out new ideas.

There was broad agreement that China has been able to do several things on a scale that India is unable to even dream of – these include development of infrastructure, education in science and technology, funding for start-ups etc. China has a strong desire to dominate telecom and has therefore supported the creation of large corporations like Huawei and ZTE. In contrast, India lacks a strategic orientation, is unable to spend the R&D money committed because of cumbersome bureaucratic processes, and is no longer even the source of the largest number of graduate students abroad.

Regarding academia-industry collaboration, speakers pointed to the incentive systems in Indian academia that appear to favour academic research resulting in papers and do not give importance to industrial R&D. A specific example was given of a person with considerable international corporate R&D experience who was denied a job in one of the IITs because she did not have adequate research output (=papers in journals).

The fifth question – economic dividend for india – prompted an interesting discussion around value capture in the innovation process. Sanjay Nayak wondered aloud whether Indian companies need to invest more in marketing and branding if India is to capture more value. There was a broad agreement that collaboration was key to improving the economic returns to India – and that even multinational subsidiaries in India may gain from collaborating with each other rather than trying to “sell” their innovations to reluctant managements in the developed world.

Does innovation have to be a struggle? Or can it be the mainstream of a company’s activities? Many speakers pointed out that innovation involves change, and most human beings don’t like change. Hence innovation will always involve overcoming obstacles. Ishwar pointed out that even in Apple, ideas are hard fought. But I felt that companies like 3M, Google, and our own Titan have shown that innovation can become a more routine activity of the company.

Conclusion
I see confidence in our abilities to innovate from India growing, and that’s a good thing. There is a new generation of innovation evangelists returning to India (people like Vishy and Ishwar) who are determined to make things happen here. At the same time, we have people like Srini and Sanjay who have shown that good innovation can come out of India and that it’s possible to run innovative companies here. Of course, it’s not easy, but I see the formation of a critical mass of people who know how to make innovation work. Let’s hope a lot more people get inspired by their examples in the days to come.

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Re-positioning and Re-imaging India

Over the last year or so, the image of India, like the Indian Test team, has taken a beating. The halcyon days of India Shining, of India Everywhere and the world’s “fastest growing free market economy” are now over; the brand-builders and spin-masters are not able to conjure up the magic of old. Instead, we have the picture of a struggling economy, just chugging along at barely over 5% a year; simmering social unrest fuelled by a hugely inequitous society; scam-a-day revealations of corruption; a divisive polity and – certainly till recently – an indecisive leadership. Many feel that if BRIC is the new power-house of the global economy, the “I” in it should now mean Indonesia, not India.

Yet, any attempt to write-off India may be, as Mark Twain said about false reports of his demise “The report of my death was an exaggeration”. After all, the fundamental underlying factors driving the India economy have not changed: demographics, a huge domestic market, an extensive education system with a sufficient topping of high quality, a thrifty and hard-working population, and a strong institutional base. However, converting these potential advantages to real economic benefit requires appropriate action.

The gains of a proportionately large young population, the “demographic dividend”, can be reaped only if they are imparted sufficient education and trained in skills that the economy needs. While recent years have seen a major thrust on education – through both the Right to Education at the school level and a huge expansion at the university level – and an ambitious skills development programme, their results depend on efficient implementation. It will not be easy to simultaneously achieve the goals of expansion, equity and excellence. The veneer of a few institutions producing high-quality professionals will no longer be sufficient, especially in an evolving, globally-competitive market for goods, services and ideas. We will need to be flexible and innovative not only in content and pedagogy, but also in the administration and structures of the education system.

The advantages of a large domestic market are currently reduced by regulations and structural barriers, inhibiting the free and easy movement of goods across the country. These include barriers to movement of agricultural commodities, octroi, and too many and inefficient toll collection points, causing unnecessary harassment and delays. Poor infrastructure slows movement. The introduction of GST – much delayed, already – will certainly ease the numerous tax-related obstacles and provide a big boost to the economy. Similarly, changes in the APMC regulations, and better management and use of technology at toll collection points on highways, can lower costs in the movement of goods.

