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

13/10/201515/03/2017

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.

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

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.

On what drives investors’ decisions

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.
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?
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.
Most funds last for 10 years. 3 years to invest and 7 years to grow and nurture those investments towards exit events.
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.
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?

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.
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.
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.
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.

On how to negotiate investment terms

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.
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.
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.
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.
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

04/10/201504/10/2015

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.

“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)

28/09/201528/09/2015

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.

25/09/201514/01/2016

India Innovation Session with Jeff Immelt, CEO, 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 Indus

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 Wireless

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.

Savari

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 Computing

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.

Logistimo

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 Stack

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.

26/08/201525/08/2015

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 🙂

21/08/201524/08/2015

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

12/08/201512/08/2015

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

31/07/201501/08/2015

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-

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The 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.

17/07/201515/03/2017

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

01/07/201501/07/2015

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 customers, 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.

26/06/201515/03/2017

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.

19/06/201519/06/2015

Top 10 Expectations from Digital Banking Users

Digital banking has caught the fancy of every bank in the world, from small to large. Digital, which assumes internet connectivity, allows customers to avail of banking services anytime, anywhere from their digital devices. Digital devices include laptops, tablets, mobile phones, ATM, Kiosks and may be even large touchscreens. Every time a customer or a prospect is interacting with a digital device and learning more about a bank or transacting with a bank, the bank is providing an experience (even if the bank knows it or not). Whether that experience is making it easy for the customer to remember, come back, start a process, complete a process, ask for support, recommend to a friend etc. is what defines the essence of digital experience.

In other words, digital banking experience is a series of interactions a customer has on his/her digital device. Most of us would pay attention to the “series of interactions” and forget about the “customer” part. We need to look at the experience from a customer’s perspective. What’s missing in most of the digital banking experiences is the emotional aspect. We don’t need to run a Yash Raj Films musical score in the background while banking. But, are we able to empathize with our customers in a way that we can capture their intent logically and emotionally and solve it so that they can be both successful and happy after the interaction?

Why is this important? There is a huge realization that if banks don’t get their digital banking strategy and execution right, their customers might leave them for another bank that does get it right. Banks have realized that digital is a fundamental new challenge for them. It is also a huge opportunity to re-imagine customer experience. So, what does a digital banking user want or expect the bank to provide? There are many things, but we need to remember, everyone in this world has a relationship with money. And they need help to manage that relationship so as to maximize their wealth. Digital makes that possible like never before.

But, are banks ready? It all depends on how well we know our users. So, here are top 10 things a digital banking user expects based on my observations. Some of the examples and jargons used like NEFT are familiar in the Indian context. But, the principles remain the same for any global bank.

#1 Digital user has a goal to accomplish. Digital banking is pretty convenient in terms of time and effort. It beats driving to the bank and standing in line any day (nothing personal). To provide the best customer experience online, we need to know why is the user visiting the web site or mobile app? Do they want to transact, as in check balance or transfer funds or do they want to shop for loans and fixed deposits? It’s very easy to find out depending on what they choose to click (or touch). Unfortunately, there is a lot of information thrown at the user. This causes cognitive overload and the unintended effect is that the user will learn how to ignore everything except a sequence of clicks built into muscle memory to get their jobs done. So, are we helping the user get their jobs done or are we throwing hurdles along the way? Next time you login, count the number of horizontal scrolls, vertical scrolls, flashing news, ads, popups and extra pages you see on the way to checking your balance! To get this right, we need to provide relevant information based on customer intelligence. For this to happen, we need to begin with really understanding the users.

This requires deep capabilities in product management and a product mindset.

Yes, the hidden question is, so how do we market our billion other products now that we have the attention of the customer? Agreed, the website is a great channel to market new products, but we need to first focus on making the customer successful in their intended jobs.

#2 Digital user expects anytime, anywhere, anywho service. This is a very basic expectation from internet services. The beauty of digital bank is that it’s always there with the customer wherever they go and whatever the time or day of the week is. So, for example, instead of saying NEFT option of funds transfer is not possible now (after entering all the details) since its beyond office hours, how about providing the user with a workable set of options based on the time of login, from the moment they choose to transfer funds?

