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Scaling Sales: A Deep Dive At SaaSx Fifth Edition

As a first time attendee of iSPIRT‘s annual SaaSx conference, I didn’t know what to expect as we drove along the western coast of India towards Mahabalipuram – the venue for SaaSx5. From all the chatter around the event on Twitter, it looked like the who’s who of SaaS leaders in India were attending. Upon arrival, I took my seat with my colleague and looked around. There were only about 100 people in the room, very different from most conferences I’d attended in the past – a lot more exclusive, and a melting pot of SaaS founders building a diverse set of products. It had all the markings of an inspiring day, and it did not disappoint.

Starting with a keynote from the estimable founder of Zoho, Sridhar Vembu, the day was packed with talks and discussions focused on growing one’s SaaS company in the current technology landscape, primarily led by founders of notable SaaS companies of the country. One such event was an unconference on “Setting up and Scaling Sales across Segments and Geographies”, led by Ashwin Ramasamy from PipeCandy.

Picture this: about 80 founders seated in a room, circled around Ashwin who was leading the conversation about setting up and scaling your sales team. Since the flat organizational hierarchy at SignEasy, and the culture of openness at the company provide me with a wonderful vantage point of all functions across our company, including sales, I was eager to listen to the different perspectives that the founders brought to the table. At the start of the discussion, Ashwin graciously asked the audience for talking points they’d like covered, and the discussion began. A plethora of topics were discussed, starting from the very definition of inside sales, leading up to when and why to deploy an inside-sales team. Hiring and putting together the right sales team, including whether it should be in-house or outsourced, was another hot topic of debate with many founders offering their own experiences and perceptions.

The conversation then steered towards outbound sales and the mechanics and economics of that, which contributed to some of the biggest takeaways for me – things that cannot be found in a book and are only learned through experience.

The success rate of outbound sales peaks at 2%, as opposed to the 40-50% success rate you come to expect with inbound sales. This was an interesting insight, as it’s easy to assume your outbound effort is underperforming when it could actually be doing quite well. Also, you should use the interest you’re receiving through the inbound channel to refine your outbound strategy – your inbound interests are a goldmine of information on the kind of industries, company sizes, and job functions your potential customers represent. At SignEasy, we are constantly honing our outbound target by capturing as much information as possible from our inbound requests.


Further, the efficacy of your outbound sales effort is a direct function of the maturity of the market you’re in – for a saturated market with tens of other competitors, outbound usually fails to make a mark because it’s difficult to grab a potential customer’s attention. This is a great rule of thumb to decide if outbound is for you, depending on the market your product serves.

Outbound sales also requires dedicated effort rather than a ‘spray and pray approach’ – a minimum 6-month commitment is crucial to the success of your outbound strategy. Founders should be deeply involved in this initial effort, sending out 500 emails a day for at least 3 months, and tweaking and iterating through them as they get to the most effective email. It’s also important to dedicate yourself to a channel when experimenting, but also experiment and exhaust numerous channels over time to zero in on the most effective ones.


The value of this discussion, and indeed the day, was best expressed by the ferocity with which my colleague and I took notes and wrote down every piece of advice that was being dropped around the room. Being product leads of the SMB business and mobile products respectively, Phalgun and I were amazed at how much we could relate to each point being discussed, having been through and living the journey first-hand ourselves at SignEasy.

SaaSx5 was nothing short of inspiring, and we emerged from it feeling uber-optimistic about SaaS in India, and what the future holds

This blog is authored by Apoorva Tyagi, Product at SignEasy

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A Look Back At How Startup India Has Eased The Journey Of Startup And Investors

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It’s been two years since the fateful 2016 budget which recognised “Startups” as a separate breed of companies unto themselves, demanding bespoke treatment from the government and authorities. The clarity brought forth helped quell the nerves of both companies and investors, who had to otherwise resort to exotic exercises, supplementary structures, and platoons of professionals to keep their entrepreneurial dreams alive.

As we all await with bated breath for the slew of reforms expected of the Finance Minister, it behoves us to see how far we’ve come and how much further we need to proceed so that a billion dreams may become a reality.

This article is the first part of a two-part series which explores how Startup India has eased the friction in the Startup ecosystem so far, from an investor’s perspective with the second part talking about the next step of reforms which would have a multiplier effect on the ecosystem.

Flywheel of Funding

More often than not, any coverage about fundraising covers the journey of startups and entrepreneurs and the travails of raising their multimillion dollar rounds. But there exists another dimension to this story, that of fund managers raising their own funds. A large section of the investor community was elated that the government recognised this oft-ignored story and created the Rs 10,000 Cr (USD 1.5 billion) Fund of Funds managed by SIDBI which invests into SEBI registered AIFs and Venture Capital Funds.

This approach seeks to galvanise an ecosystem through a flywheel effect, instead of gardening it via direct intervention. The 10,000 Cr corpus can help seed AIFs worth Rs 60,000 Cr in India, which when fully deployed, is estimated to foment 18 lakh jobs and fund thousands of Indian startups. By contributing a maximum of 20% of the corpus of a fund, many fund managers can hasten they fundraise and concentrate more on helping their portfolio companies raise, instead of competing with them.

The Fund of Funds has invested into 88 AIFs so far, thus galvanising more than 5,600 Cr (USD 873 million) worth of investments into 472 Startups.

Bringing back tax breaks, not a back-breaking Tax

The Government’s support of Indian investors found its way into the Income Tax Act, with several measures to incentivise investments into the Indian Startup ecosystem, such as:

  • Insertion of Section 54 EE, which exempts Long-Term Capital Gains up to Rs 50 lakhs provided it has been invested in the units of a SEBI registered AIF
  • Insertion of section 54GB, which exempts Long-Term Capital Gains of up to Rs 50 lakhs provided it been invested into the shares of a Startup which qualifies for section 80IAC
  • Clarifying that the conversion of debentures or preference shares to equity shares will not be considered as a transfer and thus subject to capital gains at the point of conversion (the entire Venture Capital industry is based on convertible debentures and preference shares and this move has settled long-standing disputes regarding the instruments of investments)
  • Issuing a notification that the dreaded angel tax will not apply to shares issued at a premium to domestic investors by those startups who qualify under the DIPP scheme (although the scope of this needs to be extended to rid the spectre of angel tax that haunts various investors and entrepreneurs)
  • Clarifying that the stance of the assessee in categorising the sale of listed securities held for more than 1 year as Capital Gains or Income from Business can’t be questioned by the taxman
  • Changing the definition of a capital asset to include any securities held by a Foreign Portfolio Investor, thus removing the friction arising from asset classification (a similar provision is sorely needed for domestic hedge funds and Category III AIFs)

Capital without Borders

The Startup India scheme over the past few years has rolled out the red carpet to foreign investors while rolling back the red tape. The success of this is evidenced by the percentage of funding foreign capital represents in the Indian startup ecosystem, which is 9 times higher than domestic capital investment.

Some of the initiatives include:

  • Liberalising Foreign Direct Investment into most sectors including financial services, single brand retail, pharma, media and a host of other sectors up to 100% in most areas
  • Abolishment of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board
  • Relaxation of External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs) for Startups for up to USD 3 million
  • Allowing for issue of shares for non-cash consideration to non-residents under the automatic route
  • Marshalling foreign investment into Indian entities primarily for the purpose of investing in other Indian entities has been brought under the automatic route as opposed to the previous government approval route
  • Dismantling the approval mechanism for the transfer of securities by a Foreign Venture Capital fund to an Indian resident
  • Moving most of the filings (FCGPR, FCTRS, etc) to an online window managed by the RBI (ebiz.gov.in)

Well begun is half done

The government’s efforts to improve life for Startups in investors have begun to bear fruit in tangible ways as evidenced by the reduction in the number of companies seeking to have a Delaware entity with Indian operations. The recent leapfrog in the “Ease of Business” rankings also stands testament to this.

The Government must now seek to consolidate all these gains and clarify its stance and the stance of the tax department on long pending issues which have been a bane to all startups. While we have miles to go before we sleep, we must look back and take note of what we’ve achieved before we seek to scale greater heights.

This post has been authored by Siddarth Pai of 3one4 Capital

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Being entrepreneurial isn’t just for startups

An unusually hectic travel schedule this summer took me to four great cities in four weeks: London, Chicago, Dubai and Beijing. In each, I learned about at least one interesting organization. In London, I added to my knowledge about Unilever, the well-known consumer goods giant whose products range from soaps and shampoos to ice creams and soups, when I met the head of a unit called Unilever Foundry that engages with startups. In Chicago, I attended a Father’s Day event at Willow Creek, a non-denominational megachurch that averages over 25,000 attendees every weekend. In Dubai, I learned about Aramex, a company sometimes referred to as “the FedEx of the Middle East”, whose Chairman Fadi Ghandour was the recipient of the 2017 Academy of International Business (AIB) Executive of the Year award. Finally, in Beijing, I visited the Nasdaq-listed JD.com, China’s first internet company to be featured in the Fortune 500.

Four very disparate organizations, but all with an unexpected common thread that became quickly apparent to me in each case: entrepreneurial behavior. As a relatively young e-commerce retailer, JD.com was probably the most “obvious” candidate for being entrepreneurial – and from the various displays at its futuristic exhibition center it wasn’t difficult to perceive that the company was in no mood to rest on its laurels. But the hunger to stay relevant was evident at the other organizations as well. In the case of Unilever, it had quite deliberately stepped outside of its comfort zone to engage with non-traditional allies, specifically startups, in the pursuit of novel ideas and innovative solutions. In relation to Willow Creek Church, it had clearly added creative elements into its activities, borrowing from a very different template – showbiz – to infuse its worship services with a greater experiential appeal. And as for Aramex, here was a courier company that had fearlessly pursued opportunities in a volatile region which held little appeal (when it was created in the 1980s) to large international players.

