Posted on

Great Mentoring Session for Product startups with Piyush Singh & Greg Toebbe

Both, Piyush Singh(Sr. VP & CIO) & Greg Toebbe(Sr. VP) at Great American Insurance, are active participants in the Indian software ecosystem and are acknowledged speakers in the NASSCOM Product Conclave. This time they selected 4 companies to have one-on-one sessions with them on February 27, 2013 after reviewing several companies that had applied for this mentoring session.

Objective of these one-on-one meetings was mentoring/guidance on product strategy, Go-To-Market (GTM), scaling and sales among other things. The number of companies selected was consciously kept less so that each startup gets quality time of one hour with Piyush and Greg.  The time was split as follows: 15-20 minutes of introduction and product presentation followed by a few minutes of the product demonstration. More than half of the allotted time was suggested to be used for seeking advice and feedback. These sessions were voluntarily given by Piyush as part of helping the Indian Software Product ecosystem. Participants were at liberty to seek out the mentors for any advisory role or future involvement. I am sure that every company walked away feeling satisfied and renewed energy to pursue their dreams after these meetings. The companies selected were:

Here are some of the snippets of advice given to the companies (in random order):

  • Presentations should immediately connect with the audience. Great way to do this is to start with user stories/perspectives so that people immediately see the product’s value rather explaining the technology involved or the general problem that the product is solving. He also mentioned that CxOs like numbers. Numbers hit them more than anything else. One of the startups declared that their product reduces the testing effort, increases productivity and saves license costs too. They were advised to take a specific case study and put the actual savings in numbers. These would then make people see the value instantaneously.
  • One company had built a great enterprise technology platform over the last couple of years. However, it had difficulty in selling it to the big guys. Piyush advised them to build vertical-based solutions on their platform and target one or more marquee customers in that segment. He said they could keep the core common and build vertical-focused modules. This would help them differentiate from their competitors as well as have potential customers see the value immediately.
  • While everyone is clamoring for moving their applications into the cloud, he said cloud is not meant for everyone and everything. Companies should not make superficial efforts to move their product into the cloud if it doesn’t make sense to their customers. Alternatively, if they could offer the hybrid model (cloud and on-premise) then customers are free to choose what they want. Ultimately the development should be driven more your customer needs rather than general technology trends around you.
  • For selling in the US, he said there is no alternative to burning shoe leather. Companies will have to meet the leads face-to-face and sell. Specific targeted Tradeshows as well as exposure in right magazines are another avenue to generate good leads. He also advised the startups to tie up with bigger player in their domains and use their sales muscle, if it works out symbiotically for both parties.

Once again, ProductNation and the participating companies would like to thank Piyush and Greg for their valuable time and advise. And last but not the least, we would like to thank Pramati Techologies (Syed Khadar) for hosting these meetings and helping us with the arrangements at a very short notice.

Few testimonials from the companies:

Thank you very much ProductNation for the opportunity to Mr. Piyush Singh and Mr. Greg Toebbe.  The feedback and suggestions shared by them was quite valuable, especially good to know the buyers perspective, which will be helpful in presenting a business case to the prospects.  Once again thank you ProductNation for all support extended to start ups – Sudhir Patil, Qualitia Software

It was a great experience meeting Piyush & Greg, very high return on my time spent (RoT).  The quality & amount of, to the point, practical and meaningful advice I got in one hour of our interaction was invaluable and is impossible to get by even attending a dozen startup events.  Very productive, very helpful, expecting more of such interactions with people who know and understand the needs of your target customer segments besides knowing technology! – Sumeet Anand, Kreeo Software

Our main intention was to validate some of the assumptions we have made for building the Enterprise Software. Piyush, being the CIO of a huge enterprise, provided that validation as well as helped us prioritize a few things. His offer for using out free Lite version (when it is available) was also deeply appreciated. Overall, we felt it was time well spent. – Chandra, i7 Networks

The interaction provided some valuable feedback for our company growth and scale. Even though the session time was limited, ROI was there ! Today we need to interact with wide/diverse network of people due to the product DNA nature in the business model and the pace at which this model is growing as compared to the old mentoring model and nature of the companies/business model.
Also he was good enough to keep the interaction beyond the session as well ! I would like to quote Jim Rohn in this context – “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Lot to learn from their expertise and hopefully the session provided the platform for the same/to get started with. Thanks to ProductNation for organising such a session and expect to do more sessions. Abdulla Hisham, Fordadian Technologies
Posted on

Photolity – The finest, most efficient, and an intelligent aggregator of photos.

It promises to aggregate photos from any source, and do some great things with them. Photolity was created recently against the backdrop of a similar Facebook app which was launched last year. The team brought the whole idea to life within 8 months. According to Gautam, extensive product experience helped the idea get off the ground in such a short timeframe. 

What is Photolity’s proposition?
In simple words Photolity aims to bring magic to photos. We are surrounded by billions of photos and everybody is searching for photos through Google but once search is complete there is not a frictionless next step. Downloading and sorting photos is a painful process. Photoliy is a small widget that allows you to aggregate the photos and do many things with them. It is an efficient tool for photos!

What are your key offerings?
Photolity can be used in many ways, for instance it allows teachers to prepare nice looking presentations, ad agencies to prepare contact sheets, users to upload pics on facebook and order for printing. It also supports the law enforcement agencies by helping them identify key pieces of information in the CCTV footage and in creating mugshots. It could be applied across other sectors including professional modelling and photography in general. 


How are you funded?
According to Gautam, Photolity is completely bootstrapped and has not raised any capital from external sources so far. 

What is your pricing model?
As of now the pricing model is not defined but the potential options include charging users for app download, forming partnerships with camera OEMs and printer companies.

What is your customer base saying?
The app is due to be launched in Beta over the next couple of weeks. So far there has been tremendous interest from the community. For example, Nasscom wants to do a pilot with Mumbai police to create a database of criminals whereas Intel and Window 8 want to display the app in their stores. The team is planning to launch a social media campaign to take this to market. 

