Posted on

What India needs is a bootcamp for existing Product folks

PNSummit just pivoted. But only in name. And it was to reflect the true nature of what this first-ever bootcamp for product folks is all about.

Many ProductNation friends asked why it was called a Summit because…  hey, it is not a conference. Its more intense than a conference and much more meaningful for a product startup. This led to the pivot and thus was born #PNCamp – the bootcamp for product entrepreneurs by iSPIRT, cooked in the ProductNation kitchen.

With the new name we wanted to share with you new insights into #PNCamp…

There’s 4 Masala packed sessions on the Discovery Hacking day (Dec 4) for young startups. You’ll stay with the same group of 20-25 folks all day, across all sessions and get to know and help each other in depth. Now does that sound interesting?

Selling in India and selling to the world – baked oven fresh for you and served on the Scale Hacking Day (Dec 5). There are group sessions and in between several informal sessions or ‘quick bites’.  The groups sessions are the “a la carte” for a software startup – conceptualized and cooked with your taste in mind.

There’s food for B2C folks and B2B folks. For 1 year old Startups. And for 3 year olds. All slow cooked the way it should be. Hand curated sessions, every single one. This is what the volunteers are doing, and being product folks themselves they understand this intricately.

Does all this talk about food make you hungry for more?

  • See the Slideshare deck below for a more detailed overview of #PNCamp
  • Attend a PNCamp Q&A webinar and meet one of our volunteers online – click here
  • Directly apply for PNCamp here.

Wait, there’s more… the icing on the cake at #PNCamp awaits. That icing is the hand curated peer group we’re creating for you and one that you’d love to work with during the #PNCamp, and even after.

P.S. : you can choose which of the days (Discovery Hacking OR Scale Hacking) is suitable for you, depending the stage you are and the traction at your Startup. We kind of want to ensure that the folks in your room have similar stage of challenges as you do. So some filtering will happen. It’s for the common good so we’re sure you won’t mind. The volunteers are product folks like you, putting in a lot of effort to make this vision a reality.

 

Posted on

Speaking at PNCamp – Dhiraj Kacker(Canvera) and You

Get to hear speakers at conferences every day, don’t you?

Delivered over the mike, broadcast mode.

Speak speak, no listen.

It won’t happen. Not at PNCamp

Because when folks like Dhiraj Kacker are at PNCamp, it’s not to share their story but to listen to yours. And to help you make your story the stuff that conferences are made of. Dhiraj is going to be at PNCamp. Are you?

Dr.Dhiraj Kacker - 4 (square)

Apply here if you haven’t done so already. If you have already applied, you don’t need to do it again. We shall be in touch with every single person who wants to be at PNSummit. We’re just taking a little longer to get similar folks into the room so you can benefit from sharing with people who have similar problems. Stay tuned – here’s the latest on the PNCamp blog.

Posted on

ProductDossier – An integrated platform for project planning and execution

ProductNation interviewed Sandeep Kumar, Founder of ProductDossier, a company focused on providing integrated project management software solutions to customers worldwide. Read on to understand the genesis of the company and the learning from the experience gained in selling to different sectors of B2B customers…

What factors led to creating ProductDossier? 

0f89878During my professional career and extensive travel to the West, I noticed that a lot of project based industries were struggling to manage the execution of their projects and programs. While they had ERP systems and PDM software, these solutions were still not able to help them manage the project planning and execution. I reasoned out that the cause for this gap was due to ERP systems being transactional in nature, and PDM systems aiding only in data management. This led to the inception of ProductDossier, positioned primarily as a platform for project planning and execution.

Besides the above, two more factors aided me in starting up ProductDossier, out of India. My education was from IISc, which imbibed a strong desire in me to create something from scratch or something new. Secondly, I had noticed a strong bias on IT services in the Indian ecosystem, while in the West, they appreciated the product oriented work in equal terms. I wanted to work on things that would help put India in the world of products. So, these aspects also contributed in me starting up.

Going to customers who are so used to ERP and PLM concepts, and trying to explain your offering should have been tough. How did you manage to convince your initial customers about the need and value of your product? 

Since we setup our company in India, we targeted customers in our backyard, i.e, India for the first iteration. I found out that Indian customers were not able to verbalize their needs. Most of them were confused with the utility of ERP, PDM, PLM and CRM solutions and jargons – and were not sure of the value provided by these standardized solutions to their business. While in reality, some of these solutions could be a good fit, their lack of awareness of these solutions, and equally, the inability of these vendors to explain the value that these solutions can provide to the business – all led to the confusion.

Hence, we started approaching our prospective customers in a consultative fashion. Our first meetings with them would be to provide structure and meaning to the set of activities that they performed, mapped with the tools and practices that they currently used. Once the customer became aware of the landscape of their activities, we would then start discussing areas where there were big gaps and explain how our offering could help. This mode of complementing their existing solutions, showing them the bigger picture, aiding them to move to their desired goal, incrementally helped us win customers.

Product dossier - courtesy sme storyHow did your company evolve into offering diversified solutions to different industry sectors? What learning did you have as you straddled different sectors? 

We first positioned ourselves as an Integrated Project Management company, who would work to aid project based companies in the manufacturing sector in India. After a few engagements, we discovered that Manufacturing perhaps was not the best industry to go after, at the time we started. This was because in this sector, customers were not willing to pay, they expected any software to be delivered free, and they were not ready to look beyond what they already knew. Decision making was very slow – since the chief beneficiary of our solution was not the owner of the company or the key stakeholders but perhaps just the engineering manager.

We learnt a lot from the above experience. We realized that we were not solving a mission critical problem. Customers looked at our offerings as a nice to have capability – and not as a ‘must have’ capability. This way, we would stand a very less chance of converting a prospect into a sale. These experiences led us to focus on other similar project based industries, namely to Professional Services, Life Sciences & Pharmaceutical, & EPC.

We now focused on solving problems of the key stakeholders in these industries. We also made sure that we were solving the ‘must have’ problems – things such as project profitability, cashflow status, resources utilization, project material procurement, visibility of project status execution in real time, statutory compliances (ISO/CMMI,FDA, etc), NPD project portfolio, cross functional collaboration etc. This led us to more customers across different sectors.

Very interesting insights! What are your thoughts on selling and pricing your offerings in a market where every customer seems to have a unique need? 

There are different aspects one needs to master, when you begin selling to enterprise customers. Firstly, there is a huge opportunity in the B2B marketplace if you can do two things: one is to provide your product as a solution and not as a pure software and second is to position it right along side the existing IT landscape without displacing anything in the beginning. As I mentioned earlier, the lack of awareness of customers, along-with the rigidity of established solution vendors provide immense opportunities for other players to satisfy the needs of customers, not only in India but across the world. So for instance our product has several modules with each module a complete product in itself. So what we do is we pick a few features from each module, assemble and deploy it at a customer location as a customer specific solution

However, pricing such highly customizable product or solution is a challenge. One needs to remember that a customer is only looking at whether the package or offering suggested by you helps in his business or not. So, many a times, pricing becomes the perceived benefits that the customer expects to derive from your solution, as you pitch to him. We are still learning in this aspect but I believe we are on the right path.