Why do I describe these companies as entrepreneurial? Arguably, Unilever’s behavior can be described as proactive in that it took the initiative to add a new dimension to its partnering activities: working with startups. Willow Creek’s actions can be termed as being innovative in that, in order to enhance their efficacy, novel ideas were creatively incorporated into what some would view as boring activities. Aramex had demonstrated a propensity for risk-taking. Academics refer to these features – proactiveness, innovativeness and risk-taking – as dimensions of “entrepreneurial orientation”. Numerous studies suggest that higher levels of these specific characteristics in organizations yield better results and, as JD.com is clearly striving for, continuous strategic renewal. The important message here, then, is that being entrepreneurial isn’t just for startups in high-tech sectors; it is as relevant to large corporations like Unilever, non-profits like Willow Creek and firms in traditional industries like Aramex.

So what does it take for an organization to be entrepreneurial? Here are three lessons:

1. Recognize that it is a collective effort. It was evident to me that in all four cases, the leader at the very top was providing clear messages to organizational members, calling for creativity and dynamism. But that was not all. These organizations seemed to also have “middle managers” who had bought into the need to stay hungry, and they all implicitly or explicitly emphasized the need for attracting and retaining talent. Thus, while leaders matter, it’s not just about them. Everyone in the organization has a part to play.

2. Draw inspiration from your local environment. While there are broad similarities between these four organizations, the specifics in terms of being entrepreneurial perhaps reflect some inherently local characteristics. For instance, Unilever Foundry struck me as very global in its ethos and ambitions – not unlike London, the city in which it is headquartered. Willow Creek had “creative directors” on its staff whose passion for pushing the envelope reflected the creative edginess for which Chicago is known. Aramex’s resilience was congruent with that of Dubai’s. JD.com’s scale of ambition echoed that of Beijing’s.

3. Learn to be comfortable with contradictory ideas. All four organizations were addressing tensions. To illustrate, Unilever was exploiting its own assets (brands) and exploring new ideas via outsiders (startups). Aramex had to remain locally relevant to its core Middle Eastern base, yet also be international in its mindset and reach. Willow Creek was holding on to both the traditional and the modern. JD.com seemed focused not only on short-term competitive challenges but also on long-term strategic imperatives.

Clearly, none of these lessons is easy to put into practice. Being entrepreneurial is effortful, not effortless. It is unlikely that these organizations, or any others, always get it right. The key, however, is to strive continually.

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Innofest to Innonation

Evolving from a festival of innovation to a platform helping innovators to succeed…

Over the past 3 years, while volunteering for Innofest – the platform for hardware entrepreneurs – I realized two things:

  • Doing a hardware product in India is much tougher ….
  • … but there are several resources available across the country that can make it easier for hardware companies to succeed

What was needed is a way to connect those who need the assistance and advice to those who can help and are willing to help.

The goal of this group of 10-12 individuals who selflessly give their time in organising various initiatives and events under the Innofest umbrella is to make it easier for first-time entrepreneurs and to assist them in their journey. We deliberately chose to focus on startups and individuals who were using hardware and technology to solve meaningful problems. Because that is the most underserved section of the entrepreneurial eco-system.

The initial 2 years were invested in reaching out to hardware entrepreneurs and enablers who can assist them – maker spaces, companies, mentors, investors, etc., and bringing them together to interact with each other. As with many other sectors, in hardware led innovation too, resources were concentrated in 3-4 cities, while innovators were spread across the country. These innovators usually worked on their own, often spending time and energy and money on aspects that had already been solved by someone else. Getting together problem solvers and innovation enablers was a critical first step. And the community responded enthusiastically. Over 1800 innovators turned up at the inaugural in Bangalore. Since then we have taken the initiative to Hyderabad, Jaipur, Nagpur and other cities. In fact, Prathibha Sastry, the key volunteer driving Innofest took two ‘yatras’ – once driving from Bangalore to Delhi and once Bangalore to Assam – to find innovators in small towns and tier 2 cities across India.

What she unearthed was awe-inspiring – folks who were solving local problems with their frugal innovations. However, many of these enterprising folks did not consider themselves as entrepreneurs. For them, they were just using their ingenuity and creativity in addressing a problem that they or someone in their family or community faced. They were solving for Bharat. And that we feel is the real opportunity. To encourage these inspired, enterprising and creative problem solvers to get their innovations to solve problems at a much larger scale than they have currently envisaged. To help spread their innovations to places that can benefit from these innovations. I.e. find innovators and help them in their entrepreneurial journey.

To do that, it was important that we shift gears. And at Innofest, we have.

We now have extended the goals to not just curate and connect innovators and enablers, but to also undertake programs and initiatives that will increase the chances of success of these innovations. These include providing better access to resources like maker spaces, working with large corporates in helping drive their innovation programs, creating better access to capital and markets, creating a pool of mentors, etc.

Indeed, from being a festival or celebration of innovation, Innofest is now a platform for innovators to succeed in solving problems and making our country a better place. And hence, we have also taken the bold step to change our name from Innofest to Innonation, which means using innovation to improve the nation.

Whether you are an innovator, or want to volunteer, or a company that wants to support innovation or a co-working space or maker space, do connect with us at Innonation. We need a lot more people in making this volunteer-driven platform successful.

To get a ringside view of the innovation happening across India, join us at the flagship event in Bangalore on 26th August. If you are into solving a problem for Bharat, check the agenda to see what workshops and events are most relevant for you.

See you at Innonation. The country needs you to be there.

Prajakt Raut

Founder –  Applyifi

 

 

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Are you a Baba Entrepreneur? 98th #PlaybookRT

Let me set the stage for iSPIRT’s 98th Playbook held at the EKO office in Gurgaon.
 
43 Degree Celsius in a very dry and dusty Gurgaon summer, a Playbook on “The Hard Truths of Entrepreneurship” and a bunch of battle-hardened entrepreneurs of the size of a cricket team – What do you think was the result of the match?
 
To call it special would not be ‘different’ if you go by the words of the facilitator of the playbook – Abhishek Sinha, Ceo, EKO.
 
A ‘Different’ 98th Playbook may be the best description for this session which discussed business strategy, unit economics, content marketing, sales, team building and not to mention investors and fund-raising.
 
If you are like me, you may be wondering what was so ‘Different’ about it. If you attended the session, you would know, that none of the above was even mentioned. (Apologies, I think fund-raising was mentioned once)
 
So what did this eleven talk about on a Saturday afternoon.
 
It would not be incorrect to sum it up as ‘101 things an entrepreneur finds difficult to share’. It was about emotions. And I will leave you with just ————-
 
To keep the confidentiality of the participants, none of the —– points are being attributed.
 
The session began in Jeff Bezos style, with Abhishek distributing a 6 page memo about his journey as an entrepreneur. In Abhishek’s words, he was starting at a blank document for over 15 days. If I were you, I would kill to read those 6 pages. It is not worth a ‘miss’. This beautiful write-up raised the perfect questions and many follow-up questions that the participants added to, with a ‘stunned’ surprise.
 
Lets roll with the eleven.

1) Destiny is a Child

If you are a parent, you would understand that a child is spontaneous and unpredictable. An entrepreneur’s destiny ‘seems’ to be exactly the same. In Abhishek’s EKO journey, he recounts many occasions when the business was on the brink, and then something happened. Not once, but more than once. In one such occasion, a loan of Rs 6.5 crores got arranged overnight and it has been over 5 years, but the loan agreement is still awaiting signatures.
 
This was enough to get other members involved into the conversation. Everyone seemed to agree that there was some ‘force’ – very difficult for the human mind to comprehend – that conspired to make things happen. Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘kayanat‘ was also invoked to substantiate. But whether destiny always resulted in a positive outcome, well that debate continues.
 
To sum it up, it does seem that ‘Destiny favors the Brave’.

2) Create a Crisis on purpose

More than half of the group testified to this. The situation – each one was expecting some financing to happen, but because of demonetization and Trump being elected as President, the cheque did not find its way. Everybody seemed to have found a unique creative way to solving the cash flow problem whether it was a commission-based channel partnership, or a unique sales incentive or just changing the payment plan. Looking back, the participants reflected that it was only in crisis-like situations that each one of them found a unique solution, to move the business to the next level.
 
Steve Jobs has been known to drive all his businesses to the brink. In more recent times, this name has also been doing the rounds.

3) Unbundling of Payments in FinTech

For this, I guess, it would be best if Abhishek could sometimes do a webinar with screen-sharing. To put it in short, Abhishek stressed that the way in which smartphone unbundled calling, messaging, VAS which was earlier bundled in a feature phone, in a similar way, the current payment technology framework would be unbundled. This unbundling in payments would happen in ID, Source of Funds, Payment Network, Authentication, and Loyalty. Are Fintech entrepreneurs ready to build on this opportunity?

4) Recruiting – Interview the Intern | Work-Life Balance

Ambarish – Founder and CEO of Knowlarity – shared that he is involved in the interview of each team member, even interns. It was an interesting share that each participating entrepreneur listened to, with great intent. His approach at Knowlarity is to discourage candidates from joining and by creating an interview process that requires a lot of work. e.g. The interview process for interns is a 12-hour full day long interview that involves many steps like writing, quantitative, interviews and then followed by a final interview with the CEO at 8 PM on a Saturday. Only 40% survive the process and the rest 60% quit but rewarded with a chocolate on the way out. Interestingly, Ambarish also shared that how categorical they are, when it comes to the matter of work-life balance. It is made clear to the candidate that there is just work. Obviously, this was contested by some other participants in the room, including Abhishek, who have seen improvement in personal and people productivity by making attempts at work-life balance.
 