What does the future hold?
Gaurav suggested that Photolity aims to become a market leader in this space through continuously refining the app features and thereby enhancing user experience. As the product gets ready for launch, the team needs to develop a clear product-market strategy and customer acquisition plans over the next few weeks. 
Posted on

SaaS #MadeinIndia Products – HR & Recruitment

This post and the one’s following this are attempts to improve the coverage and knowledge of Indian made Product companies who are solving issues with their SaaS type solutions. This is not a comprehensive list, and if there are some companies whom we have missed and should be in this list, please feel free to email us or drop in a comment and we will add it to the list, this hopefully will turn into a Crowd Sourced list of companies in the HR & Recruitment space.
Some of the HR & Recruitment based Products with a SaaS twist and the #madeinindia component in an alphabetical order:
1. Adrenalin – Adrenalin is a business-critical Human Resource Software. It provides critical tools such as HR software solution, payroll software solution, HRMS software solution, performance management system, attendance and training management software solutions.
2. Ascent Payroll – Employee Self service, Payroll Software.
3. Cynergis – HR Outsourcing, Payroll & HRMS software which has been around for over 10 years, and also has a major SaaS play involved.
4. Employwise – HR software for integrated employee life-cycle management delivered as SaaS.
5. Emportant – Emportant.com provides Internet based HR and Payroll Management software. Based on cloud technologies, it provides highly reliable and worry free software environment that you can just use without any other software management overheads.
6. EmpXtrack – EmpXtrack is a software product of Saigun Technologies Pvt. Ltd.. The company has been focused on HR solutions for the last 10 years and is a CMMI Level 3 company implementing best software development practices since inception.
7. Fluous – PowerApps – Adaptive HR Systems is the premier HRMS solution being by both large and growing organisations.
8. Greytip – Greytip Software is a leading HR & Payroll software solutions company. They offer a wide range of HR solutions (from on-boarding to exit) for customers big and small across industry verticals.
9. Hackerearth – Help you hire programmers for your companies.
10. HireCraft – Talent Management is a tool to help you manage all your employees and talent via this product suite by HireCraft.
11. Hire Rabbit – HireRabbit helps you design a beautiful career site on facebook, boost your referral recruitment, automate manual social recruiting activities, and provide metrics that matter!
12. HR Mantra – HR Mantra provides SaaS based Employee Self Service, HRIS, HR & Payroll Software on the Cloud.
13. Jombay – the smartest way to find jobs in India on the next generation job portal.
14. KServeHRMS is a flagship product with of Kallos. The HRMS product is known for its unique employee self service centric model for integrated HRMS software
15. MinervaHR Suite – A product from TenXLabs designed to house all information pertaining to every employee in an association from Recruitment to Retirals.
16. Mettl – Mettl is an online assessment and testing platform to measure, analyze and improve people skills. It is ideal for companies who want to run multi-competency assessments for their prospective hires or existing employees. We focus deeply on the science of assessments and combine it with advanced technology to deliver highly valid and reliable tests.
17. PeopleWorks –  A flexible, robust, customizable, and seamless cloud based solution for efficient management of the HR lifecycle of every employee in the organization.
18. Recruiterbox – Recruiterbox is the easiest way to receive and manage job applications to your company. It is more efficient than email and simpler than any other recruitment software. They are Bangalore based, but have been getting great traction outside and within India for their product.
19. Saral Paypack – Payroll Software for managing all your employees in one place, SaaS based web platform.
20. Shawman Software – From recruitment to retirement, the entire gamut of managing human capital is supported by HRMS.
21. SumHR – SumHR is a HRMS product, automating all HR requirements with a Free Employee & Leave Management system product integrated as well.
22. Synergita – Software for the people, performance management and continuous feedback.
23. Talentpool – Talentpool is a recruitment software for HR Departments of companies. It helps them streamline their recruitment processes, meet hiring targets and get instant reports to track performance.
24. Valuehire – A complete workflow automation solution for recruitment agencies and
companies of all sizes.
As mentioned, if (and we must have) we have missed out on some companies, either yours or another you know of, and would like it to be added to the list, please comment below here, or email us.
Our Goal is to create a great compilation of SaaS Product companies made out of India and hopefully get more businesses to try using these products as well compared to other counter-parts.
The next list of SaaS Product companies made from India, will have special focus on Social Media Tools. Watch out for that in a few days.
Posted on

Why More Indian Software Product Companies will Emerge

Any discussion about building products from India is lost in the hype and din about India as an IT services powerhouse. However, the mostly unnoticed surge in product start-ups marks the beginning of a new movement, with potential to re-invent the Indian software industry. Emergence of globally recognized Indian product companies will represent the final step in the software value chain. If India can become the hub of the world’s most successful IT services as well as product companies, it can truly lay claim to being a knowledge superpower.

Building products requires a mindset, capabilities and an environment, which is very different from delivering services. Achieving this final frontier won’t be easy and Indian entrepreneurs face major challenges. There are very few role models who have built successful product companies, which limits access to mentors, who can provide guidance. Access to market requirements is difficult, since major consumers of software products are in Western markets. IT spend- ing in India is growing but still limited and global vendors are preferred. Finally, early stage funding is a major problem, and getting engineers to work in start- ups is a big challenge.

An increasing number of motivated entrepreneurs are working to overcome these handicaps, just as founders of services companies did in the early 1990s. A convergence of factors is ensuring the emergence of successful Indian product companies:

  • A large pool of talented engineers and managers who have worked at global companies in India and US
  • The rapid growth of local market and increasing adoption of IT with India-specific requirements especially for consumer facing apps
  • Technology disruptions including the emergence of cloud computing, which make national boundaries irrelevant, and reduce cost of global sales
  • Flair for innovation and risk-taking amongst a generation that has grown up in post-liberalized India
  • Self-confidence that comes from an economy that is the second fastest growing in the world
  • Weakening US economy that is motivating an increasing number of experienced software professionals to return to India

Since services culture dominates Indian IT, the book will continue to high- light how software product companies differ from their services counterparts, and the specific challenges that they must overcome.

