When we learned to crack US sales from India

October 24, 2015. A Saturday after Dussehra, and 59th roundtable of awesomeness in lively office of Zapty.

Not only Sanjay (founder of Zapty) was great, offices of Zapty welcomed us with a lot of natural light. Then, introductions happened and people started to get comfortable around each other.

It was Samir, founder of Shop Socially, who flew from Pune a day before, was going to share the things that worked (and didn’t work) for him at ShopSocially when they built a team to sell to US companies from India.

PS: He also has sales people in US, but we will get into that as well.

We were scheduled to start at 11:00 AM, but kinda waited till 11:15 to start. I call this Bangalore Standard Time (not really late, but a little late)

Then I clarified certain things about Round Table and set the context to make sure everyone understands it’s more like a discussion than a lecture session. Also, it was clarified that its a safe place to share and nothing that is sensitive will leave the walls of that room. That made everyone attending it comfortable and also people were ready with their discussion hats on.

Then Samir shared some great processes which he has developed over 20+ years of experience.

Ohh man, if I could only describe it in words, you should have been there to feel the transparency we saw in an Entrepreneur. The goal of each function inside organization was clear, more like crystal clear. Tons and tons of questions were asked and we all shared some great insights.

Well, here is my attempt to put some of the learnings we had in words:

    • Marketing is Lead Generation: From beginning, Samir made it clear. In his business, marketing is Lead Gen. Branding is a byproduct of marketing, but marketing is for one thing and one thing only, Lead Generation. So, all efforts are measured on this parameter.
    • A simple Motto – Get conversations going: Samir pointed this out multiple times during discussion, getting conversation going is the single most important step in a sales cycle. Do whatever it takes to get conversation going, if your prospective customer is not responding to product/service/problem A, show them B, then C. Do anything to get conversation going.
    • 5 min callback to warm leads: So, this is a 2 part lesson. Number one “define” as clearly as you can, what is a “warm” lead. And then making sure 5 minute callback to warm lead. Now, both of these tasks are important, and success of your “sales” department depends on this. You can define “warm” leads too loosely and your sales team would end up wasting a lot of their time. Or you could end up defining your “warm” lead to tightly, and end up leaving a lot of money on the table. So, constant feedback is super necessary and should be part of the process.
    • For a product, IT HAS TO LOOK STUNNING..PERIOD: I don’t think this needs any explanation, but when he said this, he was really clear on one thing. No compromise on this, its HAS to look stunning.
    • Where to start? Email List: We spent quite some time on how to do this in a scalable way and what are great do’s and don’t around it.  
    • Quora and LinkedIn Pulse are great places to start for B2B sales. If you can get one of your articles on LinkedIn Pulse, that can do some wonders in early stages.
    • For inside sales – warm leads only: Samir was very clear on another thing, how anyone in the team spends their time. And inside sales team should be spending their time on “warm” leads only.
    • Text only emails are best: You can surely try more formats, but whole group agreed on this, as pretty much everyone had experience with sending a lot of emails.
    • For calling, make a script: If you get a chance to get on a call with customer, don’t go without a script. It’s like going to war without a plan..don’t do it. Make a script and rehearse it.
    • Optimize lower end of funnel first: Samir made this super clear that it’s super expensive to lose sales at lower end of the funnel, so if you are optimizing start from bottom of the funnel.
    • Case studies, no…Stunning Case Studies, YES: We according to Samir, anything that you put in front of potential customer (PPT’s, Case studies etc.) has to look great, nothing less than “stunning”.
    • Retargeting – FOR EVERYONE: It doesn’t matter what kind of product you are selling, retargeting ads are for everyone..
    • Video testimonials: If you can get video testimonials, they are the best. You can even put them on landing pages..they are expensive, but might be worth it

Tools / Service companies that we discussed:

  • BuiltWith
  • Datanyze
  • DataCall (a company in Bangalore)
  • Benchmark
  • Yesware
  • Pipedrive
  • Localphone
  • Ringo
  • Express Writers – Bangalore
  • Discover.org
  • AgileCRM

Now, it’s quite possible that you want to know more about the process we learned in the RT, but may be that’s the reason you should attend next Round Table in your city..

PS: Here is another post about Samir’s round table in Pune..

Guest Post Contributed by Natwar, Around.Io

The next 25 #PNgrowth companies – the second shortlist is here!

We now have the list of the second batch of #PNgrowth companies and this time, we have en even more eclectic mix of domains and products. And since we have also just announced the final agenda for the three day residential workshop that will launch #PNgrowth, the buzz we feel has only intensified. The program is now being over-subscribed many times over, and we request you to apply early if you don’t want to be disappointed.

25-founders-collage-2nd batchIf you still don’t know what this is about, jeez! Anyway, you go here, and if you want to apply, here, better late than never.
 
So here we go, the net 25 companies, making a grand total of 50!
  • Anil Mantoo of content marketplace Contentmart
  • Ankur Kumar of Employee Recognition engine Rewardtrunk
  • Anup Sahoo of Technology Search Engine Ideapoke
  • Nitin Purohit of Big Data Analytics firm Aureus Analytics
  • Chennapanaidu Darapaneni of events site Meraevents
  • Gautam Garg of QR code company Scanove
  • George John Vettath of HR and Payroll software Kserve
  • Kartik Poddar of Movie site Fropcorn
  • Khadim Batti of interactive flow builder Whatfix
  • Kiran Menon of enployee engagement app Tydy
  • Mahesh Subramaniam of video delivery company Strmesy
  • Milind Katti of account management software Demandfarm
  • Nikhil Soman of gaming company Playblazer
  • Prateek Pands of mobile safety company Appknox
  • Pratik Munot of talent management firm Jombay
  • Rajiv Nag of translations manager Readmylanguage
  • Sandip Panda of cloud security company Instasafe
  • Seshu Karthik of deals app Thankbunny
  • Siddharth Deshmukh of website builder CMSbudo
  • Sudarsan Ravi of HR referral engine Ripplehire
  • Sumanth Raghavendra of presentation builder Deck
  • Sunil Bodke of employee dashboard Cadashboard
  • Tushar Bhatia of talent management Empxtrack
  • Abhishek Kumar of school management software Schoolmitra
  • Pavan Thatha of web safety company Shieldsquare
Congratulations to the startups who’ve made it. We’ll have the next list up soon! 🙂

 

SaaSx Chennai Express – Board this Train Now!