Given these observations, your Sales team would have a big challenge, since you go-to-market as a solution. How do you address this challenge?

If you notice, scaling the sales team has been one of the most critical success factors of B2B companies that have now become large entities. The issue to be addressed here is about your sales team’s ability to articulate the pain points that their customer faces. Given the highly unique circumstances of the target customer segment, it becomes a challenge to bring in consistency and repeatability in the value proposition articulation process. To mitigate this, we have relied on visuals that tellingly explain different scenarios a customer would face, and how our offering can help us. We also have come up with many case studies, and based on the prospect, we provide the closest case study as an example, during the selling process. These have helped us in scaling our sales execution. We have also setup a back office team whose sole mission is to innovate around all aspects of product so that it becomes easy for our sales team to demonstrate the value proposition and also easy for our implementation team to implement.

Many other companies similar to yours rely heavily on partners to scale, while you seem to be focused on scaling your sales team organically. Why? 

In my view, partners are only one of the many different means to reach to your customers. It is very easy to sign up a partner, but it is difficult to enable them to sell our offering in a comfortable fashion. At best, then can be lead generators, introducing their captive customers to us. We initially engaged with a few partners, but it turned out that we had to do all the heavy lifting, in terms of engaging with the prospect, explaining the value of our solution and then even attending to their deployment despite partners being around.

This is not to say that the partners are not of value. The key problem is in enabling them to sell and manage the relationship with a customer even after deployment. So, we now are focused on creating an infrastructure where our sales team or partners can use the capabilities (visual, audio, content) to set up demos and articulate better. Once this is in place, I believe we will have a much fruitful relationship with partners.

When did you start selling globally? What has been your experience dealing with global customers? 

We did not explicitly start selling to global customers. However, due to the nature of industries in which our India based customers worked, we were able to get good foothold and visibility on to foreign markets. For example, QuEST Global and Tata Technologies – two of our most valued Professional Services customers used our products worldwide to manage projects and resources. So, in reality, our product, while was deployed in India was used by about 5000 users across 30 countries almost from a couple of years since our inception.

However, we made concerted efforts to sell in the international market only from last year – since we wanted to have a good set of domestic customers as references prior to us formally entering foreign markets. We are making good progress in this front, signing up customers across different geographies in a short span of time. Moving forward we will be focussing a lot more on the overseas markets as a part of our growth strategy.

Thank you for your insights. As a parting question, can you share a few of your personal learning that you believe other fellow product entrepreneurs will benefit from? 

I would say that as an entrepreneur, you should be out with your customers as much as you can. This is critical, because, when you interact in person with a prospective customer, you learn so much about their needs and requirements much closer at their workplace, as it happens, than by reviewing these trends from your office.

Secondly, try and solve a business critical problem that has significant impact on the target organization. This will maximize the chances of sale of your product and bring this stickiness. Thirdly, do not go by the herd mentality – stay focused on solving your customer problem. Everything else will follow!

Posted on

“We think more like Product Designers, and less like Product Managers” – Bharath Mohan, Pugmarks.me #PNHangout

(This passage is a summary of the conversation with Bharath Mohan. The audio transcript can be found here.)

Adopters of any new innovation or idea can be categorized as innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%), based on a mathematical Bell curve put forth by Everett Rogers in his book titled “Diffusions of Innovations”. The book broadly suggests that if you have a product that is of value, you often times have to pave the path for the consumers to be the beneficiaries of this idea. It’s the product designer’s role to design how a product is used across the dispersion of users. This ultimately determines the principles of design and the features that your product consists of.

bharath-photoWhile I was doing my PhD in IISc, I worked on designing a myriad of algorithms for information retrieval. A typical internet user reads content that could range from currents events, such as the war in Syria, to topics as specific as Product Management. I’ve always dreamt of a system that can bring the most relevant information to a user – without the user searching for it. Pugmarks.me connects the context in which you are browsing through these articles by following the digital trails you leave behind. It then uses its context engine to recommend the next article it considers you should read packaged in a seamless experience.

Designing Pugmarks.me has been an exciting experience, which included research in algorithms, building a real time crawling and retrieval system, and constantly learning from users. We’ve followed some Mantras in our product development – especially because the product requires inputs from multi-disciplinary areas. Everything has to tie in, to each other. Nothing is known prior and has to be learnt along the way. A “product management” approach would not work. A “waterfall” model to design would not work. “Powerpoint presentations” would not work either. Our product management is less of “management”, and more of design and evolution.

The Pugmarks Mantra

Unlike Facebook or Twitter where the problem’s technology core is simple and scaling is complex, our problem’s technology core is complex akin to the likes of Google’s search engine and NEST. Hence, over the past 1.5 years our product has been opened to a smaller set of users which gives us data to refine the product further ultimately paving the path for a larger cross section of consumers to enjoy the benefits of the product.

pugmarks-character-evolutionSome of our Mantra’s are:

  • Be metrics driven: Once we analyse our features metrics we identify ones that are successful and bolster them to make these our ‘super class’ features. While we do this, we bin our users into “Fans”, “Tried but dropped off”, “First day drop-offs”. The ‘tried but dropped off’ is where we focus our energy on. We do data analysis, interviews and direct emails – to understand why they drop off. What we learnt is that they mostly drop off because of the “inconvenience” of a new product; either added latency, extra memory consumption, instability of the browser, etc. These reasons give us new things to work on and improve.
  • Usage versus Users: We are building our product with the goal that even if few users come to try out our product, they all stay back. Between usage and users, we prefer high usage between a small number of users over low usage in a high number of users. If our product cannot engage users for a long time, any amount of marketing will still not help.
  • Focus on real Virality: Virality is often confused with just having a Facebook share or a Tweet button, or slyly making a user talk (spam) about your product in his social channels. Virality for us is the inherent quality in our product which makes the user want to talk about it. We consciously ask ourselves, “What will our users want to talk about Pugmarks to someone else?” These viral loops must be strengthened and not social share buttons.
  • Constantly question your assumptions: In our initial iterations, we felt our users will be concerned over privacy. Soon, we realized that the paranoid would never use us anyway – even if we gave them a lot of control. The ones, who used us, felt we were not building good enough models for them. So, we moved away from user supervised learning to a completely automated learning system. We imagine our current user telling us, “I’ll tell you everything about me. Now help me in ways I’ve never seen before”.
  • Continuous Integration: We never take up features or tasks that take more than two weeks to launch especially one’s which require a lot of people and require extensive build times and planning. If you finish the code and if it’s lying unused, there’s an opportunity cost lost because that code could very well engage a user or maybe incite him to talk about the product to someone else. This is a loss for us, hence, we continuously integrate.
  • Own the full user experience, end to end – From messaging to user touch points to the backend algorithms: A user doesn’t appreciate information until it is delivered in a way that is useful to you and is needed by you. We obviously needed a team that was capable of building this experience end to end. Our team considers every aspect of the product, from the touch points to the user, how the product interfaces with the user and also how the product communicates with the user using the technology algorithm we created.

pugmarks-airplanes#PNHANGOUT is an on-going series where we talk to Product Managers from various companies to understand what drives them, the products they work on and the role they play in defining the products success.

