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 …
A Great Leap Forward to Transform Fintech: Data Empowerment
India is one of the first nations in the world to kick off Open APIs for consented financial data sharing. And nobody’s heard about it! Dear Kickass Financial Product Managers and (current & future) Fintech Entrepreneurs, Amidst the usual flurry of sensational headlines, you may have missed a quiet announcement a few weeks ago that …
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Bharat Calling In Bay Area
In the first week of October, around Dussehra, a bunch of Indians gathered in the Bay Area. The setting had nothing to do with Dussehra, it had more to do with whether they would be spending their next Dussehra while settled in India or in the Bay Area. iSPIRT conducted two sessions around opportunities emerging …
Indian Software Product Registry – All That Product Companies Need to Know
Earlier this year, National Policy on Software Products was rolled out to create a robust, participatory framework to bring together industry, government and academia on a common platform to make India as a global hub for software products development. This is a much-needed initiative to provide holistic and end-to-end support to the Indian software product …
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The Global Stack: A Manifesto
Elevate digital cooperation to an interministerial level, promoting India’s advancements globally