India’s institutional base – a strong and fair legal framework and an independent judiciary, in particular – have long been projected as major strengths and a comparative advantage. In addition to the Election Commission, independent regulators, including SEBI and RBI, are much respected around the world. All these contribute to business confidence, especially amongst foreign companies and investors. However, the gains of many years have been endangered by retrospective tax laws, cancellation of contracts/licenses which had been entered into within existing laws, and perceptions of government pressure on regulators. Institutions and their credibility are built over decades; destroying them is, unfortunately, much faster and easier. Government needs to tread with caution to sustain and build on the respect that our institutions command overseas.

Globalisation has been driven not only by trade and investment, but equally through bonds of religion and ideology, which – aided by new communication technologies – transcend national boundaries. The battles of today are for the hearts and minds of people rather than territory. In a world where wars between countries have become rare, “soft power” has become far more important. While recognizing the importance of the economic dimension, the image of India needs to go beyond that. India’s unique advantages lie, in fact, in other areas.

India has substantial soft power assets: its rich culture – including films, music, yoga and spirituality – cuisines, historical heritage and natural beauty. These are a powerful magnet for people around the world. Of late, the country is also recognized as a hub for innovation. In the developing world – and, often, elsewhere too – its democracy and electoral process is highly regarded. A large number of countries admire India’s higher education system, despite its many flaws, and the top institutions are held in awe even in the developed world.

Leveraging these advantages can position India strongly in the mind-space of the global community. This, however, demands strong and pro-active action by both, government and industry. Image building without substance is like a soufflé: hot air will hold it up, but it will soon collapse. Therefore, in each area, concrete steps on the ground are necessary. In education, for example, the high drop-out rates and very poor quality at school level need to be quickly remedied. Higher education calls for major reform. In addition, a large scheme of scholarships (say, 5000 a year) for foreign students for study in top universities and professional institutions will engender much goodwill and be an investment for the future (foreign students develop a special relationship with the country; Suu Kyi is but one example). Similarly, promoting Indian cinema, music and tourism abroad can lead to great benefits. An independent global TV channel – aimed at viewers beyond the Indian diaspora –  which sees world events through Indian eyes can be another contributor.

It is time to re-image India, going beyond the purely economic. A private-public partnership, like the Brand India Fund, could be the best means. Such re-positioning will certainly provide business and economic advantages, but will also give India a greater share of voice resulting in geo-strategic benefits.

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Getting funded by US investors vs. Indian investors – a perspective

This is another post to force the debate. I have heard many Indian entrepreneurs say that they would rather be funded by a US investor than and Indian investor. In fact most would prefer specific Silicon Valley investors.

There are many pros and cons to both Indian and Silicon Valley investors.

Lets do the valley first.

Pros:

1. Investors move quickly. They make no decisions fast and yes decisions faster. Some companies (Cucumber town for instance) have been known to take a few days or upto a month to raise a seed round of $300K.

2. Investors are willing to invest in breakthrough ideas, instead of me-toos. In fact they have deep liking for disruptive ideas.

3. Willing to lead a round, and help you syndicate other investors.

Cons:

1. There’s tremendous deal flow. Competition to get funded by a valley investor is huge. Lots of companies that have 3 to 10 times the traction as their Indian counterparts for the same stage of company.

2. Valley investors dont like funding anything outside the valley. In fact an investor told me “I dont like to drive to the other side of the bridge (I am sure he mean Dumbarton bridge, given how close it is to Menlo Park) to fund a company”.

3. You have to move to the US (Maybe this is a pro for most Indian founders). The biggest hassle is immigration. H1B visas (working permits) are much harder now than 5 years ago.

Now lets look at India.

Pros:

1. Competition is a lot less. There are far fewer product companies in India than US. Some might even say there’s too much money in India chasing too few deals. Entrepreneur’s dont necessarily agree with that, though.