If you have any feedback or questions that you would like answered in this series feel free to tweet to me: @akashj

Posted on

Billbooks is helping ease the invoicing for the freelance economy

It has never come as a surprise that the best startup solutions and most passionate entrepreneurs are the one who end up solving their own pain points. For Sagar Kogekar founder of Billbooks the journey began with the advent of his startup Webwingz which he started at the age of 18 years, engaged in client servicing. He would be able to provide and do the client work but the part about billing was always a hassle. Invoicing and billing like most people was done in Word by him.

Soon Sagar realised the potential in the market. Rather than jumping head first into developing the solution Sagar took his time and did his research to find the niche he was targeting. By 2012 he had gone full time into developing Billbooks as a product with his team. Billbooks was his take on creating an online invoicing solution for small and mid-sized businesses.

On signing up for the first time the user is gifted three invoices to try and experiment with the product. Irrespective of the package a user takes, all the features are uniformly accessible on the platform. Which is a big plus. The pricing model begins from as low as $10 per 20 invoices upto 60$ for 200 invoices. With no monthly rental and expiration of the recharge, the user is free to use the invoice credit as and when he wishes.

The product is aimed at North American and the European markets with language customization in five languages to tap the local clientele. Sagar claims the user base to be in the early hundreds with nearly 10% of them being paid customers of the product. To say what an ideal Billbooks customer looks like would be an exercise in futility with diverse occupational users ranging from a video jockey based in Spain to a wood artist in Australia to a piano teacher in the US being proponents of the product. The unifying factor being the freelancer or the small enterprise economy.

Billbooks is not without competition and claiming otherwise would be unjust. The space for online accounting softwares even those with a focus towards SME is a crowded one. Solutions from big names like Zoho and Intuit, and products like Freshbooks already exist in the market. With many of them offering more utility in the form of mobile products at a slightly higher price point. But the USP of Billbooks would lie in offering a simple approach to a more professional looking billing solution for the freelancers and helping keeping track of partial payments, scheduled reminders and giving free estimates. The service should be an ideal product for people with extremely limited invoice requests a month and their model actually encourages that with no expiry on the invoice credits. 

In the coming months of the product timeline we can look forward to having native mobile products for the Android and iOS ecosystems in place for Billbooks. Features like the Freshbooks import option are already in place making it a breeze to get new users onboard and be up and running on Billbooks quickly.

You can show Billbooks some startup love and sign up to let us know what you think about the product! But the fact remains there is a niche that Billbooks fulfills and Sagar is happy building a product for that.

Posted on

Lets Not Lose the Reason and Season for Products

One of the long running debates in the Indian technology entrepreneurial world is whether India will ever engender global product companies or will it be destined to be a purveyor of services and a consumer of products and solutions that are imagined, created and marketed by others. As in most things, and especially true for India, there has to be a reason and there has to be a season for anything to occur. So what has occurred? What’s the reason? What’s the season?

What has occurred and is occurring with increasing velocity is:

  • Services companies are passé.  Almost all companies being created today are products or solutions (ie services around a core product offering)
  • These companies are largely to be found in the telecom/mobile domains utilising SaaS/cloud based delivery. This isn’t surprising since telecom/mobile are global scale, scope and market opportunities in India; SaaS/Cloud based companies can inexpensively cater to the world leveraging expensive and complex infrastructure built by others.
  • Talent from global tech companies or even from overseas is coming together to capitalise on these opportunities.

While these are heartening developments, what is more interesting is the opportunity ahead-  across each and every sector of the economy.

What’s the reason though for all this?

Increasing competition, awareness, technology adoption, and the like are beginning to convince more and more companies, across the board, of the importance of investing in technology to drive efficiency, productivity, quality and indeed competitiveness. Technology for all practical purposes today is all software: from vehicles to logistics to hotel, bus and airline reservations to rocket launches to banking to fraud detection to communication to education to anything-else-you-can-imagine! India is beginning to realise that it can be a market on a global scale for solutions as each of these sector s is plagued by colossal global sized problems.

Why is the season right?

Without the right season, no fruit would ever ripen. The season, in this case, is the environment:  enormous numbers of youngsters – aspirational, aware, impatient, confident, unafraid, educated, driven, the growing presence of avenues for these youngsters and their supporters, backers, service providers – investors, mentors, partners of all kinds– to experiment.

The collision of the reason with the season is accelerating this process at an increasing pace.

But before we all start hyperventilating, it is useful to remember that India, despite being the world’s largest producer of milk and in spite of being a milk surplus country, isn’t known around the world for its milk products! There’s a lesson in there somewhere right?  And as a country, we’re known to grab defeat from the jaws of victory with unfailing regularity and precision.  Some important points to keep in mind:

  • Most of the young product companies, especially those that have the connections, are either considering or already have set themselves up as overseas entities. Why? To escape from the mind-numbing red-tape, to enjoy operating freedom, for reasons of branding, protection of intellectual property, to get the benefit of taxation, investments and exits.  Is this desirable? If not, shouldn’t there be policy mechanisms to ensure that the reasons for seeking overseas domicile are minimised? When all countries are laying out red-carpets for companies to come to their shores, why are we intent on driving away those we have?
  • Local branding and awareness generation: Are there sufficient role models for Indian customers? Is it a matter of pride for the country if a world class “Made in India” product is used? What can and should be done to make this happen? Examples from what Taiwan and Korea did are relevant here. Remember, branding isn’t advertising. It is the delivery of a promise, consistently.
  • Industries that are global scale in India eg  defence or where India offers unique challenges eg retail and distribution? Co-option of stakeholders to build world class solutions in these areas is a possibility.
  • India, one would imagine, is ripe territory for the creation of unique voice based products and solutions, given the illiteracy, proliferation of languages and accents. Yet there’re no solutions here. Education – quality video over low bandwidth lines – can be a gamechanger. What about offering cloud based mobile apps for managing businesses for the large number of SMBs?

There are obviously opportunities and possibilities. But without the coming together of like-minded people driven by the desire to effect change across industry clusters via policy, awareness generation, branding, crafting solutions to solve Indian problems, the season to ripen fruits will pass.

This is a season where the coming together of young people, using technology, knowledge, research, engagement, drive and passion, are driving large changes in the way democracy and politics are practised for the better in the Indian nation. Surely, building a product nation is far simpler? Are we all up to it?

Posted on

Happy B’day ProductNation, We are One year Young

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. ― Mother Teresa.


ProductNation is today, one year young. Yes! One year. It didn’t seem too long ago when I was contemplating putting a blog together to showcase Indian Product companies. It all started as a passion project at the One97 office with the support of Vijay Shekhar Sharma; it was something I wanted to do for a long time. Having worked for almost eight years with the Product eco-system, I wanted to connect and contribute in a small way to the project building India as a ProductNation. I wanted to build something which allowed product people to share their experiences. I did bounce off the idea with a few of my friends, evangelists of the Product Industry and I had spontaneous commitment from many of them.