I personally thought that for the entrepreneur ‘Work is Life’. It would be interesting to get some feedback from the readers on this subject.

5) CoFounders

This topic begets a dedicated playbook session. Entrepreneurs present at the playbook did accept that CoFounders eventually move on (for various reasons including getting bored) and in the interest of the business startup, it is vital that agreements are put in place that takes care of governance of exits. It was all about the basics when it came to managing CoFounders and their interests.

6) Baba, Are you?

Don’t we love Babas in India?
 
I understand that matters of faith is a sensitive subject. I encourage you to take it very lightly. For this was a very important insight that emerged from the Playbook. This was fleetingly mentioned in the 6-page write-up Abhishek had shared at the beginning of the session. He expressed how bewildered he was, to see how some of the religious organizations in the country are able to pull off massive following without any monetary exchanges. How volunteers commit time, money and energy to such movements? The cohort attributed it to the ‘Cause’.
 
Abhishek picked up ‘Cause’ and stressed the need to reinforce it time and again in the team.
 
He went on to add that as Founders and CEOs, we all have a duty to be like a ‘Baba’. He highlighted how a Baba only encourages, inspires and supports, that is exactly how we should be to our team – A Baba.
 
Are you being a Baba?
 
If you enjoyed reading this and somewhere feeling that you missed the session, it is true, you indeed missed a ‘different’ kind of playbook.
 
You can still express yourself in the comments.
 
Have a wonderful life.
Guest Post by Rajagopalan C, Inboundmantra
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Innofest Nagpur, March 2017

TiE Nagpur and iSPIRT – two iconic initiatives, committed to building a great startup ecosystem for startups in India, came together to create magic at the Nagpur Innofest on the 5th of March 2017. Innofest is a platform where innovators can connect with enablers, experts, mentors to build, create, connect, improvise & explore. It’s a movement on ‘Innovation’ in India.

The first Innofest of 2017 was held at Nagpur, with over 150 slated to attend the event. However, the organisers were pleasantly surprised to cater to over 250 people that eventually attended the event. The keynote addresses were made by Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder iSPIRT and Nagaprakasham, who is an investor. There were multiple workshops during the entire day.

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Over 10 interesting hardware products were showcased at the event. Right from a 3D printing machine, collision-detecting devices, IoT based tracking devices, ultrasonic sensors, drone technology to the very unique e-funnel.

Nagaprakasham talked about the trend of creating copycat technologies and emphasized how innovation must ensure that newer technologies are able to touch more and more Indian lives. India’s strength lies in its humongous manpower, ample farmers, cheap labour and last but not the least, its vast natural beauty. And they all must be leveraged for innovation.

Subinder Khurana, held a session on Product innovation, where he talked about the essential ingredients of innovation. He pointed out that every venture must have a story of its own that is inspiring enough for not only the customers, but also family, friends, investors and other collateral stakeholders.

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On the concept of disruption, he clarified that breaking something is easy, but it must be done creatively. Has some new technology being leveraged? Is there a good story around it? Is some equilibrium being challenged, which will add value to the customers?

Sharad Sharma spoke about IndiaStack and why it will be a critical step in helping creating new innovations for Bharath, he also explained about the building blocks as part of IndiaStack which include Aadhaar. He also spoke about how SAAS will be for India as Cyber Security is for Israel. He spoke so passionately that later during an audience interaction, Shashikant Choudhary, TiE Nagpur President felt that the entire stage was shaking and the podium would fall off. We had Radhesh Kanumury, Country Lead, Global Entrepreneur Program, IBM India Ltd having a fire side chat with Prajakt Raut. Radhesh spoke on the various technology trends giving good insights about them along with examples of innovative Startups working on those areas.

Another session, led by Prajakt Raut was on creating Business Plans. According to him b-plans are critical indicators of the real status of the business as it gives us a framework for assessing the business. The plans give us early warning signals of something that is not going right. It is important for every Founder to know the answers to these questions: What problem or opportunity are we addressing? (The market/ target audience). How are we addressing it?

How are we planning to do it? (Organisations & operations planning) what skills are required? (What are the competencies that are required to handle the business). Why are you doing it?

We also held the iKen Workshop which was facilitated by Rakesh Debur and Kavita Arora of Bangalore Makerspaces joined us to mentor the innovators. This entire activity was possible because of the support of TiE Nagpur and the people of Nagpur who joined us on a Sunday.

Some of the innovations showcased…

Traxafe is an advanced, tiny IOT based tracking device for kids, elders and cars. It’s based on GPS, GSM and BEACON technology connected with a user-friendly app to keep track of your loved ones.

E-Funnel is an electronic fluid gauging device. It measures any quantum of fluid flowing through it. All the information information of every fluid filling can be accessed through a mobile app or through our website on your desktop. It will be available for different variants of diesel generators, trucks and buses.

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ISCREAM is a device which can perform numerous operations from detecting vehicle

collision to analysing the vehicle analytics.i-Scream is assisted with our IoT-based crash sensor and emergency response software which helps us to both keep a track on you and make you feel safe at the same time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Indian E-commerce: Moving on from GMV

It has been a nervous month for the professionals working for internet and e-commerce companies in India. Shutdowns and layoffs have been the flavour of the month, and business models have come under scrutiny. The effects of recent events at Stayzilla and Snapdeal have not been limited to job losses only. Weighed down by these developments in the sector, Rakuten, the Japanese e-tailer, has puts its India plans on the back-burner.

Stayzilla, an alternate and homestay aggregator, has shut operations. Investors including Nexus Venture Partners and Matrix Partners have invested USD 33 million across multiple rounds in the company. The founders have promised to bounce back ‘with a different business model’.

Snapdeal, announced that it will lay-off about 600 employees from the company including from its Vulcan (logistics) and Freecharge (payments) business divisions. The company has so far raised USD 1.75 billion from investors which include global heavyweights such as Softbank, Kalaari Capital, Temasek, Alibaba Group and eBay. However, Snapdeal reportedly is left with less than enough cash to survive the next 12 months. The merger talks with Paytm, facilitated by the common investor Alibaba, are not murmurs anymore and seem to be the logical next step in many ways. A very honest and important insight on the business model emerged from this episode, in which the founders admitted to ‘doing too many things’ and ‘diversifying and starting new projects while we still hadn’t perfected the first or made it profitable’.

The above incidents highlight the fact that Indian e-commerce in 2016 has been significantly different from its ‘glory days’ in 2015. GMV growth in 2016 was flat, even though long term prospects remain intact for now. The year-end sales were also impacted due to the demonetisation exercise carried out by the government. The cash on delivery (CoD) transactions, which account for approximately 50% of total GMV, were severely impacted due to the lack of availability of the new currency notes.

Figure 1: India e-tailing GMV (USD mn)

Source: Company data, IAMAI, Euromonitor, Credit Suisse

AHHHGMV, as the supreme emperor of metrics, has lost its sheen and the challengers which have come to the fore include revenue per customer (function of number of orders per year, value per order and commission), net promoter score (a measure of customer satisfaction) and overall user monetisation (including alternative sources such as advertising as well as new service offerings such as hyperlocal services).

The sustainability of business model is back in focus as a tool to evaluate potential winners and losers. Throwing money at the customers as discounts has not worked out very well for a lot of players. There has been a definite move towards trying to find other means of retaining customers. Going forward, winners are most likely to be companies that provide a differentiated customer experience. An obvious example is Amazon Prime which now brings more personalized experience to the company’s customers. Flipkart (Flipkart Assured) and Snapdeal (Snapdeal Gold) have similar offerings to enhance the stickiness of their customers. While ‘Flipkart Assured’ has seen limited success so far, Amazon Prime, launched at a very attractive price point of INR 499 per year, seems to be more suited for success going forward. Amazon has also clubbed its Netflix challenge – Prime Video offering with Amazon Prime subscription. With these offerings, the companies are trying to take focus away from discounts and towards customisation, quick delivery, consistency and reliability of shopping experience.

The control over supply side is a key element of constructing an enhanced and consistent experience for customers. Logistics is one of most prominent cost items for ecommerce firms, and depending on the category and value of the goods being delivered, could be 10% to 20% of GMV.

In India, the number of Amazon fulfilment centres has grown to 27 by the end of 2016. Shipping from stores is less efficient than from dedicated fulfilment centres. Amazon is looking to replicate their success in North America where they have invested billions in network of fulfilment centres. It has more than 75 such centres in North America, covering 25 US states. This gives Amazon an easy two-day reach over the entire US. Snapdeal has opened 6 logistics hub during 2016, with an estimated investment of USD 300 million. Paytm, flush with a USD 200 million funding from Alibaba, is reportedly firming up plans for a significant strategic investment in a logistics firm to improve its deliveries process.

The key growth drivers for e-commerce in India remain in place. There is a large aspirational population, faster and wider internet access, a never before push on digital payments and an opportunity to further penetrate the offline organised retail market. Nevertheless, the year 2016 has been a reality check. The Indian players have had to review their business models and take some tough calls to focus on sustainability. While the market may continue to be volatile in the short term, with more potential shutdowns and/or consolidation in the offing, we can now be more confident that the firms that do survive will turn profitable soon.

arvind-yadav

This is a guest post by Arvind Yadav,

Principal at Aurum Equity Partners LLP.