I am Amit – running a SaaS venture Interview Mocha, a pre-employment skill testing company. In this blog I am sharing my learning from SaaSx and how it helped me achieve product-market fit and grow my company fast.


As they say, “a startup’s life is a roller coaster with ups and downs”, this ride has not been easy for me either. Just to talk in numbers, in the first 1.5 yrs of our existence, we were able to add only 22 customers and that too mostly from Pune, our home-ground. While in last 6 months, we have been able to add over 100 customers from 11 different countries. Needless to say – SaaSx has played a major role in helping us achieve this. Hence, I would like to share my journey and learnings from SaaSx with the larger community of SaaS people out there.

My SaaSx journey started when Prasanna advised me to visit SaaSx-1 in Chennai and Avinash was kind enough to allow me immediately. I had one more reason to visit Chennai – to meet Krish (my mentor).  I am happy to thank SaaSx, Prasanna Microsoft, Suresh  Kissflow, Krish ChargeBee and Girish Freshdesk who are constantly acting as a source of knowledge and guidance for me.

Interestingly, I found something common about all of them and you know what that something is…They are all from “SaaSx” and they are all from “Chennai” .

So now I can say that “SaaSx Chennai Express” is changing my (Interview Mocha) life completely and moreover this Chennai Express journey is a lot safer than Shahrukh Khan’s Chennai Express as there is no Tanghaballi (villain) here, only heroes :-)  and you still get your sweetheart Meenamma (Success).

Krish has helped us grow our daily leads from 2 to 10 leads a day. Suresh helped me multiply this number by his personal mentorship and playbook on Nuts and Bolts of Marketing & selling SaaS products to US customers from India for First Timers. Girish’s Talks always makes me think – how this poster boy of Indian SaaS knows all my key problems and their solutions. He narrates everything as if he is my personal mentor helping me sharpen my SaaS business skills.

So, here are the key takeaways, learning and some food for thought from my interactions with these SAAS champs:

1. Focus, Focus and Focus.

Focus on customer pain (mother-problem(s) you are solving that customers care about). Focus all your efforts to solve these problems the best way possible.

2. Your Product has to be Superb.

Customer success, Word of mouth and “Mouth of word” are the key for SaaS products and which is not possible without a superb product. Product is the core – keep it in mind.

3. Product Market Fit.

Your product needs to achieve a product market fit for adding customers quickly and scaling further. This is the first good thing that can happen to your start-up. Product/Market Fit is the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. It has been identified as a first step to building a successful venture in which the company meets early adopters, gather feedback and gauges interest.

4. Cold Calling 2.0 doesn’t work.

Cold calling 2.0 won’t suit your economies for B2B companies with less than $ 2,000 annual revenue per customer. Though cold calling 2.0 is a great predictable way for pipeline generation, however it is not suitable to scale when you are charging very less annually.

5. Do not rely only on Email and Chat Support for closures.

Talk to signups/prospects over phone. We are 100% inbound till a person signs up. Talking to users helped us increase engagement with prospects and in turn more closures. Also, you get the insights that your sales team needs to understand.

6. Founders – Change the work timings if you are targeting US.

Analytics do help you understand customers but nothing better than talking to customer themselves. Quicker responses means more business.

7. SEO and Content Marketing are compulsory.

Content is King  & SEO is the way.  One or other traction methods may work, you can refer the list of all traction methods – google “Bullseye framework traction trumps everything”.

8. SaaS is Software as a Service.

Focus highly on support activities and customer success. Get immediate reply policy as a part of company’s DNA. Remember “Fast is Success”.

9. Understand behavior of SOHO, VSB and SMB for sure.

Each customer segment has its typicality and common needs. Understand their pain points, where they hang out over internet, how they buy, what makes them happy. Targeting big deals from enterprises in initial days may not happen. One funny thing, we have a few fortune 500 companies as our customers paying us $49 p.m. these are SaaS enterprises (business units) and not classic enterprises.

10. A/B testing is the way for SaaS companies.

What works and what works better – don’t assume much. Try A/B every now and then.

11. Tools help.

Start exploiting Mixpanel, Intercom, Moz etc.  being a SaaS player, trust and adopt SaaS.  These tools are helping us a lot in reaching, understanding and communicating with customers.

I consider the above points as extremely important for any SaaS business. I strongly recommend becoming a part of SaaSx community, if you are a SaaS startup in India. Chennai Express passengers/ drivers (Prasanna, Krish, Suresh, Girish, Avlesh, Paras, Avinash and many more) are easy to strike a conversation with, ask any question and receive immediate valuable responses.

Recently, I attended SaaSx-2 and acquired a new set of learnings. But I’ll wait to write on those learnings till I execute them successfully. And yes, looking forward to add 500 more customers before I board SaaSx-3 :-)

Thanks SaaSx Chennai Express. Wishing All the Best to all Indian SaaS Start-ups!

How “born globals” dance with gorillas to punch above their weight

For over a decade now I have been studying “born globals” i.e. new ventures that internationalize rapidly, and in particular how these firms leverage relationships with large multinationals to facilitate this process. My studies on this topic span China, India, UK and USA.