I always like to read and understand the successes of product entrepreneurs, which include some inspiring stories, the challenges faced by them and how they have been able to address global markets. These are the stories which will inspire a new generation of product companies from India, and indeed, it’s been a wonderful journey, for me personally, as well as for the people who have been involved. 

Here’s what ProductNation is today – 

  • We are home to 400-odd blog posts here in 50+ categories such as Product Management, Reviews of Products, Design, Eco-system, Funding, GotoMarketing and so on.
  • We have featured 110+ product companies on the site.
  • We do 5 blogs every week – Monday to Friday at 11am and once in a while do a blog on Saturdays.
  • There are 75+ contributors who actively contribute articles and share their own learning’s here. Many of them help me do the Product Reviews, interviews with Product Companies and the like.
  • We have started #PNHangouts where we have conversations with Product Managers.
  • We started out with sending newsletters twice a month, but now with so much of content coming up, we schedule the newsletters thrice a month (5th, 15th and 25th).  You can access the past issues here and subscribe to the newsletter here. We have sent out 53+ newsletters so far
  • We have 80+ Posts on Product Management
  • 18+ Playbook RoundTables which have been covered on the site
  • A vibrant community with 500+ members and 50+ conversations
  • More to come…stay tuned 🙂

 

ProductNation is the result of a collective effort, and I’m grateful to all the evangelists who have spent enormous efforts in contributing and in making what ProductNation is today! When I started, it was just me and my passion. Today, I have a large “virtual” team and many evangelists who truly believe in the movement. I do get many people who compliment me on the content and the regular updates that they get from the site. There are many who are silently observing the movement and I’m sure will jump in soon. 

ProductNation was one of the first steps in the formation of iSPIRT(Indian Software Product Industry RoundTable) – a think-tank with a difference to transform India into a hub for new generation software products. So here’s the deal. We need to put India on the global software product map. We need to do it soon. Come, join us.

Posted on

Design in Indian Startups

A brief look at the state of the Indian startup ecosystem from the lens of design and how well it is understood or misunderstood. How the next generation of the technology startups are battling the design challenge in a globally connected ecosystem for the right consumer audience.

According to Dave McClure the founding team of a startup should include the holy trinity of a hacker, hustler and a designer. In simple terms a dream team comprising of members responsible for the technology, business/marketing and the design. Dave is no stranger to entrepreneurship or India, and as the founding partner at 500Startups (internet startup seed fund and incubator program based in Mountain View, CA) each of their accelerator programs have seen interest and presence from a number of Indian startups.

“Holy trinity of hacker, hustler and a designer”

This then begets the question of what exactly is an “Indian startup”? Unlike Israel a nation known both for its military prowess and high-technology startups along with the fact that it has the highest per-capita VC investment in the world. Startups in India like the nation itself conform to no unifying sector or theme. On one hand we have Delhi based Langhar helping connect foodies with authentic home cooked local cuisines on the other we see SarkariExam a portal dedicated to helping people find government jobs. Even after applying the filter of technology and technology enabled startups with their constantly blurring boundaries in the internet & mobile space, the bandwidth of the spectrum is still large.

If one goes by the estimates of AngelList, a platform dedicated towards the startups and the investors; there are 1500+ startups in India. This by no mean implies that all of them would be independently successful or have a profitable exit. Many of them would eventually shut shop and might not even exist the next summer. Despite this uncertainty and the increasing belief of Indian founders in their idea have led to a rising entrepreneurial activity. Catering to everybody from the hyper local audiences to products specifically built for the customers abroad. Helping us establish the fact that there is no single way to explain or define as to what constitutes an Indian startup. If question of the Indian-ness wasn’t tough enough the attention to design has increased the complexity of the understanding manifold. Invariantly a handful of startups like Cleartrip (travel), Zomato (food), Paytm (payment) and Hike (messaging) have become the poster boys for the best designed products being built in and in certain cases for India. This then progresses us to our next challenge of “What is design in the context of the startups and what is the role of the designer?”

Depending upon who do you ask, one is bound to get various forms and interpretation of what constitutes design? Making it easy to complicate things for the humble hackers and the hustlers trying to fathom as to why their designer is unable to deliver in the face of the challenge for their startup. Going over from formal the definitions provided in academic institutions of design being ‘a noun and a verb’ to the one followed by design practitioners whereby they try to highlight the difference between “art and design”. One thing that emerges is that, design has been and will always remain at its core a form of problem solving.

“Design has been and will always remain at its core a form of problem solving”

Had things been as black and white as they seem we wouldn’t have startups explaining their design strategy in terms of the visual design. Or in the case they understand the value of design keep looking for that one mythical designer who could solve all their problems. With the ever changing relationship and interaction of humans with technology; and it’s constantly evolving nature the boundaries of what explicitly is the job of a designer or the hacker is quickly overlapping.

Take the case of Rasagy Sharma who after finishing his undergraduate degree in computer science & engineering joined a Bangalore based startup as their UX Designer. One of the first ‘design’ hires in the team comprising of hackers, leading him to explain his role to the people around him. If the challenge of understanding what exactly entails in these new design roles wasn’t tricky enough, Rasagy highlights the emerging debate of ‘Should designers code?’ “The answers vary from the extremes of ‘Designers can code and should code’ to ‘Designer cannot code and is not expected to code’ with a comfortable middle ground emerging in the form of ‘Designer can code but is not expected to code’ ” says Rasagy.

“Designer can code but is not expected to code”

But if there is no one designer who can solve all of the problems of the startups which range from visual design & interaction design to in certain cases industrial design; and finding the talent is tough. Then shouldn’t we see the limited resources of the startups being spent on the function (technology) than form (design and by extension user experience)? One of the most interesting theme to emerge while talking to a number startups as a part of the research was their unanimous agreement in pushing design forward for their product. Neeraj Sabharwal who heads the design at the Hyderabad based NowFloats quotes Tom Peters when he says “The dumbest mistake is viewing design as something you do at the end of the process to ‘tidy up’ the mess, as opposed to understanding it’s a ‘day one’ issue and part of everything.” Even in the case where the technical founders thought of design as nothing more than a marketing gimmick they did approve of increasing the resources dedicated to certain design activities by either hiring talent or outsourcing the process. And putting the bill under what they felt was the ‘cost of customer acquisition’.

The cost of starting an internet business is decreasing by the year and in no other period of history have we seen more entrepreneurial activity than the present. Faced with the simple market forces of consumer choice, a positive user experiences is a simple measure of how efficiently the technology works to help the user achieve his goals. In a somewhat surprising trend that in hindsight makes perfect sense, some of the best designed startups being built in the country include a designer as a part of the founding or the founders atleast have the design aesthetics in place to drive things forward.