 

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From Bootstrapped to Angeled : Is it your idea or product ?

You’ve shaped up your business idea to flag off. You have a pool of talent believing in that idea and lined up with working prototype with feedback. Now, it’s time for funding to take your idea to concept to design to product to a successful business.

Depending on the idea, startup projects can be particularly expensive and often incur new, unforeseen costs. That is particularly true of technological ideas, which are currently in vogue but require exploratory costs (to pay experts to determine if the idea is feasible) and initial product development costs. Even if a team proves the idea is feasible, they often need to build a working model or prototype to prove that to investors, which can sometimes add thousands of dollars to startup expenses.

Bootstrapped to Angeled_To_Raise_Seed_Capital 1

The vital idea behind bootstrapping in commercial means is to borrow as minimal finance as possible. In two words, you only rely on either on your own budget and savings, on some crowdfunded amount or simply on loans from friends and family. This scenario urges you to borrow insignificant amounts of money and thus keep interest costs minimal. But as the market dynamics populates further, the wider entrepreneurial community starts delivering differing views.

Guy Kawasaki has proclaimed that “you should always be a boot-strapper… too much money is worse than too little” but goes onto to suggest “if you do get offered venture capital, take it, but don’t spend it”.

Most people focus all their time and attention on building their idea, and forget that even the coolest product or service is worthless if people don’t use it. Creating a successful product or service requires two things:

  • A solid implementation of the idea.
  • People that use it.

For the best chance of success, you need to identify the smallest core of your idea that has value to your potential users, build only that, and release it.  This “minimum viable product” or MVP serves as the ultimate idea testing ground.  It lets you build a relatively inexpensive version of your idea, test it with real users, and measure adoption.

Investors see a lot of ideas, which is why they won’t sign an NDA (your idea is not original, no matter what you think). But if you have a team that has delivered products in the past, worked through adversity, and has a failure or two to learn from, then the investor can see a group of people who will protect his investment, and has demonstrated the skills to do so.

So No. An idea will not get you funded.

To be investible, a start-up needs to have a good product-market fit and the potential to scale up quickly to a large market. It needs to be defensible with intellectual property or some other competitive advantage. And it needs to have a credible team in place, people who investors will believe can execute. And there needs to be some kind of proof, also called validation, also called traction.

Building an early prototype also helps you attract tech talent, because it gives people something to look at and play with, and it communicates your idea in a more “tangible” form. Then you can shop it around to potential technical co-founders to get them excited about your vision. If you have the means to actually build a working prototype, so much the better!

Most Angel Investors (and VCs) won’t pay much attention these days without some other sign of traction, especially because the financial and technical barriers to entry are getting lower and lower. Bootstrapped to Angeled_To_Raise_Seed_Capital 2

Additionally, the current market size doesn’t matter. The market size in 10 years is what really matters. You want to be in a small but rapidly growing market. You can change everything in your start-up except the market. So spend a lot of time up front to make sure you’ve thought through your market. “Having value” and “being fundable” are two completely different things.

Two of the most valuable things that the investor community seems to have been seeing from close quarters are: customer feedback and data from pilot research, which can enable them ask questions that lead to product breakthroughs. Angel Investors would need to know how your idea has improved to a bit more than a fledged product wireframe, so that their willingness to invest into those ideas via money, and social reach can increase to ensure that the success of your product is further defines by cutting-edge product development process.

Following guidance is thus seems to have gained ground and immovable traction for all the aspiring entrepreneurs who are progressing from a Bootstrapping channels to Angeled funding:

  • Be value-driven rather than fund-driven
  • Be independent of technologies that make you lose control over your idea
  • Make the customer a base for your product than profit
  • Base your ideas on supply and demand and not on the money it can attract

Once again, this isn’t a strict definition, but the seed round is normally used to fund the initial stage of your company where you’re finding product/market fit, and the following rounds are meant to help with scaling. That said, the road from concept to readiness (aka product MVP) is long and winding. Entrepreneurs’ single greatest challenge in this sphere of activity is balancing bursting creativity with structured, method-driven decision making.

 

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The Product Manager’s RuleBook

The Product Manager’s RuleBook

This post is not about “tools” which will make you (integral)dx more productive. This post is about telling you rules of the Jungle called Product Management.

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So you are the Product Manager, Right ?

You just graduated out of B-School (or even worse completed your bachelors degree) and you have been given the product manager tag in the company you decided to work in. Welcome to the Jungle. Unless you have a really f**ed up CEO or a clueless CTO, you are in for a hell of a ride. There are a dozen of definitions of a Product Manager but, here is the one that sticks –

You are the mini ‘CEO’

Welcome to the Jungle. People don’t follow rules here. Especially when it comes to product. Here are 49 rules that I have curated, over the course of 7 years, across Product, Operations and Sales.

Rules

As a Product Manager, you will be exposed to attention, and a lot of it. Mostly unwanted and discomforting. Don’t be surprised if your peers are jealous of your role. You will get pulled into every meeting. You will looked upto/at for every release. For every feature. For almost every client meeting/call. But that is least of your worries. Unless you have been a PM before, your biggest challenge would be not having a benchmark. You have no way to draw the line. Follow these rules and you will stumble less- I am personally still trying to master the art.

  1. Get sold to the product. Believe in the product yourself. If you don’t, try again. If you still can’t make your self believe it, drop it and find something else.
  2. You will get sucked up in your work schedule. Be ready for it.
  3. Don’t get sucked up every time. At times, drop the bomb on Sales and Marketing. Reality check can never hurt
  4. Learn the art of saying no. At least in your head. Practice it over a period of time with/on your CEO, CTO, Sales and Marketing (in that order)
  5. Develop a healthy relationship with your developers, QA and designers.
  6. Avoid making value judgements. What are value judgements ? The statement that you say aloud in your head without ANY authority or reliable data to back it. You always know when you are speaking from the gut. (You know who else spoke from the gut ? George W Bush)
  7. Trust your developers. Back them up. Stand for them. Pat their back and give them credit.
  8. Bet on your Sales and Marketing. Support them. Be their favourite cheer leader. Always
  9. Keep some buffer from Day 0 itself on your delivery schedule. You are surrounded by uncertainties. Every client wanted “it” yesterday and no dev will have it ready by tomorrow.
  10. Split roles between you and your CTO. Decide, who will plan and who will drive the execution. Don’t fuck this one up. Don’t take planning, because you most likely don’t understand your dev’s code.
  11. Between your CEO, CMO and you, figure out who will OBSESS about “organic growth” (SEO). You don’t have bandwidth, don’t ever opt-in for this one.
  12. Coin and propagate your own product terminology/nomenclature, before sales “oversimplifies” it or dev “rocket-sciences” it. This is a critical to build and manage perception.
  13. Write emails with keywords that you can search. Chat with keywords that you can recall and search again. You will spend significant time in forwarding old emails to dev, sales, marketing, CEO. Skip the CTO. Your CTO barely opens your email.
  14. Park your personal choices of colors, fonts and design at home. Product is being built for customer’s delight, not yours (or your investors)
  15. Like a rhetoric, keep telling point #14 to your CEO.
  16. Get a Tee that says “Good is not fast and fast is not cheap.” Boring, cliche but still right.
  17. Pulling an all nighter for product release is cool and fun, but not if you are releasing thrice a week.
  18. Remember that you don’t understand quality assurance or testing. Like everything else, QA is a skill. Unless you have learnt it, avoid claiming it.
  19. If you are building a B2B product, you definitely need a QA. If you are building a B2C product, hell as sure you need more than 1 QA.
  20. Be friends with QA and Designer. Make them feel special. You won’t exist without them.
  21. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups. Under communication is an assumption. Hence, under communication is a fuck up. Over communicate and play safe.
  22. Build your own narrative as an objective and data driven person. Understand and question the objective before jumping into anything (including that market research slide for the investor deck)
  23. Document everything that is made and not made. At least try.
  24. Begin you conversations with developers and designers with context. They will feel involved, aware and productive. Context helps. Always.
  25. In the same breathe, demand context from Sales, Marketing and CEO. You will be able to address their requirement faster.
  26. You will always be able to sell better than your entire sales team combined. But again, don’t do it.
  27. Keep your Company Logo Product Logo, favicon, Product Description (1 liner, 5 lines and 1 pager) always ready. Anyone can ask for this. Anytime.
  28. Plan ahead for a week. Do so on a Saturday/Friday Evening. Do it on a Sunday night if you have to but NEVER on a Monday morning.
  29. CEO’s often talk sense. Listen to them.
  30. Not everything that your CEO said was actionable. Don’t act on everything that your CEO says. They most likely didn’t expect action themselves.
  31. Build your own opinion about the industry, domain, and the product. Attend conferences/events focused on your industry.
  32. CTO’s can/will have walls. Be inquisitive ( read pushy)
  33. You need to be aligned with your CEO, Sales, Marketing and CTO. Don’t forget your actual job (Mini CEO/Get-Shit-Done)
  34. There is nothing better than pen paper when it comes to maintaining lists. There is nothing better than pen paper when it comes to wire-framing.
  35. Don’t boil the ocean with every release planning. Every dog has his(/her) day. You will have yours on the day of bug bashing.
  36. Avoid falling sick. Exercise daily. Meditate daily. And buy a Macbook air
  37. Nothing will go wrong if you are late by two minutes late in sending that presentation/ releasing your product update. Be right and late rather than being sorry and on time. If your Sales team can’t hold for a client for 2 mins, imagine..Again, plan better next time and avoid being sorry.
  38. Next time, a Sales guy says that “it was you and your product” that costed him/her a sale. Gulp down your ego. Hear them out. They are ranting. The next day, give it back to them. Patiently.
  39. Your role needs you to seek feedback. Proactively. Ideally once a month, from all your peers. Similarly, your feedback for your peers is critical.
  40. Sales folks are hired for selling. They most likely, can’t make presentations. Live with this fact. Make a template for them. Engage your sales team by changing the template’s colours every 10th week.
  41. There is never a bad time for having chai/coffee. Though Obama doesn’t drink coffee. But again, you are not Obama.
  42. Content writing is NOT your forte. Nevertheless, write the copy for your website or someone else will write something that you never made/promised/planned. Rant about it, if you ever hire a content writer
  43. Create your own reports, dashboards and product performance benchmarks. Do this before the developers starts developing.
  44. Start your day with numbers of the previous day.
  45. Learn to let go, of things you like. Your favourite features, CEO’s favorite feature, colors, fonts, processes and evening dates.
  46. In hindsight, you will always be right. Move on.
  47. You job needs you to be a swinging pendulum. Hah. Self-Pity mode is awesome. But, don’t let it stretch for more than few hours
  48. Last but not the least, remember to laugh about that how, once upon a time, everyone including your head of sales, marketing lead, CEO, CTO and dev ops were clueless about the house of cards that “you” got “built”
  49. In the end, make your own list. And pass it on.

