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Interesting Post
Where Are India’s Innovative Companies, Products and Solutions?
India produces some of the brightest minds in technology, science and medicine yet has not demonstrated any truly large scale and breakthrough innovations in those fields. more here
I mean…..why NOT fill the gaps?
This might be very personal, but I doubt it can be avoided. For the past two years, there has been a lot of time, commitment, travel, stress, energy, and personal money that has gone into a really ridiculous goal - one of creating a culture of oneness, open communication and one where startups stand a chance to win. The mission does go on, and I strongly believe that the journey lies ahead for a few more years, before we can step back and let things slide on its own.
But this is not about what I am doing. This is about what is happening.
They say, that what is nice from far is far from nice. Once you get into the ground, roll up your sleeves and start digging, you start to smell the intentions of a lot of well-to-do people, which kinda make you wonder a lot of things. This post is one of warning for the startup community to take heed from, so that you don’t allow yourself to be exploited mercilessly, by any means.
Continue reading ‘Startups Exploited: An Open Letter.’
Compared to how things were a few years back, the Startup Community has come together in such a fabulous way. We have OpenCoffee Club meets, Startup Lunches, Startup Saturdays, Mobile Mondays, Barcamps, Ideacamps etc, etc, and the plethora of other activities that organizations such as TiE, NEN, NASSCOM, etc are providing to benefit this same target audience.
All that said, we understand that most of these benefits are enjoyed by those who live in the major cities, and in most cases in the cities down south. There hasnt been much activities going on in cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkatta, Ahmedabad or any where in Kerala to bring the community together and to share, ask questions, and receive support from one another.
In an attempt to bridge that, we are hosting an online meet this Saturday [today] at 3pm at http://chat.proto.in. Most of you would know how to login, and the process is quite simple. Visit the URL, enter a nickname and you could join in.
If you would be participating, do post a comment to this post, and feel free to ask any questions if you do have any. You are also more than welcome to invite your friends, should they be interested, and ask them to join.
I look forward to seeing you there, if Possible.
PS: The Client is tested to work on an Iphone, and quite beautifully. Also if your phone as an IRC client, you could participate, on the move.
(3 votes, average: 2 out of 5)
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One year down the launch of commercial model of plugHR in April 2007, chasing a million dollar first year dream, plugHR proved the concept by reaching almost half of targetted numbers.
So HR can be delivered through autoserve platform, is what some two dozen CEOs experienced with plugHR managers driving their HR strategies in a highly motivated manner. Ofcourse, we faced all sorts of things along the way. But with renewals happening now, plugHR is targetting 100 companies on its platform by March 2009.
Idea is simple, we set up and run HR department for companies. 15 days and a simple sign up is all it takes to get HR department up and running with standard delivery model, professional manager on site and sharp Project manager bringing in supervision. We cleared some serious bandwidth for CEOs last year.
Not to miss, cost of running HR department crashes to half. Quite naturally then, all our clients came in through client references only & we remained geography independant. We did Mumbai, Delhi, Nasik, Singapore, attempting New Jersey, Bangalore now.
plugHR product portfolio ensures that there’s a suitable format for every size of company. Our smallest client is 7 people 
I can be reached on 9870257257.
(3 votes, average: 3 out of 5) Loading ...Seems like we are not the only set of folks who are wanting to fix the problems we see around us and build a “sustainable” atmosphere around us. There is a post by Ryan who runs FOWA taking a stance against the Web Mission effort that is getting organized by the UK Government and quite a fair list of heavy weights, including Techcrunch. I think this post is important to observe for a couple of reasons.
The striking similarities that we hear from folks around us in:
1. Thinking that the Silicon valley for some reason offers more opportunities.
2. Europe just like India, in most cases, seems to think that you only get funded if you hit the valley. Atleast we aren’t that bad. We have much more easier access to capital.
3. There are folks like FOWA (Future of Web Apps) who are trying to build a vibrant community of users, developers and startups in Europe, very much like how we are working on the same - with arguments that they have “everything that they require right there”
4. There are also people, most of them, who seem to think that the UK companies should be looking into the valley for users and potential exit strategies.