Eventifier is being built in the southern city of Chennai at The Startup Center. Eventifier helps keep all the social media chatter around an event including the conversation, photos, videos, presentation decks in a single place. They are one of the few startups using the hacker, hustler and the designer approach since the day they began. Mohammed Saud holds the mantle of the Chief Design Officer and one would give weight to his belief when he says “Being equally proficient in all facets of design even when their underlying principle might be the same is difficult.” His solution is the one that is increasingly becoming common, become proficient in one form of design yet understands the other well enough to guide somebody with your vision. A similar ideology was put forth by Arun Jay, who amongst a number of other claims holds the post of the principle designer at SlideShare and the senior UX designer at LinkedIn. By academic training Arun began as a communication designer but his experience with film making, photography and web based technologies makes him the ideal choice for the unicorn designers so many startups look for.

But it wouldn’t be fun if there weren’t a few startups breaking the mould. HealthifyMe and NowFloats are two startups which were a part of the Microsoft Accelerator program in Bangalore. On one hand we have Neeraj Sabharwal from NowFloats with no formal training in the various disciplines of design yet relying on his industry experience and understanding of design thinking principles to lead the charge. On the other we have Tushar Vashisht co-founder of HealthifyMe attributing the fact that “Lack of a dedicated designer in the founding team even with the team valuing design, cost them precious resources in the decision making and product building exercise. With HealthifyMe treating the user experience as an integral part of the product building process getting Rohan Gupta as a designer onboard has positively affected our shipping time.”

But believing that a well-designed product is the end all in the product building exercise would be plain naïve. Design is one of the integral processes amongst the host of other responsibilities held by the hustlers and the hackers which make a product successful. Brij Vaghani is the founder of live traffic monitoring service, Traffline which currently operates in three metropolitan cities. His team is working in close association with a design studio for the soon to be launching next version of their product. “Even though we understood the value of design, the founding team relied upon our core strengths of technology in the early stages of the product. An approach which we feel might have had an impact on the metrics we use to track the product success but something that was within permissible levels”

Where are we headed? Great design and technology have always existed. The founders are still looking for that elusive designer who can handle all their design problems, but as unicorns go those beings are still rare to find. The consumer internet is nearly twenty years old, the smartphone nearly six and the tablet less than four. Yet the potential of the startups building upon and specifically for these platforms is seeing an exponential growth. We haven’t even begun scratching the surface of the potential and can’t predict the trajectory of the startup economy in India serving an internal audience of a billion plus people and catering to those abroad. But the fact remains that the designers seem to have finally found a voice and Indian startups are rearing for them to go.

Author’s Note: This article was written for a collaborative publication: Create Change for Kyoorius Designyatra 2013 produced by Kyoorius and British Council, India and is a part of British Council’s design writing programme.

The post has been slightly modified for the web by adding of the appropriate hyperlinks to the startups and the resources mentioned to aide the reader. You can download the PDF version of the print magazine in all its glory here. The article is on page sixty-nine.

Posted on

Gandhigiri to the Software and Technology Entrepreneur!

Many of us in the software industry, for more than 2 decades have not only been the direct beneficiaries of the opening up of the Indian economy in 1991, but we also pride ourselves for creating an industry that today supports the livelihood of millions of software engineers, bpo executives and call-center operators. But have we done enough, could we have done better?

India is today struggling with C.A.D (current account deficit). Simply put, we import more than we export. Some people argue that we have gone back to 1991, in effect, all the glorious 22 years which we think we have created have some how evaporated. If we had spent the past 22 years creating Indian software products, could we have not today exported more than just services, based on labor arbitrage? In fact, I would say its largely because we did not think ourselves as a ProductNation. We became pseudo-intellectuals, happy with the easy money flowing into our economy.

Good thing is we can still learn from our legacy. 300 years of British colonial rule, and all the well educated software industry professionals, fail to understand that we are no different than our fore-fathers. Its quite fascinating, and really important to see the parallels outlined below. As software professionals and business owners, its time for us to introspect and learn a little bit of Gandhigiri.

Economic Impact during British Raj

Any chapter from our history books will have paragraphs which read like this…..

Indian Economy was transformed into a colonial economy whose nature and structure was determined by the needs of the British economy.

India supplied all the raw material required for Britain’s Industrial needs, especially the cash crops like jute, cotton, iron ore, silk, wool. In-turn, became the ready market for Britain’s large-scale finished products which were also cheaper than Indian finished-goods, since they were mass-produced, for e.g. the ready made shirts, pants, sweaters, machines,etc. The economic policies of the colonial government was to reduce India to a feeder economy to Britain’s industrial base and hence with out any domestic policy support, the cottage industries within India were destroyed systematically.

Added to that, the zamindari system also meant all profit accruing out of the agricultural sector went to the zamindars instead of the cultivators. High revenue demands and rigid manners of collection forced peasants into the clutches of the moneylenders, who were controlled and financed by the colonial government’s banks. Expanding population put greater pressure on viability and sustenance, and as there was no corresponding domestic development of both urban and rural infrastructure, the economy collapsed and India became a poorer nation. Britain’s policy of trade ruined India’s urban and rural industries.

Economic Impact from 1991 to 2013…

Indian Economy was transformed into a “global” economy whose nature and structure was determined by the needs of the US/Western economy.

India supplied all the raw material required for America’s IT/software needs, especially the cash crops like software engineers, creative designers, app developers, analysts, bpo executives and call-center operators. In-turn, India became the ready market for America’s large-scale finished software and technology products, which were also cheaper than Indian-finished goods, since they were mass-produced with patent protections, for e.g. the Office software, ERP software, Accounting software, Routers, Switches,etc. The economic policies of the Indian government was to reduce India to a feeder economy to America’s Technology and Software base and hence with out any domestic policy support, the local software industries within India were destroyed systematically.

Added to that, the funding eco-system also meant all profit accruing out of the software/technology sector, went to the venture-capitalists instead of the entrepreneurs. High revenue-multiple demands and rigid manners of exit-funding forced software entrepreneurs into Mergers or Acquisitions by American companies, or to the clutches of the Angels and VCs, who were in turn controlled and financed by PEs or LPs from America. Expanding population put greater pressure on viability and sustenance, and as there was no corresponding domestic need for software/technology in both urban and rural industries, the economy collapsed, the FIIs fled, leaving India poorer. India’s own policy of trade for 22 years, ruined India’s technology and software industry.

Conclusion

Well, do I have to take a pessimistic approach and assume that this how its going to be? Should we wait for another Mahatma to lead the new movement to becoming a true Product Nation? An emphaticNO. Gandhigiri to the software and technology entrepreneur provides the vision and direction, so we don’t have to go down the same path our forefathers went. We need to be the change the world wants to see. Lets go and create the change, and let initiatives like iSPIRT and ProductNation be the inspiration through which we can channel our aspirations and ideas. Happy Gandhi Jayanthi to all!

Posted on

Brand “YOU” – guard it zealously

personal-branding-tips

In the corporate world there are no certainties. There is never a “sure thing”, even the best businesses fail due to circumstances beyond their control. However, there is one thing that you can control: your brand.