It was funny to find out that NEFT (before RTGS came along) couldn’t batch my requests to transfer funds beyond office hours. I recently found out NEFT and RTGS are platforms that are government owned and operated. Commercial core banking system vendors can only do with what is possible. So, the interesting bit was the online fund transfers are timed for clearance at the same time as the manual cheques! Internet runs 24×7. Think Flipkart or Google.

There are times when the user wants to communicate with the bank via their preferred option of email, facebook or twitter. It is not important who they communicate with or when but that their problem gets solved. For this to happen, banks should put in place mechanisms to create an integrated session across multiple channels of communication. Banks should also stop viewing emails, facebook or twitter as silos and have an integrated strategy in communication.

This requires deep technology platforms and robust customer data.

#3 Digital user expects banks to simplify the security process and yet keep it 100% secure. Two factor authentication is becoming the world standard for secure logins. More and more banks are deploying this measure for greater security. It is no doubt commendable that banks take our money deposited with them seriously and put strong security measures around them. Still, there are too many passwords to remember. I bet most senior citizens are writing down the passwords somewhere and reading from it. Hence, banks need to consider biometrics based logins urgently for mobile apps. Not sure if Aadhaar can verify biometrics but that’s a start for leverage.

However, there are some pretty confounding security measures followed by some banks. For example, a few banks don’t allow you to copy and paste (Ctrl-V is disabled) credit card or account numbers. In some cases, the account numbers are treated like passwords and masked. But there is another field right below that asks you to confirm the account number, which is not masked. Even OTPs are masked. I am not sure what’s the rationale behind this but isn’t it better if data doesn’t get transduced for integrity? May be someone can enlighten me behind the security use cases that demand masking every input. It will be great if banks develop a sense of graded risk tolerance. Once the user is authenticated and authorized there can be a scale down in terms of masking inputs or asking more passwords. Knowing user location can also help in grading risk tolerance. For example if the user is checking in from home it is much safer than from anywhere else outside.

A few banks want to educate the customers. Unfortunately, users have neither the time nor the inclination to read user manuals or attend workshops or watch videos just to figure out how to login! This is true for any digital service not just for banks. An eclectic mix of design and security can keep the vaults unbroken forever.

To build this capability you need to innovate rapidly or invest in a promising startup.

#4 Digital user expects that you don’t make them think. This is taking words from the title of a book by Steve Krug on how the best user experience designs don’t make the users think. This is true for even first time users. The questions in user’s minds are intuitively answered through thoughtfully designed interfaces. Getting to this point is an iterative process but this needs to be understood before growing the customer base. A very simple example is the design of choosing payees in some online banks. You are asked to remember the beneficiary id (numeric). It’s scary enough to remember your wedding anniversary. Who remembers beneficiary ids? Seriously! It’s incredibly over-engineered! I have figured out some short cuts – like for example, you can click on Search without giving any inputs and it will show you all the current payees.

Another example is interchanging the location of Change and Confirm buttons in subsequent pages in the same process flow. These are all actually hygiene factors in good design. It gets even more critical when you design mobile apps with limited real estate and shorter attention span.

Another example is NEFT, RTGS, IMPS are great technology platforms but for an average banking customer, they sound like jargons. How about showing a default (recommended option) along with other available options at the time of transaction with clear charges?

To build this capability you need a strong design organization. Banks may consider hiring a Chief Designer too!

#5 Digital user expects omnipresence. Omnipresence means being available and usable across all digital points of interaction. This is applicable for marketing channels across digital devices. A Facebook user may be looking for home loans for his/her new apartment. How can banks identify, participate in this conversation and help him/her make a decision? Are you there when the customer is looking for you? Think about rural users with feature phones. The second scenario is when the user is already a customer and needs to interact over their preferred choice of digital device. For e.g. how many users are using Windows Phone? Users would very much appreciate a consistent user experience in terms of layout, style, fonts, colors, design etc across all digital points of interaction. The third scenario is customer support when the user has a grievance and there are no easily available redressal mechanisms, the user has the power to vent on twitter letting the whole world know what a shameful service he/she is getting.