I’ve been working on a post that shows a snapshot of interaction between startups, venture capitals and the markets from across the globe - the valley, Canada, Australia, Europe and India. You’d be surprised how similar most conversations are. Trust me, things are not so hard because we are in India, neither too easy because we are here. We are just facing the same harsh realities as anywhere else. Perhaps the world is flatterning. Huh! who thought I’d agree to that, so easily!
I’ll leave you with this comment by Phil Bradley in that post, which just gets the message home without any explanations:
“The equity gap between seed and series A that plagues the UK will not be resolved if we can’t demonstrate maturity and ability to build profitable businesses.”
That just eerily sounds like the issue we face here.
PS: I haven’t thought through this yet, but I believe this only applies to Internet/Media related startups.
(4 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...Ever since the journey with Proto.in started, about two years ago, I can safely say that I’ve sifted through atleast 300+ company profiles. I’ll hit you with the bad news first: Most of them are hopeless. They are half-baked solutions. They probably are great hobby projects and shouldn’t even allowed to be classified as a “startup” or a Product. Most of them lack business sense - to the point that if you did get a chance to see some of them, you might totally lose hope on the startup scene in India altogether.
Of course, the good news, is that the evolution is happening extremely rapidly. I am seeing lesser and lesser of the type of companies that I described above, and more holistic companies starting to appear. So what’s the issue? Not all is happy and merry yet.
Lately, I am seeing quite a bit of companies that seem to be addressing some very valid problems, and coming up with solutions that do make sense and would work. The only issue is that since most of them have a problem hiring, and a much bigger issue validating the concept and running the pilot that they end up building one piece of the puzzle and it takes them far too long to roll out the “solution”. The funny thing is that, mentally I can clearly see that there are different pieces of the same puzzle being put together by different groups. I simply can’t understand why they can’t collaborate and work together to target the problem.
So, yes, there are issues with this. First of all, since all of them are startups, and all being run by founders, there would be some issues with personality clashes as to how things are done. But lets face it. There are atleast seven players for every single component that is being made for the same problem out there. I think there are plenty of options of teams to choose from.
Before I do get blamed for pulling this out of thin air, here’s an example of something that works somewhere else. There is a Firm that I am aware of that operates out of an emerging nation. The way they work is that they fund certain entities to create knowledge and IP. Their IP could be as simple as a new recipe for a cake (quite seriously!). The firm identifies entrepreneurs in a location, and helps this entrepreneur create a franchisee location, and is given the know-how as to how to create these recipes and sell them. He is given just about six months of time when he is hand-held and guided on the art of running a businesses.
Six months later, the firm goes and finds an entrepreneur, exactly in the opposite side of the country and does the same thing. Follows up in another three months with another entrepreneur in another location, etc etc and repeats all above steps till they have five or six stable entrepreneurs who are running local units in different parts across the country. Then their only focus is to pump all their energy, and resources into these five units and watch with whom the entrepreneurial leadership kicks in. Once that is identified, they create a new entity, merge all these five units under it, place this “leader” as the manager, and take a stake out of this new entity.
The positive note for the firm in all this is that, they take equity out of a firm which has a high chance of success since its run by not one but five entrepreneurs who are well versed in the same business, understand local diversity, and have crossed the issue of scalability, and probably are leaders and hence will ensure that their local unit grows and thrives.
If you take that model and see how to apply a version of it in the context of India, and the technology space, I’d say that for most problems, the solution is broken and built by various companies - mostly small teams, two or three people. It would be interesting for a firm, or an incubator to pick a aching problem, and bring together startups who are building pieces of the puzzle. Come up with a formula (perhaps on revenue, team size, and product readiness) as metrics and figure out the percentage each company will hold, on a new entity that will be created and promoted as the solution to this problem.
Simple case in point: Ordering Food over the net. It is going to require a hotel network front, a logistics front, and perhaps a LBS, technology front. Hungry Bangalore + OrderMonger + Yulop is a solution to go with. You at least need these three bare minimum teams to come together if the Seamless web is the kind of end-result that they are aiming for. I am sure there are other alternatives and maybe other elements as well, that other companies can bring in.
Firms, since they do enjoy the same bird’s eye view that Proto.in enjoys can definitely put together this high level working arrangement, and someone will have to “architect” and manage these teams, atleast initially till their co-existence structure gets ironed out and they find their roles. But its certainly do-able.a
I strongly believe that this kind of lego-work will probably increase a few more holistic startups in the indian scene. If it does come together and work, it will probably one of the most high energy teams, since all the founders will be the guys who will be driving this, and there is no comparison to that - ever.
