Posted on

How We Got The IT Minister Excited About Indian Product Startups & Made Him Our Spokesperson #UnleashTheEnergy

A behind the scenes account of how a showcase of 11 disruptive startups was put together in just 100 hours!

If you’re reading this, I’m sure  you are a part of the Indian product startup community in one way or the other. And unless you were living under a rock (which is fine, if you were busy hacking away or traveling to sell your product), you wouldn’t have missed that our Hon. IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad was in Bangalore on Tuesday meeting with the product startup community. iSPIRT hosted  the “Conclave for India as Product Nation #1″, an open dialogue between the Product industry and the IT Minister.

What made it all the more special was that the he was the first IT Minister to meet with startups and also that he first met with the startups first before meeting officials from his ministry! The Minister met with the industry leaders, gave a patient hearing to the needs of the product startups and also saw presentations from 11 disruptive startups.

And here’s what the minister had to say after meeting with the startups!

So how did we pull this off? And what if I told you that it was all put together in 100 hours. We ourselves cannot quite understand how everything fell into place! But as Sharad often says, when a bunch of passionate volunteers come together towards a common cause, magic just happens. At iSPIRT, we take our volunteering quite seriously. No wonder then, that we actually have open sourced our volunteer model through a whitepaper to help other communities benefit from it!

 

A text message from Rajan on Saturday morning got me involved. Could we get on a call, he asked. There’s an iSPIRT event scheduled on Tuesday and some help was needed. We spoke and I got to know that there’s an interaction with the IT Minister scheduled on the coming Tuesday. As part of the interaction, we needed to put together a showcase of disruptive product startups to help the Minister get a sense of the kind of impactful work being done and the opportunities ahead. There was list of companies drawn from across various segments and stages, with whom we’d need to connect and get their availability for the event on Tuesday. Tapping into our network of volunteers (many of whom are themselves startup founders and industry leaders), we gathered the contact details of these companies and started reaching out to the companies. These were companies spread across the country and we checked with their founders if they’d be available to present. Based on the availability of teams and the some intense discussion and debate among the Program Managers for the showcase, a short list of the companies presenting on stage was drawn up. The thought process behind the selection of companies was to give the Minister a good view of the breadth (sectors where product startups are making an impact), the depth (companies that have achieved global market/tech leadership) and how far they can grow with sound support from the ecosystem, which includes the government as well. We were immensely privileged to have Mr. Mohandas Pai spare his valuable time for multiple meetings through the whole process and share his inputs on what kind of stories would make the maximum impact.

Product Leaders with the IT MinisterArriving at the shortlist was surely a good beginning. They say well begun is half done. But the tougher half lay ahead! We were already at Monday morning, and within the next 24 hours we had prep up the presenters. Each of the companies were to have a short, crisp presentation with the key points to be covered in under 4 minutes! Shekhar went about this with the precision of a toolmaker, thoroughness of a scientist and the strictness of a school teacher! From putting together notes on what points to cover, iterating multiple times with the presenting companies on their presentations over a sleepless night, to conducting the actual showcase in front of the minister, Shekhar was always on.

(That’s me on the left  trying to get the slides up!)

The event received some very good coverage in the media. Below are some links:

Here’s hoping that achchhe din are indeed ahead for the Indian software product industry!

Posted on

The Most Important Technology Trends of 2014, According to Gartner

Leading market analysts issue their latest technology trends every year. Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company has defined the top 10 technology trends and drivers that will be strategic for Indian organizations in 2014.

134459715These technologies can impact an organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. Implementing business process improvements, revenue growth through differentiated products and services, and business expansion are the top business priority areas of investment for Indian organizations.

Gartner’s top 10 strategic technology trends for Indian companies in 2014 include:

Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics

The BI, analytics and performance management segment is the hottest software market in India, fueled by IT prioritization and expanding business buying centers. A competitive business environment and economic conditions are also forcing enterprises in India to focus on using fact based decision-making tools to rationalize costs and time for businesses.

Mobility Solutions

Mobility in enterprise has created a huge opportunity for IT leaders to reduce costs, increase productivity and enable smooth business transactions. Swift growth in the prevalence of mobile devices, a decline in their price, and falling data plan costs have the potential to completely transform some business models.

Cloud Computing

Although still in its infancy in India and other emerging markets, cloud adoption is increasing. Led by infrastructure-as-a-service engagements in the data center, disaster recovery and storage areas, there is a broad range of providers that target large organizations as well as SMBs. This fast growing adoption by a diverse range of organizations has catalyzed providers to invest in high quality data centers and innovative cloud infrastructures, as well as a portfolio of cloud-related offerings such as security, communications and managed services.

 Social Media and Computing

Social media in India has seen exponential growth in the recent past with enterprises using it for customer support and customers using it to offer opinions. A growing number of enterprises used social media to connect with their customers and for marketing campaigns in 2013 and social media is playing a pivotal role in Indian politics with the government and political parties increasingly using it to connect with citizens

Machine to Machine (M2M)

The M2M market in India is in a nascent stage but growing rapidly. Indian enterprises driven by demands to improve agility and productivity are evaluating the use of M2M-enabled solutions.

 Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD)

In India, server-based computing, which is also referred as “hosted shared desktop” or “terminal services,” is seeing more adoption. More than 80 percent of desktop virtualization implementations are based on HVD. Organizations are only looking at desktop virtualization from the point of cost requirement, and they overlook other benefits such as full data backup, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) support, extended hardware life cycles, security, compliance and anytime-anywhere access.

 Personal Cloud

Adoption of cloud computing in India is currently limited to the private cloud. Organizations are focused on protecting their applications located in enterprise app stores, as well as the content on employees’ personal devices used at work. Tablets are becoming the first-choice user device and this form factor’s explosion is creating device ubiquity. Users are creating their own personal digital ecosystems with their own sets of apps, games and media. Content is starting to shift to the cloud but, in the future, the cloud will become the primary storage for personal content, and local versions of the content will exist only as staged or cached elements.

 The Internet of Things (IoT)

The IoT delivers tangible value to enterprises through the ability to better utilize remote assets and creates business cases in three key areas – operational technology (OT), digital supply chain and customer interaction.