Reprinted from From Entrepreneurs to Leaders by permission of Tata McGraw-Hill Education Private Limited.

Posted on

Profit from Price, Always – The Bootstrapped Story of RateGain

This is part of our “Podcast with a Product Entrepreneur” series. Do check out the 30 minute podcast!

His first fling with business was a video game exchange, while at school. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, the question was never about the “Why”; it was only about the “When”. A computer science and finance graduate, his stint with Deloitte saw him starting up with a technology consulting business that later led him to this technology product idea.

Meet Bhanu Chopra, the Founder and CEO of RateGain – a B2B price comparison SaaS product for the travel industry –  as he talks about starting up, go-to market strategies, the CNBC Award, challenges and some priceless advice for all software product entrepreneurs.

In business, Bhanu has demonstrated tremendous agility by making quick decisions. His initial idea of a price comparison website focused on the US market, quickly morphed into a B2B offering, given the challenge of marketing to US out of India. Then by licensing technology and acquiring a few beta customers, he not only validated the idea, quickly, but also generated revenues for reinvestment.

Bhanu advocates a Go-To market approach built on two parameters:-

  • Power of a Brand built on thought leadership, where Bhanu humbly accepts being “late in the game”
  • Sales Structure customized to the channel and prospective customer personas

 

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/79810846″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

 

Straddling across the hospitality value chain with RateGain, Bhanu sees tremendous opportunities for existing products as well as newer products on pricing optimization using Big Data and predictive analytics.

Also an angel investor, Bhanu recognizes the tremendous passion amongst product entrepreneurs but highlights the imperative to persevere and think about the global market. While the team is critical, he concedes that team building would always be a challenge for product companies in India, given the latency of IT services in influencing engineering talent.

We conclude the interview with Bhanu mentioning two of his favorite product companies – Google and ….. – an awesome data visualization company that is just about to IPO on NASDAQ. If you haven’t guessed the name, do listen to the podcast.

Posted on

Guerilla Marketing 2.0 for Product Startups!

Jay Conrad Levinson, father of Guerilla Marketing defines it very simply as going after conventional goals with unconventional means! When you are a product startup, trying to build a business on little to zero money, you need plenty of unconventional means. With the rise of social media, viral word-of-mouth options with web and mobile global connectivity, it has never been easier to do guerilla marketing! As you will see in  the rest of this article, social media can be a part of guerilla marketing and that makes it 2.0!

However, guerilla marketing requires lots of time, energy, imagination and information on your part rather than money (in Jay Conrad Levinson’s words again!)

First, it is worth watching him describe guerilla marketing in his own words! It is worthwhile to remember that he invented this way before we had social media but since then they have made what he was trying to do a lot easier!

Time, energy, imagination and information are not easy to muster or master easily when you are short of money, trying to get to the next level of getting angel funding or venture funding or just trying to keep your business afloat! But that’s when guerilla marketing could provide the big breaks you may be looking for in terms of customer adoption!

Here’s a video of the Unidesk CEO talking about how they performed guerilla marketing and the tools they used throughout the lifecycle of their product. Right from inception, when they did not have a product to when they had a product and trying to get repeat customers!  They used different tools, some of them social media, at various stages of the product development lifecycle and for different purposes. For example, their use of SurveyMonkey to survey potential users of their product BEFORE they had a product is remarkable. Unidesk is in the business of desktop virtualization. All they had to do was ask potential users what they needed using a survey and seems like they got MORE than what they needed by way of inputs on what was needed in their product. This ties in with the Lean Startup movement where you get out of the office and talk to potential prospects before implementing anything.

Very interesting to see the variety of tools used during different stages of the lifecycle of their product (inception to repeat customers). Most importantly, their use of measurement of everything is key in seeing what works and changing tools or approaches quickly! After all, time, energy, imagination and information is not easy to come by, and cannot be wasted even if you can do many things for free these days!

Here’s another YouTube video about understanding the Chain of Conversion. Software product founders may also know this as the Funnel. This video makes a very important point about understanding the way your own funnel works, pinpointing the weaknesses in your funnel, working backwards from any point in the funnel, and fixing these weaknesses systematically. This is where you may need to employ different guerilla marketing approaches depending upon what is suitable at the different stages of the funnel.

Finally, here’s a stunning YouTube video. I don’t want to say anything more since that anything would be a spoiler!  Watch it for yourself! All I want to say is that this one has 43 million views as of this writing! Rest assured that this Guerilla Marketing effort was highly successful!

Many users on twitter, facebook and instagram believe they are the star of their very own reality show when they are stalked by a mellow mushroom! – Entrepreneur Magazine talking about Mellow Mushroom’s (restaurant) guerilla marketing effort.

Posted on

Geeks with Dilli Wallas

Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. #GOAP is headed to India and after visiting Bangalore & Mumbai the geeks will be visiting Delhi from 27th to 2nd March ’13. We (91Springboard, ProductNation & Moonlighting) are hosting #GOAP while they are in Delhi. Come join us to meet the #GOAP team, most awesome startups & entrepreneurs in Delhi-NCR and other cool folks accompanied with a light lunch on 28th Feb ’13 from 11am to 2pm.

Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is program initiated by 500 Startups, a startup accelerator from Silicon Valley. Through this initiative, founders Dave McClure and Christen O’Brien travel to technology markets with geeks and startup enthusiasts. The participants come from companies like GE, Wahooly, XG Ventures, SoftLayer, JESS3, Qualcomm Ventures, SendGrid, Google and more.