Author – Vivek Khandelwal

Founder of Datability Solutions, a technology startup building iZooto, a web push notification platform for user engagement and retention. 

 

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Why Your OnPage Chat Is Not Working? [How To Fix It]

Why Your OnPage Chat Is Not Working_ [How To Fix It]

A Step by Step guide on how product marketers should evaluate on page chat tools, implement and use them to start generating leads for sales.

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We had rolled out the first version of our product in March. It was only in April when we saw a spike in customers signing up and we started getting lot of support enquiries. The reason for the latter was obvious – the product was broken. While we nearly choked on the support requests, we ended up creating a Ver 2 of the product. While the queries continued to flow in, the questions were different. The learning was simple – constant customer interaction and hand holding can prove to be extremely critical, especially when you are driving product adoption. The feedback that flows in, is worth its weight in gold. But again, not every beta user is an email fan and unless you are speaking to everyone ( less likely ), you will potentially be missing out on lot of feedback. It was at this stage, we decided to extend onpage chat as a support channel. The idea was simple – capture feedback whenever you can. And hence started our hunt for drilling down to the ultimate chat tool. We had a very clear requirement – we wanted to talk to people who are inside our product. Nothing more. Nothing less. We played with as many as 7 tools ( we rejected lot many ) and finally drilled down to Drift for onpage chat. I will talk about the choice in detail but before that here is how we went around with our primary research.

What’s Your Requirement ?

We tried a ticketing solution and we failed at using it. Ticketing solutions are meant for dedicated support teams. Back in March, we were 9 people. 3 of us were doing (trying to do) everything. Our requirement was very simple – we were not looking for a blown ticketing solution. At least not yet. But we also identified what we were looking for in the ideal solution –

  1. Query First. Details Later – Most of the messaging platforms, first ask users to fill in a form. These forms can have anything between 1-4 fields. That’s a catchy catch. Situations which trigger support are often desperate. Yes, desperate times call for desperate measures and the user will end up providing all details to log in a support request. The experience is clumsy and far from being ideal. The ideal experience should be the other way round, allowing users to first push their question / query and then asking them for contact details.
  2. Design Centric / Clean UI – Nothing much to say here. The design must encourage user to chat / talk.
  3. Mobile First- The day your product adoption goes beyond 3 times zones, your luxury of operating as per your own time zone goes away. Expect customers to send you emails / chats at hours which would be unearthly for you. You will realise the need to have the ability to handle these chat requests right from a mobile app. Expect your support staff to be answering queries at 2AM, on lunch desk or while sipping chai.

What Options Do We Have – “The List”

First things first – Find the list. Best thing is to go to G2Crowd or GetApp and start from top to bottom. This will save a lot of time. Our first website was built on WordPress, so the WordPress plugin could also be a great place to start your primary research. Not that it’s critical to have a plugin but again it’s a handy. Here are some other places to start your hunt

  • G2Crowd: Live Chat Reviews / GetApp Live Chat Reviews– This can be overwhelming
  • WordPress Plugin – Not a great list
  • Google for – Live Chat / OnPage Chat tools / Chat Based Support Tools. Scan through the first 3 pages on Google.
  • Product Hunt is a great place to search for the newer tools – This can be great because you get on to the Beta list and have access to early bird pricing. Pricing which typically changes after 4-8 weeks ( depending upon the product’s release cycle et al )

“The Free List” – Getting these out of the way

Elimination is extremely helpful, especially when you are hunting for a software and have a couple of dozen options to choose from. There are a dozen free live website chat tools out there. I have always believed that there are no free lunches. These tools come at a cost – user data, limiting experience, weird packaging or dev involvement. I am not saying that these tools are bad. For a business up to a certain scale, free might work. For most, it does not. If you are looking at messaging/chat seriously (Read Here On Why You Should), throw this list out of the window.

Experiencing the Experience

For obvious reasons, all these tools, without fail use their own product for onpage live chat. While experiencing the onpage chat support and talking to sales reps on chat, we realised some key points that influenced our decision.

Live Means “Real Time”. Nothing Else Is Acceptable

 

Onpage ChatUnlike Yahoo chat rooms where users had a lifetime to respond, in case of an onpage chat, the expected response time is seconds. If you are a B2B SaaS product, your average bounce rate ranges between 50% – 70%. Top this up with the fact that the average attention span of a human is less than that of a Goldfish. If your response time exceeds 30-45 seconds, the user has most likely moved on from the page. You have lost a potential lead and valuable feedback. You have to be on your toes to respond to these incoming chats within seconds. This is the real game changer. When you attend a visitor on chat within seconds, you have already won of half of your battle. The rest half is won, when you address their query. Yes, you can’t be available 24*7 but again that’s the idea. You can put together some great copy telling them how you are busy fighting aliens in a parallel universe and are offline but that’s a second option. And you should treat it like that.

Mobile Interface Is Super Critical

Onpage Chat

Because the conversation with the end visitor must be in real time, having a mobile interface for your customer support team / agents is critical. You are strapped out of resources and money to have dedicated agents manning the chat window. It is because of this reason, your Sales / Marketing / Content team should have the ability to reply to these incoming chats – right from their mobile device. This allows them to respond swiftly when you cannot. Imagine being on a client call / heading back home late night / being in the elevator and still converting visitors into paying leads. Most of the tools do offer a dedicated App ( both for iOS and Android) for agents.

Chatting But Only At The Right Time

If you could build an offline store for your product, would you want your sales reps nagging your visitors the minute they entered the store ? If the answer is no, identify simple metrics on when / where / on doing what – you want to prompt your users. These could be basic triggers such as –

  •   Amount of the page scrolled
  •   Time spent on the page
  •   Did a specific action / event on the page

These proxy signals will help you in filtering the spam. Gauging the user’s intent basis some proxies is extremely important – especially when your sales reps will be investing time here.

Getting The Messaging Right

Onpage Chat

More than often, most of the onpage chat prompts that popped up on the website, irrespective of the page had the same messaging. One size fits all approach really doesn’t work. This messaging can be far more personalised basis the history of user or your knowledge about the user – again, something that needs to be done at a later date. Not Day 0. If you were to build an offline store for your product with every page of the website as a full blown section in the store and you had the luxury of having dedicated reps manning each station, how would you like these reps to greet the visitors ? Can this be quirky – Why not. No harm in experimenting.

Smart Conversations with Context

Onpage Chat

In the Utopian world, I would want to know everything about the visitor who I am talking with. Where they are from, which company do they work in, what is their function, what is their objective and so on. Conversations with context are far better than just plain hello. Pick up a tool that allows you to know bit more about the customer. You don’t need to know which other website they are looking at but simpler things like which city they are from – can help your sales reps in break the ice. This is referred to as data enrichment / knowing more about your customer. This can literally take you down the rabbit hole but remember, you don’t have to boil the ocean by knowing everything about the visitor. After all, you do have the option of talking. 🙂

Alright. What Are Your Drilled Down Options ?

Here is what our final list looked like before you apply filters of cost, features, support, API’s, customization et al.

Zeroing In

As a young startup, we follow a simple framework while evaluating third party tools  –

  1. Time vs Value
  2. Effort vs Value
  3. Cost vs Value

The semantics of an early stage startup require the software value to follow the Brontosaurus Curve.Onpage chat

  • Stage 1-  In the initial stage, Founders want to see value without investing too many resources. Stage can be defined as Trial period / Trial period + another month. Once the value is established in the product and support has been evaluated, you are fundamentally good to go.
  • Stage 2 -Post this, the team would put the tool on an auto pilot mode, moving to the next task. Waiting for developer bandwidth to get allocated.
  • Stage 3 -Once developer bandwidth, the next level of value is unlocked. This typically involves personalisation, integration with CRM et al.