Having a presence is one thing and being effective is another thing. For example, it sounds like some banks that have twitter presence have given out a Standard Operating Procedure to their twitter reps of entrusting the responsibility of solving the customer’s problem back to the customer itself by asking them to navigate through their organizational maze. Wouldn’t it be great if these twitter issues and sentiments are also tracked and ticketed? All the bank needs to do is to link the twitter handle to the account and your twitter rep can solve the problem!

To build this omnipresence capability requires not only an integrated technology platform that bridges all silos but also an organization that is empathetic and aligned towards customers.

#6 Digital user expects “You must know me by now”. You would think that simple things like choosing “No Thanks” to downloading mobile app should be recorded but they keep showing up every single time you login! Going from fixing this to recommending the most relevant product based on my age, profession, income, savings, loans, where I live, my spend history, family information and a dozen other parameters; would be an ideal trajectory. Banks need to focus on conversions than clicks. Few and most relevant messages would be more meaningful than throwing a dozen messages and hoping for the best.

To build this capability, consider Predictive analytics and a robust customer database platform.

#7 Digital user expects that you are rethinking the WHOLE process and not just mirroring offline processes. Digitization of business processes presents a tremendous opportunity for improving efficiency. This should not be lost by simply taking the existing process with a mix of manual and semi-automated process and offering the same experience online. Digitization needs to be thought through in disruptive ways and this is certainly in the realm of several technology platforms available today. Digital needs an end-to-end perspective. For example, a few banks expect paper letters to initiate or re-initiate logins and request certain documents. It sounds like this is to ensure the person requesting is the same who owns the account but that should be obvious with a few security checks online.

To build this capability, we simply need better empathy of users that can be woven into product features and design! There may be a need to make core banking systems more open in terms of API support, but I will leave it to the experts.

#8 Digital user expects speed… and they get it! The speed of online banking is one thing that banks do get right. Speed is something that a digital user has been pampered with thanks to Google, JustDial or even online display ads served within 200 milliseconds from inMobi and the likes. Here speed should be viewed not just in terms of online site or mobile app responsiveness which is pretty good, but broadened to include overall online process duration. For example, time taken to approve a loan online or open a bank account online.

This highly engineering scalable capability is already or mostly built!

#9 Digital needs to augment hybrid experiences. Customers, retail or merchant, may need to visit a branch for various reasons. The frequency and the need may have already reduced and may further reduce. But, I think branches are not going away anytime soon. When the user visits a branch, is it possible to predict their questions given their historical pattern or an open case? How wonderful if this information was ready at the fingertips of the bank staff to satisfy the customer’s questions immediately. For example, every year around tax time, I need to make 2 visits to the branch to get a tax document. The first visit, I need to submit a written letter asking for the information and then come back the next working day. This needs to get online immediately but until then assuming regulatory procedures can this be solved in one visit? You can use the rest of the time in understanding your customer’s upcoming growth plans or life events and thereby using this opportunity to share more information about your other services (up-sell/cross-sell). This is probably the best outcome you can get out of face time!

To build this capability, bank staff needs to be equipped with customer intelligence management tools.

#10 Digital user expects you to be there for him/her. Just like personal relationship banking, digital doesn’t take away the need for the user to know a human on the other side. Adding a human relationship element in the world of bits and bytes is going to be a key differentiating factor in a bank’s success. The scope and quality of the conversation needs to be reconsidered once the basic transactional experiences are taken care of.

To build this capability, you just need good leadership!

In summary, be bold to put customer success first. WhatsApp founders were bold to say no to ads and the result is a super clean interface that is simple and powerful. In the words of Steve Jobs, Simplify, simplify, simplify and hide the complexity behind this simplification. It is not the customer’s job to understand how we work. It is our (as in the creator/service provider’s) job to understand what customers need and deliver value. To re-imagine a superior customer experience we need a holistic approach that spans business, products, design technology, analytics, marketing, support and most importantly new skill sets for the people who run and represent your banks.

What do you think?