Let us face it. Whether we like it or not, we are constantly selling. Whether it is our agenda as a design guru, a resume, a position, even a restaurant we want to go to, we are always trying to convince others to do something that aligns with our agenda.

Great leaders do this effortlessly while others struggle. I confess, this is an area I have struggled with.  Mostly because, as people who know me will tell you, I have been known to  be blunt to the point of being obnoxious at times. Let me tell you, it doesn’t work, especially when you have a team to motivate. I have had to change. I have had to soften my pitch and listen more.

There have been many lessons along the way but the following have been critical for me establishing myself as somebody who can be trusted. Here goes:

Mean what you say, say what you mean –  Too often we are tempted to say things to mollify the other party even if we don’t mean what we say. I can think of many silver tongued individuals who always say the right things, whether they mean them or not. This is a mistake. You don’t have to be a jerk but having clarity of communication and commitment establishes you as a person of integrity and people like doing business with people like that.

Keep your commitments – Whether it is showing up for appointments on time or completing deliverables that you committed to, you have to do what you said you will if you want to be taken seriously.  There is an individual who comes to mind, who always talked big, but never delivered on time. There was always an excuse. The behavior had a direct impact on this person’s relations with his colleagues and customers and had an adverse impact on the revenue he was able to bring in to the company.

A favor is a debt – Our network defines us. It is what makes us effective. New opportunities come from it. Be a net contributor to your network rather than a leech. Any favor you ask, should always hang over you as something you have to deliver on. As my old boss Rajesh Hukku said, “…always look for ways you can help your customer, not just in what you have to sell, but in every other way…”.  Perhaps their kid is looking for math tutoring and another person in your network is a great tutor. Connecting the two of them, adds value to all three of you. Without doing too much, you would have positioned yourself favorably with your client, what you sell will need to have merit but the client is more likely to take you seriously if they feel you add value to their life.

Treat people well – People remember kindness and people remember jerks. Choose what you want to be remembered as.

Admit when you are wrong or when you don’t know – Just because you are in a leadership role, doesn’t mean that you are always right. In fact, you are probably often wrong. Don’t be afraid to admit when you are wrong or when you simply don’t know enough. It builds credibility. And a credible brand is something everyone wants to associate with.

Keep things in perspective – Salman Khan of Khan Academy said it best when talking about people being successful in their endeavors, I quote: “…(enjoy your successes) but keep them in perspective. Enjoy the successes. But when your ego starts feeling a little bit large, keep in mind the sun will supernova one day, the galaxies will collide. We are just these small little mammals on this small planet. There’s a hundred – two hundred million stars in our galaxy alone. So have peace in the little success(es) “

Agree. Disagree. Or have another viewpoint. Would love to hear your thoughts. 

Posted on

Clearing The Air: 3 Roles Indian IT Providers See as Product Management

The Indian IT industry is over $100bn, but still struggles in creating global IT products.  While there has been the occasional Tally, Ramco, or Finacle, there is not much else.  One critical reason I attribute this to is that Indian IT companies do not really understand how Product Management can create long term customer value and business sustainability.  While one can argue that there have been more of these companies in the last 5 years (Livemint: Tech Startups), the next 5 years will determine whether India has actually created global products.

Most Indian companies view product management as either of these: Product development, delivery (or project) management, and marketing (or marketing communications).

Role 1: Product Development:  Great at problem solving, developers are expected to provide insights on what they believe the customer wants, and create products based on their understanding.  Let’s admit, very few developers are comfortable socializing with customers (aka Raj Koothrapalli – awkwardness multiplied a few times).  I have often encountered developers spending hours defining products, with limited idea on how the customer environments actually are (a few minutes meeting customers would have saved those hours).  The smarter ones are able to engage with customers, but put them in front of a business strategy plan, and things slow down again.  BTW, this may work for startups, where the founder often has a clear intuition about the idea, but when they have to scale revenues up (to new customers or increased wallet share of existing customers), most struggle.

Role 2: Delivery (or Project) Management: They engage with customers and internal teams, to co-ordinate schedules and resources.  However, expecting them to gather requirements because they are engaged with customers, based on which products are created, is better suited for an IT services delivery, not for sustainable product IP creation.  Today, most Indian SI companies are struggling as they attempt to create product IP and value, because of this belief and expectation from delivery managers to “productize” based on customer specific projects.

Delivery and Services Approach

Role 3: Marketing (or Marketing Communications): Marketing teams are definitely engaged with the market, but most are focused on lead generation and marketing communications, and the execution of those plans, rather than gather actual feedback.  Thus, what we get are customer leads, with very little investment in market research aligned with direct customer engagement.  Recall the last time you attended an IT vendor’s event, and exchanged business cards with their marketing person – I can’t!

As long as Indian IT companies continue to depend solely on one of the above to help create long term products, they are going to struggle in creating global products, and building the valuations that Apple / Microsoft / Google / Salesforce (and many others) have.

I end with my definition of Product Management – engagement with the market and customers, through multiple channels, to understand stated and unstated needs, analyze the potential opportunities, align with corporate strategy, and work with sales, marketing,  and development teams, to translate the needs into a multi year product roadmap, eventually creating products that customers desire (read Apple, though the approach may have been slightly different 🙂 )

If your current teams are geared and empowered to do this effectively, time and again, then you maybe in the right direction to be hailed as an Indian product company (if not already) soon.

Guest Post by Angira Agrawal, AVP and Country Head – Cloud atNEC India Pvt. Ltd

Posted on

Keeping Data Theft Prevention Simple & Green!

Zarir M. Karbhari is the Chief Architect of CopyNotify! & Founder of CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd shares his journey of diversifying a outsourced programming services company into a software product company. The company was founded in 1995 with a focus of offering hi-tech outsourced programming services for companies based all over the world. The company maintained this hi-tech niche by ensuring that most of its projects involved network programming, communication protocols and device driver development for various operating systems.

Decision to diversify to product development — What factors contributed to this?

Based on inherent in house expertise and experience of over 100,000 programming hours in the field of application development, networking, security and communications, a strategic decision was made by CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd. in 2007 to move up the ‘value’ ecosystem and develop a network security software product which catered to the needs of the small business user which was at that point a perceived need of the hour.

Explain the journey of evolving your core product. What aspects and feedback were important in this process?

Security against data theft of source code was becoming paramount in the outsourced programming industry in India and many nightmarish stories of how data was being copied in an unauthorized manner and without detection via USB flash drives were beginning to surface. So theft via USB became the initial ‘problem to solve ‘. Instead of searching the web for similar
anti data theft products and cloning them, the engineers at CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd took the route of talking to system administrators & small business owners and created a vision specification for CopyNotify based on their feedback.

The company had identified a problem, spoken in detail to those who were facing the problem and then went on to design a software product to solve the problem. From a simple beginning of just detecting the insertion of USB Flash Drives, the product soon evolved into a full fledged Data Security Software for small office networks.

Can you share details about your products.