Good to have’s at this stage are pre-built integration with CRM, 1 Click Installation ( like a WordPress plugin / Zapier based integration et al )

It is for this reason, we went ahead with Drift. Drift is not a live chat software – it is a customer support and sales tool. Drift’s slack integration is what makes it indispensable for our customer support and sales team. It comes in with a pre-built integration with Hubspot – helping us push and pull data fluently. The fact that it is priced optimally – only helped us pick up the paid version immediately.  Today, 10% of our current leads / signups are because of conversations that our website visitors have with our sales and support team. This number is improving on a daily basis and we are excited about scaling up this channel. Here are some of the handy metrics to be tracked are simple –

  • Open Rates
  • Click Through Rates
  • New Subscribers and
  • New Leads

We @iZooto work hard every week to ensure that we beat our past week stats for all the 4 pointers. There really are no benchmarks besides whatever it is that you have achieved so far. The focus area is simple – to outperform the numbers of last week. Tools in hand – limited dev bandwidth. Access to creative resources for copy and design, followed by sheer execution and constant iteration.

 

Author – Vivek Khandelwal

Founder of Datability Solutions, a technology startup building iZooto, a web push notification platform for user engagement and retention. 

 

 

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Beyond Google Search – The Platforms For The Internet of Actions

Beyond Google Search – The Platforms For The Internet of Actions

The below post is edited from an answer given to ET for this story. This article is 2 yr old. Republished today.

The rise of Mobile is a big shift in the way Internet is used, thereby influencing commerce over the Internet. In developed economies it is the desktop based users who have started spending a significant amount of time on mobile. For India specifically, mobile is bringing in lot of first time Internet users.

Given that Google Search is not the default starting point on mobile, there is a void waiting to be filled as the platform of the mobile internet. No, Android/iOS is not it. There are 3 services that I believe can be the platform of the mobile internet viz. maps, payments and delivery. Before looking into each of them, the hypothesis here is that the Internet of mobile is no longer about serving information but it is about enabling actions. So what happens to information related stuff? They will move to a Chat like app with a command prompt like interface. It is already happening with Wechat, Line etc. Search would be easier over chat with results showing bite-size info in cards, the blue-link click is only required to dive deeper. Why chat and not current Google search? Because the current Google search is a state-less communication. Two consecutive searches do not relate to each other. The command prompt type interface serving bite-size info will need to be state aware, just like human communication.

The 3 platforms:

Maps

In the long term, Maps are going to be default page for most of our local needs, like movies, cabs, handyman or anything related to offline commerce. Different reports suggest that about 40-50% of all mobile search is local. Instead of a page with blue links, maps will become our search engine on mobile. China is already seeing this change with Baidu Maps driving all-things-local. Google Maps also recently integrated Uber to show estimated pickup time if you have uber installed (http://blog.uber.com/googlemaps). When you have more than 1 cab app installed, Google Maps will influence which one you choose. In the long run it will also mean that you will not need to install the app but the app will just be backend integrated with Google Maps.

Users currently find it easier to search for “Zomato Pizza Hut” on Google and then go to Zomato’s Pizza Hut page, as compared to first going to Zomato.com, and then searching for “Pizza Hut”. In the same way, people will not look for a cab on a map inside Ola or Uber’s app, instead Ola and Uber’s cabs will be visible together on a single instance of Google Map.

The future of mobile local search is Apps on Map, and not maps inside apps. Just like now we don’t need to bookmark every restaurant site on the web browser, in future we may not need to install every cab booking app. This is the most important and defensible product of Google in the long term. Individual Apps as an interface is an intermediary stage of the mobile evolution until platform level aggregation and deep integration does not come into action again.

Payments

We do not see payments as a platform because it is generally not the starting point or in most cases we don’t even realize if it has an interface. It just happens, and that is how it is supposed to be. Apple and Samsung are working towards that. In India, the wallet feature in apps is being accepted. Mobile carriers and large banks are trying to get into the space. Paytm seems to be moving fastest in this space though. There are still licenses to be issued in this space by RBI and rightly so because this space is more about enabling trust and insurance, the core of commerce, than anything else.

Indian consumers do not relate to payment systems and insurance directly, but in developed economies one can ask their credit card company for a complete refund if the service by a vendor is not satisfactory. So they not only act as a credit and payment company but also an insurance company. Being on a universal trusted payments platform will mean more business. Micro-transaction will happen over a payments app and each little vendor need not have their own app with payment gateway. I should be able to use a plumber’s service and pay via a payments app that both of us use.

Delivery

Delivery of physical goods is a big platform opportunity. What we generally see as an ecommerce company is a delivery company. A lot of commerce, new and used, B2C and C2C, is being limited by the physical movement of goods. While intercity delivery is controlled by large courier companies, the hyper local delivery of goods is still an unsolved problem. Uber is dominant in this space for people movement and now starting for food but their platform doesn’t yet allow movement of small goods from B2C or C2C. In India, Delyver and Grofers are trying to capture this space. Entering the C2C delivery space will be a big move for them. It’s human delivery network now but from what we see, it will evolve into a drone network.

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85 Things I learned being a CEO

  1. It is going to be an extremely hard job. No amount of preparation or education is going to prepare you for what it demands.
  2. You will feel like quitting at so many instances. Don’t, just persist.
  3. It’s a lonely job. There will be no one who you can tell everything about your work.
  4. Uncertainty is the hallmark of entrepreneurship. You have no guarantee that you will last a year, at times a month and sometimes even a week. Learn to embrace this uncertainty.
  5. You will wake up crying at times. Don’t fret about it, deal with it.
  6. If you are married, your spouse will play a very crucial role. They are going to be the only person who you can tell everything. They can give you the third-person view to take unbiased decisions. They are going to be your rock when you are the lowest.
  7. Being a CEO is all about transitioning from doing everything in the early days of the company to delegating everything as the company matures.


Key Responsibilities

  1. You are going to make a lot of decisions in the company. If you are overly careful in your decision making you will slow down the growth, if you are too impulsive you will end up taking the wrong decisions.
  2. Setting the vision and talking about it is your responsibility. You cannot crowd-source the vision from your team. You must listen to everyone but at the end you set the vision.
  3. You define the culture and most importantly you guard it. People will ultimately emulate what you do.
  4. As a founder-CEO it’s your number 1 duty to ensure that the company never runs out of money.
  5. CEO should always be involved in the product. You can go away from any other function but not product.
  6. The success of your organization depends on how well your team is equipped. No one comes knowing it all at the job, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you train everyone.

Decision Making

  1. You will never have the complete information that you need to make decisions. Your gut/hunch will play a big role in such situations.
  2. It may sound counter-intuitive but gut-thinking can be developed. Great founders take right decisions not because they have all the information but because they have vast amount of knowledge. That’s what constitutes the gut-thinking.
  3. You will be wrong more often than you will be right. The trick is to detect your mistakes early, learn from them and never repeat them.
  4. You must stand by the wrong decisions you make. People will respect you if you are willing to accept your mistakes.
  5. Take time to explain your decisions. People around you need to know what is the thought process behind your decisions.
  6. Don’t fall in the trap of over-deliberation. Most of the times speed is more important than the right decision. You will always get time for course correction later. Good is better than best.
  7. There will be times when you are going to take decisions that nobody will believe in. If you have 100% confidence in yourself, go forward unabashed, because no one else has the full picture other than you.
  8. When taking strategic decisions, step out of your day-to-day operational work. Decompress completely. Swipe the board clean. Forget everything that’s going on currently. And then think about whatever you want to think. Think, how your future will change if you take this decision and not what benefit your present will get out of it.
  9. There will be some decisions that can significantly alter the direction of the company. You can’t always white-board a conclusion out of them. At times, you need to mull over them, you need to let serendipity happen.
  10. All good decisions seem obvious in hindsight because it’s easier to explain a chain of events, rather than predict one. Don’t mistake yourself in believing that you have found a pattern.
  11. For decisions like letting a misfit go, shutting down a product line etc. it’s always better to do it sooner rather than later.

Culture

  1. You are the guardian of the culture. You define what is to be appreciated and what is not acceptable. If you don’t do it ardently you are fucking up the culture.
  2. It’s always easier to hire people who believe in your culture than to try and convince non-believers. If someone doesn’t fit your culture, don’t hire them no matter how good they are on skills.
  3. You have to speak, shout, repeat, chant, recite and roar about your culture. Culture becomes culture only when it’s spoken about all the time.
  4. There is no definition of what a good culture is. More than being Utopian it has to have universal resonance.
  5. Your culture is never set in stone. The basic tenets will be defined but the shape and form of culture will rapidly evolve as the company grows.
  6. A good culture must breed 2 things — respect for each other’s work and open communication.

Leadership

  1. Soon you will realize the impact you can create through your individual contribution is meaningless when compared to the impact you can create by leading people.
  2. The best way to lead is to lead by example. A good leader tells you how it’s done, a great one shows you how.
  3. As a leader, the biggest thing that you can give your team members is your time. A lot of them will go through a bad phase or will be clueless about what to do. At those times, they need to know you are there.
  4. People will look up to you. At times, even for things in which they are far more skilled than you. You don’t have to take their decisions, just provide them your confidence so that they can take their decisions.
  5. Good leadership is when people are not afraid of bringing bad news to you.
  6. Politics starts at the top, if you start taking sides, everyone else in the company will too.
  7. In no situation can you afford to shout at your people. Things will go wrong, you will loose your calm, you can be stern with them but not disrespectfully shout at them.
  8. People need inspiration. To be a leader you will have to inspire them and it’s best if you do it by story-telling.
  9. Talk to/address the entire team at regular intervals. The format and frequency depends on you. It could be for 30 mins every week or 3 hours every month. I do an ‘All Hands’ every month. It has been 3 years and the All Hands has always had above 80% attendance.
  10. Very few employees are going to critique your decisions, particularly if you are a vocal leader. It’s very easy to get blindsided because you will rarely get a critical feedback. There are two ways to mitigate it a) have a close network of advisers who can say harsh things to your face b) consciously create a culture where people are not afraid of you.