2. There are many funds raised just to invest in Indian product companies. They are willing to provide the same amount of money, as their US counterparts from as low as a few hundred thousand dollars to many millions.

3. Traction requirements are a lot less. A lot less in India. For a sapling round (assuming you raised a first seed from an accelerator or from friends and family) many companies are getting funded with far fewer customers or users than in the US.

Cons:

1. Indian investors (angel and seed) move very slowly. Slower than molasses in fat. We have a company with a 2 month old signed term sheet, that’s waiting for the money, and expects it will take 6-8 more weeks.

2. Their terms are lot more onerous and they require a higher percentage of the company during the seed round.

3. They rarely add any value after putting money into the company at the seed round, usually only asking for “3 year financial projections” when the product is in beta.

If I were an entrepreneur and I have the ability to go to the US and have some (small or otherwise) network in the valley I’d go and raise money there in a heart-beat. If my customers are primarily in the US, then I’d also consider moving there.

If I have never set foot in the US and want to stay in India or have my market here (for any number of reasons), then I’d be better off raising money in India.

What do you guys think? Did I miss any obvious pros and cons?

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The little Spark with great promise – Inaugural #PNMeetup on Pricing for Enterprise Sales

When a bunch (around 45-50, I didn’t keep the count) of Product enthusiasts – with experience accumulating into decades – gather at a single place to share their learning on specific topic in a compact & well-moderated session of 2 hours, it’s worth every bit. That’s how I felt coming out of the inaugural session of #PNMeetup – Pricing for Enterprise Sales: Specific & Important Topic, Quality Participation, Richness of Experiences, and Quality Conversations.

The location, Hauz Khas Village in New Delhi, carries a constant buzz and energy. Very apt for a meet-up like this. Kunzum Travel Café (Thanks for being a great host for the event!), should be happy because participants used up every nook & corner of the place. Many of us had to settle down on the carpet with no more sitting or standing space left! Of course, the snacks & coffee was great too. But, that’s not what everyone coming in was specifically looking for (especially since the last 500 yards got harder to make with the traffic and parking situation ;-)).

We were looking for some great (practical, experience based, relevant) conversations and takeaways on Pricing. And, there was plenty of it, coming from speakers as well as from the participants. As much as is possible in 2 hours of time, that is, also thanks to some great moderating & counter-questioning by Arvind Jha during speaker sessions, and Rajat Garg & Vivek Agarwal in the un-conference session.

Tushar Bhatia, Founder of Saigun Technologies, set the tone for Enterprise Products Pricing by sharing his experiences on Pricing Strategies and Sales tactics. Tushar emphasized that Pricing is not a linear decision, but a complex process and subject to assessment from multiple parameters. He also differentiated the Pricing Strategy from Sales Process. Pricing, as per him (in the context set of Business Planning, Scalability, Consistency, Standardization, and a reflection of the Value Proposition) is a guide at broader level, while on sales tactics front, one should be willing to consider the customer & geographic circumstances as well. The decision matrix for Pricing decisions typically is pretty complex, and a product undergoes multiple iterations of pricing models

Pricing for Enterprise Sales
Pricing for Enterprise Sales – Tushar

before arriving at the sweet spot. However, various types of customers may need to be assessed in their own contexts when deciding on a deal pricing, especially in the traditional Enterprise Sales scenario.

Tushar also emphasized that the Enterprise Licensing deals should consider not only the product pricing, but also the other costs (such as, hardware) and provisions (such as, for Product Support). The considerations on TCO are critical, because the customers assess the products, not only functionally, but also very critically from an operational viability perspective in longer term. Tushar also laid out few questions that need to be answered while deciding the pricing model. The detailed presentation from Tushar on “Pricing for Enterprise Sales” can be found here.