Tentative agenda:
1100 – 1115 hrs – Welcome & Introductions
1115 – 1130 hrs – Talk by Dave McClure – Go Local or Go Global (or both)
1130 – 1145 hrs – Talk by Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder, iSPIRT – Surfing the Innovation Wave
1145 – 1245 hrs – Lessons Learnt from Product Startups in Emerging Economies – Ambarish Gupta (Knowlarity), Aloke Bajpai (iXIGO), Kavin Bharti Mittal (Hike) Ketan Kapoor (Mettl), Paras Chopra (Visual Website Optimiser), Rajat Garg(SocialAppsHQ); Moderated by Kunal Bajaj – Advisor, iSPIRT Founder Circle
1245 – 1400 hrs – Networking Over Light Lunch with the Geeks

Venue: 91springboard

Entry free: Rs 500. Register Online. We have very limited seats, please do register online by filling up the form and we will confirm your participation. Here is an opportunity to meet and interact with the geeks. Register now to avoid disappointment. No on-site registrations will be allowed.

Posted on

Build it Right, then Sell it to Many (and Keep Repeating)

Building a software product is more difficult than doing projects or providing services. With projects, software is developed to meet the exact specifications of the client. Work begins only when the contract is signed.

The project scope can be defined accurately in consultation with the customer, and deployment happens in a controlled environment at client site, with known hardware and software. Support requirements are minimal.

Changes to specifications, or defects during development or after deployment, usually have limited financial impact. In T&M contracts, the vendor is paid regularly, based on efforts put in. Hence, changes and delays may in fact, bring in more revenue. Fixed price bids usually account for contingencies like delays. If specifications are changed, the vendor can ask to re-negotiate the price. Quality issues may cause loss of credibility, or at worse, project termination and denial of future contracts. 

A product, in contrast, will be shipped to thousands, or even millions of users. Specifications are based on the seller’s understanding of customer needs. Therefore, a deep knowledge of market and domain is required. Clients are not guaranteed, and marketing and sales functions are critical. Selling cycles are longer and more cumbersome.

Quality has to be outstanding, since the product will be used by a variety of users, and on a plethora of platforms and configurations, and not all of it can be anticipated in advance. As the diagram below shows, the cost of fixing a defect increases exponentially depending on when it is detected.

A post-release defect creates negative publicity and costs lot of money. A patch to fix the problem has to be developed and distributed quickly to the users. Even Microsoft has faced this problem repeatedly when hackers have exploited vulnerabilities in its operating systems. In another instance, a US-based personal finance company inadvertently exposed the private account details of several hundred individuals to other users. Such snafus can expose a product company
to expensive lawsuits.

A product business requires highly structured engineering and organizational discipline. Formal reviews are necessary at every stage (architecture, design, coding) to catch deviations from the requirements. Rigorous testing and quality assurance (test/QA) processes should be followed to detect defects before product  release. Test labs must replicate the myriad deployment environments that users  may have. This can become complicated for multi-platform products that support a variety of operating systems (Windows, Unix, Linux) and databases.

The installation procedure must be highly automated and work fl awlessly in all possible system configurations. New versions, patches, and future upgrades must install without any disruption to existing software and data at user sites. A strong support organization (on phone, email or onsite) has to be built.


Unlike projects, there is no end date for product engineering. They must  continue innovating and releasing new versions with more functionality and advanced features, to stay ahead of competition. Product organizations often have a signifi cant revenue component derived from services such as consulting, customization, integration and solutions. Unlike a pure services business, these are used to underpin and drive their product sales.

The ecosystem for products is more complex, consisting of engineering teams, product management, marketing, sales, consulting, professional services, distributors, system integrators, resellers and investors.

Reprinted from From Entrepreneurs to Leaders by permission of Tata McGraw-Hill Education Private Limited.

Posted on

How to go from an engineer to a product entrepreneur?

When you work as an engineer regardless of whether it is startup or a big company (in consulting services or products) you are always given guidance on what you should build. Even the most autonomous programmers when working independently has someone tell him what to do. However when you become the founder of a startup the most stressful thing you immediately encounter is ‘What should be built?’.

This decision is guided by what-if scenarios or even based on what is cool to build and show off to others. If you are somewhat disciplined then you document these thought somewhere before you start writing code. In software engineering language this is also referred to as requirements analysis document. Little thought is given to how does one know that this is indeed something needed by someone. To address this one of the best techniques known to engineers is applied – abstract it away. You decide to assume that whatever conjured up is indeed correct to help make further progress as sitting idle without any doing any coding is a waste of time.

When you were just an engineer working elsewhere the impact of such assumption is someone else’s problem but now the impact is on you.  Also given that you have limited runway the stake for making mistakes about that question is very high.

You thus face two scenarios which as engineers you may have never faced.

  •  To make a decision in the face of unknown 
  • To own the decision you make

Product entrepreneurs realize this situation and resist the urge to make any assumption and proceed with a learning mindset. They make decision to the extent to which they can learn. Infact the really great entrepreneurs mentally sequence their unknowns (assumptions) in the order of most negative impact and move forward to uncover them.

These are in fact the two key skills that a startup product manager should become excellent at – owning the decisions & discovery (learning) before making decisions.

In the next post we will look at “How to debug a product startup idea?”

Posted on

In discussion with the Founders of Qualitia

Today there are proven automation tools in the market from  HP, IBM as well as open source tools like Selenium, Webdriver but the success does not lies in just investing in to tools but putting right strategies, best practices in place.

Qualitia is a one of its kind platform which intern leverages these tools as an execution engine while enabling users to adopt RIGHT strategies, best practices, where in now test automation designing, test automation development and even detailed reporting happens in Qualitia. We interviewed Rahul Chaudhari(MD & CEO) & Sudhir Patil(Founder Director) about the company’s product development journey & their advice for startups.

Q)    What was the Vision with which you launched the company ?
Vision is to empower the manual test engineers to contribute to test automation worldwide. Which has been a job of the technology resources till today, but we see a larger opportunity to empower the 90-92% of the QA community who come from the domain background or functional knowledge background and empowering them to drive test automation way faster then any traditional way of automation. Test automation challenges are primarily attracting resources who were good in development technologies and then making them work into testing. Bridging the gap between domain and technology expertise to dramatically reduce the turnover time in test automation. This will empower the SME’s manual test engineers that are the existing strength of every company to drive automation themselves. Also to reduce the maintenance effort and cost  of enterprises to help them to invest into test automation.