Self-Management

  1. The first thing you need to learn is how to manage your time. Your time is a scarce resource, you must be very protective about it. Say no to anything that doesn’t add value.
  2. Learn to manage emails. No matter what communication tools yor organisation uses, you cannot escape emails. This particular trick has been extremely useful for me in managing my inbox — https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/email-multiple-inboxes#sm.000a54r0d14a2ct5r3d1yoluod5vf
  3. Manage your calendar — every Sunday spend 30 minutes analyzing your calendar for the week.
  4. Learn to manage your cash-flow situation. You need to keep track of the following every month — cash outflow in the month, revenue collected in that month, money spent on salaries and money in the bank. Setup a process so that you receive this information regularly.
  5. Every thing that goes on in the company will come to you. Very soon it becomes over-whelming to manage this information barrage. You need to learn to deal with it.

People Management and HR

  1. Hire a HR early in your company. 30 employees is the right stage to hire a HR.
  2. The sooner you introduce an objective performance management system, the better it is. In the early days you know about what everyone is doing, but as you grow you will loose control. The right stage for introducing a formal process is when you are 40–50 employees.
  3. One on Ones are absolutely critical. Ensure that you do one-on-ones, at least once a month, with everyone who directly reports to you and so do the other leaders in the company. In his book ‘High Output Management’, Andy Grove talks about the right way of doing one on ones.
  4. Set Goals — Every employee needs goals in order to contribute effectively. Most of the time people don’t under-perform because they don’t want to work but because they need direction. A quarter is the right time frame to set goals.
  5. Providing Feedback — Provide both negative and positive feedback with the same demeanor. It’s very important to come prepared when giving feedback. Provide negative feedback not based on your feelings but based on facts. Don’t use the Sandwich Approach, discuss the positives and the negatives as is.
  6. Just providing negative feedback is not enough, it’s your duty to also provide them a direction on how they can improve. If you are feedback is not accompanied by how they can improve then you are wasting their time.
  7. Appreciation — Everyone needs appreciation, do it often. Appreciate people at the time they do well (don’t save it for later) and be genuine when you appreciate.
  8. People don’t leave because they are underpaid, they leave because they feel you haven’t been fair. You are not supposed to compete with the best paymaster out there, but you do the best you can and they need to know that you are being fair.
  9. Setup an on-boarding process. When the company is small it’s easier for people to understand everything happening in the organization. Once you are beyond 30 it can be daunting for a new employee. Setup an on-boarding process where they get introduced to the product and people.
  10. Set a rigorous reporting process: Having access to the maximum amount of information across organization is going to be your biggest asset. As the organization grows you will find extremely hard to get all the information. You need to set up a rigorous process of updates with your direct reportees. Every function head should share updates with you in-person as frequently as every 14 days.

Meetings

  1. Whether you like it or not, you will have to do meetings. The point is how to make sure that your meetings are productive. There are only 2 types of meetings that you should attend — a) where you have to take a decision b) where you get updates/information. The productivity of the first depends solely on you and the latter on how you have trained your team. Step out from any meeting where you are not going to take any decision and you are not getting information you already don’t have.
  2. In his book High Output Management, Andy Grove talks about the concept of ‘Chairman of a meeting’. This is the person who is going to lead the meeting, facilitate discussions and take decisions. You will be the chairman for a lot of meetings as a CEO. If you are not going to prepare for these meetings you will waste everyone’s time. As a rule of thumb for a 1 hour meeting, you must spend at least 30 minutes in preparation.
  3. You don’t have to take charge of every meeting. As founder, you would be tempted to do that in any meeting you are part of. Refrain!
  4. Explicitly ask people if you are needed to be part of a meeting. Wherever you are needed, ask them for an agenda and also ask what is expected from you in the meeting. Else say no.

Hiring

  1. No matter how careful you are, you will make wrong hiring decisions. There is no definitive science for interviewing so don’t beat yourself up for wrong hires.
  2. Add a layer of objectivity in hiring. Every role should have some form of objective evaluation, like a task.
  3. Don’t interview people on what they have done in the past, interview for the role they are coming in for.
  4. Go prepared to interviews — put down a list of questions that you definitely need to ask. You don’t have to ask them in any specific order but you must ask all the questions.
  5. Ask your interviewers to give a Yes, Weak Yes or No. If there is a single No then don’t hire. There should be a majority of Yes in the verdict.
  6. Ask people where they screwed up in the past. Their failures will tell you more about them, than their success.
  7. Set an interview target for yourself — commit to doing at least 15 interviews per week in the first 2 years.
  8. Don’t look for patterns, there are none. Some people are good at giving interviews some are not.
  9. You need to create a circle of people (not necessary everyone in the company) whose loyalty is unshakable. These are the people you will rely on when shit hits the ceiling. Look for this trait when hiring key people.

Fundraising

  1. Whether you like it or not you are always fundraising. Practice the pitch incessantly, so that you can pitch anytime, anywhere.
  2. Fundraising is not a milestone, it’s not an achievement, it’s just a necessary evil.
  3. Fundraising is about story-telling. More than facts, investors are interested in your story.
  4. Choose your investors carefully. These are the folks with whom you are going to take some of the toughest decisions for your company, you want someone you can play with.
  5. Choose friendly terms over extra money. It’s okay to get half a million less in the bank if you can get less restrictive terms.
  6. You don’t raise money when you need it, you raise money in the good times, and as soon as possible.
  7. Raise as much as possible. Your company can fail because of reasons completely out of your control. Having a war chest at that time could be invaluable.
  8. Become immune to rejection. Most of them will turn you down not because you are not good but because they don’t understand what you do. 99 rejections are worth it for that one who says yes.
  9. Don’t let fundraising get over your head. It’s your number 1 duty but not your only job. You can’t compromise with running the company just because you are fundraising.

Things you should do

  1. Read voraciously, set a target to read at least one book a month.
  2. Network — In the early days of the company meet as many people as you can. In the later days of the company, choose who you want to meet and reach out to them.
  3. Take holidays — don’t feel guilty about it, you need it more than anyone else. Take spontaneous and frequent holidays, you will be amazed at the kind of thoughts that will come to you when you are relaxed.
  4. You will have to do a lot of public speaking — internally to your employees and externally to the world. Rather than being forced to do it, do it consciously. Practice before every major speech.
  5. Your job is to protect the downside of the company. The upsides will anyways take care of themselves. You should be constantly sniffing for what can go wrong.
  6. Exercise — Being a CEO will take a massive toll on your mental health. One way to keep your sanity is to exercise. Make it a habit to exercise at least 5 days a week (you can pick a sport).
  7. You are always negotiating — negotiating with your investors, your clients, your employees, prospective hires and everyone else. Master the art of negotiation, at the end it’s all give and take.
  8. Every time you say ‘Yes’ to something, you will be saying ‘No’ to something else. Choose your ‘Yes’ wisely.

Guest Post by Sachin Gupta @ HackerEarth. Original Post can be seen here

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Action For India’s 6th Annual Forum invites FinTech startups

Action For India’s 6th Annual Forum invites FinTech startups
Just about two months ago, the nation attempted the massive ‘demonetization’ initiative at an unprecedented scale to clean-up illicit money and move towards greater economic equity and justice. As a consequence, the realm of digital money management and transactions saw a burgeoning growth and needless to say, this accelerated the vision of ‘Digital India’, the India where technology and digitization makes every facet of life for a common man, easy and empowering. This is becoming a global phenomenon as a recent report from Accenture found that global investment in FinTech has skyrocketed from $930 million back in 2008 to over $12 billion by the beginning of 2015.
Alongside digital payments, the nation also takes pride in harboring FinTech initiatives working wonders on the ground, in the areas of banking for the unbanked, micro-loans, credit-free schemes, micro asset-management, and a portmanteau of other technology-powered solutions/models that are serving the unreached. Recognizing these FinTech entrepreneurs, the 6th edition of Action For India Forum, is on a mission to help Indian social innovators overcome barriers to scale and achieve greater impact.
Though this exclusive invite-only event (taking place on January 24th & 25th, 2017 in New Delhi) that brings together 100 leading social innovators (with FinTech as one of the six sectors of focus) along with 100 “influencers” (from the realms of impact investment, philanthropy, government, technology and public policy), it aims to bring together a stellar set of handpicked start-ups and provide them with a platform to further partnerships, investment and growth. The applications to be a part of the esteemed Forum, are still open for all the promising FinTech startups.
The form can be found here: goo.gl/9xdqfn
It is at this event that the most promising social entrepreneurs are selected to be a part of a two-week all-expense- paid trip to Silicon Valley through the Silicon Valley Challenge (SVC).
You can find a post-event update on AFI’s 5th Annual Forum here: http://bit.ly/1U35zdE & details of the upcoming AFI Forum 2017 here: http://actionforindia.org/afi-forum-2017/.
You can reach AFI via email at afiforum2017@actionforindia.org or call +91-72040-24529.

 

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Simplified Incorporation And Documentation Procedure

Simplified Incorporation And Documentation Procedure

Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has further simplified the ease of doing business in India by introducing SPICe forms to further digitize the company registration process. The form INC 29 was originally used to incorporate companies within a couple of days. Though this form simplified the process of incorporation, key stakeholders and professionals felt that this was a risky form because a rejection in a particular section or subsection would result in the entire form being rejected. It was because of this most promoters/founders (about 65%) used the INC 7 Form to file for incorporation. To fix this drawback, the MCA created Simplified Performa for Incorporating a Company Electronically or SPICe Form.

