As you may have heard from us or read about in our publications, iSPIRT takes the long view on problems. We call ourselves 30 year architects for India’s hard problems. The critical insight to a 30-year journey of success is that it requires one to be able to work with and grow the ecosystem, rather …
COVID19 strikes cash flow lending for small businesses in the country
Many ongoing industry efforts to bring cash flow lending to life for MSMEs are now on hiatus COVID19 strikes cash flow lending too At iSPIRT, with our long-cherished dream of democratising credit in this country, we advocated for and built public infrastructure to enable market players to offer cash flow based lending solutions to small …
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Timing is key for Product Market Fit
I wanted to write a post on how timing is important for a product-market fit – but with the covid19 times, this has become even more important as the leading indicators change superfast. Usually, such events create massive opportunities for certain products, and if you have that product, you are bound to win. Marc Anderssen …
The future of ‘civic’ technologies after COVID-19
In 1973, the British economist Ernst Schumacher wrote his manifesto “Small is Beautiful”, and changed the world. Schumacher’s prescription — to use technologies that were less resource-intensive, capable of generating employment, and “appropriate” to local circumstances — appealed to a Western audience that worried about feverish consumption by the ‘boomer’ generation. Silicon Valley soon seized …
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The history of technology is about to change radically. India must seize the moment
There are no atheists in foxholes, and there appear to be no capitalists in a global pandemic either. The head of Honeywell’s billion-dollar GoDirect Trade platform, which uses a permission-based blockchain to buy and sell aviation parts, declared on March 20 that American corporations had a “walled-garden” approach to data. “They need to start sharing …
When one door closes…
An inspiring effort in response to COVID-19 Last Tuesday, for the first time in recorded history, India pulled the emergency brakes on all of the complex interactions that make up the economy and society of 1.3 Billion Indians. We’re going to see a lot more cascading effects of bringing almost all economic activity to a …
#BlackSwan: Has Corona turned your Vitamin into an Aspirin?
One lens I use to evaluate startup opportunities – and have written about in the past – is, are you offering an Aspirin or a Vitamin? My basic premise is that in order to do business with a startup, one has to overcome a lot of inertia – whether you are consuming and more so …
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R&D Revolution from Rural India – Rendezvous with Vembu
When constellation research published the best award for enterprise software to Zoho, I was thinking its yet another Silicon Valley startup that is kind of making some mark. But I was really surprised and it was a bit of a shame when I found out that its an Indian company – how could I have …
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Account Aggregators : Opportunities For Entrepreneurs And Technology Companies
The Account Aggregator (AA) construct defined in this RBI circular, this technical specification, and this article is imminently coming to life. Individuals and businesses in India will be able to link their bank and financial accounts with an AA application and begin leveraging their own data in order to avail of cheaper, faster, and more …
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Union Budget 2020: A Good Start That Needs Swift and Decisive Action
“Words can inspire but only action creates real change.” Presenting the second Union Budget, the Finance Minister asserted that entrepreneurship has always been the strength of India and proposed a number of measures and policy changes to help boost the Indian startups. The Budget was a step in the right direction, but these are just …
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Union Budget 2020 – iSPIRT Recommendations
India is among the top startup ecosystems in the world with home to 50,000+ startups and 3,500+ funded startups growing at a rapid pace at 30 per cent. While the future outlook of the Indian startup ecosystem is definitely promising, further accelerated growth can happen only if the government introduces more startup-friendly policies, other than …
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Focus – Essential ingredient for product success
As we enter 2020 and a new decade, I wanted to touch upon an essential ingredient for startup entrepreneurs and product managers – Focus. In India, we all know about the great archer Arjuna. When asked by his guru Drona on what he sees during an archery session, he replies that he just sees the …
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#8 Call for Volunteers: Designing Digital Infrastructure for Healthcare at National Scale
Why Healthcare? Interacting even briefly with the healthcare system reveals the issues that plague the sector in India: a severe shortage of high-quality doctors, nurses, or medical supplies (and a lack of information on where the best are); misdiagnoses or late diagnoses; overcrowding and long waits in public hospitals; overpriced and over-prescribed procedures and in …
Announcement: iSPIRT Foundation & Japan’s IPA to work together on Digital Public Platforms
Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA), Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), and the Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable (iSPIRT) have shared common views that (i) our society will be transformed into a new digital society where due to the rapid and continued development of new digital technologies and digital infrastructure including digital public platforms, real-time and …
Fast-Tracking Inclusion: Digital Infrastructure for Identity, Payments, and Data Empowerment
In 2011, just over 3 out of 10 Indians had bank accounts. This number was, according to the Bank of International Settlements’ analysis, in line with that of other countries with a similar GDP per capita. By 2018, more than 8 out of 10 Indians had bank accounts and around 330 million people had been …