Q)    How will the product help startups to scale up?
In terms of startups where the focus is primarily development and they realize the importance of test automation, some barriers exist primarily:

  • The competencies required to drive test automation.
  • The Cost of commercial licenses. 

We therefore provide the solutions through Qualitia where startups can get the licenses on subscription model at around 23% of cost of their QA resource with 200% increase in the productivity leading to huge savings for a Startup from day one. 

Q)    Which are the important markets which you are looking at?
India contributes the maximum of users, where as US contributes 60% to the buying space worldwide. Therefore a balance needs to be created between them therefore both are important markets for us. 

Q) What is the next 1 year roadmap for the company?
We would look to drive success stories in the markets/segments identified and anchor  customers in these markets. Since US is a mature market where we have been present for the last 2 years we would like to build on the success realised
 by customers there.  The target is to grow the revenues in double digits. 

Q)    What advice would you give to new startups?
For any product – The idea and its research is important keeping in mind ability to take the product to the market. Time is of the essence. Therefore it is very important to ensure that the fructification of the product on real time is very important. 

Q)    What has been your go to market strategy?
Identifying the focus clearly, and slowly expanding the market.

Guest post by Nakul Saxena, NITEE


Posted on

CIOSE selects 8 #MadeInIndia product companies to showcase on global platform

CIO Strategy Exchange (CIOSE) has selected 8 companies from India from the #MadeInIndia tag to showcase them on a global platform. Its director Ernest M. von Simson reviewed many applications that were submitted and chose 8 companies to showcase when he is here in Bangalore. The eight companies are Kreeo, Cloudpact, OrangeScape, i7 Networks, C2il, ArrayShield, Anoosmar, and FieldEZ.

CIOSE received many applications from early stage technology startups to those who have spent few years in the industry, with exciting ideas across Big Data, social networking, Analytics, healthcare, education, mobile applications, security, etc., during the one week period starting January 31, 2013 until February 8 2013. The final 8 were selected after several rigorous rounds of screening by CIOSE. 

The demo from these selected companies will happen in Bangalore on Februay 26th and 27th in iGate premises. 

Here are the selected companies and their product details:

  1. Kreeo: Due to information overload, inefficient information discovery and ineffective management of knowledge and learning.  Despite the best of tools from biggest of vendors organizations are not able to significantly enhance knowledge worker productivity.  Kreeo’s innovative “Collective Intelligence” framework and product uniquely combines the power of social computing, PaaS and Big Data in a unified framework (winner of Nasscom Emerge 50 2012 in Innovation category) is used by companies like Standard Chartered Bank to evolve to next level.
  2. CloudPact’s Marble Enterprise: CloudPact Marble is an award winning, unique enterprise mobility platform, with the world’s best cloud hosted mobile application development IDE, smooth enterprise connectivity, security and comprehensive management tools. We help our customers mobile enable their enterprise and extend their business frontier to very edge of mobile reach.  We provide mobility solutions across industry verticals which can be deployed in public clouds, private clouds and also dedicated, traditional IT infrastructure.
  3. OrangeScape: Cloud has disrupted the middleware market with Platform as a Service. All larger enterprise are evaluating PaaS offerings currently. However, there three key capabilities enterprises are looking a) Private Cloud Deployment b) Productivity with greater price performance c) Specialized for B2B Apps. OrangeScape Visual PaaS elegantly address these 3 key requirements when compared Generic PaaS offerings. OrangeScape is featured among the Global Top 10 PaaS companies in research reports of Forrester and Gartner.
  4. i7 Networks – PeregrineGuard: i7 Networks enables enterprises to “say Yes” to BYOD by providing an agentless paradigm for discovery and access control. Our premier offering in this space – PeregrineGuard – enables an intelligent, non-intrusive, clientless way of detecting all devices that are trying to connect to the corporate network. By the use of proprietary algorithms and sophisticated fingerprinting techniques, we extract highly granular information like device-type, device-class, OS, version, user of the device, etc; this information is used to provide device based differential access to corporate assets and to make sure sensitive data is provided right access to the right device type. It integrates with EAS and also provides authentication via AD and also denies access to all jailbroken/rooted/compromised devices. Only those devices that pass the company’s baseline configuration and are registered via EAS are allowed to connect to network for further access.
  5. C2il’s inciseEAM: inCiseEAM Asset life-cycle Management system takes the power, performance and possibilities of Asset management to an entirely new level. Built on a single software platform, inCiseEAM Asset life-cycle Management framework delivers a comprehensive view of all Asset types — production, facilities, transportation and IT — across your enterprise. This holistic perspective allows you to see all your Assets, as well as identify all the untapped potential within them. You gain the knowledge and control you need to closely align your organization’s goals with the overall goals of your business.
  6. ArrayShield’s ArrayShield IDAS: This product addresses the growing threat to enterprises from advanced malware/Trojan based attacks that steal the credentials and attack the enterprise in real time. By protecting the critical organizational data from advanced malware attacks using innovative two factor authentication, enterprises can minimize their security risk and protect their organization data and brand. Globally, Two factor authentication is now being considered as a must have much like anti-virus or firewalls. As per Gartner, 2FA market is expanding by 30% globally and many of the current 2FA mechanisms are flawed like that of hardware tokens, sms based solutions. Hence ArrayShield is uniquely positioned to capture the 2Bn$ global market that is growing at 30% CAGR.
  7. Anoosmar’s Vaultize: The current CIO challenges: 1. with the rapid consumerization of IT and proliferation of consumer solutions like dropbox in enterprise, enterprise IT is looking to control the data loss that might happen through these cloud services 2. traditional file sharing is too cumbersome for roaming users endpoint data (e.g. laptops) is hardly backed up and encrypted. Traditional backups are geared for structured-data (application data) and not unstructured (files) Vaultize provides a unified platform for file backup, file sharing, endpoint encryption and mobility. Vaultize offers this through public cloud, appliance or private-cloud/on-premise. Vaultize’s at-source encryption together with de-duplication helps enterprises adopt cloud based backup and file sharing by eliminating concerns about security, data privacy and compliance. The patent-pending technology secures data even before it leaves endpoints. 
  8. FieldEZ: is an On-Demand mobile based solution that makes managing mobile workforce such as field sales or service teams very efficient and easy. With features such as call management & scheduling, enterprise collaboration, time & location reporting, integrated bar code scanning and payment options, FieldEZ provides valuable field insights to management and boosts the productivity of field personnel while making a positive difference to their work.  It works on common feature phones and smartphones, with a highly responsive user interface, robust security, ease of configuration and web-services for integration. It can work as a standalone Field Service / Sales Management solution or provide the “last mile” mobility to incumbent backend systems.

