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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.

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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.

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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!

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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. 

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Events Landscape 2.0

About four months ago, most of the core volunteers that had built NASSCOM Product Conclave into a successful event gracefully handed over the keys for NPC’13 to a new team. Thereafter, in an effort to address the remaining gaps in the product ecosystem, multiple initiatives were born. Playbook Round Tables was one of them which has been immensely successful right from the word go. They have already brought unmatched experiential and peer learning to 120+ product startups.

Playbook Round Tables are an example of small, highly-curated, nation-wide events that are hyper focused on specific real-world problems most product startups face. Back in 2009, and I know it’s hard to picture this now, NPC was reimagined just along these lines. We saw it as the specialized version of the mega event of those times – the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit. In fact, we kept the format as-is and just populated it with very product-centric and highly curated content. This clicked and NPC went on to become the mega event that it is today.

Now, the wheels are turning again and further specialization is happening in the ecosystem.

UnPluggd, DEMO, etc. have become places where early stage angel and VC investors get together to hear curated entrepreneurial pitches. This category came to life when the self-help volunteer community created Proto.in.

Now the same powerful energy is at work in building another specialized event. This will bring many global CIOs in front of dozens of curated startups. Watch out for more about this important event in the coming months!

There is another fundamental shift afoot not just here, but all over the world.

Community powered learning is becoming the new norm. This trend has been in the works in our ecosystem for years. A wonderful example of this is The Fifth Elephant, a three-day workshop and conference on big data, storage and analytics, with product demos and hacker corners.

Early next week an important new community powered learning event will be launched. This will take the Playbook Round Tables to their logical conclusion. It will be a 2-day “learning orgy” (yes, that is an acceptable phrase now!) for practicing product entrepreneurs where they’ll fluidly exchange knowledge about playbooks. It’ll be a transformative experience. To maintain high quality of peer learning, it’ll be invite only! Somebody who is already attending will need to pull you in.

Defying economic gloom, Indian Product entrepreneurs are gaining confidence.

They are now reaching out to eclectic groups beyond their immediate ecosystem in The Goa Project. They are taking a bit of Bangalore to other countries with Startup Festivals. The self-help volunteer community is on a roll. In the next few months, you will see the event game go up one more notch.

We are now creating open-source based “public goods” that small buyers (e.g. jewelers, tier 2 manufacturers, etc.) can use to drive their own learning programs. The initial pilots have gone very well. And these are leading to some powerful partnerships with trade associations. So, together with our new partners we are planning to rapidly grow the pool of informed software product buyers. We are talking about delivering our “Be an Informed Software Product Buyer” sessions to, not thousands, but hundreds of thousand small businesses in India.

There is lots of new stuff on its way.

Step by step, we are fixing critical product ecosystem gaps on our own using the pay-forward model. We, the self-help volunteer team, won’t rest till India becomes a Product Nation!

[Thanks to ThiyagaRajan, Avinash Raghava, Bala Parthasarthy, Pallav Nadhani, Sridhar Ranganathan, Vijay Anand and Kiran Jonnalagadda for reading drafts of this and suggesting improvements.]

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The march of the product brigade!

For the last fifteen years and more, there has rarely been a meeting of visionaries and practitioners in the IT industry where somebody does not offer the view that the days of IT services are nearing an end and the product movement will create new heroes for the industry and country.  In each of those fifteen years, the gap between the revenues of the services firms and product pioneers has only widened and a cynic might be pardoned for asking “Is it really worth our while to obsess about products when the services sector continues to do well and find newer and newer avenues and models for growth?”

The truth is that the success of  product ventures is an idea which has been slow in developing but whose time has now surely come. Many successful Product Conferences conducted by NASSCOM in Bengaluru and led by the passionate  Sharad Sharma and his band of merry evangelists, the iSPIRT and ProductNation initiatives of the product group championed by former NASSCOM stalwart Avinash Raghava, the very successful Knowledge Management and Intellectual Property movement led by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the huge deals flows seen from product wannabes for funding by the Indian Angel Network all point to a renewed surge of enthusiasm for a “Made in India” wave that will sweep the industry forward and unleash a tsunami of success for many young entrepreneurs.