The discussion, then, veered towards the product pricing strategies in areas such as Telcos, serving also as a cue for Tarun Anand (CTO & Co-founder at Semusi) to pitch in and provide his perspective. He shared his experiences in working with the big Telcos on working out product strategies and pricing models. They tried out various pricing models, in partnership with Telcos especially, and had mixed results over time before arriving at something that seemed to work. However, pricing remains a volatile when dealing with the larger partners and in more complex ecosystems, such as Telcos.

In Tarun’s experience, one needs to ascertain that the partners in the ecosystem are ready to take your product to the market if that is the expectation. It is also important to ensure that the pricing terms & conditions are clear, and you are able to hold the customers as well as partners accountable in the operational limits as much as you can. After all, you want to focus on running the business and do not want complications of financial & legal nature. In the context of Pricing and products strategy, in areas such as VAS, as per Tarun, one needs to be very careful. “VAS is dead” in his words! 🙂

Tarun also emphasized “there are takers for product at ANY price point”. One need to clearly understand whom one wants to target, and also understand that it’s not only a question of moving the pricing point up & down in inverse proportionality with the volume of customer base. There are various triggers for the pricing, one of which is the “premium value perception”, and also the fact that once you move into a market with a particular price point, increasing it later on is almost impossible without hurting your customer base and overall strategy.

App Pricing Tactics
App Pricing Tactics – Prashant

The heat in the Mobile Apps makes the App Pricing a very sought after topic, and that’s where Prashant Singh (Co-founder at Signals) came in and provided a good framework for the high level App pricing approach. There are two clear distinct possibilities – Free & Paid. Complete Free, as per Prashant, directly leads to an Ad based model for revenue that shouldn’t be a preferred model as such for most app developers. In fact the question is not whether to go Free or Paid. Question is when is the user ready for monetization. “You hit when the iron is hot, as simple as that”, Prashant says.

Prashant provided a high level framework to judge which approach should be adopted by the App Developers, based on the two parameters: “App Life Span” and “Time to Realization of Value”. Based on a combination of the two, one can decide on the high level strategy (Portfolio/Platform/Utility/Device Embedding/Brand Apps…) and Pricing model (Advertisement, Paid, Transaction based, Freemium, Development level, and so on). Check out this presentation – App Pricing Tactics for more details.

One key point that drew interest was around the Price Point for App at the launch time. Contrary to the normal belief, Prashant says, one needs to launch the app at a price point that is higher than the Median price point for the App store. That provides the App Store an incentive to showcase the App, and it is important since App Stores control the downloads more than the “content” or “quality”, at least until critical mass. Growth Curve of the app can be maintained around Median and depending on the value prop of the App, the baseline pricing can be used at sustenance phase. Another strong point of view from Prashant came around the Advertisement model, which as per him is the last to be considered. And if Ad model is considered, his advice is to “not” let the control away – “Always have your server in loop”.

While all the content and discussion, and few laughs in between, served well to our appetites, snacks were served amidst a quick “Unconference” session moderated by Rajat and Vivek. We discussed and debated on some great points. I’m finding it harder to capture every bit here and I don’t want to be partial to only what I remember right now! I hope that if you attended and are reading this, you would be able to add your takeaways in comments section! 🙂

Overall, I had a great time. The highlight of the session, for me at least, was the richness of experience and passion for products. And I met some really cool folks! Many of us hung out until later in the night and continued the conversations, which is a great sign. A small impetus can go a long way, and I’m very excited that Avinash has triggered this spark that all of us as a community have to fuel into a passionate ecosystem around products. Great initiative, ProductNation! Looking forward to the next edition on Jan 19th 2013!

PS 1: And, there was a cake-cutting for Avinash on his Birthday! Great gesture!

PS 2: Some Tweets from the session!

