Overall Learnings

1. There is no problem, i.e., (1) there are not enough good problems that startups are working on (2) there seems to be no shortage of funds, platforms and ecosystem partners willing to help startups, there are not enough good startups for them to support. The ecosystem is hungry for successes.
2. It was a good *startup* conference and not as a *product* conference – talks about bootstrapping, mentors, jobs for dummies, writing a B-plan, etc. were out of place.
   • We saw delegates from Sun Microsystems, Intuit and many other big companies. These guys would not benefit from such sessions when they were expecting a product-oriented conference.
   • Conferences are really really hard to make.
3. Product Management skills are the need of the hour, NOT talks about talks about opportunities in X sector, and so on. When there is no culture of knowing how to execute, rest of the topics are moot points. We will explain this with an example below.
4. What can be done better next time? More emphasis on product management, practical sessions such as case study on using Google Adwords to do market research, it was briefly mentioned in Naaem Zafar’s presentation, but why weren’t topics like these explored more? And also, people like @gauravnomics should be invited next time for marketing sessions. And so on.

Bottom-line: If you are considering to start a full-time startup, then please, please, build your product management skills than your powerpoint skills.

Now, on to the notes from some of the interesting sessions that we have attended.

Learnings from the Sessions

1. Guy Kawasaki said “Don’t worry, be crappy. Get it good enough, then take the shot and start selling. Don’t ship crap but ship ‘revolutionary new crap’. It’s not about the first version, it is about getting it out there and fixing according to what customers say. Beta programs are BS because no one will give proper feedback. As a rule, all betas go well. People will give real feedback only when they put their money on the line.”

The rest of what he talked about was irrelevant to the context of the conference – about products from India – see Sameer’s question: Why Kawasaki at a Product Conclave? for more.

2. Workshop on marketing and branding strategies for product organizations. The session was moderated by Peter Yorke and the panel had the CEO of Brandcomm, Sridhar Ramanujam, MD of Inventus Cap, Samir Kumar, CEO of Stelae Technologies Aruna Schwarz & Professor. Venkateswaran from SDM Mysore.

• Product is the language in the company. Brand is the language in the mind of the customer. Creating a value proposition is all important to make a product successful.
• When a brand is being created, the path is very similar to what Gandhi had professed so many years ago. First other companies ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you & finally they respect you. Any product/brand will go through all these phases.
• Starbucks is all about consumer experience. That is where all the concentration should be.
• Products are mostly identical. It is of utmost importance to provide and deliver value.
• Product is just a minimum criteria and the value proposition has to be driven by the right marketing mechanisms.
• Technology is one of the unique industries that create a need instead of satisfying a need. You have to be more in touch with market and consumer behavior to drive success through marketing as product development is only a basic condition that is satisfied.
• The most interesting story had been by Stelae. Her company was started by 2 non tech, purely business people even though they were providing a tech solution to publishing companies in France. They did have a customer when they started on it. But, they didn’t hire a CTO until 2 years into the process. This should be an eyeopener to many people in the tech community. Titles are not important. If the roles are satisfied, ignore the titles and move on & create products and do customer development.
• CEO is the overall image of the company. For 5-8 years, there will be no other brand image for the company. CEO will have to meet customers. The way CEO answers the phone might also become crucial to whether you make or break in the industry. Be professional in all your interactions.
• The key message is that “Brand is You”
• The VCs dont want to hear about any cool tech products, or any other kind of cool lingo. They want to see that there is a balance towards customer development. The problem is similar if there are only sales folks and no tech folks. Take care of balance.
• DO NOT create a marketing plan based on any textbook definitions. There have been biz plans with totally irrelevant target spending like on magazines etc.. when the product really requires traction online. The spending has to be very very targeted. Keep in mind that the really important thing is ROI and not doing something for the sake of satisfying criterion. Avoid misdirected spending.
• It has to be all about customer development & customer centricity.
• Have you asked yourself how the price premium is being justified for the product? What is the most unique proposition?

See Minimum Viable Product by Eric Ries and Customer Development process by Steve Blank for a succinct description of the same.

3. Krishna & Arjuna sessions – the value of a mentor/mentee relationship, and how startups should look for advisors

• Krishnas are valuable when they are “been there done that” people
• Arjunas can’t know everything, mentors can guide and tell you what you never expected
• 2-3 advisors in a mix of areas is a good choice
• Look for balance of ideas and execution, balance of advice and rolodex of contacts
• Examine your own SWOT analysis and find people who can shore you up
• Advisors look for humility ⇒ learnability, trust relationship, and their own relevance to the mentee
• Watch out for time constraints of advisors
• Communicate right things at the right time – they need to know enough precise context to advise you so that the 3-4 hours you spend with them is productive
  • A person who has been advising 3-4 companies say that they come to him only when they are in trouble and not give ongoing updates which shows their immaturity
• Can have a 2-3 year contractual obligation / timeline for advisors
• Avoid expectation mismatch, have structuring of relationship
• Distinguish between CEO coach / mentors vs. Advisors vs. Consultants – what are you really looking for?
  • Mentors / CEO Coaches are for long-term
• Compensation is the last thing in mind for a real mentor, but it is a gesture of goodwill. Equity-based vesting over the years is the best and simplest option.
• Only when we walk a few steps together, you really know the person
  • Do due diligence
  • Be patient (think long-term)
  • How do you structure an exit?

4. The panel session on telecom products led by Rajesh Jain was one of the best in the conference. The topic was broad, meaning not much depth but Rajesh Jain really did it well. He asked really pointed questions, guiding other panelists, keeping it sharp & on schedule. It was so interesting that midway I forgot to update my notes on the talk & got totally engrossed in the talk. The following points are all from my mind, so apologies in advance if something is misquoted.

• The panel had one member from each stack of the telecom product space. Vishy from Bell Labs was representing the most basic infrastructure. Sangeet from Comviva was in the space of applications and layer above the basic infrastructure. Manoj Dawane of Mauj Telecom was representing the VAS and consumer space from the telco perspective. Rajesh Jain represented the consumer from a overall perspective at the level of apps independent of the network.
• In the next couple of months/years, there will be an explosion of virtual operators in India. Virgin mobile is one of the virtual operators in India. As far as we know, they use the network of Tatas to provide their services. This will hopefully lead to better margins & free apps on mobiles.
• Hopefully the perennial “1 year away” 3G will be introduced in a couple of months.
• Overall, the telecom space in India is one of the most competitive space. In most countries, the margin is around 20% whereas in Indian market, it is less than 8-10%, putting pressure on the whole ecosystem to show ROI and profits.
• The main reason for the low margins is that the operators want to reach users at all segments and also control the revenue sharing. There have been some issues in measuring traffic for revenue sharing. The operator is all powerful.
• First up, the bell labs member spoke about the innovations at the most basic level.
• 1. Village Net – They are coming up with better antennae technology and hardware to increase range of wifi routers to 20km with no reduction in bandwidth, it is really difficult.
• 2. Mango application – mobile audio video on the go. GPRS is currently not cost-effective and people don’t know what to do with GPRS. The network cant support multiple media downloads etc. with the current infrastructure. You should be able to go into coffee day, browse or download for a couple of minutes, pay in micropayments and get out of coffeeday. This kind of technology is being realised by bell labs
• 3. Micropayments… This was more like a teaser.
• Second, the comviva member…
• Basically, this is the space which supports doing ringtone downloads, infra for VAS support, payment systems of telcos, everything other than basic infrastructure and non consumer end of VAS. This is a huge space in terms of products but very few companies. For example, comviva is in 40 different product spaces. I dont even know the extent of opportunity in this space. This is a good space to think about new services. Map services etc… have to be realised at this level. Another example is the top up technology supported by this layer of infrastructure.
• Indian ecosystem is really really innovative due to the competition and the market. This has led companies to innovate in India and then move on to other emerging markets. It is preferred that you enter the Indian market even though the margins are less and only afterwords diversify. The reason is that the the product will be suited to the consumer market as the company knows the consumer in and out.
• The future will be mobile financial services, mobile internet and mobile cloud.
• Because of the constraints in terms of processing and multiple platforms on each phone, there is a huge need for cloud computing for processing information, helping create a mobile cloud & pipes. This seems to be really appealing space to think of innovative products. Are the telecom departments in engg colleges listening?!
• Thirdly, the mauj member…
• Manoj has had a very interesting life in telecom. He was in telecom when incoming calls were priced at 16 rupees!! ie 1994. He has seen the innovations in the mobile space starting from prepaid cards. He was one of the people who approached Hindustan Unilever distributors to take care of prepaid markets. They went to Italy & some other country to learn how it works and had to implement. Can you imagine the journey form there to easy recharge of today?
• Manoj has been in places like UP which is 6 times the UK in population but a huge challenge to innovate and drive revenue. How can a prepaid card of around 10 be sold and above that, ask them to have ringtones and message beeps? They had to develop a infrastructure to make it based on daily revenue. That is vas, instead of being one time huge money, they made it per day. This was good for telco as well as the customer.
• Rajesh Jain mainly spoke about his ideas to appstore. How that will probably be the time when we can assume that regular users will have access to all kinds of applications.