However there is no case for a simplistic polarization between services and product companies and there is certainly no basis for the argument that IT services firms will decline and give way to product firms. Even five years ago, when we had postulated that the industry would grow to a three hundred billion dollar level by 2020, the canvas was painted in many colours – on-premise and cloud based services, new platforms and frameworks, accelerators and shrink wrapped and embedded products. The boundaries are blurring and most of us in services have embraced IP creation as a necessary part of all our vertical solutions. At Zensar we have built a compelling “Digital Enterprise” strategy that leads our clients from systems of record through the wonderland of Cloud, Mobility, Social Media and Analytics to true systems of engagement. This strategy is delivered through an eco-system of product partners who have focused point solutions for vertical and horizontal engagement. The day is not far when all services firms will attempt to garner over thirty percent of their revenues from systems integration and carry a cohort of product partners into new markets.

This is not to say the product companies cannot succeed on their own steam. On the contrary, there is a strong sense of self-belief in the new generation of product entrepreneurs in our country even as some of the global product majors are beginning to consider themselves as services companies. A forthcoming CII Knowledge Management conference will showcase small companies in India that can provide worthy solutions that push the frontiers of knowledge, for organisations in all user domains and as well as technology savvy services organisations. A revolution is in the making in this country and the march of the product brigade will lead this revolution !

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Protect your Enterprise Network from infected BYODs – A disruptive product from i7 Networks

Manjunath Gowda (Manju), CEO if i7 Networks, shares his experiences of starting up a products based company, ground up from India. In this freewheeling chat, he discusses on various topics ranging from branding the products, managing investor relationships to seeking IP protection for products offered in a niche, evolving marketplace. Read on…

What was the motivation for you to start i7, a product based company?

The decision to start i7 actually was spurred due to a comment from a CEO of a multinational company. While in discussion with him in the valley, he seemed to indicate we folks from India would never be able to run a product company successfully out of India specifically in networking. While his comment pricked me instantly, I took time to objectively reflect on his observations. After analysis, it occurred to me that I could prove him wrong – since I figured out that we had all ingredients to build one and sustain it too. Besides this, I had just then successfully sold off my previous venture. I was looking at doing something more exciting. All of these converged, and so i7 Networks came to be.

You have chosen to build products in the Internet security space, and specifically addressing the BYOD challenges. Can you explain the reasons behind choosing this segment?

First, the Internet security space is the most volatile and evolving area that businesses need to deal with. Hence there is lot of opportunity to offer disruptive products and services, to meet diverse security needs of enterprise customers. The emerging challenge these days is due to change in the nature of threats. Earlier, most products and solutions were geared towards dealing with threats emanating from sources external to the enterprise. Now, enterprises are grappling with the damage that could be potentially caused due to the internal threats – ones that emerge from within the organization. BYOD is an easy entry point that could cause this. So, we chose to focus on providing products and solutions addressing this area.

How do you differentiate your offering with other players in your field? What are your strategies to achieve competitive advantage?

Our product is disruptive in the segment. Traditional vendors and competition is focused on deploying an agent on to every device that needs to connect to the network in order to discover and manage security threats. We have completely inverted this proposition – and are offering a purely agent-less and zero latency based solution. This means that users won’t in any way be disturbed as they connect their devices to the network and work. The IT policies in enterprises are increasingly being influenced by end users in the company these days. We plan to effectively leverage this shift in the decision making patterns of the IT companies and use it to our advantage.

Since you are offering an unconventional product, what steps are you taking to market your product, so that it is viewed favorably by prospective customers?

The folks in the line of business readily can see the benefits and advantages that our product brings to the table. However, to ensure that we have buy-in from all stakeholders in the enterprise, it is important to make them aware of our product and our strengths. Hence, brand building has become an important activity for us. We do it by positioning ourselves as the thought leaders in the BYOD security space. We are active on all the related forums on BYOD security; we publish and provide insights on BYOD security regularly in leading worldwide magazines, blogs. We are present in all leading conferences on this topic. These have helped us to gain visibility to a large extent. We are seeing some early successes. You should note also that we have not spent much by taking this course to market our product.

Second, recent developments in the world, especially the programs like PRISM from the US government have actually helped us open up new markets and opportunities. A lot of developing countries are now seriously considering evaluating indigenous security solutions rather than depending on MNC based vendors. This is one development which we plan to leverage effectively. In this regard, we are coming up with an alliance of likeminded security solution providers from the developing economies. We intend to form a common forum and through it, we want to engage with governments of emerging countries.