I recently published a book targeted at other academics, based on this research, titled Born Globals, Networks and the Large Multinational Enterprise, which was released during the Academy of International Business conference in Bangalore.


The insights for entrepreneurs from this research include the following:

Be proactive in recognizing the opportunity to harness globalization. More than at any point in history, multinationals are genuinely interested to engage with start-ups. It wasn’t always like this. When I started my research in 2002 I could barely find any multinational with a structured partnering program targeted at young companies at home or abroad. This changed over the next few years as multinationals recognized that they could not be self-sufficient in generating novel ideas, and that start-ups were great at doing this. Today many multinationals offer a range of start-up engagement mechanisms from mass partner programs to selective incubators.

Be discerning in order to leverage the right opportunity. Just because an opportunity exists does not mean that it is guaranteed to work out. Entrepreneurs have to be discerning in how they engage with multinationals. In one sense, discernment in this context entails figuring out which partner is most appropriate to its strategic intent. Another facet is ensuring that its interests are protected, which may call for clever cooptation of local allies (e.g. mentors from respected incubators or VC firms). Yet another aspect of this is learning as much about the partner as possible to have a realistic understanding of what is and isn’t likely to be feasible.

Be reflective to learn from, and become better at dancing with, gorillas. Gorillas i.e. large multinationals can be an effective source of new business opportunities and revenues – but typically there are limits to how helpful they can be in this way. In the long term, new ventures will accrue important benefits if they adopt a learning mindset and seek to learn new capabilities through observation of, and joint activity with, large multinationals. Also, partnering with multinationals is a skill, and ventures can become better at this over time – if they consciously make the effort to reflect on their partnering experiences and talk to mentors periodically.

Thus partnering with multinationals involves considerable skill and effort – but the payoff can be considerable for new ventures if they can pull it off. Such start-ups harness globalization to punch above their weight. It’s a worthy goal for ventures with high aspirations in terms of innovation and internationalization

“Dancing with gorillas” – what is it?

Dancing with gorillas refers to start-ups partnering with large companies, in particular multinational corporations. I have been studying how these very different types of companies engage with each other in both the West (especially the US and UK) and East (especially China and India) for about a decade now. At the early stages of my research, I once asked the late Professor C K Prahalad what he thought about the scope for start-ups to engage with large multinationals, and his immediate response was: “Many of these small companies have no choice but to learn to dance with big gorillas”. I immediately latched on to that phrase!

Source: An interview with Dr Shameen Prashantham available here

Funding Game – The rules and the hacks via @skirani & @BKartRed

The weather in Chennai was finally getting kinder & more pleasant in tune with the time of the year, much like the funding climate which has been less testing on the entrepreneur in general. Depending on whether you ask a consumer product entrepreneur or a B2B SaaS product entrepreneur, the level of optimism could vary, but it’s optimism all around.

As a pre-event runup to SaaSx2, we met at Freshdesk’s office in Chennai, for the Roundtable on “What it takes to fund a SaaS company?”.

Shekhar Kirani from Accel and Karthik Reddy from Blume, joined by Girish Mathrubootham from Freshdesk, anchored the conversations.

IMG_1198

Shekhar and Karthik started the round table, with some pretty interesting nuances about what numbers ought to add up, for their investment to make the returns they promised to their limited partners. The conversation touched upon what it takes to get funded at the early stages (upto Series A) and what it takes to be on that path, beyond Series A. Girish chipped in with personal examples of how Freshdesk got funded and his first-hand insight into looking at early stage startups that get funded (or not)!

Here are some bite-sized insights from the conversation that lasted for 3 hours:

On the options for the entrepreneur

  1. Indian B2B entrepreneurs have bootstrapped their startups remarkably well that it’s not an exception. If you are a B2B entrepreneur bootstrap or do more with less. Wait for the right strategic opportunity to scale. With numbers backing you up, raise for growth.

2015-10-07 11.12.22On what drives investors’ decisions

  1. Don’t get discouraged with ‘No’ from a partner of a VC firm. They have their biases and baggages. It’s the partner who has a view and not the firm. Find your champion.
  2. Most investors don’t like it if the outcome has a cap to it — there’s a maximum that you can do in the market and that sets a pretty hard ceiling to crack. In such cases, you’ve to out-execute everyone else and that’s a hard ploy and makes less exciting for the investor. Example: Would you start another CRM company now and if so why would you do what the rest of the 1600 have not done. Even if you execute well, what market share can you capture?
  3. VC firms pitch to Limited Partners (wealthy individuals, family offices, pension funds etc.) more than startups do to investors. They’ve the same issue of having to convince an LP that a certain startup that’s pre-revenue will get an exit worth $100M in 7 years. To do that in India, when there was no such exit till recently, made it even less credible.
  4. Most funds last for 10 years. 3 years to invest and 7 years to grow and nurture those investments towards exit events.
  5. Among the top quartile or decile of startups in a portfolio, one company returns the entire fund. Top 5 companies return 90% of the capital.
  6. Each startup has to be a prospect for a $500M exit, for the fund to meet its “Return on Capital Employed” goals.

On what investors look for in a startup?

  1. In a SaaS startup, front loaded costs are high. So your first two rounds are not about revenue or profitability but more about Product-Market fit and elimination of business model risks.
  2. Integrity, smartness and hard working ethics of the team are important but not sufficient. There has to be a potential for $500M exit for that startup for investors’ math to work. Anything less is already a sub-par outcome.
  3. It’s the job of the entrepreneur to make the VC look and realize how big the market is. They see a 1000 pitches a month and carry stereotypes. Help them make the context switch.
  4. Integrity cannot be stressed enough — Questions about India’s professional ethics do come up.). Indian LPs too find it hard to fathom that it’s possible to legally generate a 25x outcome from a startup, given where they come from and what they’ve seen.