Some more really good observations form this session:

• Learnings – The learnings in product development can be divided into 3 distinct sections. 1. Customer acquisition is really important. 2. Cashflows have to be handled carefully and effectively. 3. Execution – organization and management. It is all in the promise of delivery and execution.
• English – This was one of the questions. A startup is doing voice based VAS which is teaching english on the phone. I think it is a really good thing that the company is doing. They have been facing operator pressure but I am sure that with the help the telecom ecosystem, we might finally see some kind of education being imparted on the mobile phone. The day might not be far when the mobile phone will overtake the radio as the means to disseminate information in a more personalised manner. One day, there might be info about health, childcare, classes, agriculture and anything else that you can think of… the name of the person who asked this question was Mitul Limbani.
• Persona – “am I the customer” is WRONG! “I am building for the customer” is RIGHT! especially for enterprise customers. Basically, you have create a persona of a customer to keep the company and product in the right direction.

5. Writing a B-plan — Naeem
This was a good session by Naeem, mostly self-explanatory from his slides and from this description. The reason the session was so good was because Naeem was candid and to-the-point, busting so many common myths.

6. Building global consumer businesses out of India.
This was another really good session. We could hear all the stories of the people who created Indian brands for the global market. The companies chosen were also really good. Infosoft CTO Pallav had the most inspiring story. Ganesh of Tutorvista told us about his journey from BPO till tutorvista. Amit Ranjan shared his stories of the creation of slideshare. Narendra of Intel Asia spoke about how managing Asia pacific software products for India was challenging and interesting over the last 10 years. I will briefly tell each of their stories.

• Pallav – He started off without even knowing that PO means purchase online/order?! He is on the path to creating 6 new products after more than 6-8 products in the market. His dad takes care of all the finance part of it. He had to rely heavily on word of mouth, opensourcing code, writing code for free or for some mindspace in the user. It is the perfect rags to riches story of the coding world.
• Ganesh started off working with the BPO. Most investors when he approached them told him that the concept was too complicated and will be really difficult to maintain quality across especially if you expect a teacher who is not tech savvy to wake up at 3am and then teach an american kid when ganesh himself doesnt really know what american education is all about. The opportunity was that for really heavy personal tutoring, the rates were like $30-40 per hour against $100 per month of tutorvista. There are around 1000 teachers and 500 hours of teaching everyday today. (dont remember number exactly). The marketing in local media in silicon valley to Indian gujjus etc.. was unsuccessful. They found out that online ads were the best thing to attract and retain customers. They have adwords on more than 4000? words. It is a really interesting to see the challenges overcome by Ganesh. It seems such a simple idea but so difficult to execute! Every other person who knows skype would have thought of this idea but there are real challenges in executing it and keeping quality.
• Amit of slideshare was also very interesting. Amit was working for pepsi. His sister was a psychology prof in berkeley. Amit was bored of creating presentations everyday and decided to do something on his own. (oh! the irony! They modelled a lot of their site on the ideas of youtube, like embedded links etc.. One of the sequoia presentations has had more than a million views! The team is distribute 2:5 (us:india). They have around 23 people in all. It is really interesting to see an indian company based out of here be a global brand.
• Narendra – shared the challenges and the post mortem of what has happened in the last 10 years in APAC, especially India from a product perspective. Intel was/is interested in software domain as they see software to drive the sales of hardware. Narendra has been following APAC for a long time. The ecosystem is slowly opening up in India and slowly more product companies are coming up like subex etc…? There were a lot of jargons in his speech. It was good but since I dont remember any anecdotes, you will have to read his part elsewhere.

To end it up, let’s take the case of an actual product that we saw in the stalls section of the conclave. The product was called YoPedia (see walkthrough). Great concept of changing the focus of the user from “which software do I use?” to “what task do I want to do?” It delivers the long-forgotten promise of WinFS, especially allowing to store and categorize links, URLs, files, in a seamless way. It has many additional features, such as picking a few of them and emailing them, making new Word documents just 1-2 clicks away, and so on.

The downside? It *still* is not easy to use. This is exactly where product management would come into the picture. For example, anybody who is looking to simplifying the concept of a filesystem would assume that one single way of categorization would have been enough. But YoPedia actually had 6-7 ways of categorizing – category, topic, tags, color, workspace, etc. This means that it replaced the headache of folders with the headache of multiple ways of categorization! Excellent idea, great potential, but suffers from only tech people working on it. Not easy for a beginner, even though that is the USP. The product is still in alpha phase, and will be released as beta in the coming months, and we hope that it will eventually become the simple, easy-to-use, and must-have product that it can be.

It felt gratifying to see one product in the conclave that was interesting, which is both sad and ironic. Here’s hoping to really seeing more products from India!

This event report was brought to you by Swaroop C H and Srikanth Thunga, who thank StartupDunia for the opportunity to attend the event.

P.S. See http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/category/nasscom-product-conclave-2009/ for more coverage of the event.

Comments

• November 6, 2009, sandip commented: Thanks pranav!!
• November 6, 2009, Raghu Pandey commented: That was a quite comprehensive coverage. Thanks

VCCircle reports that Infy co-founder, NR Narayana Murthy, has sold $37 million worth of Infy shares to setup a VC fund. Proceeds from the sale will be used as seed capital for the fund.

That is great news. He has amazing street cred and is definitely viewed as an entrepreneurial icon who grew Infy to a multinational company.

Comments

• October 23, 2009, Rajat commented: This is good news. More people might follow his steps , Azim Premji and others.
• October 24, 2009, vikas shah commented: Dear All Entrepreneurs, All VC's are alike .They will come when profits are around. An eg. NR Narayan Murthy was on front page of ET for showing interest in startups in India. There is a company providing "internet security solutions" to Banks in India .But this company is not able to break in its clients ,even though it has better product on anti-phising and anti-spamming.It is on multi-factor tool authentication. Only reason is that the biggies like Infoys and Wipro are deeper clutches and dont allow innovation. Allowing external innovation ,for them , means loosing a client. Message is clear I hope Happy new year to all the strugglers
• October 27, 2009, Chirag commented: Was not aware of this. It sounds good. :) NR Narayana Murthy will surely do wonders again !
• October 27, 2009, Rajat commented: Do we really respect body shoppers like Infosys, Wipro TCS ?? These companies have no product. they are just renting indian minds ..... no innovation so what if they have billions..... they do not have a single product
• October 27, 2009, Rajat M commented: Business is business rajat (even my first name is rajat :)), i don't think it really matters whether it is a prod company or a services company....As long as something positive is happening it should be a good idea right ... Do people ask this questions from VC's in america whether they started as a prod company or services company
• October 28, 2009, raj commented: NR Narayana Murthy will surely do wonders again !
• November 5, 2009, ekerala commented: I wonder who will get the first funding from him :) . Whoever it is, along with the funding they are going to get huge media mileage.

Although I’ve been tempted to own an iPhone since the day it launched, I’d held off doing so because AT&T is the sole carrier in the US and frankly – AT&T simply sucks. However, I finally caved in and got myself one a couple of weeks ago.

First and foremost – there’s no denying that the iPhone is an amazing device and singlehandedly can be attributed for jumpstarting the entire mobile platform market. From touch screen to the accelerometer to the appstore, it has pioneered an entire market in no time. Apple has gotten such a big headstart in terms of the application ecosystem that other players are going to have a tough time catching up. But while Apple continues to flaunt the 85000 + apps in its appstore in its TV ads, I’d say the number of meaningful apps in the appstore is much less than half that number.

When you leave out the gazillion fart apps, the lighter apps, the flashlight apps and the bikini babes apps, there are just very few worthwhile apps that warrant enough justification to be installed let alone used regularly.

To illustrate my point, take an example. SpeedDate, the dating site, has no less than 100+ apps listed in the appstore. From religion based dating to geo based dating, they have an app simply for every US state / religion that you can think of. A simple search for ‘fart’ in the Appstore yields several hundreds of results.

Beyond these stupid apps, majority of the apps are  ‘nice to have’. Very few would fall into the ‘must have’ category. All these apps make the appstore such a crowded place that it takes so much effort to find the true gems.

By allowing all sorts of junk apps, I think the appstore is becoming more of a crapstore.  If the influx of such apps continues, it could actually become a downfall for Apple and in fact competitors could use that as leverage – by being more selective on what apps get approved.

What do you think ? Is Apple shooting itself in the foot by approving all these stupid apps ?