 Collaboration Technologies

Collaboration technologies (otherwise known as workflow management or team collaboration) consist broadly of – real-time electronic meetings, content delivery, desktop and application sharing, text chat, group document markup with electronic whiteboarding, security and remote control. More advanced features include integrated voice over IP, file sharing, videoconferencing, content archiving, media streaming, feedback and polling. Real-time collaboration technologies not included in the Web conferencing category include instant messaging and stand-alone audio conferencing.

 3D Printing

In India interest levels in 3D printing are slowly picking up and this is reflected in the increased presence of providers in the 3D printing space. Because of the country’s large population base, high volumes and low cost requirements, 3D printing is expected to take off rapidly and revolutionize industries as diverse as aerospace, consumer goods, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and the military. 3D printing has the potential to radically transform design, manufacturing and the supply chain model in India.

According to Gartner, while Indian companies may be keen to invest in new technologies, there are still barriers to full-scale adoption including business readiness, a lack of capacity for organizational change and low levels of IT funding. Implementing business process improvements, revenue growth through differentiated products and services, and business expansion are the top business priority areas of investment for Indian organizations.


Posted on

14 Ways to Emotionally Engage users with your Product

Most conversations with entrepreneurs and product managers who want drive engagement and bring viral features to their products are answered as ‘We will gamify our product through features’. This post is about clearing some nuisance around the topic of gamification in products.

Gamification has nothing to do with building features. In fact, even Product Management has nothing to do with building features. It is not a rocket science, product managers usually figure out the ‘building features’ part of it with time and experience.

“People don’t buy products. They buy better versions of Themselves.”

So how do you ‘connect’ users with your product? Not through features, not through gamification, but by triggering certain emotions with your users.

Gamification = Getting People Emotionally Engaged with Product.

Below are some of the most powerful emotions people have along with few examples that will help you figure out how get users to emotionally engaged with your product / startup.
PS: The number of emotions could be more, I have referred to only 14 here.

1. Expression

Expression – People love to express themselves. Enable it.

Products that allow users to express themselves:

  1. Tumblr
  2. Twitter
  3. Facebook
  4. Medium

Products that allow users to express themselves anonymously:

  1. Secret
  2. Whisper
  3. FML

Tip: ‘Expression’ is used as a core use-case in product.

2. Acknowledgment

Acknowledgment: People love getting acknowledged. With interactions & endorsements.

Help people getting acknowledged. They love it!

  1. LinkedIn – Recommendations & Endorsements are social acknowledgments which users love.
  2. Twitter – Retweets and Replies on tweets are great way to be acknowledged.
  3. Facebook – Likes & Comments are acknowledgments to status messages users shares
  4. Quora – Upvotes & Comments is acknowledgment to your answers.
  5. Tumblr – Love & Reposts are acknowledgments to you posts.

Tip: ‘Acknowledgments’ lead to ‘User Notifications’ which further lead to Engagement. Always build features that enable acknowledgments in products that use ‘expression’ as use-case in product.

3. Exclusivity

Exclusivity or Privilege: People love being privileged. Make it exclusive.

Make it exclusive. No one likes the feeling of being left out.

  1. Gmail – Gmail invites were exclusive to few users. People were ready to buy invites off Ebay.
  2. Quora – Only existing users can invite new users.
  3. Pinterest – Users need to apply for access. After few days they were granted it.
  4. Mailbox – Users were in queue to get access to the app.

Tip: ‘Exclusivity’ works best for initial referral program for driving sign-ups.

4. Being Cool

Being Cool: People want to be Cool. People want others to know they are Cool.

Make your users look cool when they share your product.

  1. Frontback – Share a snap along with a selfie. Lets users be cool.
  2. Vine – Short cool creative videos.

Tip: ‘Being Cool’ will help you drive sharing on Social Networks.

5. Nostalgia

Nostalgia: People have memories. Sweet Memories. Remind them about it.

Remind users about some of the best times they have experienced.

  1. Timehop – Complete product is built around Nostalgia. Reminds users of special moments from the past.
  2. Facebook – 2014: Year in Review videos
  3. Twitter – 8th Anniversary: Which was your first tweet.

Tip: ‘Nostalgia’ helps get back old users and revives their interest. Can be only used once in a year on special occasions.

6. Curiosity

Curiosity: People want to know. They fear on losing out. Keep them curious.

Keep users curious. Keep them looking for more.

  1. LinkedIn – The feature ‘who viewed my profile’ tries to keep its users curious, and engaged.
  2. Twitter – Catching up with Timeline, mostly is the fear of losing out.
  3. BuzzFeed / UpWorthy / ViralNova – All try to trigger curiosity of readers through their post titles.

Tip: ‘Curiosity’ in products helps you increase repeat usage.

7. Competitiveness

Competitiveness: People love to compete with others. Creates a sense of achievement. Make it happen.

Drive users to compete with friends / others.

  1. Foursquare – The leaderboards between Friends was a great way 4SQ ensured people kept checking in.
  2. Quora – The feeling of ‘I have a better answer’ or ‘I can answer this question in a better way’ keeps driving engagement.
  3. Fitbit – Leaderboard that tracks your fitness with friends.
  4. Hackrank – Programming challenges.

Tip: ‘Competitiveness’ leads to greater engagement. Though its novelty in private group is lost after some time.

8. Stay Organized

Stay Organized: People love to organize things. Organize everything. Make it happen

Give users stuff that they want to sort / organize. Keep them busy.

  1. Pinterest – Lets you organize pins / interests/ stuff you love.
  2. Evernote – Organize all your notes.
  3. Wanelo – Organize fashion stuff. Ask girls how much they love doing this.
  4. Calendar / Contacts – They are always in a mess. Its a never-ending struggle to organize this. Google Contacts & Google Calendar help you keep them in place.

Tip: ‘Staying Organized’ helps your users spend more time in your product. It soon becomes a habit.

9. Importance

Importance: People love to feel important. Its about them. Their identity. They want to show off.

Make your users feel important about themselves.

  1. LinkedIn – My professional achievements., that is how a user sees it.
  2. Twitter – My views. My opinions., that is how a user tweets.
  3. FourSquare – Checkin is telling the world – I am here.
  4. About.me – This is me. This is my identity.

Tip: ‘Importance’, everyone wants to be important. The product usually ends up being shared, talked about – and results in others wanting to do the same.

10. Authority

Authority: People love to display their authority on a topic. Give them opportunity to do that.

Help create authority for users. Users want to be acknowledged as influencers by others.