CygNET Systems currently has released 3 products.

1. CopyNotify! (Data Protection that went GREEN)

CopyNotify! is an entry level data protection software designed specially for the small business / SOHO networks. The software deploys anti data theft measures for computers on the office network by disabling the copying of data to external USB drives and Smart Phones, blocking internet connectivity via portable modems / data cards as well as restricting browser based uploads of data.

The software monitors user logon activities such as privilege levels, remote logons and invalid logons. Software installs and un-installs on the network are logged as well as rogue devices attempting to access network resources can also be detected.

CopyNotify! goes GREEN in data protection by also offering electricity saving features such as switching off IDLE machines and the auto shutdown of computers after office hours.

2. Insta-LockDown ( Data Protection at a Key Stroke )

The personal edition of CopyNotify! is called Insta-LockDown. It has been designed for single computers / laptops and locks down the copying of data with a simple keystroke combination.

Insta-LockDown restricts the copying of data through various routinely used data channels such as the internet, file attachments, removable USB devices and Bluetooth transfer to smart phones and comes in handy when single PCs are used by multiple users and protection of confidential data is a concern. It also plays a protective role against data theft when administrative privileges are granted to multiple users of the same PC or the admin password has been inadvertently compromised.

3. GreenNotify! (Energy Saver Software)

GreenNotify is an energy conservation software that reduces electricity bills of small businesses by automatically switching off computers that are not being used and shutting down computers automatically after office hours.

Your views on how your offering is differentiated in the market / Competitive advantage you have over others in the same space. Your plan of achieving success in a crowded and mature marketplace.

During this endeavor of developing a security software, CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd in its strategy never tried to compare or clone its software with those released by its perceived competitors. A data security need had been perceived and the requirement of simplicity of acquisition, cost and expertise for Indian conditions had to be addressed.

In today’s digital world, protection from data theft is crucial and soon will become a ‘must’. However for small business users, the prohibitive acquisition costs of sophisticated Data Loss Prevention software and the level of IT expertise required at times results in data security being ignored all together. Also more often than not, the DLP software is an overkill in terms of ‘cost versus capability’ for small organizations due to non suitability of all available software features.

With CopyNotify! and its affiliated products, data protection software is made as easily available and affordable as a ‘wada pav’. A ‘wada pav’ is a popular spicy fast food native to Maharashtra. It is filling, inexpensive and caters to the masses.

Keeping the analogy of the ‘wada pav’ in mind, CopyNotify! offers data security solutions that brings enterprise level data protection to the average computer user. The software does basic data protection, is inexpensive in acquisition, feasible in implementation and simple enough to accepted by the average business user. CygNET Systems firmly believes that in India unless the use of data security software percolates down to the average user, an acceptable deterrence against data breaches will never be achieved whatever the size of any organization.

Very low cost of acquisition, suitability for Indian conditions and ease of use of the software products developed by CygNET Systems Pvt. Ltd are already paying rich dividends by the way of increase of sales.

Key learning from selling to customers

Feedback is crucial for a good product. Right from its inception, the team behind CopyNotify! have taken the feedback of users in the field, tried to understand the problems they face in a routine day and then design the software to alleviate these problems. This principle of user feedback based feature additions has made CopyNotify! very popular with its existing customers.

Your views on relevance or importance of leveraging channels and partnerships to sell.

It is far too expensive and time consuming for a startup to set up its own channel of resellers / distributors or having its own sales force. Partnering with existing VARs/Distributors/Resellers is best way to proceed as these organizations already have existing sales networks which can used to push the product out to the market.

The biggest difficulty is getting a partner / distributor to sign up with a start up is the ‘curse’ of being an unknown brand as the effort to push non branded product becomes more time consuming and expensive for the partner hence the reluctance to partner with a start up.

Your views on alliances and its benefits/pitfalls.

For any software product, alliances should not be shirked away from, be it technical, financial or by the way of sales and marketing however care should be taken that all is in ‘black and white’ and immense care should be taken that in the hype tornado of ‘promises and assured success’ the best interests of the start up is kept in mind at all times.

Your views on networking with industry colleagues and participation in conferences. The benefits or pitfalls of the same.

Networking is great provided one can get themselves in a group that is one step ahead of one’s current stage of business and can actually help with getting more sales. Networking is about getting the right connections to make more sales and not just about collecting visiting cards. 

Your message for product development entrepreneurs for India.

You might have a great software product but unless you know how to tell the world about it, it will never sell. If it does not sell, your idea was of no use in the first place.

Posted on

The Who, What, When, Why and How of Consumerization of the Enterprise

Users of enterprise software marvel at the ease of use of facebook, twitter and gmail on their mobiles, tablet computers and desktops! Then they wonder why their enterprise software should not be as easy to use or at least be available from their own devices. The CEO wonders why she cannot see the company graphs and charts in vibrant colors on her iPad at home on her sofa, while watching TV! This is where the consumerization of the enterprise sets up expectations of mobility, flexibility, ease of use and at a minimum, just being able to access enterprise applications from these other devices!

Consumerization of the enterprise is exciting from an end user point of view, but brings with it a number of new issues of security, availability, and application responsiveness that need to be addressed by the enterprise software maker or the IT department. Enterprise software product start-ups need to take this trend very seriously since mobiles and tablets are getting only more powerful, less expensive, and ubiquitous. By the time they mature and emerge from a start-up stage, this may not be a nice to have but a must have. So, here’s a Who, What, When, Why and How of Consumerization of Enterprise Software. This is a rather involved subject to be covered in a single article. I will cover the basics and provide links to additional material as appropriate.

The Why

Users of enterprise applications like the mobility that comes with smartphones and tablet computers. They see fairly sophisticated things done with these devices in their personal lives and are wondering why the same should not be true of their enterprise applications! They see that these devices are powerful computers in their own right and are wondering why they should not be using them for work.

The What

Consumerization results in a number of new expectations of enterprise software – use of inexpensive commodity servers for hosting the application if on-premises or a Software As a Service (SaaS) model, browser based interfaces, access from mobile devices and ease of use that matches consumer applications like Google, Twitter and Facebook. Consumerization involves the design and implementation of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies where employees use their own devices to access enterprise applications and data. What happens to the enterprise data that may be stored on them,  if they lose this device or it gets stolen? What happens when this employee leaves the company? How do you make sure that the company data or the applications are no longer accessible?

The When

In many developed countries, smartphones and tablet computer penetration are near saturation already with many individuals and households having many of these devices, each. In India, the annual penetration and total market saturation may be lesser but it is only a matter of time. Even in India,  at the C-Suite level usage of these devices may be pretty much near saturation. So it’s not a question of if, but only a matter of when. This is especially important to enterprise start-ups that will face all of these issues by the time they have their products ready and achieve market fit.

The Who

Consumerization involves a host of policy and technology issues. Not all of them could be resolved only with the software product maker or the IT department. Access to applications and data may be policy issues to be determined by management and implemented by the IT security folks within the company. Software designers may need to address the ease of use issues that bring the enterprise applications closer in user experience to popular consumer applications like Google, Twitter and facebook.