• Airtel to sell unlocked iPhones
• How many mobile platforms can we take ?
• Vodafone to launch iPhone in India this year

Comments

• October 19, 2009, Gaurav commented: I don't think so. It is a market place should have what everyone needs. How many times do you actually search for the fart apps if you don't want to install. Here is how I access the app store and believe most of the people do as well: 1) Browse top 10 paid, free & apple featured apps 2) search for something specifc when I need it. Mostly productive/utility apps. There are a lot of people who like the fart apps and pay for them, not that I understand why, but they do pay. Walmart has a ton of items that you don't need and think are ridiculus, but that doesn't mean you stop shopping at Walmart. You go there to buy what you need and that's it.
• October 20, 2009, Roopesh commented: The problem is no different from Internet in general. No doubt Internet had democratised research by allowing everyone access to lots of information (including info and access to applications), but I dont think we are anywhere close to having the tools to analysing the vast amount of information made available nowadays to figure out which the best one for me is. I remember reading somewhere that there is actually an initiative from top companies to train people in colleges on analysis, by providing access to supercomputers etc to encourage research in this area..
• October 20, 2009, Bharat commented: Well, I've had the iPhone from back when it was 400 bucks. The trend with these apps is that they are used most for about a week after they are downloaded and then u don't look at them ever (I think I saw a study too somewhere online which had charts to prove this). I do not agree with this article, I think Apple is blocking more apps than it should just because they provide alternates to its basic functionality. Case and point, Google Voice, I've been amazed at what Google voice can do only to be disappointed by Apple for rejecting it. I know its a big controversy that the FCC is looking at and hopefully will resolve. But then I must say, I love the iPhone and can never understand how people go by without it (You wont believe how many times I hit double-space to get a full-stop :)). It makes you wonder why it took so many years for someone to come up with something this. Of course there will be competitors and imitators to iPhone, but it will always be the FIRST.
• October 20, 2009, pranav commented: I dont go searching for fart apps, but it just adds to the mess. It makes discovery of worthwhile apps that much more difficult. >>1) Browse top 10 paid, free & apple featured apps I guess thats what most users do - but over a short period of time, these lists dont change that drastically. Its finding the hidden gems that get lost in the mess becomes a nightmare. >>Walmart has a ton of items that you don’t need and >>think are ridiculus, but that doesn’t mean you stop >>shopping at Walmart. You go there to buy what you >>need and that’s it. The analogy doesnt make sense - Walmart is much more structured and organized so at least you know which aisle to go looking for say 'milk'. Besides, in Walmart, you know what you're looking for. In the appstore, a lot of the times you may not.
• October 20, 2009, pranav commented: roopesh, its no way similar to the Internet. Internet is an open system - the appstore is a closed system and apple is the gatekeeper -- so they have control on who makes it through the gates and who doesnt.
• October 20, 2009, pranav commented: bharat, topic of discussion isnt whether iphone is a great device or not - its about the appstore and the quality of apps making through to the marketplace.
• October 22, 2009, RohaN commented: I am surprised at this reaction of yours. Its business, so they will offer something that really sells and makes money. Since you are not new to the startup thing, you may well be knowing that that are many startups that have better products than their most popular and best-selling counterparts. Just because Windows or Apple or Gmail is extremely popular, it does not mean that there is no OS that is better than Windows or Mac, or that Gmail is the best email app ever. Retailers fill their shelves with something that sells, irrespective of their perception about the value offered by the product. I doubt if what you say is a "real" issue.
• October 22, 2009, pranav commented: Rohan, Imagine the appstore a year down the lane - if there are 85K apps at this time, and such lame apps keep making their way into the app store -- sifting through the mess would be even more of a problem. If there would be some amazing recommendation software (the apple genius is kinda ok) that would suggest new apps based on my preferences / app installation history then i wouldnt care less about fart apps or whatever.
• October 23, 2009, bipin commented: Application discovery is actually an interesting problem that many folks are dealing with. You may note that Nokia and others have also stumbled on executing an app store. I think a fresh/innovative approach is needed to create a logical framework for a) app discovery and b) app preview. This might require mining existing information ( text/pictures/videos) to create a new kind of user experience. We at mobikwik.com have just started on this problem and would love to hear from interested folks!
• October 23, 2009, swaroop commented: Actually, what irks me is how bad the search works in the iTunes store. If that worked well, I think most of the problem would have been solved. And the number of "85+K apps" *is* a marketing-wise selling point for the iPhone/iPod Touch irrespective of how many of them are useful or not. Let's take the hypothetical case that only sane and useful apps are allowed, but there are 15 different note-taking apps and so on, now you have the problem of deciding which one to buy without getting a trial (ignoring the Lite workaround), how to solve this problem now? Ultimately, the user has to search for what he wants. If he wants to track what are the best apps, then he has to visit http://www.148apps.com just like people use IMDB for movies and so on.
• November 2, 2009, Gaurav commented: Pranav, "Walmart is much more structured and organized so at least you know which aisle to go looking for say ‘milk’." So are app store's categories. I agree they are more like departments in Walmart than aisles. "Besides, in Walmart, you know what you’re looking for. In the appstore, a lot of the times you may not." This can be true for a regular store as well. Say, you might be shopping for a birthday present for a friend. "Its finding the hidden gems that get lost in the mess becomes a nightmare." In my opinion, it is the problem with the creators of the hidden gems. They should be able to market the apps to top 10 level if the app is 1) good 2) has a huge market. An SSH Terminal app can never be in top 10 paid or free as the market for it is not large enough. I don't think these apps should be banned from the store, but Apple should come up with more entry points to find newer or less popular apps and perhaps improve their algorithms (ratings/uninstalls?) for personalized app discovery (as mentioned in other comments). The bottom line is that users download/buy these "crap" apps which helps make $ for Apple.

Introduction

Question: Where are the successful product startups from India? How to become one? And how long will we be taking example of only one company (Zoho)?

To answer this question, we’ll be attending NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009 on Oct 27-28 at the Lalit Ashok hotel, Bangalore.
It’s a traditional conference organized by NASSCOM (short for “National Association of Software and Services Companies”), the consortium that represents software companies in India.
The agenda this year is “Positioning to Win.”

Why is it interesting?

As the official website says:

Come, demonstrate your product, network, share with peers, and learn how to identify market opportunities, build a product organization with domain expertise, roll out a product, build brands, reach out to prospects and customers, create a network effect of channels, user and development communities – in short how to build a viable and scalable business model.

Of course, the caveat is always that no amount of teaching or sessions will help anyone until, you, the audience takes it seriously, imagine putting it into action immediately and ask questions on what will come up in your course of action. In short, look for the advice that you need.

Now that we have that diatribe out of the way, let us focus on the conference. There will be 4 keynotes, 11 panel sessions, 4 workshops, networking sessions and unconference sessions. The full program agenda is available as a PDF. The truly interesting part of this event is the quality of people expected to be on stage.

Here are the parts of the agenda that we found interesting:

1. Key Sessions and Panel discussions:

• Technology Opportunities serving the millions of India: The next major growth area for Indian technology firms
• Building a product ecosystem that addresses the millions of India
• Building global consumer businesses out of India
• Leverage the ecosystem for Product Development
• Indians Pulling off the impossible
• Product strategies in the telecom sector: potential for global leadership
• Why and how you can tie-up with SIs if you have a software product for enterprises
• Listen to key speakers from the usual suspects such as Guy Kawasaki, Kiran Karnik, Ashish Gupta, Rajesh Jain, VCs to people you would not usually get to hear from such as Ajay Dhir (CIO, Jindal Steel), Rajesh Hukku (SVP, Oracle), and founders of successful startups such as from iYogi, Stylkist, BabaJobs, and so on.

2. Workshops such as the Workshop on Go-To-Market strategies for Product companies which is being led by Subinder Khurana, Delivery Head, Enterprise Analytics, Cognizant.

3. Unconference sessions

• Krishnas and Arjunas — regarding advisors and mentors
• Hiring in startups, plus startups and potential employees get to talk to each other
• One on one business mentoring sessions
• Impact of social media inside organizations

4. Product Expo showcasing 12 companies with products for the enterprise market.

5. Specific structured networking sessions for startups with CIOs, country delegations, potential partners, potential advisors, potential employees, potential investors.

The downside is that because there are three separate parallel tracks, we won’t be able to cover all of them. We hope that we can cover the whole spectrum along with other indian startup blogs.

We wonder if we can hope for talks such as the one by Prof. Deepak Malhotra (Harvard Business School) about how to negotiate at NASSCOM Leadersip Forum 2007.

How to follow this event?

If you’re unable to attend the event in-person, then don’t fret because there are multiple ways to follow this event:

• We will be covering the event and hope to bring you new insights and interesting learnings as much as possible.
• Participate in the NASSCOM communities discussions
• Follow the NASSCOM blog
• Follow the #nasscompc tag on Twitter and @nasscom_pc
• Watch out for NASSCOM videos

This guest post is written by Swaroop C H, co-founder of a startup called IonLab. He writes regularly on his blog at www.swaroopch.com, considered to be one of the top ten blogs in India along with StartupDunia.

Wishing you a very Happy Diwali & for those who celebrate their new year, wish you a happy & prosperous new year as well.

• StartupDunia is one year old
• StartupDunia is 3 years old

Comments

• October 28, 2009, raj commented: Wishing you a very Happy Diwali

In most of the consumer markets, pricing is guided by a supply – demand fit. Price a product too high and there’ll be less demand, price it too low and you’ll miss out on potential profits (of course, there are lots of exceptions to this too). Pricing is therefore more of finding that fit as opposed to a perfect science.

Last weekend, I went to watch ‘Wake up Sid’ at a nearby theater. For a Saturday night show, the theater was reasonably crowded and I would have expected it to be more crowded. On my drive home, I started wondering – why is it that theaters follow a fixed price model ? For instance, lets say a ticket costs Rs 250/-. You pay the same price no matter if you watch the movie first day first show or 3 weeks later (assuming its still running). The only price variations theaters offer (in the US) are for students, senior citizens and matinee shows. That just doesnt make sense.

Seats in a movie theater are ‘perishable’ inventory. What I mean by that  is all the unsold tickets for a particular show translate to unsold inventory that is wasted – meaning wasted potential revenue. Its just like airline tickets. If a flight is not full, all the unused seats mean wasted revenue for the airline. Ditto for hotel rooms. So, while hotels and airlines offer incentives like last minute deals and sell through other opaque channels like Priceline etc., why dont movie theaters do something similar ? One might argue that last minute opaque selling for a movie theater is difficult since the actual unsold inventory can only be found out after they have sold tickets to a particular show. So, the opaque selling has to be a truly last minute, real time channel to meet the unique constraints of movie theaters.