  1. Quora – Authority by Topics. Asked to Answer is being authoritative.
  2. StackExchange – For programmers.
  3. HackerOne – For hackers.
  4. Hacker News – For Geeks.

Tip: ‘Authority’ is the importance others in a community or forum assigns to select users. Users want to be acknowledged as being authoritative, it helps increasing engagement and spending time on the product.

11. Visual

Visual: People love stunning visuals. Its a powerful emotion.

Visuals create impact in product. Don’t miss on it.

  1. Instagram – Personal Emotions.
  2. Flickr – Professional Emotions (yes unfortunately for Flickr).
  3. 500px – Photography community.

Tip: ‘Visual’ is a substitute to all unsaid emotions. Use well when your product is build around pictures and photographs.

12. Freebies

Freebies: People love Freebies. Badges. Credits. It all works.

Freebies work. Make use of them correctly.

  1. Quora – Credits users get when other upvote their answers.
  2. FourSquare – Badges for Check-in.
  3. Uber – Credits to Refer Friends.
  4. Facebook / Twitter / Google – Regularly use Advertising Credits to on-board new advertisers.

Tip: ‘Freebies’ – use it only for one purpose. Can be used for activations, sharing or driving engagement. Use it for one use-case that can measured.

13. Money

Money: People want to make Money. People want to receive Money.

Money is one of the strongest emotions. Portray it positively.

  1. Google Adsense – Opportunity for bloggers, individuals, publishers to earn money online.
  2. PayPal – Receive money from anyone.
  3. Elance – Get paid for free-time work.
  4. Kickstarter – Raise money for your projects.
  5. Gumroad – Make money by selling digital goods.

Tip: ‘Money’ – Receiving Money / Making Money is a positive emotion. Giving away is negative.

14. Sex

Sex: People want Companions. People want Dates. People want Sex.

Keep it simple, keep it safe.

  1. Tinder – Helps you find date.
  2. Match.com – Helps you find date.
  3. OkCupid – Helps you find date.

Tip: ‘Sex’ – It is more about selling the Hope. Keep the product simple. Don’t over engineer.

Concluding Notes:

When you build any feature, try to trigger a emotional engagement with user. If you are in early stage of your product development or in process of making your product roadmap, spent some time with this methodology – 15 Steps Towards Building a Great Product.

When it comes to including emotions in your product, ensure the following:

  1. Use max 2-3 emotions per product.
  2. Gamification is not about building features. It is about emotionally engaging a user.
  3. Don’t exploit users. Be subtle. Be good.
Posted on

The Threat of Termination

The emergence of high speed Internet services and the ability to outsource the networking and processing requirements has generated a plethora of opportunities for various companies to avail these emerging services and reduce their overheads and speed up product delivery.  There are however, various critical termination and post termination issues that are encountered by IT companies who are operating on a Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) business model.

cyber-security-a-growing-issue-small-businesses1A typical SaaS Agreement is akin to a “property lease agreement” whereby the user would pay rent for the property as long as it is used and on termination of such a lease, the user would cease from using the said property.

However, unlike property, the services rendered by a SaaS operator would need not only require protection in-terms of asserting its rights over the underlying software program, but also for ensuring that only the right to use are assigned to the end user for the limited period.

From the end user perspective, the SaaS model of business operations raise a whole new gamut of issues given the nascency of this Industry. A common concern that is being raised by them is “what would happen if the service contract were to be terminated by the service provider”.

While many a client/end user would brave the odds and accept the risks associated with the industry, it is critical to address the concerns discussed herein. In a standard SaaS agreement, it should be viable for having an amicable exit option so as the interests of the end users are protected especially with respect to migrating to a new platform so as to ensure business continuity and guarantee data security post termination. If the agreement secures these rights of the end users in case of a termination, the agreement will be deemed to be not too restrictive so as to attract anti competition regulations, if any. The end user in which case can easily migrate to another platform or use services of a different service provider in an effective manner.

Takeaways

A SaaS or PaaS business model is susceptible to Anti-Competitive regulations especially if the arrangement is in exercise of a dominant market position. It would also be a concern for the client to have an exit option and not be wholly dependent on a single SaaS provider. Following are some of the tools to be used in negotiating a contract in these scenarios:

  • Use a Post Termination clause to assist the client in identifying alternatives
  • Assert IPRs in the underlying software
  • Non-disclosure and Non-compete agreements may be entered into between the parties
  • Post termination cleanse of all traces of the software
  • Build in adequate clauses for protection on data and codes during migration to the new provider

Guest Post contributed by Aashish Somansi and Shantanu Sahay, Anand & Anand

Posted on

Will the Revolution Happen?

Revolution is not an easy word to throw around. Those cheering for a software products revolution in India must look at the historical context.

Innovation Factory

So many countries and communities have tried to emulate the amazing startup culture that exists in the United States, specifically in the Silicon Valley. The Valley is not only a fountainhead of creation and innovation in computer technology but also of commercial execution and expansion. For those who have some interest in this phenomenon, the reasons are obvious. Few weeks ago, I came across the wonderful book about the Bell Labs, “Innovation Factory” and it gave this phenomenon yet another perspective.

The book traces the history of how a powerful team came together to solve a big problem for humanity and also monopolistic wealth creation. The Bell Labs, in the decades before and after the second world war, was pretty much where everything that is the basis of modern communication and computer technology was invented. From the transistor to satellite communication, from fiber optics to UNIX, the Bell Labs became a factory of sorts for innovation. The labs were manned and managed by some of the finest brains of the time, sourced from the best American universities. Together, they had an opportunity and to solve a great problem for humanity, how to bring people who lived far apart, closer. And in return they ran a near monopoly in telecommunications in the United States, protected by dubious patent laws.

This team in the Bell Labs was the precursor to the next revolution, the one that came a few decades later, when the action shifted to the West Coast and Stanford University, when William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor moved to the West Coast to setup his semiconductor venture. Almost all of the semi-conductor companies found in the silicon valley at that time were started by employees who left the Shockley venture. Soon semicondutors became cheap and the startup culture spread fast. This second revolution, was driven by teenage hobbyists who later founded billionaire empires. To help these hobbyists build empires, the mandarins of finance, the venture capitalists, were already there, bringing in their networks and money.

The Indian Context

When we compare this culture to the Indian culture of innovation and wealth creation, we find stark differences. Our telecom revolution, when it finally came, has become synonymous with crony capitalism and corruption. Instead of creating new technologies, we have created new business models, where our telecom tycoons have outsourced the technology and we are completely dependent on our neighbours for handsets, weakening our foreign trade balance and dependency on outside technology.

