A year back I was involved with a leading mobile apps company on an issue related to product pricing. The company developed customized mobile apps for business. At the time it had a staff of 20 programmers and reasonably successful – having on its customer list several top global corporations like cola companies, few leading …
The Other E-commerce Guys
“Fifty years ago the nice housewife still prided herself on knowing the right place for everything. There was a little man in a back street who imported just the coffee she wanted, another who blended tea to perfection, a third who could smoke a ham as a ham should be smoked. All have vanished now; …
5 Essentials of SaaS Revenue Models for Product Companies!
Enterprise as well as Consumer Software is moving fast towards a Software As A Service (SaaS) model. Who would not like paying a per user, per month charge as opposed to doling out huge amounts of money for licenses upfront and paying 16 to 20% Annual Maintenance Charges year after year! But the short history …
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Users or Customers?
If you’ve been around the internet startup world for long enough, you’ve probably engaged in the user-customer debate at least once. Who’s the user? Who’s the customer? Who should we be focusing on? I’m going to start off a series of posts talking about the basic elements of Platform Thinking and this being the first, …
CollateBox: Cloud-Based Software Simplifies Small Biz Collaboration
Small businesses with growing lists of data are the ideal customer for U.S.-incorporated CollateBox, a software product of India-based WOLF Frameworks. Sunny Ghosh, co-founder and CEO, describes CollateBox’s value proposition and the factors that influenced its development. This article is brought to SandHill readers in partnership with ProductNation. SandHill.com: Please describe your product and how it …
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Indian SMB market at 48.8 million units growing at a CAGR of 4.53%
Our recently launched study titled, ‘Indian SMB Sector 2013’ captures some interesting facts and figures on the burgeoning SMB segment in India. The study reveals that with a total base of 48.8 million SMBs, India is expected to emerge as the largest SMB country globally. The SMB sector in India is growing at an exceptional rate and has …
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Cloud Services and Mobile Apps
In addition to vendors of traditional on-premise products that are shipped or downloaded via web, a different generation of providers is fast emerging. They are leveraging new technologies and business models, often interchangeably referred to as cloud services, Web 2.0 or SaaS (Software as a Service). (Not all SaaS products are truly cloud based but …
The day Zest.Md picked on smartest brain for inputs at #PNMeetup
I met Avinash a few weeks back to share details about zest.md, and to discuss some of the challenges which we are facing. Avinash, helped me to understand a lot of issues better, and invited me to be a part of the #PNMeetup to discuss it with a larger group. To be honest, I was …
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Some Takeaways from the First iSPIRT Playbook Roundtable on Positioning & Messaging for Products
“99% Practice, 1% Theory”. This was the ground rule laid down for the session by the workshop facilitator Shankar Maruwada at the beginning. Sounds very much like the tagline of a popular softdrink brand that’s No Bakwaas! No wonder it came from someone who has loads of experience in the FMCG space, built and sold an …
Financial Inclusion in India – Challenges & Opportunities
What is Financial Inclusion? Financial inclusion is the delivery of financial services & products to sections of disadvantaged and low income segments of society, at an affordable cost in a fair and transparent manner by regulated mainstream institutional players. The term “financial inclusion” has gained importance since the early 2000s, and is a result of findings …
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What should you expect from an accelerator?
I have written previously about how to evaluate accelerators and choosing the right accelerator since there are so many of them these days and also about what the goal of an accelerator is. I wanted to share somethings that entrepreneurs should expect from an accelerator from a perspective of a startup founder. I think the best thing that has happened is …
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Why does India struggle to develop its own complex high technology products like fighter aircraft?
Dr Raghuram Rajan, Chief Economic Adviser to the MoF, GoI, was the chief guest at the IIMB convocation this year. I had the privilege of meeting him briefly before the convocation started. We talked about jugaad, Indian industry’s innovation capabilities, and which companies stand out on the innovation dimension. One question that Dr. Rajan asked …
Collating Problems Worth Solving
In my experience working with Entrepreneurs for the past 9 odd years and possibly have seen a few thousand startups, there is one key attribute that instantly sets apart the startups that just might make it, to the ones that would struggle – the clarity on the problem they are trying to solve. While we …
The Business of Accelerators
Accelerators are in the business of creating Startups – or atleast taking the first bet. Its a startup of startups; Which means, everything they talk about as risk, in venture capital nicely gets bundled up and will get put on the head of what is the accelerator. Going back to the basics, Now depending on …
Sapience Analytics is driving over INR 10 million in annual value per 100 employees
CEO and Co-Founder, Sapience Analytics, Shirish Deodhar, is pleased with the market response to their first software product, Sapience, and says their objective is to become the default standard for Automated Enterprise Effort Visibility and Gain Sapience Analytics was set up in 2008, as a software products company. It was formed by four serial entrepreneurs, …