ProductNation and CIOSE take this opportunity to thank all the participants and like to congratulate the selected 8 companies.

Posted on

Zomato “gets” foodies, and it gets them so well

I am a foodie. And a big Zomato fan, no pun intended anywhere. Here, I am going to talk about everything we foodies love about Zomato and all the things it could do better.

For the uninitiated, Zomato is a restaurant discovery platform with 74,800 restaurants listed across 19 cities and 4 countries, and claims to have served 62.5 million foodies till date. More simply, it is about food and where to find the best of it.

So this is how I met Zomato. I was in college till 2009, and whenever I needed to know of new places to eat or hang out at, I just asked a couple of friends and I had more recommendations than I could handle. But once I entered the world of technology, everything in life started to begin with a Google search. But that’s not how I discovered Zomato. That’s how I discovered that websites of restaurants, when they have one, are completely useless. They talk about everything except what I need to know.

I got to know of Zomato in a rather funny way. I was looking for some kickass About Us pages on the web, and a friend of mine pointed me towards Zomato’s team page on Facebook. It spoke the same language I spoke, had this young and fun feel about it, quirky bios of everyone on the team. I loved it. Then I gave their product a try. And I uttered — “My precious.”

And we have been together ever since. It’s been a rather smooth relationship, and now I will tell you of all the things I love about it.

When do you look for a new place to eat at? Most likely when you are in the mood for some good Italian food but have been to little Italy thrice in the last fortnight. Or you are at a friend’s place in your shorts and floaters, probably a little drunk, and want food delivered to your doorstep? Hyderabadi Biryani has not been very kind on your stomach lately, so you want to go for someplace lesser spicy. Zomato delivers on both counts by allowing you to search for restaurants by fine dining or delivery in your city. There’s also catching up and nightlife if you are in the let’s-go-hangout mood. And if you like searches the Google way, then you have a simple Search bar you can throw in all your keywords into.

But that is no rocket science, is it? No it isn’t. Actually most of the things that Zomato does isn’t rocket science. It’s just that they do it well, really well.

Then you get your search results in 0.035 seconds in a beautifully laid out page with everything you need. Ratings, timings, cost for two, bar or no bar, cash or card, reviews from people you follow (more on this later) and more. And then you can apply filters like wifi, outdoor seating, buffet and whatnot to find that perfect someplace for you. Again, all of it in what I can only call a lovely interface.

Then you choose a restaurant, and are presented with all the details you need on the restaurant. Up-to-date scanned copies of the complete menu (which they go door-to-door and collect manually), photos of the place and food (not the best, but manageable) and most importantly reviews. Comprehensive reviews from foodies, big foodies and connoisseurs. The reviews tell you everything about the ambiance of the place, the service, the dishes to try and then they give you more photos.

The reviews were not always these helpful. Then Zomato decided to create a food social network of sorts, and there has been no looking back ever since. You can follow foodies, so every time they add a new review, it comes up in your notification bar. Passionate foodies and wannabe food critics use this as an opportunity to educate their followers about food and the best of it.

As the number of reviews you post increase and more people find it helpful, you go from foodie to connoisseur, and you also become eligible for the leaderboard which is displayed in each city’s homepage. The catch is you have to enter a review having more than 50 words, and when you are doing that, you might as well write a good detailed review. And with the recent Instagram integration in the reviews, you can add pics for other foodies to drool over.

Sounds like the perfect love story, doesn’t it? Well, almost. There are some things that Zomato could have done better though.

The ads. They are some of the ugliest ads I have seen on the web. Every time I search for restaurants, a bunch of these ads come up in the right panel. And every time I see them, my eyes bleed and a little part of me dies. I understand Zomato has to make money and restaurants work with shitty digital agencies, but there has to be a better way. Featured listings, photo albums, more details, whatever it is that they can make money from as long as the ugly ads can go out the window.

iPhone app. While it has seen big improvements over time, it still isn’t as good as the website experience. And the consistency is missing across the two interfaces. You can just search by location or cuisine on the app, not by delivery, dine out, catching up and the like. But an interesting feature is the instant recommendation that tells of you of a random new place near you — if you don’t like it, just shake the phone and a new recommendation will come up. I think I could use a variant of this on the web interface as well.

The tags. A cafe is a cafe to me, so when it comes up in my search for Italian food, I start getting cranky. And this happens because under the cuisines tag, the cafe has American, European and Italian marked against it when it serves four dishes for each of those cuisines, and pretty bad one at that. Same with pubs having Indian, Mughlai, Chinese and Italian slapped against them. Of course, I have no qualms if the cafe or the pub serves really good food, but when I am looking out for good Indian food, neither a pub or a cafe or a restaurant having a total of three Indian dishes is what I am looking for.

Notifications. While I like to be notified when someone I am following posts a new review, why do I have to be notified when someone I follow follows someone else? I want to follow their food trail, but not every single thing they do.

All that said and done, I have to commend Zomato for everything it has done for us foodies, and for the industry as a whole. Only time will tell how it fares against the Yelps of the world as it expands into more mature markets, but it’s got an international product and the balls to take on the world.

I wish them all the best.