Our famed IITs are another dismal example how things can go completely wrong. Even as we praise the IITs for producing some of our brightest minds, we should also remember that they have failed miserably compared to their counterparts in other parts of the world to produce any volume of innovation.

Even as we are saddled with “third world” problems, our governance is stuck in the 19th century. The Bell Labs had access to a unified market which helped them scale quickly. Our big problems of housing, sanitation and healthcare are all fraught with legal and regulatory red-tape. The only recent example of wealth creation is that of the IT Service industry which was again, less of an organic phenomenon and more a beneficiary of globalisation and reducing cost of communications.

So when we talk of starting a software products revolution in India, we are in effect talking of replicating the American culture of high paced innovation and commercialization in India. But what we forget is that we lack any historical or cultural context to bring in this revolution. Just because we have a whole lot of software engineers, there is nothing to suggest that they will start innovating suddenly and recreate the decades of learning that is subtly passed on through culture and smalltalk.

E-Commerce Nation

This places where technology built by Indians has touched common people are in e-commerce, travel and classifieds. Here we have home-grown companies that have created technology solutions and enabled people to see the benefit of transacting online. Even though these are still not pure technology companies, a number of Indian software products are founded by employees of these early e-commerce companies.

But what is badly needed is a “breakout” success, but there is no guarantee how soon that can happen. We can only hope that one of these companies becomes very large and creates a “mothership” like Bell Labs that then becomes the fountainhead of a revolution.

The other thing to note is that these revolutions were brought about by a significant shift in technology that opened new avenues for communication and commerce and these opportunities were successfully monetized by companies that were closest to these innovations. Hence to bring in such a revolution, we must build engines that invent those paradigm shifting technologies.

The real problem in Indian product companies is not lead generation or sales, but building innovative technology. On top of it, most Indian software products lack good quality and are not designed to be inspiring, though this is slowly changing. The problem in this model is that we are now competing with the best in the world and time is running out. My guess is that the Indian company that breaks this mould of mediocre technology, quality and design will most likely be the Indian mothership.

Posted on

‘India Innovates, India Leads’: Indian Talent + Information Technology = India2022

The success of India in future is intrinsically linked to its ability to keep pace with technology. The world has seen an unprecedented change in technology landscape in the last decade and innovation has become more important than ever before. Technology can help build a digital India- a knowledge-based society and economy- by empowering, connecting and binding all parts of India.

For India to become a global knowledge hub by 2022- the Diamond Jubilee of our Independence- Innovation, Research and Technology will have to play a major role of being the driver, engine of growth and shining light of Brand India. Innovation and Technology will have to be the enabler for empowerment, equity and efficiency by joining people with governments, bringing them closer to knowledge and bridging the gap between demand and supply. Despite India having become the software services capital of the world, the benefits of Technology have not percolated down. The lack of a proactive political vision in not appreciating the full potential of technology in the last decade is primarily responsible for restricting the spread of Information Technology domestically.

Next Phase of Innovation and Technology Revolution in India

India has a long history of Cultural Innovation driven by necessities. It’s time that we take our Innovations globally and solve societal problems. It is in this context that India must embark upon next phase of Innovation and Technology revolution with renewed vigour. It would be unwise to be satisfied with successes in instalments and not tap the vast potential of Indian Talent. The success and Brand established by the Indian Software Services Industry needs to be leveraged with next wave of “Made In India” Technology, Products and Innovations.

That the BJP has seized upon this opportunity and responded to the aspirations of the country is evident in its Manifesto 2014 that has laid unprecedented emphasis on Innovation and Technology and its cross sector potential.

E-Governance

E-Governance is easy, efficient and empowered Governance and has to become the backbone of Good Governance paradigm. A Digital India -where every household and every individual is digitally empowered – is key to the concept of new age, efficient & incorruptible governance.

This can be made possible by increasing the internet penetration and usage of broadband across the country. Deployment of broadband in every village would be a thrust area. Every district of the vastly diverse India having its own specialities must be digitally integrated by 2022.

Follow the Fiber Policy is another path-breaking proposal that can refurbish the digital outlook of the country. Smart Cities will be developed around Digital Highways. The example of the ‘E-Gram, Vishwa Gram’ scheme in Gujarat, that ensured significant empowerment of the rural population by bridging the Digital Divide between the rural and urban areas by providing e-services to all its villages, is worth emulating across the country. The scheme helped control corruption significantly since all transactions between government and citizens are computerised.

Innovation

Spurring innovation and research in India is essential in order to reduce dependence on foreign technology. Innovation is an evolving process and there cannot be a stationary blueprint for it. However, the basic pre-requisite for driving innovation is to have 1.2 billion Indians digitally connected through our own technologies and networks.

The BJP Manifesto talks about such path breaking innovations in governance as promotion of e-Bhasha (National Mission for the promotion of IT in Indian Languages), Content digitization of all archives and museums, financial inclusion and participative governance.

The idea of participative governance using social media as an enabler merits a special mention. Today, Social media has the potential to transform all interactions in the public mindscape. They are powerful catalysts that are changing the ways people use technology to interact with the world around them. India must include these interfaces in its governance models and take full advantage of it. Youth, the biggest driver and user of social media, ought to be involved in policy formulation & legislation.

In a country where nearly 70% of the population lives in villages, a significant segment of about 6,50,000 villages do not have a single bank branch, access to quality healthcare, and higher education, BJP has done well to recognise these handicaps and addressed them in its manifesto with the ideas such as National Rural Internet and Technology Mission for use in TeleMedicine, Mobile Healthcare, Massive Open Online Courses and setting up a National e-Library.

As a matter of fact; policy, institutions and market factors will determine the fate of India in coming years. The existing market factors are quite favourable but it now needs a set of ‘good policies’ & ‘good institutions’ under a visionary leadership for building an India of our dreams.

There is an inescapable clamour by the young and capable nation for a proactive and innovative policy framework that goes beyond being stuck in a reactionary mode. The nation is looking up to the new political dispensation that is likely to assume office after the general elections for providing such a visionary roadmap.

Posted on

How to “Know” What Your Customers Really Want?