The How

Consumerization involves making the user interface of the enterprise application on mobile devices, easy-to-use like those of consumer applications, native or HTML5 based. Bring Your Own Device policy implementation may involve the use of Mobile Device Management (MDM)  software which allows organizations to register and allow only authorized devices to access enterprise applications. In case employees need to be allowed access only to certain applications and not to others selectively, Mobile Application Management (MAM) software may need to be used. Chris Swan presents these issues in a very organized and understandable fashion in a video here and a presentation here, in case someone wants to dive deeper into the technology issues.

Consumerization of the Enterprise is about managing the expectations of the users of enterprise applications properly; answering questions such as – why can’t I use my smartphone or tablet to access the company’s application? Why shouldn’t their interfaces be as easy-to-use as my Gmail, Twitter or facebook? The technology and the design approaches for making this happen are already there. It’s only through careful analysis and addressing of issues that these objectives can be met, while at the same time balancing other issues such as security of data and applications!

Water cooler chatter 15 years ago used to be about what happened on Seinfeld. Now it’s ‘Look at what I’m doing on the enterprise network with my mobile device. – Bob Egan, vice president of mobile strategy at Mobiquity

Posted on

How does an Ecosystem need to help itself? The Zensar way of doing it!!

As part of the iSPIRT ProductNation initiative, we work together helping product startups to connect to the enterprises to find, build and utilize the synergies and in the process helping the product startups as well as the enterprises have a inclusive growth. As part of this initiative we are very proud to bring in such a TechShowcase organized by Zensar Technologies from Pune.

When we approached Ganesh Natarajan of Zensar, he was more than happy to make this happen. Later we worked with many other heads at Zensar and we were astonished really at their eagerness and the hurriedness and for a second we were confused at the speed of execution. We have so far never seen this sense of urgency from a large enterprise. Anyways we got around 73 applications for this coveted TechShowcase and Zensar as promised chose the top 10, which makes a lot of synergy for their offerings and for their customers.


Last Saturday (Sept 8 2013) they flew us all the ten companies to Pune and the startups had to do a double presentation – one in front of the executive council and the other in front of the tech council. To be frank we were amazed at the preparations at Zensar with the kind of welcome we got, the setup, the welcome boards, the executive & the technology council being ready and on time considering it was a Saturday and it was a long weekend, and of course the goodies we got. Just amazing!! I think if Zensar is anything to go by the discipline and sense of urgency and the diligence they showed they have a great future for sure!!

Thank You ZENSAR – we appreciate all your efforts and your hospitality – from iSPIRT as well as all the participating companies.

Here is the list of 10 companies that Demo’d @ Zensar (& in the order they presented)

    1. Germin8 – Mumbai based company, which works on big data analytics on social media mainly that is text based. They started in 2007 and they mainly target Marketing and Corporate Communications team in an organization.

 

  • TriggerO – Delhi based; working mainly in the Rewards & Recognition space and employee engagement via Social. Their tag line is “Recognition is Social”. They provide smart analytics about employee engagement as well as ROI.

 

 

  • GoDB – Chennai based; started on 1999; Creates vertical focused mobile apps, which come with scalability and security, and is based of their platform and their main focus is on FMCG, BFSI and Retail verticals.

 

 

  • Kreeo – Bangalore based; Started in 2007; Helps share knowledge within an enterprise like what you do in the social outside. They call it a Collective intelligence and a unification platform for enterprises.

 

 

  • Seclore – Mumbai based; Started in 2007; they work in the space of information security policy based. Their tag line is security not at the cost of collaboration.

 

 

  • i7 Networks – Bangalore based; Started in June 2012; they work on the space of BYOD security; Their sweet spot is 100% Agentless device discovery, fingerprinting and health-check and then denying infected/malicious devices from connecting to corporate network.

 

 

  • Teritree – Bangalore based; Provides social commerce platform

 

 

  • Knowledge Foundry – Bangalore based; Advanced segmentation and profiling to target Ads and helps run smart campaigns and helps ecommerce with tools with Amazon-like recommendations.

 

 

  • Vondasoft – Mumbai and Bangalore based; Scans multiple social media for your relevant brand, filters data based on many attributes and provides the true social image metrics for your brand.

 

 

  • MeshLabs – Bangalore based firm; has a text analytics platform. Listens to all stake holders and unlocks the hidden value via text analytics.

 

As next steps, Zensar will shortlist those companies that they and their customers will find value to take them to their customers. We are sure this will be a huge value to the selected startups and ofcourse for the whole ecosystem. Can we have some more bigger companies doing the Zensar way?

We would like to thank Kumar Gaurav, Vice President at Zensar to lead this initiative with the support of Ajay Bhandari, Chief Corporate Development Officer, Sanjay Marathe – Head, Strategic Services Unit and CTO, Krishna Ramaswami – Senior Vice President, Healthcare Vertical & Global Infrastructure Management Business, Lavanya Jayaram – Head – Marketing and Sales Enablement & Vivek R Sarnobat – Marketing, for their support.

We also feel that these kind of events can be a huge boost to the whole ecosystem as well as a win-win proposition for both service comapnies which now can innovate and provide services that make a difference to their customer while the product companies can benefit hugely as their biggest problem today is not the product development itself but taking them to market. These kind of partnerships and differentiated solutions will help both and in the end help customers to get better, innovative and faster solutions.

Posted on

Next Gear into ProductNation Summit

The journey is unstoppable. India has started building software products that the world recognizes… a far cry from the days when it was known only for software programmers and not for software. Through its successful Playbook RoundTables and Community platform, iSPIRT’s ProductNation initiative has touched the lives of hundreds of product entrepreneurs across India.

ProductNation thrives on the strengths of our Volunteer community who are people just like you. This community is proud to announce the ProductNation Summit coming this December in 2013. We will soon be on twitter, just follow us @Product_Nation and the #PNSummit hashtag.

#PNSummit is selflessly hand-crafted by Product folks, a Summit attended exclusively by Product folks. A lot is going to be talked about Customer Discovery and Growth Hacking. #PNSummit has lean forward and lean back sessions and is practitioner led with over 70% of the sessions being interactive. These sessions are no holds barred. They are practical, frank and maybe even brutal. It will be a gurukul, where teacher and taught share the same platform, only the roles are reversed. Yet there is no sage on stage, only like minded peers.

If this sounds like just what you are missing, we’ll be delighted to send you an invite. Just let us know a little more about you, so we can ensure the other folks in the room are also passionate Product folks. Seats are extremely limited and there is a marginal Attendee fee. What gets you in is not the fee, but your passion, i.e., what you do.

Once you’ve been there, you can take back a lot more that what you learn in 2 days. Insights from great like minded people like you, a platform to share and learn for 4-6 months after the summit, and friendships for a lifetime. Seats are extremely limited and open only for the first 100 who get invited.

Your current situation is not important. If you have the mindset, Invites for the lucky 100 will not remain available for long. Gates close on 30th September.