I would imagine that channels are an important aspect of you reaching out to the market. What has been your key learning, working with them?

Dealing with channel partners who operate in services space is entirely different on how one would work with channel partners in the products space. Having come out fresh from selling my services venture, I had a lot to unlearn in this aspect, and learn new ways of dealing with products selling channel partners. In the products space, the channel partners will listen to you only if you can help them solve today’s problems, or if you can solve a real need in the market that has not yet yielded satisfactory outcomes. As always, relationship and transparency builds in trust – and so, we have been able to rope in credible channel partners in East Asia, Europe and US.

I notice that you have repeat investors, even when the nature of your current company is vastly different from your earlier one. In this context, I would like to know what it takes for one to build sustainable relationships with your investors.

I guess being honest and being punctual with my investors helped me a lot. I respect human relationship without expecting anything from them.So, when I need anything it becomes easy to ask something. This is what I think has led to sustained faith being imposed by my investors on my ventures and plans.

You have taken steps to protect your IP by filing patents. Tell us your experiences as you filed your first patent?

I was completely naïve on the aspect of IP for my product. However, when I visited my friends in the Bay Area and discussed my product and its features with them, all of them educated me on the value of protecting my IP, especially given the disruptive nature of the offering. They forced me to file for a patent ASAP. Having done that, and after spending more time with them understanding the nuances and benefits of filing patents, I realize the merits of doing so. I would urge all product entrepreneurs to consider this seriously, especially when your product idea is in a niche, underdeveloped marketplace.

You have used media/PR effectively in both of your ventures. What tips do you have for product entrepreneurs in India regarding these activities?

In India, we tend to focus a lot on engineering/product development aspects, at the expense of other key and important aspects such as positioning and selling your products. One should realize that marketing your product is of paramount importance. Media and other online mechanisms such as blogs, online magazines etc are a great way to reach a wider set of audience. The key thing is to not do these activities in spurts, but as a regular habit. Results from these activities cannot be achieved overnight – it takes time, and a lot of hard work, patience and perseverance. You need to establish yourself as the go to person in the area of the product / offering. You also have to be honest and genuine in your views and opinions. This is how you can build credibility. In summary, never take your foot off the marketing pedal is what I would say.

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KeyMails is making the email smart for Outlook users!

Still believe email is small and dying a slow death in the world of IMs, tweets and Facebook messages? Just have a look at the massively viral ‘Every Second on the Internet’ and scroll till the end to get a visual realization of how big a part of our life email still is. Email is still the first choice for internal communication and chatter within a number of organizations owing to its ubiquitous nature and presence, not that it was intended to be used that way.

A number of startups are now building tools to help users get more out the email ranging from helping you get the social media information to turning your inbox into a to-do list in itself. But it is no wonder that the biggest peeve with the email has been its overload. With independent researches confirming the belief held for long that the overdose of email has severe effects on productivity costing precious man hours and increased costs.

With the latest Gmail update the users found the presence of the tabbed inbox easily helping filter the signal vs noise between social media, promotions and genuine email content. But Bangalore based KeyMails is looking to provide a similar level of productivity for the Microsoft Outlook users. Keymails is a plugin for Outlook helping users to prioritize the email and the best part it becomes efficient over time based on the usage patterns.

What is KeyMails and how does it work?

The KeyMails team is reinforcing the belief that for a large number of corporate users the desktop/laptop is the device where the emails get done with. Thus the plugin keeps all of the information on the device itself and doesn’t send anything on the cloud. Options like the ability to archive a mail till a due date along with being fully functional offline makes it an impressive tool for Outlook 2010 users.  

KeyMails works within Outlook system by creating a separate folder which implies that the user is still using the familiar Outlook interface thereby reducing the learning curve. By default the system prioritizes the mails based on the previous usage patterns but moving on the user can upvote/downvote certain users or domains to affect their priority ranking in emails for the KeyMails folder.

But why email and why Outlook?

Pankaj Kulkarni is the founder of Colimetrics the parent company behind KeyMails and he has been in the corporate world long enough to understand the email usage tools and patterns. According to him there are enough corporate Outlook users out there to keep them busy in building more efficient tools. With such a big market, building tools for them just is the right place to be.