Focus on understanding the situation that the customer wants to resolve, not the customer

Product managers are constantly told that they must “know” or understand what customers really “want” or “need”. Did they tell you how? Did they say — understand what problems customers are trying to overcome? Should you focus on understanding the problem, the customer or both?

You will be better served if they told you to truly understand what jobs customers are trying to get done.

A “job” is a fundamental problem a customer needs to resolve in a given situation.
Focus on understanding the situation not the customer. Customers find themselves in a situation, with constraints and emotions. This situation forces a customer to take a decision to hire a product to get a job done. This helps a product manager understand what causes a customer to hire a product and why. Understand their constraints while they are in that situation (like time, capability to handle complexity) and the emotions they feel as they encounter a situation (like fear, anxiety, anger, frustration). Understanding the constraints helps in shaping the solution, understanding the emotions helps in pitching the product.

Customers rarely hire a product as soon as they find themselves in a specific situation. Repeated exposure to a specific situation causes the customer to take various steps to resolve the situation. Only if the steps taken fail to resolve the situation to their satisfaction, do they decide to hire a product (or seek a new solution). Understand the various steps taken and how their situation has changed over time. What outcomes were they dissatisfied with? This helps a product manager to understand key attributes or dimensions that are important to the customer. Each attribute or dimension is a potential differentiator. Understanding these attributes helps in differentiating and positioning the product. Which dimensions are important to the customer, but poorly served by other alternatives and competition? Understanding expected outcomes helps in creating delightful experiences. How can we provide outcomes that exceed the user’s expectation?

As the situation changes, the customer experiences various “pull” and “push” forces before they hire a new product. The pull forces are various hurdles that they have to overcome — an existing habit, will the solution work for my situation, will the change make things worse? The push forces are things that lead the customer to make a decision — the current solution sucks, that product seems interesting. Understanding these forces helps in designing systems around the product. A great product takes a systems approach to resolving a situation, the “product” is just one part of it.

What are the other benefits of this approach or methodology?

Helps you focus on alternatives available to get the same job done, hence pricing risk (under pricing or over pricing) is lower. You may realize that folks, who occasionally want to work on a document across devices, may hire email to do the job for them, not your file sharing application. Customers do not think in terms of product categories while seeking a solution. You may realize that a customer uses multiple products to get a single job done

Helps you understand the key trigger points in the decision making process (or key triggers in making the “switch” from an existing solution to your solution). You may discover that folks who use email for sharing documents across devices, begin to seek out a better solution on forgetting to email the document after working on it. It helps you understand what actions a customer takes as the situation changes, like research which product to hire, seek feedback on a particular product, or actually decide on which product to hire.

Helps you keep the product simple, road map is more aligned with what customers want. You can stop adding features because the competition does. Why move to a higher pixel resolution if customers are not printing photos taken on your cameras? Trade-offs decisions are easier. You may also discover other product categories you could compete in.

Helps you market the product better. Take a look at the Amazon Dash video. Notice the number of “personas” in the video?

Summary: Using “jobs” as the unit of analysis for all product decisions will lead to building of better products and delighted customers.

If you are interested in the methodology, you can go over the excellent research and content developed by Clayton Christensen (milkshake video) and the Re-Wired Group. The Re-Wired group has a course on Udemy on Mastering Jobs-to-be-Done Interviews to help understand the real reasons why customers buy a product.

Posted on

‘Customers buy your product does not mean they will use it!’ – Kishore Mandyam, Founder and CEO, PK4 Technologies

ProductNation interviewed Kishore Mandyam, Founder and CEO of PK4 Technologies, the company that owns the Impel CRM offerings. During this interview, Kishore shares some of his experiences in creating a product suited for Indian customers, and discusses his learning from dealing with customers and technological developments. Read on…

What was the motivation to start Impel?

There were a couple of factors that came together in influencing creation of Impel. During 2006-07 timeline, after having successful career and managing different aspects of business around the world, I was looking at what could be the next big challenge to take on. Frequent travels to different parts of the globe also had started to become taxing. The domestic market was showing encouraging signs of robust demand for product based solutions. All these factors influenced in we taking the decision to set up Impel, a product company based out of India.

Impel Home page screen shot

What were your experiences during the initial years of operation and what was the learning? 

As we setup Impel, we converged on the CRM area as our focus to provide solutions, since we understood that many customers in the target segment that we were aiming were not very organized in dealing with Sales leads and customer centric operations. We invested our initial 18 months to build the product and made it available for customers by 2009. Given our previous corporate experience, we initially started leveraging the state of the art marketing and selling techniques and were able to land about 120 customers during the first year of operations.

However, the biggest learning came next year, when we could not retain most of these customers. When we analyzed what went wrong, we discovered that our method of signing in customers using web based sales ensured that customers bought the product – but just purchasing the product did not mean that they would use it. It turned out that most customers had not tried the various features and capabilities of our product offering and hence were skeptical to renew the relationship with us for the next year.

As an organization, how did you respond to this learning and what new measures did you take to overcome these limitations? 

We all gathered back at the drawing board, analyzed the developments and worked on how we could enhance our offering to ensure more usage and hence more engagement from the customers. We further segmented our target customer base, identified the key sub-segments that showed more promise and started working closely with leads from that bucket. During 2011 and 2012 we got very good traction from lifestyle businesses and rural businesses that focused on selling and marketing seeds, solar lamps, pesticides, FMCG and so on. The targeted and focused engagement with this sub-segment yielded very good results for us, and by 2013, we had about 120 to 130 stable customers.

During the same year, based on our experiences thus far, we shifted our focus to engage with mid size companies and fast growing small companies. This shift in focus helped us to increase our profitability and ensured diversification into another segment of customers.

What are your observations on the Indian market based on your dealing with them over these years?

The Indian small and medium companies have many challenges for which they desire solutions. However, they currently are unable to articulate their problems and explain the desired solutions to the vendors who approach them. On the other end, if any vendor is able to identify these gaps in their operations, clearly articulate the pain points and propose a technology based solution that adds value / solves their pain points, the customers will lap it up.

In our own case, we started off with a CRM offering – we wanted to be the Salesforce for India. However, as we listened to our customers, we discovered that they were buying our software to solve a variety of problems around the CRM domain of which we had no initial knowledge of. This interaction made us tweak our offerings based on their feedback.