If opaque selling is not a viable option, movie theaters should at least consider gradually decreasing the ticket prices for each subsequent week that the movie is aired. But if customers knew that movie ticket prices were to drop in subsequent weeks, why would they watch a movie first day / first week ? Wouldnt everyone wait just for the subsequent weeks to watch it ? Well, the answer is no. For two reasons:

1) just like die hard apple fans want the latest gadget as soon as Apple launches them, there will be movie fanatics who want to watch as soon as its released

2) In this scenario, you also throw in a dynamic pricing element. So, for instance, you keep it uncertain whether there will be price drop in the subsequent weeks or not. For a super hit movie like Harry Potter / Batman etc., it might not make sense for the theater to drop the price – there will be hordes of moviegoers who would pay the full price to watch the movie in the subsequent 2-3 weeks as well. Its for the other movies that you are most likely going to have unsold inventory that you try to price dynamically.

There might be aspects of this that might need more research, but just jotting down my thoughts as they flow. Let me know what you think.

Comments

• October 14, 2009, Ganjam Kalyan commented: Nice read. Certain aspects definitely need more research. Atleast in state I live, Andhra pradesh, It's a govt mandate to maintain prices approved by Govt. Multiplexes is a totally different game though which I think have less govt control. However, Movie ticket distribution is broken and there's lot of money at stake for those who can fix.
• October 14, 2009, Hari Babu commented: It is not right to compare movie tickets with airline tickets. Theatres are a source of entertainment; so, people will not want to acquire movie tickets on a last minute basis all the time (probably for the first two days for a blockbuster). However, consider DVDs and rentals : they are the cheaper alternative for older movies, aren't they? They allow you to watch whatever you want whenever you want.
• October 14, 2009, Suren commented: A friend of mine floated the idea of actually auctioning the first few days. The highest bidder wins the ticket. Sort of dwindle the black marketeers out of the picture and make it official online. Profits proceed to the theatre, movie makers and pocket the commission. I said, its viable but said it might seem like a fine line between auctioning and black marketing.
• October 15, 2009, Santhanam commented: In Tamil Nadu, Government has permitted theaters to fix a higher price for first few weeks of the film release. After few weeks, the ticket price goes to a normal level. This is good, since unscrupulous theaters will sell only few tickets through counter and rest through black market by their employees themselves.
• October 16, 2009, MaddyUK commented: The pricing model should also consider attracting more people during off-peak or down phases. Say a movie XYZ is not running well after 2 days from the release date, should'nt the ticket rate go down the normal price (obviously considering the govt. tax) ? I know people don't get fooled with low rates...but isn't there a scope to attrack more viewers?
• October 18, 2009, ankit commented: the idea is good ...tis may generate revnues for even movies that are low budget and currently suffer heavy losses...but i suggest one more thing..for people like us who want to watch movies in theatre every week there should be a priviledge card...to reduce regular cinegoer's expense...for example if you see 4 movies in a month for 600 rupees...using this card if reduces your cost by say 20 % would be cool
• October 18, 2009, amol aggarwal commented: I know a mall in Noida(TGIP) which follows the dynamic pricing model-it was selling a movie ticket for nearly 350 bucks for a newly released movie when the normal price is around 150 bucks.
• October 20, 2009, shande commented: As far I know, Inox has been doing sort of semi-dynamic pricing for long awaited movies on first weekend. usually it will be priced at a premium rate >= 300. Implementing full dynamic pricing based on rate of booking and amount of seats would be interesting. Also, on the lines of airline tickets there should be discount for people who plan and book for a show advance (3-4 days) before official release without hearing any reviews ! Later, when critical reviews are in public domain, prices should be brought back to normal level.

Yesterday marked the 3rd anniversary of StartupDunia. Wow – its hard to believe its been 3 years already. Its been an amazing journey so far, of course with its share of ups and downs. Along the way, I’ve made some awesome contacts and friends and come in touch with folks whom I would have never come across otherwise.

I know that this year I’m not posting as frequently as I’d want to – I’d actually attribute that to two reasons.

1) Honestly, there isnt a whole lot of startups happening in India – doesnt matter what anyone says or how many events / b-plan competitions you have. Of course, I could always rinse and rehash tech news, but I’d prefer to post original thoughts on this blog, even if thats infrequent. I’d rather post when I have something to say rather than just posting for the sake of it.

2) There have been some ongoing transitions in my life leaving me with less time to blog

I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll sure try to post more frequently. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in writing for StartupDunia, drop me an email (if you have a blog, provide a link to your blog) including your background details (sorry – I dont make money from this blog to pay you money).

Finally, I’m grateful to my wife who’s been very understanding & supportive throughtout these 3 years – seriously, all the blogging time is time away from her – so without her support, it’d have been just impossible to do.

And of course, thanks to all of my readers and especially those of you who take the time to comment on posts.

• StartupDunia is 2 years old
• StartupDunia is one year old
• Off to India on vacation

Comments

• October 11, 2009, Indus Khaitan commented: Congrats Pranav! Would love to see you post more. Cheerio! Indus
• October 12, 2009, Ravi commented: Hi Pranav, Congratulations! 3 years is a significant milestone indeed and you deserve credit for building up one of most-followed blogs on happenings in the Indian start-up world. Looking forward to a lot more from you! Cheers, Ravi
• October 12, 2009, Rajat commented: Hi Pranav, Congratulations on the 3rd anniversary of the blog. I would love to contribute to the blog. I have been following the startup scene in U.S. for a long time and have recently sparked interest in bringing these ideas to the Indian market. I have gained tremendous insight from your blog regarding it. I would love to contribute to this blog. Please send me your email address where I can send a direct message. Thanks Rajat
• October 12, 2009, Saurav Mishra commented: Hi Pranav, Congatulations !!! Thanks for some real good insights and food for thought! Keep it coming. Have sent you a mail too. Do keep in touch. Saurav
• October 12, 2009, Jayesha Jhaveri commented: Hi Pranav, Congratulations for completing 3 years. Your messages help me keep track of the recent developments on the startup scene. Keep it up and congrats once again. Regards, Jayesha
• October 12, 2009, Aditya Kedia commented: Thanks Pranav for the excellent work you are doing. Indeed the startup scene in India has been dormant lately, however, it's good to know you are covering whatever is present. Regards, Adi
• October 12, 2009, Rohan commented: Congratulations Pranav :)
• October 12, 2009, Manish commented: Congratulations..........
• October 12, 2009, pranav commented: thanks guys !!
• October 12, 2009, Swaroop commented: Congrats! And agreed, there has not been many interesting startups worth talking about... either the hype is too early or the market is not mature yet for tech startups... or a bit of both.
• October 12, 2009, Rajat commented: Congrats.I started reading your blog around 6 months back and i am totally hooked up to your blog now.I regularly read your blog.Keep the good posts coming.
• October 14, 2009, Gopal Sharma commented: I find some of your blogs really useful. I think you have done a great job overall... It is very difficult to keep motivation level up for this long and that too while talking sense :) Great job!!!!
• October 16, 2009, Aditya commented: Hi Pranav, Congratulations, wish to see more of your posts...keep up the good work. Aditya (Perfios)
• October 16, 2009, mohit commented: congratulation dear
• October 18, 2009, Rama Vadakattu commented: Congrats Pranav.

WSJ has an interesting story on the play by play strategy of TweetPhoto, that hopes to usurp TwitPic as the leading photo sharing service via Twitter. Right from initial idea to leveraging developers, it highlights how TweetPhoto stumbled along the way and then went on to have Britney Spears as a user.

Read it here.

Comments

• October 7, 2009, Manuel commented: nice info

Iglooo, a Pune based startup, has launched a price comparison website for books.  You can search for a book based on title / author and they provide price comparison results from vendors like A1 books, First & Second, Landmark and Crossword. To purchase, you are redirected to the vendors website. Currently, they claim not to be making any money from referrals but that should change down the line.

In their pitch, they seemed to stress on their  ‘clutter free design’. However, there’s a difference between no design and clutter free design and the latter doesnt necessarily mean the former. The design definitely needs some work from a usability perspective. For instance, if a book has no photo associated, display a default ‘no image’ thumbnail. Allow to sort results by title as well. If possible and available, include a brief summary of the book in the site results — you could use Amazon API or any knowledge available from public sources like Wikipedia for this. Use a horizontal line or border to easily demarcate the various listings in the results page.

In its current form, the site provides little value to an end user.  Let me elaborate why:

For starters, you cant discover new books using the site. Just like music and movies, you dont necessarily know the title of every book you will like and want to read. Book discovery is an equally important aspect of such sites. Secondly, without the book summaries, I have to visit the vendors website, get an overview of what the book is about — if it doesnt interest me, come back to Iglooo’s result set and then rinse and repeat. As an example, say I’m searching for books related to startups. If I search for startup in the title field, the back & forth process on the results set just becomes too painful.

Few additional suggestions to the founders – get a logo developed ASAP if you are serious about building a brand (learnt it the hard way on StartupDunia). You also might want to consider an alternate name for the site — its too easy to spell it wrong in the url (there are 3 ‘o’s).

Although it needs a few tweaks, the service does have some potential.