Users & Funding

KeyMails had a public launch in June of this year and right now they are working on adding more users. The current user base befits a product newly launched but they have seen individual beta users come from organizations ranging from Viacom to Infosys to even the White House.

The venture is partially self funded by the co-founding team of Pankaj and Phaniraj with the money coming from the sale of their previous venture S7 Software Solutions and venture money coming from investor Yogi Kandlikar, who also happens to serve as the teams resource in the Silicon Valley.

Product timeline

Pankaj promises that what the user sees right now is just a sneak peak of the things to come. In the coming months they would be focusing on marketing campaigns and documenting content to help make the on boarding process a breeze. 

The short term goal for KeyMails is to introduce a freemium model of the product to get the user a taste of the product which is currently priced at US $25/year or US $3/month with a 30 day trial period. Apart from this Pankaj emphasized on the long term vision of building a host of services and tools around and email and productivity itself. Which would begin with email diagnostics and team collaboration to knowledge management, to help document recurring issues in the organization to help the staff.

On one hand desktop users would find boon in the tool built by Colimetrics on the other lack of multi-device or mobile support could be a bummer in certain regard. But then no two email users are alike head on to Outlook and give your productivity a spin on KeyMails!

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Choice Overload prevents a Sale. The 4C approach may overcome this!

Too many choices make your customers just stop with browsing. They don’t buy and move on! So if you have too many looky-loos and not enough purchasers, you may be giving them Choice Overload!  Too many Free Trial users and not enough conversions? Choice Overload may be one of the problems in that case also. Whether you are an e-commerce business or designing a user interface, you may be overwhelming your intended audience with too many choices! Luckily there is a 4C approach, proven with social research, that may help you overcome this problem.

Here is a terrific TED talk by Social Researcher, Sheena Iyengar:

Sheena talks about experiments they did with handing out free samples of 6 different kinds of jam vs handing out 24 different kinds of jam. They found out that more people bought the jam when they were shown fewer choices, only 6 kinds of jam!

More people put money in retirement savings accounts when they were shown only a handful of retirement finds than when they were shown hundreds of options!

That’s the Choice Overload problem! Too many choices, people don’t choose and move on! Nice insights! But how do you overcome Choice Overload? Sheena recommends the 4C approach.

1. CUT – Cut the number of choices you are presenting. Whether it’s your e-commerce site or your user interface design, too many choices frustrate people. You need some choice, but too many choices may hurt your objective!

2. CONCRETIZE – Make your choices vivid! Don’t describe something. Show pictures of what happens when someone chooses something. Show the consequences of making a choice, not just more about the features of that choice. Talk about benefits of a choice!

3. CATEGORIZE – Chunk your choices into Categories that make it simple for your customers to narrow down what their choices are. Don’t overwhelm them with too many choices upfront! Make pre-defined combinations of packages where you could. In User Interface design, Wizards are a great example of making choices on behalf of the user, making it easier for them to start quickly.

4. CONDITION – Condition for Complexity! – Make simple choices easy to make and hide complex choices for later, once they have some experience with you.

Great research whose applicability can extend beyond just social research! Can help a lot in product start-up companies in designing and presenting choices or in designing user interfaces.

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice – William James

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The push for products

By investing in the product marketplace, India will do the same leapfrog as it did with the mobile revolution. 

Recently I had the opportunity to witness the silent revolution that is taking off in India – a revolution that has been overshadowed (and somewhat suppressed) by the media-popular IT giants!

For a long time I have wondered why the IT giants with so much intellectual capital and knowledge had not invested in building products.  Most of these giants had smart folks who worked on endemic problems and were focused on solving them through service contracts. My queries to senior executives in IT giants were always met with one of the following answers:

    • not part of their niche,
    • not easily understood by analysts who closely watched their quarters,
    • they did not want their customers to feel that they were capitalizing on  knowledge gained through services to address the problems differently, and
    • did not have the rich domain experience.

 

My personal perception was that the reality was different.  They could guarantee (not just generate) a positive ROI with an incoming professional in six months. Investment in products required long term thought process and needed a completely different kind of entrepreneurial thinking.  More importantly it needed leadership that had an entrepreneurial mindset based on conviction and risk-taking.