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#PNMeetup – Delhi (15 December 2012) Pricing for Enterprise Sales

The event was kicked off by Arvind Jha starting out with a round of introductions. It was quickly realised that the community was well represented and people coming from Noida, Gurgaon and Delhi was heart warming to see. Arvind then went on to describe how diversity is important when you are running a business. Different regions, different customers and hence different pricing make it a much complex environment. It is in this scenario that choosing a good pricing model becomes important in accordance to your business model and scaling needs. Arvind then went on to invite Tushar from Saigun Technologies to share his thoughts and take the meet forward.

Tushar started out speaking on the relevancy or the need of pricing. The context here was clearly set when he announced that the discussion here is setting up ideas on enterprise pricing which is a whole different ball game as compared to consumer pricing. Factors like evaluation of potential customers, kind of money received from them, directing sales teams, consistency and setting a value to the offering brings in the need of pricing. He then went on to speak on the various challenges in enterprise pricing such as long decision cycles, decision matrix complexity and competition, no matter how good or new the idea is can never be neglected. A great example he shared was the case of Saigun’s HR product which is different to an HR manager and to a CEO. An HR manager would see it as tool which would reduce his work and a CEO would see it as an investment and in turn happily show a few pink slips to some of his HR managers. Tushar also spoke lengths and breadths on total cost of ownership of the product as well as the brand image when setting up your price. A cost is not just determined by the development cost but the service associated with it, the tenure of such a service is an important consideration. One cannot afford to give service away free. Brand becomes important in case when you have an established player in the market already. A SAP can price its product at 2 million but it is fairly practical to say that only SAP can. This is because of the trust and recognition it has built for all these years it has been in existence.

Tushar then spoke on the key parameters to a pricing strategy. Geographic focus and segregation of the offering based upon location always helps. The inclination of the pricing strategy to the company’s overall business strategy is another parameter one should look at. The case of virgin market and mature market were discussed to great detail by all participants. Tushar also shared that apart from his experiences the book written by Nagel on Strategy and Tactics of Pricing has helped him a lot. By this time the crowd appeared to really appreciate the thoughts of Tushar and his experiences. He then concluded with a short brief on the need to do discounting and how discounting eventually becomes a strategic view more than just being operational. He was applauded by all and then Arvind invited Tarun Anand from Semusi to take center-stage and share his thoughts on selling to enterprise customers, in his case, telecommunication service providers or telcos.

Tarun started off with his encounter with an Indian telco. His product offering took off on Nokia’s platform and with Middle-East customers. The product was well received and this is when Tarun decided to launch it in India too. The subsequent agreement with an India telco major pushed the product to India. However, moving forward it became clearer when the telco abruptly changed requirements and priced the product to almost 1/5th of its competition. There were cases of non-payments and violation of contract agreements with the telco as well. The rationale given here was that the product is new and there are not many takers for it. But when Tarun checked, the product had sufficient number of users as well as sufficient number of dropouts. It is here when it becomes important to choose a suitable pricing model, the two he suggested were full user pricing (FUP) and promotion pricing. In this case, eventually he rebranded his product and sold it through the app store which gave him a much better insight to the actual customers of his product.

After Tarun it was Prashant from Signals who was invited to take center stage. Tushar started describing pricing techniques for an app store. The question of whether the product should be transactional priced, free, in-app pricing or ad-based was put forth by him. The even bigger question that needs an answer first is to go free or to go paid for your product. This question really gets answered by a research on ‘when the user is actually ready to be monetised’. Tushar then went to describe the price decision matrix which was split across quadrants of short life span, long life span and instant realisation, realisation after a period of time. Games, Social network apps, Dropbox and VAS were examples spread across these quadrants. So the eventual decision is to place your product in one such category and accordingly accept the price model that comes with it. Another very critical talk by Tushar was on choosing a price point, the baseline (99 cents), the maxima ($1.20) or the median (between 99 cents and $1.20) for your product or app. If one goes by baseline, then the app store owner has no incentive to give your app the preference in his listing even if you have greater number of downloads. So he suggested that it is always good to keep your product priced at maxima and then slowly move towards baseline pricing depending upon the realisation value of the product. Tushar concluded his talk by adding some avoidance measures when choosing an advertisement based model.