• IAndMyStory lets you personalize book characters
• CreADivity provides a marketplace for Indian designers
• SheepStop, Scopial launch crowdsourced T shirt designs

Comments

• September 25, 2009, Champak Bhumia commented: Although I agree with most of the points raised by Pranav, I think the design is absolutely kick ass. Coming to discovering books, I do not understand what made you think this is a book recommendation engine. It clearly states, find books by author or title. And I think it does the job quite well on that. Discovering books based on tags would be a neat idea nonetheless and I hope they start this too. I am looking for a book's cheapest price and I think this does it rather well. If I need to discover books or read summaries, I have amazon and a zillion other such sites. So, I agree with some points raised here but overall, I think iglooo fits my needs quite well.
• September 25, 2009, Prasanna a.k.a Flipkart Fanatic commented: What is the use, if it does not add Flipkart?
• October 1, 2009, Anil commented: @ Champak... Maybe it addresses your unique needs. It is possible, there might be different behavior patterns. If I am required to visit amazon for book discovery and then iglooo for actual purchase, convenience value doesnt exist at all ! Of course, meta-searches are yet to make money, it is easier with the low cost base they work upon.
• October 6, 2009, Iglooo commented: @Prasanna a.k.a Flipkart Fanatic - You'll be pleased to know that as of last week we've added Flipkart :-)
• October 7, 2009, Nikhilesh commented: @Iglooo You guys have to start caching popular searches and books. You can't expect users to wait that long while you scour the middle earth.

The iPhone without an ounce of doubt jumpstarted the smartphone category. So much so that smartphones are one of the fastest growing category of phones in the US market.

Earlier, mobile app development was restrained by closed platforms and proprietary OS’es.  Now, however, it looks like the increasing number of mobile platforms might lead to a new, different problem. Increased fragmentation and confusion about which platforms to support. You already have Symbian, RIM, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, WebOS (Palm), Mameo.

Now, it seems that Intel is planning to launch their own mobile platform. And LiMo seems to be picking up steam as well.

iPhone and RIM and Android dont seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Symbian is already seeing declining market share and it seems that even Nokia is looking to defect to Mameo – although currently, Symbian totally dominates markets like India and Africa.

The success of each platform will not only depend on what the manufacturers and operators support — but which ones the developers flock to as well.  iPhone has already built a thriving apps community, but more and more developers are getting disgruntled with its app approval process and lack of openness. But then, at the same time, other app communities have hardly reached the level of success that the iPhone has.

Say if we’re talking about 5 years down the line – which one do you see as having the biggest potential ? which one do you think will dominate the Indian market ?

• Airtel to sell unlocked iPhones
• The Crapstore
• Vodafone to launch iPhone in India this year

Comments

• October 2, 2009, amol aggarwal commented: I disagree that Symbian is going to get out of flavor anytime soon.It is a dominant platform esp on Nokia phones and doesn't see a second platform replace it in near future. I will leave iphone out as iphone is still way too expensive for Indian market.
• October 4, 2009, lodha says commented: agree symbian platform is more technological than java
• October 11, 2009, dinesh commented: dera ferr takl tima

The E-Cell @ IIT KGP is organizing an ‘Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive’ to promote entrepreneurship and encourage students across the country to embrace entrepreneurship. They will organize an Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp in 10 cities over a span of 10 days across various college campuses. Some of the campuses they intend to cover as part of this drive include Punjab Engineering college, Anna University, Delhi college of Engineering, BITS Mesra etc. Times Private Treaties and the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) have collaborated with the ECell on this effort.

You can find additional details on their website.

• Event: Conference for Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneurs
• What would be your single biggest advice to fresh college graduates in India ?
• Event: “Entrepreneurs Forum” planned at Bangalore

Comments

• October 2, 2009, amit commented: How is Delhi College of Engineering included in this drive?
• October 3, 2009, TAPAS commented: Dear all, i have a professional working samsung and also doing some kind of online business.. my website is www.lessdeal.com we deal industrial good to diffrent company.. i want to participate
• October 9, 2009, Sartups's Blog commented: Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive by IIT Kharagpur... <p>The E-Cell @ IIT KGP is organizing an ‘Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive’ to promote entrepreneurship and encourage students across the country to embrace entrepreneurship. They will organize an Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp in 10 cities ...

Apparently, a tweet by Shashi Tharoor, the minister of state for External Affairs, about some joke related to ‘holy cow’  has landed him in some shit. I kid you not – it has offended Indians and Indian politicos. So much so that Sonia Gandhi held a meeting with him about the ‘controversy’.Rumors also floated that he might lose his job.

Quite a number of tweets talking about the ‘controversy’.

Seriously, when will we learn to take ourselves a little less seriously ? The slightest mention of Indians / Indian society / religion riles us up to defend ourselves.

• Does music help you focus better while working ?
• KamlaShow on LiveMint, Sramana’s book ‘Entrepreneur Journeys’
• Nielsen Online and Wall Street Journal launch in India

Comments

• September 25, 2009, Harshal Vaidya commented: One needs to understand the sensitivity of that remark made by Tharoor. To save the tax payers money Pranab Mukherjee started a austerity drive and advised all MP's to travel economy class, following which Rahul Gandhi's train travel got much applause and news coverage. Tharoor, without much thought made a categorical comment that implied indirectly that such austerity measures are done for the cattle class or poor class, which started an outrage. The reason Sonia met him was to give him the stick and make him realize that when you are a public figure your words carry weight and they need to be thought out before they come out of your mouth. She just re-iterated to him that you are no longer in UN where nobody cares to follow your tweets, but you are a sitting MP from Congress and cannot make rash comments. Freedom of Speech is one thing, but when you are a public figure, rash comments have to be avoided or at the most sugar coated at least. Tharoor is a new kid on the block and will learn slowly.
• October 2, 2009, amit commented: Our Ministers really sometimes do irritating stuffs
• October 4, 2009, lodha says commented: thank god Mr. tharoor didnt get the job in UN

It is an undeniable fact that mobile is *the* platform in India. SMS usage aka texting is probably one of the most pervasive mobile applications prevalent in India. However, if you want to provide an SMS interface to your web-app, there is no easy solution out there. You need to either buy a SMS short code for yourself  (which is pretty darn expensive) or you can take a do it yourself (DIY) approach by connecting a GSM modem to your server and use software like Kannel to access incoming SMS messages.

So, here’s an idea.

Instead, why not buy a short code and then have multiple customers ‘rent’ the short code ? The way it works is – say you get a shortcode ‘12345′. You then let each customer reserve a keyword that they can use with this shortcode. So, for instance, if I need to leverage SMS in my app, I reserve the shortcode SDUNIA. Say some one else takes up the keyword FBOOK. Users of my web-app can send an SMS to my app by sending a text to 12345 SDUNIA <msg>. The backend service parses this keyword and decides which customer the SMS belongs to. So, you need to provide an API as well so that your customers can retrieve their SMS messages and use it in their web-app.  You charge the customers a fee as long as they use the service.

This approach has a lot of potential since it saves other startups and other businesses looking for an SMS interface the cost and effort involved in getting their own, exclusive SMS shortcode.They can literally hit the ground running in terms of providing a mobile interface to their app /service.

TextMarks is one such US based startup that does this same thing pretty successfully.

I’m not sure if such a service already exists in the Indian market. Also, one would need to check for any legal issues involved specific to the Indian market.

let me know what you think.

• Startup Idea – Group buying discount
• Startup Idea for Entrepreneurs
• Two killer startup ideas for Bangalore

Comments

• September 22, 2009, Vinuth M. Madinur commented: I think a lot of Short Code providers in India provide this option. http://www.znisms.com/sms-short-code.html SMS GupShup provides a more elegant API and is perhaps easier to get started than negotiating with Short Code providers. http://api.smsgupshup.com/
• September 22, 2009, Vinuth M. Madinur commented: BTW, I heard Facebook uses SMS GupShup API for Indian users.
• September 22, 2009, pranav commented: right -- somehow it totally slipped my mind that sms gupshup does this. thanks for bring that to my attn. i havent heard about the other service you pointed out - they any good ?
• September 22, 2009, Vineet commented: This is already being done almost all short code providers in India. Renting these keywords on shared short codes as opposed to an exclusive code is much cheaper.
• September 22, 2009, Nikhil commented: Hey Pranav, old one. lots of companies, including Yah
• September 22, 2009, Nikhil commented: sorry..accidentally clicked submit. What I was saying is that even Yahoo India has been providing this short code service. Have put up a complete list of short code service providers at MediaNama...over 50 of them. what no one has done yet, apart from ValueFirst with Alertrix I think, is make it easy to use - where you can log in online and buy a keyword at a price. one problem with these short codes now is a TRAI notification, according to which short codes need to have an alphanumeric prefix for identification of their originating operator. This makes it difficult for users to reply to messages. For example, if I query 556655 for Help, I'll get a response from, say, TM-556655 . I can't click reply and respond to it because it's alphanumeric.
• September 22, 2009, pranav commented: thanks all for the input and correcting me - i list such ideas as and when they occur leaving the onus of doing the research on those who find it interesting. if there are lotsa other companies already doing it, it might not be an easy fare then.
• September 22, 2009, Nilesh Trivedi commented: (Disclaimer :- I work with SMSGupShup ) Enterprise SMS GupShup allows you to set up keywords and masks from the online interface. (a Keyword is for directing incoming messages to your webapp whereas a Mask is what shows up as sender Id in the messages that YOU send). In fact, Enterprise SMS GupShup is the only provider out there with a complete self-serviced solution. The API is extensive as well as easy to use.
• September 22, 2009, Rohan commented: Yes, there are many startups/resellers that rent short code. Just google for "bulk SMS software". Actually, their primary service is bulk SMS from PC, but most of them offer short code renting @ about 4.5 INR p/m If somebody already has a server located in-house at office or workplace, they can instead just buy a special number like ones ending with triple digits, or ones that are easy to remember by paying a small premium.
• September 22, 2009, ashutosh commented: Hi, I think that just getting a sim card and putting it "up" with kannel for inbound routing, isn't the key. The legality involved here is that almost all telcos TOS mentions in the application form, something on the following lines: "That, the customer shall use the sim and associated services for the purpose of making and receiving calls, messages, and other services available in the SIM for his *personal use*, not any commercial use." Even if you "bypass" the above, the telcos shall disconnect you and it gets messy, as happened with NetCore of Rajesh Jain ( http://emergic.org/2009/02/17/we-versus-vodafone/ ) . The plea given by VodaFone and Bharti was that NetCore was flouting NDNC norms for alert services, while the truth was that they just could not see someone bypassing the VAS ecosystem, thus denying them their "lion's share". PS: I am not affiliated with NetCore at present, or in past.
• October 4, 2009, Suresh commented: Hi i need to buy a special short code for my company, not the keyword but want to buy a shortcode specific to my company, can you help me where to buy it.
• October 13, 2009, SMS Reseller commented: Another company offering a commercial grade credit based SMS shared short code application with api is Anchor Mobile
• October 17, 2009, Mel commented: I am currently looking for someone who can rent me a short code. But i am only interested in Premium short codes. I want to charge my customers a fee for the applications I will provide. Any suggessions.
• October 17, 2009, Mel commented: By the way, I can be contacted at centralprocessingusa@gmail.com. I will be marketing within the continental US