SPICe Forms

Simplified Performa for Incorporating a Company Electronically (SPICe) form is a single multi-purpose form that handles multiple applications such as reservation of the company name, allotment/application for Director Identification Number (DIN), incorporation of a company, etc. This was launched by the MCA to fast track the Incorporation process for companies in India.

The form INC 32 is similar to INC 29 because it helps fast track the incorporation of a company in India with the only exception, the former form has a provision for name approval, thereby assuring the name, while the latter has no such provision.

How to Incorporate a Company?

There are two ways to incorporate a company, namely:

  1. INC 7, DIR 12 and INC 22
  2. INC 32 or SPICe Form (replacing INC 29)

Types Of Companies That Can Apply Through SPICe

  1. Part 1 Company
  2. Producer Company
  3. Section 8 Company
  4. New Company – One Person Company (OPC), Private or Public Limited Company.

Step-By-Step Process

I. File INC Form 32

INC 32 is the eform used in electronic filing of the Memorandum of Association (MOA) and the Articles of Association (AOA). The Standard format to be followed is Form INC 33 (for MOA) and INC 34 (for AOA). Previously, a company applying for incorporation would use their own format and sent to the Registrar of Companies individually, but since the introduction of SPICe Form, one needs to apply for AOA and MOA with the standard format prescribed. This creates less confusion and a narrow scope for making errors.

Based on the type of company, the following standard templates are used:

Sr.No Type Of Company AOA MOA
1 Company Limited by Shares Table A Table F
2 Company Limited By Guarantee (not having share capital) Table B Table H
3 Company Limited By Guarantee (having share capital) Table C Table G
4 Unlimited Company (not having share capital) Table D Table J
5 Unlimited Company (having share capital) Table E Table I

II. INC 1 or Name Change
Only a single name for the company can be proposed in a form.

III. File DIN
DIN is automatically allocated to directors that do not have a DIN.

IV. Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) is an essential step in this process. Without a DSC, a company cannot file for incorporation through SPICe Form. The Directors, witness/es and a professional will be required to use their DSC on the SPICe Form. The limit is 7 subscribers and 1 witness per incorporation, though accommodation for certain cases that require more than 7 subscribers has been undertaken.

V. Permanent Account Number (PAN), Tax Deduction and Collection Account Number (TAN) and Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) registration can be done in a single step.

VI. Documents Required

  • Memorandum Of Association
  • Articles Of Association
  • A declaration and affidavit must be filed by the first subscriber/s and director/s.
  • Proof of Office Agreement – Rental Agreement, conveyance, lease deed and rent receipts.
  • A copy of Utility bills lesser than 2 months – phone bill, electricity bill, etc.
  • NOC from the sole proprietor, partners, other associates, etc.
  • Proof of identity and residential address of the subscribers and directors.

VII. Share Capital
The minimum share capital (authorized and subscribed) for a One Person company (OPC) is INR 1, for a Private company INR 2 and for a Public Limited Company is INR 7.

VIII. Declaration by a Professional
The DSC of a professional (Company Secretary, Chartered Accountant, advocate, Cost Accountant) along with the professional’s membership and certificate number is required to file SPICe Form (a declaration that all information provided is accurate and true).

IX. The Form is then processed at the Registrar’s office.

Conclusion

SPICe Form was introduced to replace eForm 29. While drafting the SPICe form, accommodation was made to changes that benefited the stakeholders by reducing timelines and multiplicity of several forms in the process of Incorporation. SPICe will become the standard form and format for all incorporation related purposes.

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How To File Patents In India?

A patent is a form of intellectual property defined as “a government authority or licence conferring a right or title for a set period, especially the sole right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention.” The purpose of a patent is to protect the intellectual property created by an inventor for a period of time so that the inventor has first rights over how he wishes to use his patent. A patent can be sold, leased, be used in exchange for royalties, equity, etc. A patent holder however, does not become the holder of the invention unless he has invented it first.

The then British Government of India, during the year 1856, tried to encourage and propagate new inventions termed as ‘exclusive privileges’ in the manufacturing sector. The first invention to be granted Intellectual Property Protection in India was by the Government of India under the petition special privileges to George Alfred DePenning for inventing the ‘Efficient Punkah (fan) Pulling Machine.’

The Indian Patents Act, 1970

Patentable Inventions

The list of inventions patentable are:

  • Process, manner, or method of manufacture or Art
  • Machine, apparatus or other articles
  • Product patent for medicines, food, drugs and chemicals
  • A substance should be produced by manufacturing
  • Computer software  used with hardware or with technical application to industry

Inventions Not Patentable (Sec 3)

The following is a list of inventions that cannot be patented:

  • Any invention obviously contradictory to established laws or that is superficial.
  • Any invention that could be used to exploit the population, contrary to morality, public order, or causes prejudice to life or health (of animals, plants, natural resources, humans,etc).
  • The discovery of a scientific principle, any substance occurring naturally (living or nonliving) or any abstract theory.
  • If no new product is formed nor a new reactant is formed using machines or apparatus. The discovery of a new property or new form of a substance.
  • Mere mixture of chemicals.
  • The duplication, rearrangement or arrangement of known devices.
  • A method of horticulture or agriculture.
  • Any surgical, medical, diagnostic, therapeutic, etc. process for the treatment of humans or animals (to render them free from disease).
  • Animals and plants in part or whole (other than microorganisms).
  • Algorithms, computer programmes, business or mathematical methods.
  • Musical, literary, artistic, dramatic, cinematographic (aesthetic productions or works), or television productions.
  • The mental strategy in playing a game, a mental act, rule, method or scheme.
  • Topography of integrated circuits
  • An invention that is traditional knowledge or which is a duplication or aggregate of known components properties.
  • Inventions related to atomic energy cannot be patentable under Sec 20 (1) of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962.

Application For Patents

The person applying for a patent should apply jointly with another person or alone and can be:

  • The first and true inventor of an invention.
  • An assignee can make an application on behalf of the first and true inventor of the invention.
  • The legal representative of a deceased applicant provided that before death, the applicant was entitled to make such an application.

Form Of Application

  • Every application made shall be for one patent only at the patent office in the prescribed form.
  • An international applicant applying for a patent in India under the Patent Cooperation Treaty must file a corresponding application before the Controller in India. No patent is valid for the entire world because patent law is territorial in nature. Filing an application in India enables a person to file for application at convention member countries which makes the application process easier when applying to multiple countries.

Amendments To The Patents Act And Rules

The Indian Patent Act was amended in 1999, 2002 and 2005. The need for patenting marks of patent agent examination, and chemicals and drugs under Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) brought about the need for an amendment to the Patent Act.

The Indian Patent Rules were amended in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016. The rules were amended to include a fixed fee structure, patent agent exam qualification, appointment of the patent office as searching and examining authority, third category for applicants that are small entities.

The Indian Patents Office

The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Design and Trademarks (CGPDTM) administers the Indian Patent Office, which is an Office of the Government of India that is entitled with administering the laws of patents, trademarks and designs. It is important to note the distinction between patents, designs and trademarks.

Patent Duration

The duration of any patent filed in India is valid for a period of 20 years (irrespective of filing with complete or provisional specification) from the date of filing the application. If an applicant wishes to file an application under PCT, then the term of 20 years begins from the date of international patent filing. If an applicant wishes to file a patent in another country, then he must file the patent with the Patent Office of that respective country (through the conventional filing of an application or through the PCT route) since patents granted in India are valid only throughout the territory of India.

How To Get A Patent?

Get an Idea for a Patent

First get an idea of what has to be patented, and the same has to be presented on paper with a description, drawings and sketches (if necessary) explaining the work of the invention.

Patentability Search

Next, an individual must check the list of patentable inventions. The Patent Act (as mentioned above) entails what constitutes a patentable invention and what doesn’t. Only if an idea is patentable can an individual move forward to the next step. It also enables an individual to search for existing patents in case the idea or patent already exists.

Patent Application

If a patent is at the early stages of its development, then an inventor can file a provisional patent. This enables an inventor to secure a filing date (12 months of time to file complete specification) and it is also lower in cost to file a provisional patent as compared to the cost of filing a complete patent. If an inventor has complete specifications about the invention, then the individual can file for complete specification.

Publication of the Application

After an inventor has filed for complete specification, the application is published 18 months post first filing. If an inventor feels that they cannot wait for the period of 18 months from the date of filing the application, then s(he) can file for an early publication request along with the prescribed fees and the patent would take about a month to be published under an early publication request.

Request for Examination

The controller, upon receiving an RFE request from the applicant, hands over the patent to the patent examiner for examining criteria such as novelty, enabling, inventive step, patentable subject-matter and industrial application. All steps covered till now (from patent application till grant) is termed as patent prosecution. The patent examiner then submits a first examination report to the controller and the applicant which consists of documents of the claimed invention.

Response and Clearing of Objections

Based on the examination report, most patent applicants would receive objections. A patent agent can help create a response to the objections raised in the application. An inventor can communicate to the controller as to why his invention is patentable.

Grant of Patent

After all objects raised in the report are resolved and the patent is deemed to be in order of grant after meeting all criteria requirements, the patent is granted to the applicant as early as possible. The grant of a patent is published in the patent journal.

As we move towards becoming a Product Nation, it is important that companies and individuals own their IP. A Patent can become a competitive advantage in itself and is to be ignored at your own peril!