Startup Bridge India: Breaking Down Borders, Barriers and BS

India has fast emerged as the world’s second largest Internet market. Since 2012, nearly $15 billion has been invested in tech startups with over 300 M&A deals. However, a large percentage of deals (80%, 2014-Q3’16) were sub-$5M deals driven by acquihires and restructuring. Looking west to Israel and the US, it is clear that for …

Thoughts on Open Source Communities

Supporting open source users seems like a thankless job. There have been many blogs written on this topic. Developers have stopped maintain popular projects because of the burn this causes. People who use open source projects, indirectly assume that they are entitled to free support, even if they have taken no effort to understand the …

Behind the scenes of $2 billion Indian startup movie #PNgrowth

Last month, for the first time, I witnessed something really special. Even for someone like me, whose very job and calling is to evangelise this nascent software ecosystem of ours, this was something extraordinary. I’ve been doing this a while, and what happened last month was one of the best feelings I’ve had in this …

External Commercial Borrowing norms for Startup (ECB)

What is ECB? External commercial borrowings(ECB) imply borrowing (debt) from a foreign (non-resident) lender. ECB is an attractive financing route as it generally offers access to finance with low rate of interest available from overseas low interest markets. ECBs have been in use by many corporations, PSUS and especially by MNCs setting up operations in …

How UPI is more convenient & secure than what most people think

A phenomenon that has been pretty popular recently in the news goes by the name of UPI (Unified Payments Interface). However, most people have not been able to experience the revolution and the magic moment that comes along when paying via it. Part of that stems from the myths that keep floating around, regarding how it might not …

India Inc Version 2: Disruptive, Agile, Confident and… ready to Go Global

The growing internet penetration has fuelled India’s start-up ecosystem, which is now the third biggest in the world. US-based Compass (Startup Genome), in its 2015 report, puts Bangalore as the world’s second fastest growing start-up ecosystem. There is a massive opportunity within the $2 trillion Indian economy owing to the consumption fuelled by 1.3 billion …

3 Key Factors to Increase Revenue for Your SaaS Product

There are two types of SaaS products. New innovative product The commodity products (which is a copy of an innovative product) The innovative products get sign ups and are able to scale because they have built a very useful and handy USP. They get word of mouth from early users which are enough for them …

StartupBridge India – Strengthening Potential Strategic Partnership to the world

There are many dimensions to India becoming a Product Nation. A thriving  local market is critical, which are shaped by changing consumer preference and policy.  Also important is increased trade in areas of comparative advantage. Digital consumer market in India that opened few years ago saw its waves and cycle of valuation however it is …

Innovation Diplomacy & Software as India’s Soft Power

Mr. MJ Akbar, MoS, Ministry of External Affairs, brainstorms with iSPIRT. Mr. MJ Akbar is the Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs and a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha. An author of several best-selling books, and a veteran Indian journalist who launched newspapers like The Telegraph, The Asian Age and magazines like …

Story of an iSPIRT Volunteer.

I am Taron Mohan, CEO of NextGen Tele and an iSPIRT Volunteer. I usually meet many CXOs of Banks for selling mobile-SIM-overlay based financial inclusion solutions. This one time I was on an email thread with the CEO of a big Public Sector Bank with other iSPIRTers. The discussion was about India-Stack. In my entrepreneurial zeal, I …

Every scale has an expiry date #PNgrowth 2016

It was all about #GoodScale at #PNGrowth2016 !! Pitching to Peers in Gurukul Style I participated as a volunteer this time around and missed the keynote in day one since I was busy in printing #MindFlip worksheets for 50 odd entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs were handpicked by a very credible set of people who knows what #Scale means …

Minimum Viable Technology (MVT) — Move Fast & Keep Shipping

Technology teams can be the biggest asset or worst bottleneck for a growing company based on the strategy taken by them. In name of future proofing engineering, the technology teams become a hurdle to company’s goals. You can see the ‘hidden frustration” in Bezos words below .. Engineers should be fast acting cowboys instead of calm …

RBI relaxes FVCI norms

RBI relaxes Foreign Venture Capital Investor (FVCI) norms for Startup investment One more announcement to the stay-in-India check list has come from RBI with respect to registered under SEBI (FVCI) Regulations, 2000. RBI has announced amendments to the Foreign Exchange Management (Transfer or Issue of Security by a Person Resident Outside India) Regulations, 2000, notified …

Why Indian startup founders should think about M&A and not be shy about it ?

Think about endgame, chess grandmasters do so to win. Studies point out that chess grandmasters visualize the chess board state few steps away to a ‘winning game’ and make moves based on memory pattern that can lead to that board state and thus help them win the game. Many startups however operate in a game …

The Kaysh-less Economy

The November 8th announcement of demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes by Prime Minister Modi caught everyone by surprise. That was the intent. It is, however, widely expected that bank accounts, plastic cards and digital money usage will increase dramatically in the next 12 months. In other words, India will be pushed towards …