Scopial (MVP backed startup) and SheepStop are two startups that launched their community sourced T shirt design contests.  The concept is simple – new design contests are regularly announced on the sites. Designers can participate and submit their designs – the community votes and the winning design gets prominent focus and the winning designer gets cash rewards. This model has been successfully executed by Threadless in the US.

They enter a somewhat crowded marketplace – other players like Myntra, Pringoo and InkFruit offer some of the same services (although one could argue that myntra and pringoo are much more generic).

So, unless Scopial and SheepStop have some major marketing / viral idea under their sleeve, its gonna be a challenge competing against some of these established (& well funded) players.

To build their brand and market their app, I would say the best place to start would be college campuses. Provide some free branded T shirts to college kids with some eye catching designs and use them as your college ambassadors. College Fests offer tremendous potential to market such apparel – provide some free t-shirts for a handful of kids to wear during the college fests. Additionally, they could also work with the college fest organizing committees to see if the design aspect of the college fest tee’s could be staged on their site. Leverage Orkut and Facebook effectively since those are some of the sites where majority of the urban youth spends their online time.

At the same time, approach design schools and students of NIFT etc. to sign up and submit and compete for their designs – great way to get new, fresh content with low overhead.

So to reiterate, unless they can nail this marketing aspect and or introduce some great virality, its gonna be an uphill battle for them.  Success lies not only in cool designs but ‘being noticed’ in those cool desgins as well – and for that they need to tap into the youth demographic.

• CreADivity provides a marketplace for Indian designers
• Yoplr makes trip planning easy (invites below)
• YouSuggest helps companies crowdsource ideas from users

Comments

• September 21, 2009, Ricardo commented: Yep, viral marketing could help indeed, it would help them diferentiate from the crowd. Also having a great social media strategy is important.

Santosh and Anjali, the team behind Bookeazy and Lipikaar, will be launching their latest startup Dubzer at the DEMO event in San Diego. In fact, the BookEazy url now redirects to the Dubzer website.

Not much is known about what exactly Dubzer is about, but based on their Twitter updates as well as some of the job description, it seems that they might be doing something related to language translation.

The company is incubated by Pune based Persistent systems. What ever it is, good luck to Santosh and Anjali with their launch.

• CleverTexting provides disruptive predictive text input technology
• Iglooo – Compare book prices
• Morpheus Venture Partners announces its latest batch of startups

Over the last couple of days, I was getting some updates about friends-family in India, while talking to my mom. During conversation, my mom mentioned about two recent graduates, who’s campus placements (in IT companies) were deferred due to the uncertain economy. And so, they were considering pursuing – applying for an MBA in the meanwhile.

And for some reason, that topic lingered on in my mind – bothering me. Why would two recent graduates consider an MBA as a ‘way out’ ? How much did they even know about what MBA is about ? After all, by the time you graduate with a bachleors degree, you hardly have any insight into real world, leave aside an MBA. Who counseled them into an MBA program ?

It didnt take long for me to figure out that no one else is to blame for this distorted notion but our society. A B.E + MBA combo is seen as the holy grail for Indian technical professionals. BE + MBA candidates are not only paid highly – they are valued highly by the society, professionally and even from the matrimonial perspective. Not to mention the extent to which the media has glamorized the MBA degree – touting the crore plus salaries and the direct placements abroad. Now that I revisit some of the conversations i’ve had with my peers, several of whom have graduated from top-tier MBA schools in India & abroad, it seems that the common motivation to do an MBA seems to be for one of the following three reasons:

1) I want to do an MBA to get a higher salary

2) I want to make a shift from technical to the business aspects of the profession

3) I’m stuck in a rut in my job and so need a change

Taking the entrepreneurial route would guarantee you points (2) and (3) above. Point (1) is something that is not guaranteed and apparently, the riskiest aspect of the proposition. So I guess the sheer uncertainty of point (1) leads people to opt for an MBA rather than taking the entrepreneurial route.

I actually find it quite ironic, because Indian B-schools are shifting into overdrive when it comes to B-plan competitions (just look at the increase in the number of b-plan competitions being held across b-school campuses) – implicitly encouraging graduates to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs. So, its like you joined a b-school, the b-school encourages you to become an entrepreneur when you could have completely skipped b-school and gone into entrepreneurship directly.

Personally, I believe that the biggest value that an MBA provides is the access to the network of people and the alumni. The other 3 reasons listed above seem frivolous in comparison and dont seem to justify doing an MBA – I might very well be wrong, but its just me.

The reason I decided to write about this is because if entrepreneurship needs to be encouraged at the college level then we need to change their mindset that BE + MBA is not the only way to go. Entrepreneurship is a viable career option and chances are that they will learn much more being an entrepreneur than pursuing an MBA.

Ok. Time to go and talk to those family friends about their MBA plans.

• Entrepreneurship in India – hype or happening ?
• Does it matter where people went to college ?
• You say lack of angel funding, I say lack of startups