Secondly, the perception of Indian customers about cloud has drastically changed since the past 5 years. Customers now accept cloud as an alternative and secure medium of deployment. They realize that it provides them certain benefits than the traditional modes of deployment. This development, combined with the rapid acceptance of mobile and smart phones in the Indian ecosystem is creating a market of significant size that are willing to look at mobile and cloud based solutions to solve their challenges.

What are some of the areas which you wish you could have executed better on?

Being a bootstrapped startup, one needs to always prioritize on the areas that need the focus and attention to attain growth. Having said that, as I reflect back, there are a few things that I think we could have executed better. One of them is about the trial process we have to let our prospective customers try out our offerings. We notice that despite our best efforts, we were not able to better engage our prospects in ensuring their conversion.

While the above one was on pre-sales, I also think we needed to do one thing better – on providing better documentation of our product, on the post-sales and support side. I notice that a few startups in India have been very good in this regard – and they have good customer retention and lesser support costs on account of this. I think that if we can simplify the usage of the product to the end user, and support the end user with description of how to use different features of the product; this combination will help in long term sustainability for our company.

Interesting insights! In closing, what are the three things that you would like to share with your fellow entrepreneurs who are targeting the Indian market?

I think we are at very interesting times as regards to targeting the Indian customers with our technology solutions. The first thing I want to let other entrepreneurs know is that the average Indian manager is much more willing to engage and evaluate your technology offerings. This is a very encouraging sign for all entrepreneurs. Secondly, mobility as a technology development is a big disruptive force, especially in the emerging markets. Hence, plan to leverage the power of mobility in all your solutions and that will surely delight your customers. Lastly, Indian customers take really long cycles to decide to buy. Continuously engage with them through marketing and other touch points, even when you may have ruled out immediate purchase in this quarter. If the customer is engaged, he will simply come back to you when he decides to buy and will close the deal in a day!

Posted on

Redefining Retail Stores – Weavedin

In our candid conversation with Jose and Jacob founders of Weavedln Technologies Pvt. Ltd., we have discovered a team of four entrepreneurs on their way to transform retail industry with their product – Weaver. They intend to redesign the way retail outlets work, by converting ‘point of sale’ with a smart cloud based device.

The Team: The founding team consists of JoseKuttan , Jacob, Dheepan and Jibin. Jose has done his MS in Telecommunications and Venture Practicum from University of Maryland, Washington. Thereafter he decided to come back to India to pursue his startup dream. He has worked in bunch of Bay Area Companies  along with couple of startups and a VC firm as an associate while in the US. Jacob was in the founding team of the first Incubator in Kerala (southern state of India) by name Innovation Lab. He is a graduate from Govt. Model Engineering College, Cochin and has worked with EMC Corporation prior to WeavedIn.

Dheepan leads technology and backend at WeavedIn. He is a graduate from College of Engineering, Guindy in Tamil Nadu and has experience working with Apigee, Hashcube and other startups. While Jibin leads the mobile side of technology. A hard core techie brings experience working with companies like Infineon particularly in the embedded technology.

weavedin - homeThe Product: Put together their brains they have introduced ‘Weaver’, a new species of product in the retail segment that takes care of virtually everything about a retail store. It has three facet benefit system that solves pressing problems in sales, inventory management and customer experience of retail businesses. Weaver works on native android on the front end and has a powerful web based backend. The technology stack which powers our backend is LEMP (Linux, (E) Nginx, Mysql, Python). The product has a 2048 bit SSL encryption to protect  customer’s data transfers.

Weaver handles store’s key sales problems via cloud based POS system along with its automated inventory management. It helps retail businesses to enhance their store management and in-store customer engagement experience. Their analytically driven dashboard ensures store owners/managers are updated with every single aspect of the store on real time basis on their move. It has in-built facility to generate bills for your sales either on paper or the smarter way through an email or a SMS. It helps in managing accounts, vouchers and other important sheets along with monthly tax data and Profit & Loss statements.

Weaver creates purchase orders, share them with vendors via SMS/Email, updates inventory once the items arrives, links them as components (or whole) to sales catalogue. All this components mapped to keep a watch on inventory status and get automatic alerts if inventory falls below a threshold.

In regards to customer engagement, Weaver helps store managers to stay connected with customers by capturing their details to be able to give them personalized experience. Weaver ensures data is always protected and derives maximum value out of it.

The USPs: Weaver has:

  • Cloud based touch device that integrates multiple activities of a store to a single interface in its hardware plus software package.
  • High level of automation in terms of inventory management that helps the store owners save money
  • Simple user interface design that minimizes the learning curve for employees and promises higher level of customer engagement
  • Scalable model in an affordable package, that gives absolute value of money with pay as you grow model

In this niche segment some of the players like Posiflex, Wincor Nixdorf, IBM catering to the upper segment of the pyramid and are present on an international level. While other players in the international market are Revel Systems, Square Register and Shoppify POS. Indian domestic market has players like Gofrugal, shawman, Lucid, Posist. Posist is a cloud based system that works from a browser and is a near competition in terms of the features.

In the next 12 months Weavedln is focused on sales networks and developing partnerships to enhance the product feature set. Weaver is designed to plug in the brick and mortar stores to the cloud. Productnation team would wish Weavedln team luck in their plans to build a set of features that would leverage the same and would add value to the stores.

Conversation led by Praveen Gupta, Rategain.

Posted on

Innovation Leaders coming from the US #InTech50

We are a few days away from InTech50 – a very warm welcome to CIOs and technology leaders from all parts the world to Bangalore. These leaders are responsible for bringing about Innovation in their corporate environments and are congregating in Bangalore to see the 50 best Enterprise Indian startups – the InTech50 list!

This gathering is a huge step for the Indian product ecosystem because it brings, for the first time, CIOs and technology leaders to India to see the early stages of broad spread software product innovation. The smartest CIOs already leverage product startups to infuse innovation in their business. I congratulate the top 40 companies who are picked already and look forward to the announcement of the remaining 10.

These have been carefully selected by the Advisory Board from the 200+ Indian Enterprise product companies that applied. Below is a list of luminaries who are going to be present for the occasion. Let’s all welcome them to InTech50:

➢ PATRICK FUNCK SVP, CIO Accretive Health Company Vertical: Hospital & Health Care Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ DAWN PAGE, Managing Director, Citibank Company Vertical: Financial Services Company Size: 10,001+

➢ JAY JAYARAMAN, Vice President, Global Strategic Innovation &Technology Alliances Colgate-Palmolive Company Company Vertical: Consumer Goods Company Size: 10,001+

➢ CHANDRA VENKATARAMANI, Chief Information Officer, Convergys Corporation Company Vertical: Outsourcing/Offshoring. Company Size: 10,001+ Employees.