It clocked 5:30 PM and refreshments followed in the form of tea and samosas along with flowering of ideas by everyone in regards to the overall feedback on the initiative and the format of the initiative, ways it should be carried out in the future. Finally everyone joined in to celebrate Avinash birthday and cut a cake which was the most pleasant surprise of the day. Sign of great things to come from this emerging community of product leaders.

Post Contributed by Charles Cherian

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Why they’re not giving feedback to your idea

Ideas used to be a dime a dozen. Now they’re a dime a million. 

Ideas have a short life. But you need to get some kinda feedback on your idea. It makes all the difference doesn’t it? Here are 3 reasons your idea isn’t getting validated feedback. There’s a clue in #3 that you should try and tell me if it worked for you.

1. You are verbose. Don’t write like diarrhea. Do this – send a single 140 Character tweet to the world about your product’s chief USP. Did someone respond? You get the picture? 

Your idea doesn’t reach the target audience if you’re writing more than 300 words. However, that’s not to say that you can’t draw your audience into a 3-5 min unsolicited engagement through the audio visual format. 

2. You are irrelevant. The person you’re asking feedback from has no relevance to what you’re asking. She doesn’t understand it, doesn’t care about it, and has no time to appreciate why its important for you. 

Your idea doesn’t reach the target audience if you’re talking bananas to a penguin. Penguins don’t eat banana. In all probability, they don’t even know what a banana is. 
 
3. You are being selfish. Don’t ask before you have something to offer in return. My permission is my property. Don’t try to take that from me. So don’t spam me unless you’re offering some free money. (And I will not click on your AD – just send the money in cash please.)

This Validated feedback that I glorify will be amazingly well received by your marketing function. This time, DO trust a marketer – go get that feedback.
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Indian Product owners solving problems that Indian Business Owners are facing

In the Speaker Lounge at NPC12, I asked Bob Wright what new he saw at the conclave this year. He said this year he sees Indian Product owners solving problems that Indian Business Owners are facing. This SMB market in India is lying legs-wide-apart – only money can be made here.
Here are 3 industries that I believe are fertile grounds in India:
1. Diagnostics – Data that allows the doctor to search through a list of symptoms and identify possible diseases. Usually the earlier you catch the disease – the easier it is to kill it. 
Which is why Vinod Khosla is betting on this company. That heart monitor can go with you everywhere – so there’s a doctor in the world willing to pay for it. Insurance money, hostpital earnings, patient benefits – you can see there’s nothing not to like in it – as long as it does its job cheaply. 
However dependence on hardware is still mandatory in this space. So before you jump in with your cloud-ready software and all that – do note that the doctors haven’t used computers like you have. The still get scared when you ask them to log off their machine and log back in. 
2. Aviation – the Indian government has crippled the Aviation business. There’s a massive gap between government policies (esp. taxation) and consumer need (Cheaper faster travel). Which is all the more why software is needed to bring in automation and tremendous savings for the Service provider – the Airline. Last I checked – that was what the LCC business was all about. 
IBS Plc is one of Kerala’s success stories that’s got logistics sorted through software. But there’s no success story for software that got the Airline industry sorted. Sabre and SAP solve part challenges. Most Airlines have their software custom crapped or have to invest in scary expensive systems built over the last million years. 
3. Parental Policing – Parents are shit scared of their kids getting hooked to the wrong things on the internet. And by scared I mean paranoid. A wireless router that looks sober and protective, priced at around $70, with a cloud based service that allows data reporting on the pad. 
Meraki does enterprise policing. They’re trying to do whaling, but their product can easily be turned around to make mothers feel so much secure.i7 networks – are you listening? 
Do you know any Indian companies in this space? I would love to get a chance to tell their stories.
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12 learnings from the launch of Institute of Product Leadership – Bschool for software techies in India

Seems only apt to summarize our 12 learning’s on 12-12-12

#1 – ‘Kitna detee hai’ ?