Comments

• September 16, 2009, vk commented: Good points. Also, points to the social, cultural and educational issues in society where most people are looking to make money the fastest way and not necessarily finding the thing they enjoy doing most and making money in that instead.
• September 16, 2009, Raghuraman commented: Pranav, I agree the whole perception about BE+MBA being the holy grail for good salary is quite predominant in our society. Our whole generation is plagued with the concept of 'better earning' rather than 'better living'. Very good write up . Keep it up.
• September 17, 2009, Aditya commented: In India MBA is distorted - while in the West you need a good experience before you can be even "considered" for a good B programme, in India thousands of freshers fill into our top B schools. Freshers can bring some ideas into the classroom, but without experience they can't contribute as well as the experienced people. Moreover until this recession a lot of companies believed in the B.Tech+MBA dudes and hired them on sky-high salaries, so people who make the choice to do an MBA can't really be blamed.
• September 17, 2009, rabi gupta commented: I completely support your point of view. Even I feel that such problem exists in our country. I didn't go for MBA when I learned that I should start something on my own. I believe that experience can make a person learn things much better and faster! Moreover when we complete graduation we are not sure what profession to choose in our career. Its only the practical experience which makes us learn whether to go for an MBA or not. B-Plan competitions can help anyone (MBA or non-MBA). Even our team got recognized at various B-Plan competitions and our (good) network issue was resolved because of this. We met a mentor who got interested in the idea. I'd suggest students not to go for an MBA before deciding clearly their main goals in life!
• September 17, 2009, kalyan ganjam commented: Can't agree more, very very well written piece. I don't think It's just the BE+ MBA combo that is useless, Bcom/BA/BSC/(whatever) + MBA combo seems equally useless to me. Thanks again, I am just forwarding this to all my friends and relatives stuck with MBA mania.
• September 17, 2009, Aayush Puri commented: You have hit the nail on the head. Actually after looking around and seeing so many of your friends and batchmates pursuing MBA...peer pressure sets in at some point and even if you never wanted to do a MBA or never knew how your career will shape after an MBA, you are "pushed" towards that path. > 3) I’m stuck in a rut in my job and so need a change I have heard this a lot and this is the one on which I laugh the hardest. The reasons most people whom I talk to regarding this say that there is way too much bureaucracy around and no freedom of work. And I have my reasons that after MBA this will certainly increase.
• September 17, 2009, Rohini commented: Good Insight. A lot of colleges these days are encouraging students to pursue entrepreneurship. > Entrepreneurship is a viable career option and chances are that they will learn much more being an entrepreneur than pursuing an MBA. Definitely bootstrapping teaches a lot to an entrepreneur. Once a bootstrapped company becomes mature, an MBA might be helpful to take it to the next level.
• September 18, 2009, Ashish commented: Well i do agree with ur point dat MBA is hyped a lot. I am an engg n I am pursuing my MBA from IMI, Delhi. the reason why i took was all 3 aspects. I had a low salary. I worked in an IT firm for 2 yrs n now the job seem too be too boring, and finance was something which facinated me , but was still greek to me. I had an expectation dat ill become a champ in finance once i have done my MBA. I am currently in my 2nd yr doing majors in finance. Rite now my whole perception about MBA has changed. It is quite diff dan engg. It does not makes u the master of dat subject. It dosent even gets close to mastery in any field. Wen u r an engg in some field, by end of 4 yrs you absolutely know everything .Dats not da case in mba. It just gives u a taste of real world without gettin your fingers burnt. It gives you a range of knowledge but only on a superficial level.Its upto u , ur self motivation to go deeper on your own, if you wish. SEcond thing which MBA does is to groom you overall, in terms of ur personality, ur way of thinking , ur apporch to a problem.This is the biggest takeaway from a good MBA course. Rest is just secondary. Btw in recent times there are sooo many MBA colleges crooped up in india dat u need to be beware about the fake ones.
• September 19, 2009, Anshul commented: Very good discussion going on here. I appreciate the points brought up here. Infact about point 1) , I would say stands true in some cases if one is pursuing MBA from US. There are scores of MBA grads who completed their MBA this year but haven't got a job yet. The earning was stopped for 2 years and huge loan was taken to pay the tuition fee and living cost. Now pressure is mounting on them to pay that amount. Sometimes I wonder, people are ready to stop their earning an d pay 100k+ USD for two years but apprehensive to take entrepreneurial path. I am sure a lot can be achieved with this much money in 2 years.
• September 20, 2009, pranav commented: looks like i struck a chord here !!
• September 20, 2009, Puneet Gulati commented: Good article. Just wanted to add one more point that is a possible explanation for the MBA dream in India. A large number of companies in India are looking out for MBAs for any management position worth the name. For instance, in a recent recruitment campaign from a public sector company - BSNL - for their Management Trainee Programme it was mandatory for applicants to hold an MBA degree. I think this was due to two reasons - a) cutting down on the number of applicants b) companies have little faith in Indian higher education system and Business Schools in India do add value to many graduates who are otherwise very unprepared for real jobs. Come to think of it, a large number of Indian graduates have seldom written a project proposal during college, hardly any project report, very few (if any) presentations and little teamwork or collaborative projects. These are essential skills but there is inadequate guidance on these fronts in our undergraduate courses. MBA forces many to learn all these basic things. And companies like this. These things are part of regular undergraduate curriculum in many good overseas universities. But in India, very few undergraduate courses emphasise these basic skills leaving MBA education to fill a glaring gap. And companies too recognise this. So it's a demand from companies issue as well.
• September 20, 2009, rabi gupta commented: Hey Anshul, thanks for bringing up this point. I was thinking the same for students of ISB who haven't got a job (they didn't have good placement season this year) yet but have spent 20 lacs for 1.5 year course. They could have very well utilized this amount for starting something on own. They think of risks, but now with this kind of situation where jobs are difficult to find entrepreneurship could have been the best option!
• September 23, 2009, Amit commented: Couldn't agree more... I am not sure about the real value that an MBA degree adds, but I am pretty sure about one thing- If you've got it, then you'll do it...with or without an MBA!
• September 25, 2009, vinay commented: Why Indian do MBA ? The risk taking capacity is very low. Not enough ideas (we do lack creativity) Easy path to make money and get married to a nice girl
• September 27, 2009, Anand Srinivasan commented: I agree completely with you. I'm a BE-MBA myself, and while pursuing my MBA, I was actually annoyed to find so many of them who had joined simply because of the higher pay.. Damn learning the business, it was money alone that mattered..
• September 28, 2009, purushothaman commented: although MBA degree is recognised well in the organised sectors in INDIA, only the fittest with good outlook in future management goal likely to survive in timely situation - experience with intelligence is the need of this time
• September 28, 2009, kuberan Marimuthu commented: Oh my god :) I just love this article. Life is for better living and not for better earning. People go behind money and end up doing things they dont like and get stuck with the pressure of family dependants and not able to switch professions. So whatever it is, just go in search of what you like in the initial stages of life rather than struggling in later part of life :) :) :)
• September 29, 2009, Yuva commented: and No many is considered ROI on MBA in term cost, effec/time. my MBA blues.. http://iamyuva.wordpress.com/2004/12/11/mbas-or-not/
• September 29, 2009, Yuva commented: sorry for post half(chewed) reply.. I was saying: Not many seems to be consider ROI on MBA in terms of cost/effort/time. with 100+k$ & couple of yrs of work life spent it would take min. of 5yr to breakeven that investment. I didnt do my MBA(yet). I hope do it for the same reason mentioned by the author (network/alumni). I posted my MBA blues couple of years ago. http://iamyuva.wordpress.com/2004/12/11/mbas-or-not/
• October 1, 2009, Gopal Sharma commented: You are missing a point when you say this: "I actually find it quite ironic, because Indian B-schools are shifting into overdrive when it comes to B-plan competitions (just look at the increase in the number of b-plan competitions being held across b-school campuses) – implicitly encouraging graduates to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs. So, its like you joined a b-school, the b-school encourages you to become an entrepreneur when you could have completely skipped b-school and gone into entrepreneurship directly." You are assuming that all that a business school does is to encourage entrepreneurship. Mind it you just don't need a brilliant idea to become an entrepreneur but you also need specific business skills to become one. That where MBA degree should help you get an overall business skill development in a short period. Just imagine a hardcore techy deciding to open an IT Services firm just because he thinks he can code well..... I think doing an MBA is required to accelerate your learnings on business side. Whether you decide to apply what you learn by working for someone else or use it to start your own venture is a different matter.
• October 2, 2009, amit commented: Actually indians are obsessed with any degree be it MBA or Mtech.. They spend 10 lahks to get job of not more than 20 k per month. Illogical decision.
• October 4, 2009, Viveck commented: Hey, Good article. Here is my take on that http://blogsofvivek.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/myth-of-business-administration-a-paradox/
• October 14, 2009, Talal Khaliq commented: its damn money and nothing else!

In case you didnt get a chance to take a peek at the TC50 startups, here’s one finalist that presented yesterday – iMo. iMo is a 2 person startup from India and develops an iPhone/iTouch app that transforms your iPhone into a joystick. You can then use it to control gameplay.

One of the best things was their presentation. If you havent gotten a chance to view it, I’ve embedded it below – Himanshu, one of the founders changed outfits from F1 racer to a pilot and finally coming close to whacking a judge with a baseball bat. Absolute must watch.

• Centilian launches Bollywood streaming app for the iPhone
• VidTeq gives you video maps for Bangalore
• Dhingana launches app for iPhone / iTouch

Comments

• September 16, 2009, Vijay commented: How would this product get positioned? A Joystick alternative - so priced half or lower than a joystick? Or as an Iphone app for $9.99? Hats off to the team to put this as a great tech product, but startup? Not sure. But good to see indian companies there :)
• September 18, 2009, Harshal Vaidya commented: This is absolutely amazing. Himanshu, although, looking a bit nervous, pulled it off fantastically.
• September 22, 2009, Suren commented: This is fantastic. Kudos to the presentation. Ideas are one thing but to present it visually in such a short frame is cool. Gutsy and freakin cool way to let your work do the talking. Way 2 go Himanshu.
• September 25, 2009, Prashant Agrawal commented: He is so nervous and danced like a kid. Anyways great to see an indian startup at TC50 :)

Here’s a potential startup idea with a solid business model.

Provide a Groupon clone for major Indian cities.  The concept of Groupon is simple. Each day, you provide a new discount / deal to customers from local retailers. The catch is that the discount is only valid if a certain threshold of customers buy the deal. So, essentially, its group buying power, but becomes active only when the number of buyers reaches a certain tipping point. To illustrate with an example, say you negotiate a deal with a Bangalore restaurant – if you bring 25 customers, how much of a discount will the restaurant provide. Say, the restaurant agrees to provide a 20% discount if you guarantee 25 new customers. So, you announce the deal on your site and the deal becomes active only if at least 25 customers buy the deal. If less than 25 customers sign up for the deal, the deal isnt valid and all the restaurant gets is free publicity / marketing via your website.

Its a win-win for everyone involved – customers get a better deal, retailers get more customers and you take a cut from each unit sold.

Of course, you might need to tune the service as per the needs of the Indian market. For instance, instead of providing a web-app, you could provide operate it as a mobile only app (via sms & mobile payments) so that you can extend the reach beyond the Internet savvy demographic.

The crux of this idea lies in sales and building relationships with local retailers. Start with a city like Bangalore / Mumbai and then slowly extend to other cities depending on your experience.

what do you think ?