In November of 2012 I had the opportunity to attend the Product Conclave of NASSCOM in Bangalore and it opened my eyes to a different India!  I got to see a level of passion that I had never seen before. I got to see the edge folks – folks who had worked in the domain in large companies and realized the drudgery of some of the maintenance work that they were doing.  While the vast majority were comfortable carrying on there were some folks in there who had the mind-set of “change-agents”.  They were not satisfied with simply doing the work – they wanted to get to the root issue and solve/eliminate the need for the problem.  They conceived thoughts and ideas on how they could solve the domain issue in a better way.  They aspired to replace the increasing labor costs with much better ways of doing things.  They were ready to eliminate their jobs completely but that did not fit the revenue model of large IT service companies.

These folks then did the next thing that “change-agents” do – shock everyone around them by giving up titles, safe corporate jobs and took the plunge.  They started working towards creating products that would satisfy a market need.

As per latest statistics, the total revenue of the product companies from India is currently over U.S.$2.0 Billion, from approximately 3,400 companies in the software and electronics/semiconductor industry.  When I dug into the demographics, the number of companies shocked me first, I had no idea about the same.  The revenue seemed fairly small as it works out to an average of $600K per company.   Also there seemed to be a concentration issue with 51% of the companies located in the NCR and Bangalore region.

In my personal opinion, by investing in the product marketplace, India will do the same leapfrog as it did with the mobile revolution.  It will truly democratize the software industry very quickly and let people shape their own destiny versus becoming part of the eco-system where you have to spend years to display shoulder badges of experience.  The biggest barrier is currently created by large behemoths to protect their territory.  They have service portfolios to do work, using labor at hourly charge out rates versus the paradigm shift of product folks that will either eliminate or dramatically reduce the need for the same.   Product evangelists are creating a different world that is moving away from “status quo” and coming up with new and different ways of doing things.  They are the “game-changers”.

Since the Product Conclave in November, I have seen the establishment of iSPIRT, a trade organization that is supported and focused on product portfolio companies.   It allows the product companies to build the eco-system that is required to support and enrich their environment with necessary supporting infrastructure.   Along with my colleague Greg Toebbe, I have also attended a session in February, 2013 on product start-ups wherein we were introduced to some innovative and creative technologies that had relevance to our requirements.

In this fast-paced, globally networked business environment, businesses are continuing to seek disruptive technologies that give them the competitive edge.  They are not just looking for smarter and more effective ways to do existing work but different and innovative business models that support their continued evolution in the marketplace.  They are not just looking to sell products but to engage customers in the experience – they are not looking for a sale, but a well understood and strong relationship with the customer.   Entrepreneurs need to ensure that their solutions are not constrained by the paradigm of “always have done it this way” but are “tectonic shifts” to the way of doing business.  They need to address not silo issues, but address them from a customer centric model.  They do not need to focus on big-data, mobility, social, etc., as buzz-words, but to provide solutions that provide the customer an engaging experience.   They should not get enamored by technology trends and their personal technology biases, but focus on the experience and convenience being desired by the millennial workforce participant.  By 2020, half the global workforce will be millennial and the new business models are not expected to come from the current large companies.

In the new world, businesses realize that the days of buying everything from the perceived “safe” companies is no longer the decision that will sustain them – they will buy best-of-breed from the smarter solution companies that treat the world as flat.  The power will not be in individual solutions, but the network of best-of-breed solutions.   Large companies with multi-year implementation timelines and businesses that seek to automate existing processes will not be the winners of the new world.  Solutions will have to nimble with the cycle from pilot to deployment being short followed by continued innovation.   Sales cycle will have to be supportive of the same and a long-term annuity of fixed maintenance will not be the driver; ease of use, usage metrics, continued innovation and overall satisfaction will be the new factors that will play into maintenance annuity.

So for all the product folks – my hats off to you!  My only advice would be to not be discouraged by the challenges that come along the way.  Do not care when people say “I told you so”, do not worry if you do not have all the skills to make it happen, do not worry if it takes a little longer that what you thought.  You are the “change-agent” for the revolution that needs to take place and if India has 50 percent of the world’s IT workforce, then it is time that they produce world class products!