2015-10-07 11.12.37On how to negotiate investment terms

  1. Clauses are there to protect the downsides for an investor. If you understand why they are there it’s easy to have a conversation around them.
  2. Most dissonance that an entrepreneur feels is because s/he does not understand the responsibilities the investor has to his/her fund and their LPs.
  3. Clauses such as liquidation preferences are there to protect the downside of the investments. So long as you cover the down-sides as an entrepreneur, your negotiation leverage for not carrying over these clauses to subsequent rounds is high — Don’t get it yet? Ask entrepreneurs who’ve raised several rounds, on how to negotiate.
  4. Drag along clause is there so that an investor can get the fund its returns as the fund comes to the end of life. If that goal conflicts with your startup’s, look for funds that are early in their life, to take money from and thereby give yourself a better runway.
  5. Everything is negotiable if your numbers are good. All downside protections kick in only during the bad times. So the best way to stay on top of the negotiations is to execute well.

Contributed by Ashwin Ramasamy, ContractIQ

The #PNgrowth Series 1 – The @Vidooly Secret to Scale

When we as a ecosystem try to help our entrepreneurs, we make the mistake of always focussing on the mistakes others have made, and trying to steer away from those. This is evident even from the stuff we write on blogs and platforms with the purpose of helping others. The things ‘not to do’ always take a upper hand over things ‘to do’.

Maybe it’s time we step away from that.

In this new blog Series from #PNgrowth, we are going the other way. Starting today, we are going to publish a series of posts on what we call the #OneThing. Our best product people will be asked a simple question – what is the one thing that worked best for you when you were trying to scale your company? These answers will be insightful partly as success stories and partly as guides for other startups who find themselves in a similar situation. In the first blog of the series, we talk to Subrat Kar, the CEO of Noida based Vidooly, the video analytics tool that has just secured its first round of funding, and is on its way to becoming an Indian startup success story.

Subrat Kar, CEO of Vidooly

Vidooly has been one of this year’s poster boys for the Indian startup community. The product is awesome, the market is growing, and the opportunities are endless. The team is completely homegrown, and for a company that’s growing and making waves, has a founding team that lets their work do the talking. There’s no gimmickry and absolutely no noise, except about the product they are making.

When I talked to Subrat, he was travelling back to his home state of West Bengal, and I asked him the question point blank, because I wanted to know the first thing that popped into his head.

#TheOneThing

His answer was quick too – “That blog we wrote.”

On further investigation, this turned out to be a post on the Vidooly blog, published in October last year called ‘How to maximise your YouTube views organically’. Subrat said that though at that time, this wasn’t a marketing move at all on their part, the reader interest and viral lift they got out of that post made them believe in the power of content marketing. “We don’t spend any money at all,” he says, “Our marketing is purely content.” This is incredible for a new entrant like Vidooly, and Subrat acknowledges it.

Vidooly“This is the one thing that helped us grow”, he says, “The confidence that initial number of readers and commenters told us that we were on to something. And we built on it. We didn’t do anything to actually make it go viral, so maybe there was an element of luck involved. But it convinced us that if we gave out good information, there were people hungry enough for it who would become our customers.”

About #PNgrowth

PNgrowth is ayear long mentorship program with some of India’s top product people and founders, with learning sessions and curriculum prepared in collaboration with the universities of Stanford, Harvard and Duke. Content marketing will be one of the major areas being covered, as will all the other points our #PNgrowth series will highlight. Nominate your Startup here (Apply before 15th November)

 

Product Company OR Services Company?

My name is Rajan Chandi, a technologist who likes to build software products, experiment and have fun. I was particularly fascinated by Google, Facebook and Tech Innovation. The reason why I quit my job was to be able to explore tech entrepreneurship and build awesome things.

It has been a great ride building, launching and monetizing 3 software products to various degrees with small teams and limited resources. I am using this blog­post as a medium to express my personal views on whether a company is a product company or a services company.

The Reason for Existence

If someone who has started to create a ‘search engine’ while doing their PhDs or someone who is building a social network to extract personal information of Harvard students, they are starting­off as a product built to serve a purpose of its users. Google renders ‘web search’ as a service to its users or Facebook renders ‘social relationship management’ as a service to it’s users. Even Evernote advertises itself as a ‘Note Taking Service’ but they’re all products built to serve a particular purpose. If a company is starting off with a great product to serve a large market, they’re definitely a ‘Products Company’.

Important factors that set apart a product company from their service company counterparts:

  • In case of product companies, they EXIST because their product exists.
  • In case of services companies (trying to build a product), they exist DESPITE the existence of their product.
  • If people care about a company because of it’s product, it’s a product company. (e.g. Ola or UberApps or Flipkart/Amazon app/site).
  • If people love a company primarily because of it’s customization/support, it’s a services company.
  • If a company’s business model can scale without adding a proportionate amount of people to its payroll, its a product company.

Automated Recurring Source of Revenue

How the company makes money? is an important question. The answer tells us a lot about what their users value, what ‘sells’, how does it sell, how can they make more etc. If a company is making most of it’s money because of their awesome product then they’re definitely a Products Company. e.g. Ola Cabs came off as an App while Meru Cabs was still popular in Bangalore. Meru cabs had an army of cabs, trained drivers and all the booking/communication apparatus.

How did Ola manage to exist?

They came up with an app that connects customers with existing drivers, leverages their cabs and manages to do a transaction with minimal human intervention. They may be known as a ‘Cab Hailing Service’ but they’re definitely a product company because they generate revenue due to existence of their product. People care about them because their app works and their prices are competitive!

Product Division: Profit Center or Cost Center?