• Startup Idea – Rent a SMS short code
• Two killer startup ideas for Bangalore
• Microsoft announces Startup Accelerator program in India

Comments

• September 15, 2009, Rajat commented: This is a great idea. Actually i think this is the idea that can make twitter/facebook/orkut profitable if it is clubbed with social networking sites somehow.As social networking sites already have the mass of people so why create a new site to bring in new people.Just get the deals and market on these sites.
• September 15, 2009, Raghuraman commented: Similar thoughts to Rajat. This is also very similar to 'Bulk Discounts' at Whole sale Marts like Costco / Sams Club except that it is done offline. This should be experimented in an community level and then scaled up.
• September 15, 2009, pranav commented: yes - similar to costco / sams club - but instead of products, you try and orient this towards services.
• September 15, 2009, Gaurav commented: Groupon looks like woot. The only difference I see is that woot buys in bulk, so they have a limited quantity but cheaper rates. It would be something good to try. @Rajat - As of today Facebook is officially profitable.
• September 15, 2009, Jojo Joson commented: Two things are important. 1. "The crux of this idea lies in sales and building relationships with local retailers. " 2. Most important is to find targeted customers. Ofcourse you can use all the new media, but the ultimate WIN of this business lies on "how you attract" pot customers to read about your services. Extensive marketing is what reqd! Social medias can be used for this without much money involved provided you are creative
• September 15, 2009, Jojo Joson commented: Remember-copying sth from american market won't work here! Think a 100 times before you jump!!
• September 15, 2009, Puneeth commented: There is already a company that's doing that. Check out - GoVasool.com
• September 15, 2009, pranav commented: puneeth, govasool.com does do something similar. however, the difference in that it does for products -- i'm talking of services - like say restaurant deal. or saloon deal or spa / massage service -- anything that can be a local area service..
• September 15, 2009, pranav commented: gaurav, woot employs the 'scarcity model' to sell products. groupon is like a 'collective group buying power'
• September 16, 2009, Aditya commented: There's a similar concept by a company in Indian real-estate market - www.meraflat.com
• September 18, 2009, Anmol commented: I'm actually working on something similar, but not limited to just providing coupons from restaurants. Think of it this way: [(Groupon - coupons) + (Woot - warehousing)] = Unlimited group based buying. More when the service is up :)
• September 29, 2009, David hu commented: i am strarting the group purchasing just now ,and i am also looking for sb who are interested in such kind of business , like bulk-buying ,group buying ,you can email me for sharing more detail about that, i will setup business in china .
• October 19, 2009, SUKHVINDER commented: i am working on this project , may like to seee how we can associate
• October 21, 2009, Ratan commented: Hi David I am working for a large internet company in India in VAS space. I am working on similar thing for India. Would like to get connected with you for the same. Can mail me at : ratan.gmp@gmail.com . If you share your number , can call you for the same.

To most of you, it wouldnt come as a surprise that Google reigns in the Indian Internet market. From Blogger to Orkut to Google search to Youtube, it is one of the most visited network sites in the Indian market.

For every online hour spent in India, 18 minutes are spent on a Google site. Or in other words, 29 percent of the total online time in India goes to Google network of sites – NYT

I have said this way before and I will say it again – Microsoft and Yahoo battling Google in the US market is probably a battle lost already, but ignoring markets like India and Brazil will basically be repeating that very same mistake again.

• Microsoft ignoring Indian market at its own peril
• Rethinking the User Interface
• Google – Do Evil as you see fit

Comments

• September 14, 2009, Rajat commented: 'I have said this way before and I will say it again – Microsoft and Yahoo battling Google in the US market is probably a battle lost already, but ignoring markets like India and Brazil will basically be repeating that very same mistake again.' This is very well said pranav, they should not ignore the indian market at all.
• September 22, 2009, indyaz commented: Good article.. google is king .. check any website traffic.. there approx more then 60% visitors come from google search engine
• September 23, 2009, Amit commented: Monopoly Sucks...!!! It's true that google is the king here...and the king can deny anyone of his rights, without providing any reasons or explanations. That is what recently happened with me. Google refused to approve my adsense account and refused to provide any reason for it. There mail smelled of sheer arrogance. I would post the mail content to share the arrogance ;) Hello Amit, Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. After reviewing your application, our specialists have found that it does not meet our program criteria. Therefore, we are unable to accept you into our program. We have certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the effectiveness of Google ads for our publishers as well as for our advertisers. We review all publishers, and we reserve the right to decline any application. As we grow, we may find that we are able to expand our program to more web publishers with a wider variety of web content. Please note that we may not be able to respond to inquiries regarding the specific reasons for our decision. Thank you for your understanding. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team I was pissed off with the mail, but still I tried to search for alternatives and found out that Yahoo doesn't provide advertising accounts in India. So, they(MS and Yahoo) complain about the monopoly and are themselves not ready to do business everywhere...may god help them, as they are not willing to help themselves...;)

On the heels of the Mint acquisition, a Bangalore based startup – Perfios – is hoping to replicate some of that success in the Indian market. Perfios is a web based app that helps you consolidate your financial information and provide a single point of view and insight into your finances. You can import data from different sources – for example, import info from your bank accounts, credit cards, mutual funds, equity etc. into Perfios and it helps you monitor and analyse your finances from a single dashboard.

Needless to say, the service has great value (as validated by the Mint acquisition). There might be an initial hurdle of getting users (mainly due to apprehension on part of the users to trust the service), but as users get more comfortable, I do think that Perfios has some solid potential.

The one horribly icky thing about their current site is the ‘Tour’ section, which is an animated powerpoint slideshow and takes foreover to convey its message. They should make this more simpler and get the message across to the users and provide some detailed screenshots of the dashboard as well. If I were a potential customer, I know I’d want to take a peek at that before signing up.

The service is currently invite only, but they should be launching publich pretty soon.

• Yoplr makes trip planning easy (invites below)
• Ocricket is a social network for Cricket fans
• Morpheus Venture Partners announces its latest batch of startups

Comments

• September 14, 2009, ashish commented: Its an excellent service - have been using for many months and love it. the guys who started it are very high quality folks (the founder of Aztec) and know how to build solid products
• September 15, 2009, Sundar commented: Perfios is an excellent product. Availability of complete personal financial information in one screen has never been such a breeze. I am sure more features are coming in.
• September 15, 2009, Rakesh commented: Can this service pull my account information from my bank directly (assuming I authorize etc of course) ? I was under the impression that Indian banks don't support (at least as of quite recently) some set of standards (dont recall the name) that are mandatory for US banks that mint.com used to basically pull all the info for a single user across multiple accounts in one place; to provide analytics etc...These standards are read-only so thats somewhat reassuring for finicky folks... How does that work in the perfios case? Do they scrape info by having crawlers/scrapers log in? I wonder how comfortable people are with that.. About the need/convenience for such a service, there is no question! Just simple first order analytics eg how do I spend now compared to say a year ago -- is something that my bank doesnt provide me...!
• September 15, 2009, Rajat commented: Does it store the password of the user in their database (like mint.com did). If it stores the password on the servers, i will think twice before putting the details of my bank account with a startup that might or might not exist tomorrow.Mint.com clearly told this thing on their site.Not sure whether perfious mentions it clearly or not. But i am sure people who donot know of that or are unware of that will start using the service and might get used to it also.Mostly young people would use it that what i think.
• September 15, 2009, pranav commented: i think it does -- or rather, it needs to. Else, i dont see a way by which it will be able to pull the needed info.
• September 15, 2009, Rajat commented: Yes you are right Pranav. By the way i had been researching this area lately myself as i had been writing a similar product, but it will run on client machine (offline mode) and it will be free . I am going to launch it from www.letthebucksgrow.com (the site doesnot give much details currently) . Seriously need help on improving the overally look and feel, if anybody visiting here wants to join in please ping me at rajat.me@gmail.com. Right now we can upload and parse ICICI transaction in my product and categorize and view graphs.Hopefully might support qix format later.
• September 16, 2009, Prasad commented: Hi Rajat and Rakesh, I have been using Perfios for quite some time now and as expected it took time for me to get convinced on the security and privacy issues. Let me tell you what I have learned from many interaction with them . They do not store the password on their servers, they have a patent pending technology which actually allows them to encrypt the password on the user's PC. I even gave it a try by using another computer for my account, after entering the credentials on my laptop. it did NOT autoupdate, and also a pop told me that I am not using my system!! You can interact with Aditya (adi@perfios.com), who is the sales/marketing fellow there. regards, Prasad
• September 16, 2009, Meghana commented: Hi All, Good to see that people are really talking about Perfios. Let me tell u guys, its an amazing website. It has completely automated my accounts, I can forward Mutual Fund and credit card statements, categorize transactions and generate reports like how much did I spend on grocery - compare with last year and many other things!! I have loved it coz its new to me! I guess, its an invite only service as of now. website has all the details. ~Meghana
• September 16, 2009, pranav commented: @ Prasad and Meghana it doesnt take long for someone to figure that you're somehow affiliated with perfios. nothing wrong with it - but if you publicly make that disclosure with your comment, people will take you more seriously rather than perceiving your comments as spam.
• September 16, 2009, Aditya commented: Hi All, If you have more questions on Perfios, please send me an email, I would be glad to answer all of them - adi@perfios.com.
• September 25, 2009, Rajesh commented: I have used Perfios in the past, but somehow it does not feel secure. I even contacted them thorough feed back mail with some security related queries. No response from them till date. Not a good sign.
• October 2, 2009, Kunnath Santhosh commented: Rajesh, Sorry, we did not see your mail. Must have missed it somehow. There is no doubt that one has to be extremely careful about what one discloses on the web and more so if one has to use one's financial institution's credentials. Perfios has highlighted its security model in its site as well as its application (surely, we need to talk a lot more). To reiterate...unlike many online sites, we DO NOT store any financial institution credentials on our server. All userids and password are encrypted and stored locally on the user's machine. To protect your privacy, we do not ask anything more than an email id and the same is not shared with anyone. The data stored in your account is protected and accessed (not viewed) only for the perpose of taking backups. A user is free to take out all the data he has, in an excel format, delete his accounts and walk out any time she wants. That is the level of transparency and flexibility we would like to provide for our users. Disclosure: I am the co-founder of Perfios. Regards --Santhosh