➢ JACK PRESSMAN, Executive Managing Director, Cyber Innovation Labs, LLC (“CIL”) Company Vertical: Information Technology and Services. Company Size: 51-200 employees.

➢ CHRISTOPHER T. HJELM, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Offier, The Kroger Co. Company Vertical: Retail. Company Size: 10,001+

➢ ANUP NAIR, Senior Vice President and CIO Vantiv Company Vertical: Financial Services. Company Size: 1001-5000 ➢ Damon Frost Director at P&G Company Vertical: Consumer Goods. Company Size: 10001+

➢ KSHITIJ MULAY, India IT Leader (GBS) Procter & Gamble Company Vertical: Consumer Goods. Company Size: 10001+ employees

➢ TARUN SAREEN, Head, EMC IT – APJ COE and APJ Theater Lead EMC Corporation Company Vertical: Information Technology and Services Company Size: 10001+ employees

➢ PARTHA SRINIVASA, SVP and Group CIO, HCC Company Vertical: Insurance. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees ➢ Piyush Singh Sr. VP and Chief Information Officer Location: Cincinnati Area Company Vertical: Insurance. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ GREG TOEBBE, Sr. Vice President Great American Insurance Company Vertical: Insurance. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ KETAN MEHTA,  CEO of MajescoMastek Co-founder and Board member of Mastek Company Vertical: Information Technology and Services. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ STEFAN VAN OVERTVELDT, CTO of MajescoMastek Location: Mumbai Area, India Company Vertical: Information Technology and Services. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

➢ GEOFF SMITH, IT Strategy/Leadership CIO Roundtable Company Vertical: Management Consulting

➢ MAHENDRA VORA, Deals and Partnerships Vora Ventures LLC Company Vertical: Management Consulting

➢ ROB HEIMANN, Director River Cities Capital Funds Company Vertical: Venture Capital & Private Equity Company Size: 11-50 employees

➢ RAVI KOKA, Head of Insurance Products Polaris Software Labs Inc. Company Vertical: Management Consulting Company Size: 51-200 employees

➢ PHANENDRA BABU GARIMELLA, VP of Engineering, Aurea Software Company Vertical: Computer Software Company Size: 201-500 employees

➢ KARTHIK SUNDARAM, President & CEO, Purplepatch Services LLC Company Vertical: Marketing and Advertising Company Size: 11-50 employees

➢ MARK A. BUNCH, AVP and Enterprise Architect, Great American Insurance Group Company Vertical: Insurance. Company Size: 1001-5000 employees

We will soon be sharing another list of Innovators who will be participating at InTech50

Posted on

Second 10 of the 50 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products from India

InTech50, a joint initiative by iSPIRT and Terrene Global Leadership Network, that recognizes most promising software products by India’s entrepreneurs, is pleased to confirm the Second set of 10 selected products from over 200 nominations. Check out the First 10 of the 50 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products.

InTech50 logoThe elected products that represent inspirational and pioneering concepts in software will be showcased at InTech50 , a two-day event to be held at Bangalore from April 9 -10, 2014, where global CIOs and transformation leaders will be present. 

How we picked out the Top 10 showcase products:

It is quite an honor to be in the InTech50  considering there was an overwhelming response for product nominations.

An esteemed panel of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), venture capitalists, and product leaders from previous successes have evaluated the nominated products.

The products have been selected based on their capabilities and uniqueness, while having the potential to transform the world around us.

The Second 10 finalists for InTech50 2014 Most Innovative Products (in alphabetical order) are:

  1. Contify is a Web Intelligence application for enterprise and teams. The product mines virtually all relevant online sources for information and converts it into easily accessible qualitative and quantitative insights on customers, competitors, and markets.
  2. i7 Networks is a 100% Agentless-way (ZERO-Touch) of detecting all personal devices, secure quadrupled fingerprinting (US patent-pending) of devices and apps etc. and provides network behavioural analysis. It then denies access to infected and compromised personal devices connecting to the network.
  3. KiSSFLOW is business process automation software that is deeply integrated with Google Apps environment. KiSSFLOW is the #1 app in the Google Marketplace in its category and has more than 5000 organizations and active users spread across 120 countries.
  4. Kreeo is a “Collective Intelligence & Unification Platform” for Companies which addresses three important aspects of effective information/knowledge management – Expression, Organization and Discovery (EOD). It provides a unified platform where information is shared/aggregated in various contexts and is intelligently organized around various concepts of relevance.
  5. MindTickle is a cloud based learning platform which enables businesses to create, deliver, manage and track online courses. It is easy to create courses on MindTickle by uploading or embedding existing content (videos, PPTs, PDFs, quizzes, etc.).
  6. RazorFlow Dashboard Framework helps you build interactive dashboards in HTML5 that work well on all modern devices. You can configure components of the dashboard using an intuitive API, which will intelligently render the dashboard according to the capabilities and form-factor of your user’s device.
  7. RippleHire is a technology product that gamifies employee referrals and enables social recruiting. By empowering the most effective way you hire (Employee Referrals), it reduces your hiring cost and effort and unlocks the multiplier in your employee social networks.
  8. Sapience is an innovative, patent-pending software solution that delivers over 20% increase in Work Output, from the existing team. Sapience achieves this through Automated Work Visibility, without requiring any change in process or extra management effort.
  9. SignEasy is a simple and convenient app for businesses and professionals to sign and fill documents from smart phones and tablets. You do not need a printer, scanner or fax machine. SignEasy is currently available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry.
  10. Seclore FileSecure is an Information Rights Management (IRM) solution which allows unstructured information (documents, emails, drawings, images,) to be remote controlled. It is possible to share information but have control: WHO can access the information, WHAT can each person do and WHEN does each person use the information.

Check out the First 10 of the 50 Finalists: #InTech50 Most Innovative Products. Stay tuned for the remaining 30 companies which we plan to announce in the next few days.

 

Posted on

Zoho, Cloud, Sridhar Vembu

Those who know me well have heard a lot of stories about my experience at Zoho when they transitioned from AdventNet to Zoho. I worked there between 2001-2004 when it was quite a new thing in the indian product ecosystem to talk of Product Management etc. During that period, the company went through a very significant phase of transformation which I was fortunate to be part of, see & learn from close quarters. Today, Zoho was named 4th best Cloud company to work for – makes many of us very proud.