There are a number of companies with IT/Products departments to serve the ‘business’. It you need an IT division mostly to serve the business, you’re probably tilting towards a services company. If you have an IT/Products department to serve (directly) either consumers or customers, you’re tilting towards being a product company. If allocating more money in tech/product/design division of the company will boost sales, you’re clearly a products company.

If allocating more money to product/tech/design will NOT boost you sales or grow the number of customers, you’re probably a ‘services’ company losing money in the ‘Product’. If you’re investing into a product with clear growth goals, you’re likely to be a product company.

‘What’ do they do it? ‘How’ do they deliver or render their service?

Every company has to sell something to be able to exist. ‘What’ they sell is important but ‘How’ do they ‘do it’ is far more important. For example, Google sells ‘Web Search’ as a service to people, it works. They’re a product company because of the ‘How’. They do it by building a high­tech product which indexes the web and makes the information available to users.

There exist a number of ‘Market Research’ companies. They also search things for you and put together a report. They do something similar to Google in the ‘What’ division by providing you information that you requested but they’re very different in ‘How’ division. Market research company has to put manual effort behind every ‘research’ they do which is far­less scalable model because they’ve no product to do it.

If a company offers a specific (non­democratized) offering which others find it impossible (or very hard) to offer at that price­point, it’s a product company.

The Solutions Company

There’s a thin­line when it comes to selling a product+customization in case of software products. Let’s call it “solutions company” which offers software solutions of specific problems which are customized as per customer’s needs. Automating these solutions (to a SAAS) will convert these companies into a Product company. Extreme customization necessity will turn these companies into services companies.

The Extremes of Automation

The key theme with all product company is existence of a great product which is hard to be replaced by off­the­market solutions. As a personal example, my last start­up Classmint.com operates today without putting more than 4 hours of my time on a monthly basis. It still has 30,000 monthly active users and around 500­1000 study notes are created on a daily basis. Classmint exist because the product (website) exists and does it’s job of providing a tool to create the best study notes online. If a system is built and is useful (offers a service), it’s clearly a product company. If you’re building a company, think about amount of automation that will exist.

The Litmus Test

Quick way to classify a company is to ask a question: Will this company still exist if we take down their product or replace it with commodity software? If the answer is a clear yes, It’s a services company. Otherwise, it’s a product company with their product as a differentiator.

Special Thanks to Amar, Sharad and Ravi. Amar Prabhu contributed to this article by editing it. Sharad Sharma and Ravi Trivedi contributed to this article by reviewing it.

India Innovation Session with Jeff Immelt, CEO, GE

GE

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

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

Team IndusTeamIndus

Infrastructure for NextGen Apps

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

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

Nimble WirelessNimble

Cold Chain Monitoring

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

SavariSavari

V2X: Connecting Vehicles to Everything

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

Julia ComputingJulia

An Open Platform for Brilliant Machines

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

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

LogistimoLogistimo

Open-source supply chain

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

India StackiSPIRT

Impact on Service Delivery

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

 

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

A perspective on Entrepreneurial Independence

‪To me, entrepreneurship‬ is a dynamic manifestation of creating connected values with compassion; so I focus on creating connected values without worrying for my funding orientation.

When I started, after coming out of Sun Microsystems, I was not thinking about money as I was able to get some money by helping people who were using the product that I built at Sun. I did not know what it takes to build a company and more so, what it takes to build it in a constrained environment. In the meantime, I developed a passion for the bootstrapping model for building company. I created a community around it called “Bootstrap Bangalore”, it’s been 3 years we have been meeting every other Sunday at breakfast.

Later on, I was introduced to another powerful tool called “effectuation”. I attended a workshop conducted by Professor Saras Saraswathi. The effectuation principles are simple and empowers bootstrapped companies more meaningfully. This has become a language for me to express my business model. The effectual principles help an aspiring entrepreneur to bootstrap quickly. It also makes it easy to navigate the future, which is unknown.

Fear is a constraint, and at times, courage can become a constraint as well. Starting with what was available to me when I begun (and acting on it), has given me amazing new possibilities. Understanding my affordable loss allows me to be courageous or passive, as the situations demand. As a result, I don’t have the fear of  failing; and if I do fail, I will be able to reassemble myself since the cost of failure is affordable.   

Predicting the future is unnecessary. The future can be created or co-created without predicting it, if we have the ability to embrace surprises and adjust to a  new situation. Sometimes, external funding could become a constraint for the entrepreneurs, and force them to predict and gamble in an unnatural manner, without an affordable framework in place.

Unnecessary courage and prediction without commitment does not enable freedom. When taking external funds, one should look deep to see whether the investor has the appetite or commitment to co-create the future, and therefore expanding affordable loss bracket. I don’t believe in a wave on my back, that’s just a feel good factor. I hate to go after an artificially created market without the commitment from the consumers. When customers don’t know what they want, they go slow and iterate to identify what they may need.

Taking external money eventually turns out to be expensive for any entrepreneur. If you can build and scale a company on revenue, there is nothing more satisfying than that; but in the same time if you must need to increase your affordable loss bracket, you can take external funds to scale up. Don’t take money simply because your competitor is raising money. On the contrary, external money does not necessary mean you are loosing freedom, but if you take the money when you don’t need it, you will eventually compromise on your freedom.

As we talk, about models and funding orientations, I would also like to quickly touch another important subject. Sales is one of the most critical challenges for any entrepreneur, and especially the bootstrapped ones. I was very fortunate to interact with sales gurus like Deepak Prakash (Former VP Tally), who helped me to understand yet another simple thing – don’t sell; demonstrate what you have or what you can do; if you are solving someone’s problem they will buy. And that has worked for us.

Finally, the best way to build a business without depending on external money is to seek commitment from the customers –  sell it before you build it. Be open, and allow others to help you in co-creating a company/product. Collaborate to create connected values. Again follow the first principle of effectuation, do what you can do now, without depending on others, look for participation from there on. Freedom is in your hand and it’s up to you make that choice.