Posted on

Content Generation – The 10 commandments

Content Marketing is increasingly becoming a key strategy for product marketers. With prospects and customers ceasing to be passive and, on the contrary, actively gathering information, comparing product offerings and alternatives, product marketers are now turning to content marketing as a key strategy for their communication operations.

The purpose of Content Marketing is to create a scenario where your customers and prospects interact, react, engage and market on their own. Instead of publishing self-proclaiming ads, the focus has now shifted to providing content that the target audience finds relevant and resourceful.

The key question then is how to ensure you publish relevant and resourceful content for your target audience. The basis for any content marketing strategy is the content itself, and how you shape and mould your content can define your success. The following 10 Commandments of Content Generation will serve as an effective roadmap for your content marketing success

YOUR CONTENT SHALL NOT BE PROMOTIONAL
Your prospects don’t want to read self-promotional messages all the time. The key to winning your target audience over is building credibility and creating content that matters to readers.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE ORIGINAL
It does not matter how perfect you think your content is. The success lies in the appeal. The key to building brands and winning fans in the long term is creating content that is original, which is unique.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE RELEVANT
The content you create should be based on what your prospects are interested in and what is the most relevant in their space. Identify industry-relevant subject matter and popular topics before you create content. 

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE STRUCTURED
Your content needs a blueprint.  Structure your message first and then create the content. Your prospects demand more than a bunch of loosely related words from you.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE DIVERSIFIED
Your prospects consume content in various forms – text, pictures, videos, etc. Your content must not be restricted to a single type. Instead, diversify your content to keep the interest high.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL CARRY A THEME
What message are you trying to push to your audience? Your content should carry an underlying theme that is aligned to your end objectives and goals.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL ADDRESS NEEDS
Most of your prospects and customers want to read things that benefit them. Your display of a deep understanding of the challenges they face can elevate your target audience from being interested readers to a highly engaged audience.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE EASY TO UNDERSTAND
The content, when it reaches your prospects and customers, must be easy to understand. If your target audience is forced to make an effort, there’s very little chance that they’ll go through your content till the end.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE ENGAGING
The aim of your content generation is to attract and sustain the interest of your customers and prospects. Rather than making it one-directional, make your content engaging by including calls-to-action in your content – comment, subscribe, share, register, etc. Customer communication management should be a priority.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE BACKED BY PROOF
In today’s world, information is just a step away to be found and verified. Publishing content without enough proof can backfire as you may end up losing the credibility you built. You should use information, stats, reports and trends to back your content.

 

Posted on

Building for the world? Then take it to the world.

[This post is written for Indian startups. If you are not one, you will not find much value in it. But don’t take my word for it. Read through the post to know for yourself.]

I have been noticing an interesting trend in the Indian startup landscape over the last 12-15 months. Or something like that. Indians are building good solid products that they intend to take to the world, only to end up becoming world-famous in India. Indulge me, will you?

The Indian startup community has been shaping up pretty well over the last couple of years, and these folks are well connected to each other. Startup events, emails, Twitter, all of them put together keep the spirit going. Now when a startup gets to work on its next big idea, they go to this community for feedback and nice people that they are, they send in a lot of it. The team soaks in the best ideas, puts together a solid product and gets ready to launch to the world.

They send in a note to PluggdIn and YourStory who do a nice roundup on them, and ask the startup community to go spread the word for them. They are promised a t-shirt. And of course, these folks are happy to see the feedback they sent implemented in the product, so they go tell their first-degree LinkedIn connections about this new world-changing product.

The team sees a lot of “buzz” around the product and some customers start trickling in. These are early days, and it can only grow from there. Happy with the results, they go back to writing code. They have a whole list of features that people had asked for.

They implement one feature, two features, 17 features, and blog about all the awesome new stuff they have added in the product. They engage in conversations about their product philosophies with the startup community on Twitter who commend them for their passion.

Good things will happen soon.

But six months down the line, the trickle of customer continues to be a trickle. The “virality” the initial buzz promised is nowhere to be seen. The sales cycles for whatever customers are coming in is much longer than they expected.

They go back to the startup community to bounce off ideas. Over a beer, they conclude that customers are to be blamed. Companies want to be at the bleeding edge of technology but feel buying from a startup is risky. They still want their software to come from monstrous enterprises. So it’s a problem with the buyer’s mindset, not with the product itself. But soon they will realize that the enterprises are unable to keep up with the rapid strides in technology, and they will come knock startup doors.

It’s only a matter of months, they all agree.

Drawing comfort from the collective grief and the solution in sight, they go back to work on the killer social integration feature they have been planning for long.

Social integration done, 47 other features done but 12 months down the line, the customer story is still the same. A trickle. They write a big long rant about how the world has to become accepting of startups because it is the small companies that move the human race forward. They elaborate on their point with blasts from the past and heart-touching anecdotes. They see a lot of buzz around this post. 92 likes, 45 tweets, 23 comments.

Ego massaged, they go back to…you see the cycle? And then there comes a point in time when the startup finally asks — how is it that I am able to create all this buzz but the customer graph refuses to budge?

Time for my rant.

You made a product for the whole wide world, and you took it to the whole wide….country. Your early people were all from India. And so were the people they spread the word to. The coverage you got and the rants you wrote reached the same set of people, again. So essentially all buzz you thought you created reached a small set of startup folks in India.

So what’s the solution? Go out, get covered in the TechCrunchs and Mashables of the world? If you have a good product in a sexy market, why not?

But not every product is meant to be TechCrunch’d, and not every product has to be. First, there are other sites like The Next Web, GigaOm and PandoDaily that people keep forgetting about. Second, getting your product covered is not the only way to make two-hour Internet glory. Guest posts are an awesome way to get the word out as well. A lot of these sites look for guest posts during the weekend, when news is going slow and their staff is taking it easy. So put in some more work on the wonderful industry pieces you have been writing and reaching a total of 235 people, and pitch it to these guys instead.