Maruti car runs a campaign in India around “keetna deti hai” (means in local language – how much mileage will i get in?). The first question on the applicant’s mind was – post program will I get a better pay or shift into a company of my dreams. Very few (23% of them to be precise) reported that learning is more important to them than placement assistance.

My take – People seem to forget that getting inside is easier than staying & growing inside. On the bright side its good that we have companies willingly wanting to hire the first batch immediately on graduation.

#2 – “Code Centric to Customer Centric”

The idea of transitioning from being technology centric to customer centric does seem to resonate the most with individual participants who cited “Project Management to Product Management” as the #1 desired transformation – to be able to understand the customer and the business context of what they are already doing.

My take – Business programs can only be valuable if they accelerate that transformation. Knowledge dissemination cant be the driver!

#3 – “Badge is important”

The idea of getting a diploma or a degree is rather important as a take away from the program. Brand is clearly important.. Interestingly enough compared to “Guaranteed Career Path” this was voted lower though.

My take – With liberal badge printing machines in the country most hiring managers see through it and at best use as a filtering criteria.It is even less valuable for senior R&D professionals

#4 – “Have you done this before?”

Surprisingly (at least to us) companies who wanted to nominate people to the program asked this question more often than the participant themselves. Companies (both senior HR/L&D & Engineering leaders) as well as participants appreciated the fact that the curriculum is relevant and faculty is world class but the risk appetite for companies seemed to be lower than participants who pledged nominations for the “next” batch!

My take – first movers almost always benefit. That’s why the early bird gets the worm. The program’s pilot batch will have the best foot forward to establish a brand and move the offering to higher price points for next batch.

#5 – “Better seat at the table”

Most R&D leaders showed frustration around why they were not able to add value with their global partners and wanted to equip themselves with the right knowledge and immersions to be able to have a better seat at the table and enjoy broader responsibilities.

My take – unless people make an effort to understand the productizing process all those frustrations will continue to rise. Intent and ability to help are two different things!

#6 – “I don’t want to become a Product Manager”

Interestingly enough not all senior R&D managers (64%) wanted to learn the “business” & “customer” context to become a Product Manager, instead they wanted to differentiate themselves and build a better career path on the Product Engineering Leadership track with the role models being cited as CTO and Head of R&D.

My take – Product Management as a process should be everybody’s business to understand, playing the role of a real Product Manager not so much as it’s a harder role to play than one thinks!

#7 – Its better if its hard to get in

The moment they heard that only 20% of applicants will be selected to the program the value of the program went up by a factor of 2 (Price to Value Analysis)

#8 – Relevance of MBA to their Product Leadership Growth

Majority of the Product Professionals who had done their MBA from Top B-schools cite around 21% of the subjects/topics being relevant to them in their current role. 35% of them believe that the degree gave them the necessary break/promotion/new role.

My take – General Purpose MBAs (even from top B schools) are great for people who don’t know what they want in life and hence want to get the exposure to HR, Finance, Operations, Marketing etc. Institute’s Board have actually factored this in and designed the curriculum to map to industry’s expectations.

#9 – Influence Building skills are missing

Across 5 categories of the curriculum, leadership skills were rated 3rd most desired after Customer Connect & Insights and User Experience & Product Innovation. Within leadership skills leading by influence was ranked higher than other soft skills like negotiation, presentation, cross culture communication and conflict resolution.

My take – One’s Influentiality Index (II) is actually the biggest propeller for career path acceleration, functional skills for an average R&D product professional is actually fairly high.

#10 – Relevance is good but I want my exec education to be personal

Relevance of the program resonated overwhelmingly with the target audience but most also desired personal mentoring 1:1 with industry execs and a personalized leadership development plan with necessary psychometric assessments. Interestingly 92% have never gone through such personalized assessment at their company.