Enjoy the freedom of creating value, that can bring impact and meaningful change.

Hope you had a wonderful Independence Day!! Let’s celebrate the freedom throughout the year and reimagine a “Start-Up India”, “Stand-Up India”. Jai Hind !!

By Ahimanikya Satapathy, assisted by my daughter, Adya Satapathy 🙂

Promote innovation and entrepreneurship to achieve sustainable economic growth

We are at a profound moment in India’s history. We have a young and energetic workforce, a robust macroeconomy and a strong leadership at the Centre. This is our chance to power India forward. A key aspect for achieving sustainable economic growth and providing jobs to our youth is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to do more to enable our young people to think creatively, create innovative solutions, and take them to market and achieve global scale.

The government is committed to creating a supportive environment for innovators and entrepreneurs. Major initiatives such as smart cities, direct benefits transfer and ‘Digital India’ will create a large, domestic market for innovative products and services. Additionally, streamlined policies, new infrastructure and an overall thrust on fast-tracking innovative ideas through public, private and public-private initiatives will see more innovations hitting the market.

Indians are known for their ingenuity. Our creative thinking, when applied to problem-solving using meagre and locally available resources, Jugaad, is universally recognised.

The number of innovations highlighted by the National Innovation Foundation are an eye-opener to the innovative thinking that Indians bring to play while solving problems. Anumber of these innovations are centred on addressing issues in rural India, which can tremendously impact our economy and society.

Over 750 MNCs have their R&D centres in India. Many of these are creating products and solutions for global markets. India is where the zero, cataract and plastic surgery, high quality crucible steel, buttons, ink, and rulers were invented. So, despite such a rich history, why is India today not Innovation Nation?

Our innovations have largely been about affordability and designing solutions for local problems by making incremental changes in existing products and solutions. We have focused on process and price, not enough on product innovation. Examples of innovation abound: cheaper and faster drug discoveries; faster and better ways of creating software to make air travel safer; modifying existing farm tractors as a rural transportation solution; lowering telecom prices; organising over 3.6 million small milk producers in a cooperative movement and creating a global dairy brand; fighting hunger and malnutrition by using technology and forging strategic partnerships; Mumbai’s ‘dabbawalas’ delivering lakhs of meals to people with a home-grown, un-automated process with precision; and more.

But this innovation is often not apparent to the world, because it is usually localised and not scaled up. We need to encourage innovators to scale up their solutions to global levels, particularly in the developed world. The government’s new policies and programmes are designed to make it easier for innovators to find larger markets for their solutions and products.

Today, we need a two-pronged approach: one, encouraging and enabling more product innovation; two, facilitating innovators to scale up their solutions for commercial success or social good. To that end, we require a grassroots-driven movement that will celebrate and inspire entrepreneurship.

Many ecosystem players, such as the Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable (iSPIRT), the Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi), the department of science and technology (DST), the tech startup accelerator TLabs, the Indian Institute of Science, the 10,000 Startups initiative of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), Paytm, Practo and the Anita Borg Institute, are coming together in Bengaluru on August 22 at Innofest to jumpstart this process.

In tandem with the just-announced ‘Start Up India, Stand up India’, the India Aspiration Fund and the Atal Innovation Mission are encouraging startups like never before.

Guest Post by Sh. Jayant Sinha, Union minister of State for Finance. This article was first published in ET

What I got from the pre-entrepreneur bootcamp called iKEN.

I started this journey with a jolt this January, when I got laid off from my job as a Manager at a big MNC. In the notice period, they did offer me many other roles, one of which got finalized and was about to accept, but something in me kept telling me to use this opportunity to fulfill the startup dream that I was dreaming for a long  time.

First there is a bit of flashback. I came from humble background and during final  stages of engineering had to sustain myself and to get enough money to come to Bangalore. It is during those days I got hold of telephone coin box ads and became a reseller of them in the remote region of Karnataka. Within few months I made enough money to get through engineering and landed up in Bangalore. While the journey in software industry has been great and it provided me a huge exposure, I have often wondered what would have happened, if I had pursued the coin box business. That is the reason; I never brought EMI obligations on myself and kept myself relatively free to startup.

So I quickly connected with a friend with whom I shared a common passion of fitness. Started working on a software product (SaaS) idea for gyms. Our plan was to spend a year building the product and see where it goes. So in a way not a great plan. That is when I heard about the pre-entrepreneur bootcamp called iKEN from iSPIRT and duly signed up.

In the hindsight it was one of the best decisions I took. The program itself was great, I learned a lot, but I was struggling in the class and didn’t/couldn’t complete many tasks specially ones focusing on the customer specs  and asks. Meanwhile things unraveled with my co-founder as well and I realized  that he isn’t ready to quit the job and we parted ways in a civil way. With things  back to square one I started thinking very hard about the whole thing. Everyone in  the batch from anchors (Prasanna, Rajan and Manjula) to fellow batch mates was trying to get me back on the trail.

Finally a hard, blunt discussion with Milindh a fellow batch-mate who asked me really hard questions made me wake up and I started applying the fundamentals that the boot camp tries to focus on.

First one was “What I know, who I know what I have”. I realized building software product with high-end technology is not my strong point and my biggest skill is selling things to folks. My telephone coin box experience was a good memory and  data point for this.

Second was the “bird in the hand principle”. I realized that while the gym software is a viable product, I didn’t really have the money until the product is ready which  could take months and will burn lot of money without a technology person on  board. My “affordable loss” at this time was only the opportunity cost and not  anything more.