The first thing that struck me was Sridhar’s focus on leveraging data. It went to a point where we realised that inefficient code can put paid to aspirations of leveraging data. And he rethought the data model for our suite of products ground up. The larger ambition was “Deliver software as service, not as installable“. This was in 2003! Back then, the company had about 5 big platform products (SNMP, WebNMS etc). Rethinking the data model, writing and enforcing code that didn’t obfuscate the database (most code was in Java, so it was easy enough to write inefficient code) were tough but important changes he brought about.

Sridhar cared a lot about how teams were organized – large teams are an inherently inefficient lot! Sridhar had the view that teams should be less than 7 people, cross-functional. The reward for growing a team beyond 7 was that it will be split :). His view was that since “Software will be delivered as a Service”, the company should transform from 5 big ships to a 1000 speed boats. To do that, each team team had to focus on a specific market, build and ship a unique product. By 2004 when I was leaving for Yahoo!, there were already 18 products underway. Before the end of the last decade, they were doing over a 100 products!! To go from 5 to 100 in just a few years is quite something.

There’s a lot to lay by the founding DNA of a company and what it can accomplish. While building Credibase which I’ve cofounded a few months ago, here are a few lessons I took away that we try to practice:

Data is God

Focus on the User and all else follows

Small teams create great work

Code always goes from Simple to Spaghetti, but never comes back

Posted on

Meet the Rickshaw Rising Challenge Winners!

The Rickshaw Rising Challenge finale took place in the first week of February 2014 in Mumbai. Fourteen entrepreneurs representing 8 teams went through a two day long boot-camp. Read more about Day-1 and Day-2.

unnamedOn Day 3, they pitched their business to Robin Chase (ZipCar), Harish Hande (SELCO), Judith Pollock (Shell Foundation), and Madhav Pai (EMBARQ India).
We are truly excited to announce the results of the Rickshaw Rising Challenge.

Ubida
The first award of $50,000 and 6-months business support went to Mukesh Jha and Janardan Prasad of Ubida from Pune. The company addresses auto rickshaw hailing problems on the consumer side and optimizes rides and income for drivers.

AutoRaja
The second award of $25,000 and 6-months business support went to Aishwarya Raman and Anubhav Agarwal of AutoRaja from Chennai. AutoRaja runs auto-rickshaws on call with the aim of creating dignified lives for drivers by increasing business and facilitating access to finance, healthcare, and education.

Three Wheels United
The third award of $25,000 and 6-months business support went to Ramesh Prabhu of Three Wheels United from Bangalore. TWU addresses problems in the auto-rickshaw ecosystem through financial services, alternate channels of revenue, and bringing in a shift to cleaner engines.
We would also like to congratulate our 5 other finalists and 38 other applicants to the Challenge.

We look forward to finding other channels to support and work with you.

Guest Post by Jyot Chadha, Embarq India.

Posted on

Well Begun Is Half Done: Glimpses From iSPIRT First Year Anniversary Party

They (you’ll never know who these wise people are) say, well begun is half done. If you ask anyone connected with iSPIRT, I’m sure all of them will agree that we’ve definitely begun well, but definitely not on the ‘half done’ part!

That definitely doesn’t take anything away from the impact iSPIRT has had in the short period that it has been in existence. From organizing India’s first bootcamp #PNCamp, conducting over 23 PlayBook Roundtables across segments like Sales, Marketing, Product Management, driving a focused initiative on driving M&A opportunities for Indian startups to even driving a policy intiative to work with the government and its organization, iSPIRT has indeed created a strong impact in the Indian Product Startup ecosystem with over 300 companies impacted and over 220 product entrepreneurs touched.

And the reason those involved with iSPIRT – Founders, Fellows, Mavens &  Saarthis won’t agree with the ‘half done’ part is because they believe there’s a lot more to be done in the coming years.

On the other hand, it is quite hard to imagaine that so much has been done only one year of iSPIRT’s founding! To mark this occasion, a get together of all those connected with iSPIRT was organized last Saturday in Bangalore.

The well-attended event saw participation from various sets of people associated with iSPIRT and from across different spectrums of the product startup ecosystem. In attendance were iSPIRT Founder Circle Members, iSPIRT Fellows, Mavens & Saarthis, representatives from iSIPRT’s partners for different initiatives, key people from the investor community and the media as well. iSPIRT’s anniversary party provided for a good reason for the different stakeholders to come together for an evening filled with great conversations & fruitful interactions.

There was an interesting twist at the beginning itself. At the entrance, each participant was to pick up a card and write their names on it. The card also had a pledge that they’d take towards promoting & helping Indian product startups by ‘paying it forward’. One would then write their names on it and hang it to the ‘tree’ in the center of the room. On the way out, one would pick up a random card (of course, ensuring that it’s not one’s own) from the tree and then connect with the person whose details are on the card! That’s a pretty nice way of getting people connected and having them know one another.

 

The evening began with each participant introducing themselves and sharing how they’ve been associated with iSPIRT and their experiences and learning. This brought out very interesting perspectives. There were ‘customers’ of iSPIRT – those who had benefited from the various initiatives of iSPIRT, there were ‘angels’ (Founders Circle Members) who were looking to help other startups grow by making their valuable resources available to other product startups and there were the iSPIRT ‘team’ members – Fellows and volunteers who firmly believe in the ‘pay it forward’ philosophy. There were also those from the media tracking product startups who shared their views on how  iSPIRT has impacted the ecosystem

–

 

Oh, and that was quite a nice cake!

 

The conversations gathered pace as the introductions happened and the participants stepped out to the lawns to launch the fire lanterns. It was quite cold and there was a slight breeze because of which the lanterns wouldn’t light up easily. But entrepreneurs being entrepreneurs, they wouldn’t give up so easily. We did manage to launch quite a few lanterns and it was quite a sight to see the lanterns float high in the sky! Reminded one of Sharad’s blog post – Fireflies Lighting Up The Sky!

 

Dinner, drinks and some more conversations followed! It was an evening well spent – reminiscencing about the wonderful year that iSPIRT completed, meeting interesting people from the product startup ecosystem & having interesting conversations with them and going back with a stronger resolve to do our own bit to indeed transform India into a ProductNation!