My take – I wish I had done assessments like MBTI, DISC, Product Leadership Influentiality Index (PLII) etc to really know my gaps and build a plan to bridge them faster as opposed to rely on accidental growth.

#11 – Free money – take it or not take it?

Several industry reports suggest that 26% of educational tuition reimbursement budgets goes underutilized with global R&D centers in India. Most (97%) desired to get tuition reimbursement from their company to pay for the program, however it dropped to 52% the moment it was disclosed that only self sponsored candidates will be offered placement assistance.

My take – With retention being the driver for some companies to sponsor education this is bound to happen..

#12 – Scaling Startups vs Large Companies

Management teams from both groups desire better product leaders (91% – Agree + Strongly Agree) however their approach of solving is starkly different. Global R&D Centers want a longer program (underlying theme being retention) vs Scaling Startups want a menu of courses to select from.

Would love to hear your thoughts – especially if you are a product professional wanting to accelerate your career path with atleast 8 years of experience or part of the exec management team who wants to develop strong product leaders in the India R&D center! More info at www.productleadership.in

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Project v/s Product

Every Technology driven work is supported by a piece of software and that software may be a very small piece of code written to fulfill requirement like recording expenses of house, artificial intelligence, robotics or weather forecast.

Some daily life impacting processes converted from manual to totally computerized like medical consultations,  online airline ticketing, books and gifts purchase, hotel booking etc are some of the process achieved through software.

These software’s may be broadly categorized in two ways :

1)  Software Project: A project, by definition, is a temporary activity with a starting date, specific goals and conditions, defined responsibilities, a budget, a planning, a fixed end date and multiple parties involved.

2) Software Product: By Dictionary Definition: software product – merchandise consisting of a computer program that is offered for sale

Software Project: We may consider project which consists of finding solution to a particular problem to a particular client. It depends on various products. By using the Hardware, Middleware, Operating system, Languages and Tools only we will develop a project. Here the requirements are gathered from the client and analyzed with that client and start to develop the project. Here the end user is one and complete development is based on the end user needs.

Software Product: Products are developed not for any specific client or one customer. Here the requirements are gathered from market and analyze that with some experts and start to develop the product. After developing the products they try to market it as a solution. Here the end users are more than one. Product development is never ending process and customization is done regularly and continuously.

In business and engineering, New Product Development (NPD) is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product to market. It starts from Idea generation, Product design and deal engineering along with market analysis and business opportunity size.

To give a real life example of popular product v/s project ,some are as below :

From India – Well-known software products

From abroad: Well-known software products

From India – Well-known software projects

From abroad: Well-known software projects

The companies who make these small to big software projects targets for getting a software project delivered to the users’ satisfaction, ontime and on budget. Sometimes someone has to ensure the system lasts for the long term.

The project and the product might start at the same point, but they usually finish at very different points. A project finishes with the last milestone release of the code — and a party. The product finishes with the opposite: the last byte of code being removed from the servers — and a party only if it was really nasty software.

From the above examples, you might question how Gmail or Meramail is a project  v/s MS Exchange. My point of view on this is very simple. Gmail/ meramail  Software is not available for sale / FREE or downloadable even for trial. So I would assume it’s a project built as per the need of the respective company and  is made available to be used as service. On the other hand Gmail App available on IOS and Android phone will be called as product, which is available and downloadable from respective app store.  Like wise you can purchase / download MS Exchange and XgenPlus email software, but cannot download / purchase  Gmail and Meramail software.

You might argue that Gmail is available as SaaS i.e Software as a Service. Sure it is, but it does not fit in the definition and nature of the “product”.  Moreover, if we remove service out of the Gmail, Do we get software product ? The answer is “No”, on the other hand if we provide SaaS on MS Exchange, the story will be different. May be this difference will be well understood if the difference between Product / Services / Software as a Service are understood properly. May be need of an another article 🙂

Post Contributed by Ajay Data, Data Infosys