So at around 9th week of the program (it is a 10 week program and I didn’t graduate), I simply decided to drop the idea and went back to the drawing board. I realized one of the problems that I was constantly facing was getting a water can delivered to home. There are just too many delays and multiple folks to call to get it  delivered. Most were unorganized and tracking them was very hard. I realized I  could potentially make this process simple smooth and efficient. What’s more? This could be a cash generating business very quickly.

Armed with this theory, I literally hit the road on my two-wheeler, chased down the water delivery guys, met factory folks and many corporates. It was an immense and  exhausting field research but the amount of real data I had convinced me that I am  on the right path, so I sat down and set up a website (www.bookacan.com) and started delivering to my first few customers. There is huge “co-creation” happening  with delivery guys and factories. I am happy to announce I have a steady business  now and lot of new things in the plan.

While I understand it is a long journey before I call it a success, I am happy that I  reached the clarity needed and am up and running. Please check my project at www.bookacan.com and drop me a line if you are interested in collaborating and co-creating.

Contributed by Prabhu Stavarmath, BookACan

Customer Purchasing Insights for School Management Software

SoftwareSuggest is India’s largest software discovery & recommendation platform. We provide free consultation on software, and help SMEs them select the right software. As a part of our business, we collect customer requirements, which when analysed can serve the industry with deep insights.

Keeping the same in context, we are introducing SoftwareSuggest insights. In our first research, we have profiled the school management software industry and have answered the following questions based on our data.

  • What features buyers look for in school software?
  • What is the budget of school management software buyers?
  • Preferable type of software- web based VS the installation based?
  • Geographical spread of school management software buyer?
  • Who is the decision maker?
  • Spread of software purchases over the year?

What were the features customers looked at while purchasing the school management software?

There are several important factors which prospective buyers investigate for a smart school management software decision. Here are some of the top factors considered while purchasing school management software-

main

First Time Buyers Vs Customer Upgrading their Software

20% of the customers were existing users and were looking for an upgrade. We found following reasons for upgrading the software

  • Customers were not satisfied with the service from smaller players and wanted to move to software companies focused on school management software
  • Their software did not have the latest features, and wanted to move to complete ERP system,

80% of the customers were the first generation buyers looking to solve a long-standing problem with new technology.

new vs existing customer

Web Based VS Installation Based Software

Currently, there are more installation based users then web based. For new purchased, we found 59% were indifferent between web based or installation software, whereas 11% of users wanted to go with SaaS based software and 20% with installation based software. Here is an infographic to help you select the right the right school management software.

typeofsoftware

What is the budget ?

Schools and Institutes who go with installation based software look at spending between Rs 10,000 to Rs 2,00,000 . Majority of buyers (60%) preferred the budget upto Rs 50,000.installation busget2

For the SaaS, budget flows from Rs 7/student/month to Rs 15 student/month. Buyer’s found SaaS as cost efficient and user friendly. Majority of SaaS based users – 42% prefer the budget upto Rs.7/Student/Month.Web based budget2

Size of School in terms of number of students

Largest group of software buyer where school with around 1000 students. They formed 32% of the requirements we received. The table shows the strength of school in terms of students that came looking for school software.

Number of students Software buyers (%)
Below 200 12
200 – 500 27
500 – 1000 32
1000 – 2000 16
2000 – 5000 9
5000 + 4

Software Buyer’s Geographical Spread:

Maharashtra is the state with maximum number of buyers (12%) for school software management software. The other stages with higher number of software buyer were Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan.

software buyers2

Do Seasonal time affect?

The answer is yes, it does effect. The software sales are around the time of admissions. Eventually it decreases during midterms and then starts increasing during final terms.

Sales closure seasonal

As we know school admissions generally takes place from June & July but for the sake of better precautions school do buy the software from earlier stage i.e. from the end terms (March). You can see the highest purchase rate of buying school management software in March. Also the sales goes down around October.

Who’s shopping for School Management Software?

We found mainly three types of people who are generally involved in taking the decision to purchase the School Management Software- Management, Principals and IT In charge or administrators.

softwareusercategory3The report has been generated from the data collected by my team, do write us comments or email us with suggestions on the report.

Find the list of top school management software with software demo video, comparison reports, screenshots, features and many more available to help you select the right software.

 

Enterprise Software Products – Big Clients, Big Opportunity

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of investment activity in the B2B Technology product space. One can broadly classify B2B Tech into two categories based on the size of the end clients, and the delivery model (on-premise or Cloud).

End Customer      Mid-Large Enterprises      SMEs
Typical Delivery Model      On Premise      SaaS

Most of the recent investment activity in the B2B Tech space has primarily been in “SaaS”. This is because SaaS products are relatively easier to scale globally as against Enterprise Software products. Some of the drivers for this are as follows:

  Enterprise Software SaaS
New Customer Acquisition (High Cost) Sales Team Driven Digital Marketing (backed by Inside Sales)
Sales Cycles 3 months – 9 months 2 weeks – 1 month
Enterprise “Buyer” Multiple business heads & CIO, CEO / Board Single Business Head (directly impacted)
Integrations & Customizations Needs “Services” Primarily DIY
Recurring Revenue % Low – Typically just the AMC (10%-20%) (not counting the “upselling”) High – Periodic subscription based

That being said, we see a huge opportunity for Indian Enterprise Software product companies. The “edge” such companies have over typical SaaS companies are as follows:

  • Only a handful of global players are fighting it out for the larger clients. For example, in case of Enterprise CRM, the primary competition is from Oracle Siebel, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce (for large enterprises that are comfortable with SaaS), and SAP. In case of Contact Center Software, it is from Avaya, Cisco, Aspect & Genesys. In contrast, for most SaaS products, the vendor market is quite cluttered since the barriers to entry (and exit) are much lesser for SaaS products.
  • Incumbents in Enterprise Software are large (and relatively slow moving) firms with “legacy” products. Large enterprises have seen lesser innovation as compared to SMEs – immense opportunity to be nimble-footed and have a more contemporary product platform for the younger product companies in this space.
  • Enterprise Software platforms are typically more comprehensive and feature-rich, whereas SaaS offerings are relatively more of “point” solutions.
  • As a result, an Enterprise Software vendor has greater opportunities to expand and penetrate into adjacent add-on offerings, with great ease.
  • Higher customer stability – typically much lesser churn, since the integrations and customizations are an ‘investment’ and provide stickiness to the vendor.
  • India is a great place to start. Getting large Indian enterprises as customers and then expanding overseas (to other developing regions like South East Asia, Middle East and Africa) is a trend we keep seeing.
  • While in developed markets, even large enterprises have adopted the Cloud infrastructure and software as integral to their businesses; in India the mid-to-large enterprises are still in the early-cycle of Cloud adoption.