Or what about the lessons you learnt from your entrepreneurship journey that you talk about on your blog? The mistakes you made, the lessons you learnt, the things you did differently, the rants. Why not pitch that to an entrepreneurship-focused blog like OnStartups or A Smart Bear?

How about the core philosophies you built your product on? Why not bring them out on A List Apart, SixRevisions or Sitepoint?

Get yourself invited on a webinar in your niche that isn’t geographically challenged.

Get into one of those Twitter conversations that you usually have with heavy-hitters from the Valley instead. Mark Suster, Dave McClure, the list is endless.

Get into a heated exchange with one of your American competitors.

And if you don’t have time for any of these, just go buy some ads. PPC ads, newsletter sponsorships, display ad units.

If you are building a product for the world, take it to the world.
This article was originally published on Sanket Nadhani’s blog Poke and Bite

Posted on

Product development is stimulating

“Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is wasting time. Vision with action can change the world.” Joel Author Baker. Abhiraj Malhotra is “Technology Head & Evangelist” – SchoolPad at Chalkpad Technologies Pvt. Ltd. 

Abhiraj is a passionate software developer and an entrepreneur, whose vision is to infuse productivity into organizations towards a positive change. His interest is in web technologies, web application development, and user interface designs. The Malaysian hockey federation recognized Abhiraj’s work and appropriately awarded him for designing and developing Hockey Champions trophy 2007 official website. This is an astonishing achievement! Today, Abhiraj’s flagship product is “Assistwindow.” 

The content of this interview has the potential to increase your organization’s productivity. Read on….

Please tell us your story that inspired you to be an entrepreneur.
Even when I was studying in school, I loved programming in C++. It not only helped me learn more but I was also able to dabble and learn the intricacies of programming. My passion to write computer programs blessed me with the much needed exposure to solve real-time problems. When I was studying 11th grade, I designed my first website. I kept enhancing my knowledge in programming through continuous learning. My first breakthrough in freelancing was the development of a matrimony portal in ASP 3.0, alternatively known as “Classic ASP” – a popular web development language then. 

I continued to succeed in my programming endeavors, and I was not only reaping financial rewards, but these successes were fuelling my entrepreneurial dreams. Infosys recruited me as a software engineer at my B.Tech campus interview in 2008. I served Infosys for two years. In pursuit of my entrepreneurial dream, I am now a partner in a scholastic organization in Chandigarh. 

Please define “Assistwindow” in less than 25 words.
“Assistwindow” is an online and internal Q&A platform for knowledge sharing & organizing. “Assistwindow” provides meaningful answers to seeking members, thus increasing organizational productivity.

Why and how did you start your company? Why this domain?
Product development is stimulating; hence I migrated to developing products for schools. I simply love my work. In my present work tenure, I enlightened myself in the usage of B2B (Business to Business) technology tools. My present journey also enlightens me much about business and client servicing from which I continually comprehend the multidimensional facets of user experience and product knowledge. 

My team has grown to a strong and dedicated seven member team over the last two years, and as a result of which my products are being developed successfully. During this journey, knowledge sharing was one of the management concerns that I reckoned could directly impact productivity. Since I derived tremendous value out of Q&A platforms such as “Stackoverflow” and “Quora,” I planned to construct an internal Q&A platform. Consequently, “Assistwindow” came into being.

“Assistwindow” is an online Q&A platform for sharing & organizing knowledge within an organization that provides relevant and meaningful answers to seeking members. Members of staff in an organization can answer questions raised by their counterparts anytime and from anywhere. The knowledge that is continually being built is grouped intelligently, and hence can be retrieved quickly. This results in an enhanced productivity for an organization since staff members avoid disturbing each other to gain answers and clarity.

When we deployed “Assistwindow” internally, we realized its tremendous value for internal knowledge sharing for B2B (Business to Business) organizations. This platform will facilitate greater productivity in an organization, since it empowers the staff to enhance their time management skills. 

What did you choose the name “Assistwindow?”
Those who seek knowledge require ‘assistance,’ and ‘window’ is primarily construed as an entrance of life (light and air). Thus our product derived its name “Assistwindow.” 

What is Assistwindow’s key differentiator?
The two core differentiators of “Assistwindow” are its simplicity and efficiency. It is a terrific value offering for it delivers its promises to increase clientele productivity. 

What is the greatest challenge AssistWindow has faced thus far? How did you overcome that challenge?
Our biggest challenge is to connect with people who need such a product. To overcome this challenge, we invest in social media. We share our experiences and learning through our blog named “Business, Web & More…” 

Our blogs have attracted people’s attention. Our recent blog titled “How Plans Kill Productivity” on “Hacker News” received 5000 unique hits within 5 to 6 hours of its publishing. 

Who are your potential clientele?
Our potential clientele are single or multi-site B2B (Business to Business) organizations with a need for internal knowledge sharing.

Organizations in the manufacturing and services verticals can also deploy “Assistwindow” as a personalized Q&A platform for their clients. The questions clients raise about the product and the answers received from the manufacturer will be grouped and reused as and when required. 

What are your future plans?
Our objective is to expand the reach of “Assistwindow” for it to serve our potential clientele. Moreover, any product of such a genre should be continually fine-tuned to keep abreast with the constant advancements in clientele need and technology.

What has been your moment of glory?
Our moments of glory will always reside in customer satisfaction on account of their enhanced business productivity through “Assistwindow.” 

What have been your personal and professional learnings thus far?
Consistency and patience is my primary learning. Nothing big can happen overnight, and one needs to be consistent with his time utilization for any meaningful achievement. 

I have also learnt not to work ad hoc. I desire planned routines of all the tasks that I like to accomplish. The tasks could relate to work, hobbies or even setting apart time to relax and restore my body. One needs to maintain a mix, for one cannot pursue a single objective always. 

I like to discuss any situation, for I believe courteous discussion will provide clarity to any situation 

Finally, I love writing, since writing helps me to think deep, and deep thoughts are vital to success. 

What support would you like?
The only support that will satisfy me is to expand the reach of “Assistwindow” as a tool to improve the business productivity of many more organizations.