To know more how you can go about building these capabilities and to improve customer experiences, email [email protected].

The author is the founder of Pravi Solutions, an Innovation and Marketing Consultancy enriching digital experiences!

04/06/201518/11/2015

‘I initiate therefore I am’ – Success mantra for the 21st century

If you don’t have a high degree of initiative, you don’t have much of a future in the corporate world.

17th century philosopher Rene Descartes said – ‘I think therefore I am’. With all due respect to him, I am inclined to revise this for the 21st century as – ‘I initiate therefore I am’.

For me the world is truly binary, people who take initiatives and people who don’t and that pretty much decides who survives the marathon and who doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t want to discount the value of thought because the very act of doing has its roots in a thought. However, in the modern world, taking the initiative to execute matters much more than just penning a thought on – is what needs to be done.

Before we delve deeper, let’s be clear on the definition of initiative. If you look on the net, you will find many interpretations, but for this write-up, I define initiative as not accepting status-quo and exploring ways to make things better. People who take an initiative are always working for the betterment of their own self, their family, their organization and the society at large. People who don’t are on the receiving end and perpetually complaining about the state of affairs.

If you don’t have a high degree of initiative, you don’t have much of a future in the corporate world. At the very base level, a manager expects you to take an initiative and think of possible solutions, rather than just report the problem to him.

If you are someone who has tried potential solutions, in whatever limited manner, and made an assessment on the impact, you are sure to stand out and win your manager’s trust. On the other hand, if you are very reluctant to stretch yourself and believe that you have done the needful by reporting the problem, believe me – you are the problem and your manager is better off without you. Think of it this way – the problem will anyway get reported to the manager, sooner or later…why does he need you for reporting only?

You can’t rise in the corporate hierarchy, if you haven’t demonstrated a very high level of initiative all along your career, essentially in each and every role you played. I am not saying that taking initiatives is enough to reach the corner office, you will need many more qualities, but initiative is the key ingredient here. If you are in an organization, where people are recognized more for politics played than the initiatives taken, trust me that you are falling into a pit. Neither the organization will go anywhere and nor will your career!

If you are an entrepreneur who lacks initiatives and is in the habit of procrastination, you are really a day dreamer! You can only dream of making it big because entrepreneurship, by its very nature, is all about taking initiatives at a neck breaking pace. As a founder, you are solving some industry problem which has never been solved, or even thought of before you. In the process, you are treading zillions of parallel paths, always ascertaining what works and what doesn’t work for you.

Every start-up begins with a great idea but a large majority fail. Why? Because the venture didn’t took enough initiatives to reach the sweet spot – where your product offerings, customer requirement and go-to-market converge. The founding team gets fixated with success from early adopters and gets into an execution mode, trying to do the same thing better and better hoping for repeat success. They don’t realise that the reasons for which the masses adopt a product are radically different from the reasons for which early adopters try the product. Initiatives, which should have been taken right after initial few successes to nail down the strategy for mass adoption, take a back seat.

Here’s an important observation before I close. I have seen people having a high level of initiative in the early years and then the drive tapers down. A few initiatives leading to a dead end, others which didn’t deliver as you expected and some others which were laughed at by the peers…and all this takes a toll on your motivation.You prefer to go down the beaten path now as it appears predictable and gives you that false sense of security.

But that’s exactly what it is – false.

I am a staunch believer – Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“There comes a moment when you have to stop revving up the car and shove it into gear.” — David Mahoney

Guest Post by Suresh Kabra, a leadership and business development professional with a proven track record in driving new initiatives. Kabra is a technopreneur and a MIT- Sloan and BITS Pilani alumni. He has a patent on flexible display design.

25/05/201525/05/2015

Leadership Attitude

In this cutthroat and competitive business environment it has become imperative for both new and established organizations to be on top of their game. Staying constantly in top form and delivering results requires the organization to have people in the management with strong leadership skills. These people are even more important for companies that are yet to make their mark in the market.

As part of our initiative to support the growth of start-ups and encourage them in their endeavours, we had recently conducted a roundtable on Leadership Attitude – to understand and discuss what makes a good leader – one that people would willingly follow?