So if you are an Enterprise Software company, and are looking to raise funding, what are some key aspects from a VC fund raising perspective? Here are a few that we at Zanskar Advisors have learnt from our past engagements:

  • Revenue Scale already achieved: The bars seem to be higher for Enterprise Software companies as compared to SaaS. For e.g. an Enterprise Software firm would need to have approximately $ 5 mm of revenue to attract similar amount of funding (for similar dilution) as a SaaS product firm can attract with say $ 2 mm (that too on an annualized run-rate basis).
  • Established Partnerships (especially for overseas customer acquisition / servicing): As the “expansion” would be primarily coming from overseas, some instances of selling to overseas customers (preferably through channel partners – as direct sales are less scalable) will help.
  • Instances of displacing established incumbents (large product companies) at key accounts (for reasons other than just the cost).
  • Revenue Trends
    • % of Product Revenue (License + AMC) as against Services revenue (upward trend is favorable)
    • % Revenue from top x (say 5) clients (downward trend is favorable)
    • % Revenue through Partners (upward trend is favorable)
    • Average Revenue per Customer (an indicator of “upselling” – could be in terms of no. of users or no. of modules – upward trend is favorable)
  • Global Recognition (from the likes of Gartner, Forrester etc.) is a plus

We strongly believe that a new wave of Enterprise Software product companies from India is going to take on the world – in line with the thesis of “Make in India” (and sell globally).

Guest Post contributed by Mandar Kulkarni, Zanskar Advisors

Small Businesses Ascending the Digital Path

# DigitalDesh spanned across 22 cities in 30 days to discover The Internet of Inside India.

Amritsar to Kanyakumari

An endeavor to study the behavioral patterns of entrepreneurs across different regions. To understand their digital business routines, their perceptions, the challenges and their desire to venture into new terrain. An important part of the activity was also to encourage & spread awareness to build a strong digital footprint online.

The journey of #DigitalDesh began from Amritsar and it was only apt that it got its initiation by meeting Jagdeep whose infectious energy highlighted the passion of a business savvy person. A lively man, who was excited to show his smartphone and share his social networking habits that he indulged in to do business with his customers.

Infact Whatsapp was largely used as a business tool because of its ease of use and the popularity by the word of mouth. The cool quotient too.

Local business owners found it easy to share pictures with their IMG_1512customers, samples of new designs by textile owners to or be it the owner in Amritsar who sells religious items to his customers in foreign. A shop keeper who sells cosmetics to the local college students used it to share the new goods/purses that were sold in his showroom.

The most interesting use I found of it was when the fisheries in Karwar used it to overcome language barriers and sharing the pics of fishes which is known by different names in different parts of India and across the world. Although the order was still placed on phone, the pictures were shared over whatsapp.

More savvy business owners have started using facebook pages but it was limited in numbers and even few that were looking to go the app route.

Yes many of the business owners are learning different ways of transactions, although not many of them are familiar with payment gateways, they do use online banking systems and learning to use payment wallets. Education on these will be helpful.

Email Ids – were largely used to place orders and when outlets/franchises are using to interact with their head-office. Although these are not professional ids, most of the time the personal id served both the professional and personal use. Website were still being designed by a trusted source and were given the impression that it takes a really long time to do so. Many were surprised to know about certain tools that would help them set it up in a matter of few minutes.

And yes smartphones do rule in tier 2 & tier 3 cities of India 🙂

One of the key things that I learnt as part of this drive is the need for education on the availability of tools.. lots more to be done in this area. Best part they are hungry to learn and the willingness to grow.

What is a good sales target for a sales person in SaaS in India?

Unfortunately there is no fixed answer. Problem with SaaS is that there are too many moving variables. LTV,Churn,ARR,ARPU etc. So its really hard to come up with one fixed number. So based on our experience and our product the following is a number we have come up with to set targets for our sales organization.

0.8x(x is the sales person’s salary)

So, a sales person should pull in 0.8x worth of MRR every month. Or 9.6x worth of annual contract values every month. This is the number from which they start getting incentives.So for example a sales rep getting around 18 lakhs salary should pull in around Rs.1,20,000 MRR every month. If he pulls in 30,000 MRR(0.2X) he will be just covering his base salary. If he pulls in 75,000(0.5X) he will be covering the organization costs. And only if he pulls in anything above that will the company move towards profitability. And only when the company is profitable will the sales get an incentive.

Obviously there are a lot of assumptions made to arrive at this number. We are assuming the LTV to be around a year and churn is also very low. You can find a spreadsheet with some numbers here. You can modify the variables to fit for your organization.Just open SaaS Sales Targets and play around with the values to see the numbers. You can also download it and modify it as you see fit.

Since we started a sales organization a couple of years ago we have been experimenting with different variables and this is a good rule of thumb to follow for setting sales targets. Please comment on what your experience has been. Is our model too tough on sales guys or too easy. Hopefully we can all come out with a comprehensive model for sales in SaaS in India.