Sridhar D. P. Founder & CEO and Dr. Shankar Venugopal, Chief Mentor, Thatva, say their company’s vision is to be a true enabler of innovation. Their strategy is to provide a software framework that could facilitate and enable innovation. Thatva came to be established when Sridhar was pursuing a program on innovation and IP at …
If you really have to enter the US market – some do’s and don’ts
A few weeks back I had written a post on entering the US market. It was very gratifying to see the response from so many of you on that post. So following the lead of that article, here is another one. In this post I talk about some of the basic things Indian companies can …
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Don’t Build Something Unless Someone Is Willing To Pay For It & Asks For It Twice!
Notes from the Product Management Roundtable In Bangalore. Having attended the first ever iSPIRT Roundtable on Product Positioning in Bangalore and closely followed the second one held in Delhi, I was eagerly looking forward to the Round table in Bangalore on Product Management by Sridhar Ranganathan. Sridhar is a senior Product Management professional having spent considerable …
Redbox – A Fine Example of Integrated Physical and Virtual User Experience Design!
Redbox rents DVDs, Blu-Ray Discs and family video games in US and Canada. Redbox kiosks are found in 34,600 locations and are fully automated video rental kiosks! More than anything else I love using them because they carry the latest titles, are affordable and make me happy every time I do business with them! In my …
Why will Someone Pay to Buy Your Product?
In this blog post, we discuss ways and means to reach out to prospective clients, position the product, license and price it. However, the question that founders must ask and answer convincingly to themselves is the one posed above. When doing this, they must think like a buyer and question every assumption about the product’s …
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Catching small fish can pay big.
For sure big fish can get you more meat but there also less number of those in that deep blue sea. Pound for pound, the fisherman still prefers to cast the net with small holes – getting easy food in copious amount. Unfortunately the fisherman logic is somewhat lost to a vast majority of the …
Q&A with Cloud-Based Telephony Company Exotel
Exotel Techcom “Cloud telephony product for SME’s which is like many others but we have a different approach in our problem solving.” says Shivakumar(Shivku) Ganesan, its Founder. Currently Exotel focuses on offering an easiest and fastest way to setup a phone number for your business, with smart applications tailored to business needs. He shares insights for other entrepreneurs …
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Transforming a nation with products
India is at a crossroads today. Gloom has replaced what seemed to be an unending boom just a few years ago. After a decade of rapid growth led by the services sector, the Indian economy has hit a plateau. While services exports continue to grow and create a surplus in services trade, they only constitute …
Why Business Models Fail: Pipes Vs. Platforms
Why do most social networks never take off? Why are marketplaces such difficult businesses? Why do startups with the best technology fail so often? There are two broad business models: pipes and platforms. You could be running your startup the wrong way if you’re building a platform, but using pipe strategies. More on that soon, …
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Building the Product Right
The foundation of a product company is in its IP. An idea is only as good as its implementation. Start-ups face twin pressures of building the right product and doing it in time. The broad contours of the product may be quite clear, but specific features change shape regularly. Things happen simultaneously. While the product …
How Visual Website Optimizer got to 2,500+ paid customers through great content and rigorous A/B tests
Last month, I promised to bring you stories of how Indian startups took their products to the world and got the inside scoop on how WebEngage used educational content and live demos to get to 7,000 users in less than 15 months. While I have been slow in bringing more stories to you, this one should …
Top 10 things to look for a digital marketing roadmap.
Today the biggest challenge for any of us as entrepreneurs is not to build kickass products or services but to reach out to the relevant target audience. Many of products fail not because they were not awesome but because of poor marketing strategies. I have myself made terrible mistakes which costed me and my company a lot but …
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Selling to SMEs and Startups
Arrogance is a flaw, and for a marketer or salesperson, this assumes greater significance. Unfortunately, marketers tend to fall prey to the glamour of signing on a big name client, while giving the cold shoulder to a category that shows, in my opinion, greater promise of developing a long-term relationship. Yes, SMEs and start-ups might …
Showcase of 8 Innovative companies for #IndiaInternetDay – A TiE event
It’s here! The India Internet Day(a TiE event) celebration is beginning, and you’re all a part of it. You may be an outelier, an insider, a veteran, an investor, a trend spotter, an experimentor or an industry driver, but this is your go-to event this year. Why? We’re looking at the long-term horizon and paradigm shifts …
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To open source or not….
Ashok was perturbed. In Jan 2006, an eastern European company had taken his source code, made minor changes and started selling it under an alternate brand name at a reduced price. Ashok’s company Chartengo was a pioneer in Adobe Flash based charting software that helped users create charts for data visualization. Its charts were perceptibly superior …