In response, our team came up with the following attitudes of a leader – that all those aspiring to lead must imbibe and also pass on to their teams to ensure that their venture is successful.

Know your worth – All successful people have a healthy self esteem and know what they are worth. They neither take nor behave in an unacceptable manner with anyone. Amongst all, this quality that gives rise to self belief and confidence in one’s ability is the most important one.

A to-do list – To make sure that their day is productive, leaders plan to do the most important work in the first two hours of the day i.e. they apply the Pareto principle – which suggests that one must give importance to the 20% of the tasks that generate 80% of the results.

Clear work schedule and follow up – Leaders have a well prepared work schedule for all the tasks that they want to achieve, they set clear deadlines for these tasks and regularly follow up on it – approximately in four to six weeks.

Compulsory savings – Savings come in handy during those rainy days or ‘periods of recession’ and are important both for individuals and organizations. Successful people ensure that they compulsorily save at least 10% of their income every month.

Develop intuition – Successful leaders not only use the data and information available to them but also their intuition – gut feeling, to make decisions. According to the book blink – by Malcolm Gladwell, which is about rapid cognition – the rate of success for decisions taken based on gut feeling or intuition is 60% and 40% for those decisions that are arrived at by following a logical thought process.

Clear definition of success – Success is a very relative term. What one person considers as successful may only be a small achievement or goal for another. Leaders have a clear understanding of what success means to them.

Cultivate kindness – It is important that in a hurry to win this never ending race of achievements we do not overlook the importance of or forget basic human qualities. All successful people have a strong sense of empathy and they consciously practice kindness of word and of deed. Along with this these people are trust worthy, act with integrity, are approachable and most importantly they are likeable.

Take risks – Success is part dependent on our ability to take risks and work out of our comfort zones. Opportunities often come disguised as risks, threats or challenges, which if evaded have the capacity to become regrets. So, to avoid falling into the trap of ‘what if’ thinking and holding regrets– cultivate a habit of at least taking some calculated risks.

Practice meditation – All successful people practice the art of meditation. This technique helps them keep calm and think clearly when faced with adverse or challenging situations.

Learn to apply the correct response to stress inducing situations – There are four major reactions that occur in instances of perceived harm or attack – fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. A successful person knows how to judge a situation and react according to it. For e.g. if it can be fought – then stay and fight. If the situation is more powerful than you – then retreating or flight response does not make you any weaker.

Know your personality type and that of your core team – For an organization to be successful, it is important that the core team is made up of people with different core strengths that complement each other. Leaders have the basic knowledge of personality types and also the weakness and strength of each type. This knowledge helps them build a strong and competitive team with a multitude of skills. They have also perfected or nearly perfected the person-job fit in their organizations.

Ability to take tough decisions – This is one quality on which a lot of success is dependent on. Leaders should be able to set aside their emotions and take decisions for the larger good of their people and company.

Above par people skills – Leaders now that a lot of their success depends on how they communicate with the people who work for them. They use respect and tact in all their communication so as to ensure that no one goes away feeling hurt or humiliated. The best leaders work on building relationships with the people who work for them by ensuring that they now their names, a bit about their families and for the immediate team – their goals and aspirations. These small pieces of information go a long way in building a strong and motivated team.

The God complex – Leaders know that they are not shielded from failure. They do not let their successes to get to their heads and develop a false sense of self or haughtiness.

They do not take rejection personally – Leaders know the rules of the game; they do not take rejection from investors, market or the public personally. Instead they work harder and smarter to acquire the required support.

Networking – Leaders are expert networkers – they spend adequate time on meeting and cultivating relationships with people whom they would want to work with or those whom they would like to do business with in the future.

They believe in Karma – What you sow is what you reap and what goes around comes around – are the two mantras that leaders live by.

This list is just the tip of the iceberg called Leadership, but it’ll help you to get a head start on building the awesome team most organizations would wage a war for. Start with these and build your own definitions and mantras to aid your journey in building a successful and enduring venture. We’re always there to support 🙂

Guest Post Contributed by Praveen Singh, 99Tests