Related Posts:
A New Kind of Incubation Model. Part I
A New Kind of Incubation Model. Part II
Please leave your comments and what you think here
(2 votes, average: 1.5 out of 5) Loading ...Even after all these years of the so-called IT revolution, India is still struggling for a business/company that has created intellectual capital and has thus created a true enterprise with roots in research and development. I think its about time to take stock and figure out why.
No one would dispute that India has all it takes to create sustainable, world-class IP businesses. We have the requisite manpower. We have the intellectual prowess. We have the infrastructure (at least at few places). And we have people who can be effective leaders and mentors. All the pieces of jigsaw puzzles are there. Someone just needs to put all of them at one place at the same time.
This is where the story becomes interesting. People are scattered across geography and time. And these pieces don’t know that they are parts of something bigger and they all can play a role. Even if they realize that they can take their ideas to fruition, they don’t know where and how to find complementary skill-sets. We need something, a system probably to help these people come together.
Reminds me of classical markets. Every buyer knows that they will find the best sellers at the market place and every seller knows that they will find the most generous and knowledgeable buyers at the market. Everyone converges to the market and everyone goes back happy.
A look at all great places to work would reveal that people thrive in presence of great minds around them. Everyone learns off each other and collectively the tribe becomes stronger. Starting with Microsoft, moving on to Google and now Facebook, most technology people want to be at a place where they can be pushed and challenged by their peers and they can enrich their experiences. Microsoft, Google and Facebook are like above-mentioned markets. Programmers, Coders, Managers and even Chefs are jumping the gun and looking for better place. A place where all great minds converge and learn off each other and grow individually (and obviously to a place that gives them stock options).
India today needs someone to create such markets that enables people with complementary skills to come together and get them start talking to each other. Events like barCamps, OCC, MOMO and websites like VentureWoods, pluggd.In are doing it to some extent.
And now the questions. Are they really sufficient? Are they enabling people spread across geographies to come together? More importantly so these people have complementary skill sets? Any critics? Thoughts? Opinions?
P.S.: The title might be an misnomer … Originally posted here.
Don Dodge covers the Angel Capital report from Center for Venture Research for the US Angel space. Some quick stats:
I believe that angel investment is not just a function of putting money, but about deep understanding of specific sectors, and hence the ability to value-add in those kinds of investments. The formation of angel groups is another enabler, as it provides diversification, with the same money and time commitment. I would love to get the group’s views on what can be done to encourage and facilitate more angel investments in India.
(6 votes, average: 1.5 out of 5) Loading ...Ok folks… all who answered/commented and even those who didnt; I’ve added a final comment– that wraps my last post… feel free to check it out if you’re interested.
To skeptics, who’d say “what difference does it make ?”; I’d say it makes a lot of difference:–
- because if a individual who believes in his killer-diller crisis management skills to ultimately save the day is faced with a organization that’s judging people on planning– then there’s a chance that crisis-management and risk taking would be seen as the cause of the problem– and hence punishable– rather than a hallmark for which a person should be rewarded.
- similarly; in a scenario, where the culture of a place emphasises conformity… and no conscious top-level attempt is being made to see that people are not punished for non-conformity; then, there’s a chance that projects will suffer because people wont go the extra mile– if conforming means toeing a middle-manager’s line… and folks who do go the extra mile, might just get badly punished… and there would be no cultural reason to break from hierarchy to raise a voice…
- even more so if even HR in a company believes that someone who goes the extra mile is not being heroic but rather being a simple-ton… and not reading the writing on the wall that toeing a line gets growth… and responsibility which in term brings rewards.
In that situation going the extra mile might just be a thankless job for which a person may end up being thought of a simpleton who can be punished and used and thrown away…
Nightmare scenarios the above may sound like… but they are scenarios I have scene and even experienced… but at the same time, these are not scenarios I’d lecture ex-colleagues or ex-bosses about… and that’s the reason I touch upon some of these…
More comments and shared experiences are welcome… and yeah… I hope I’m making sense….
Also, I am happy to hear from all of you.
I can be reached on:
nsnsns(at)gmail(dot)com
I believe we are racing towards a global economy. With th US economy getting colder, the heat is quickly going to turn to India to kick off and see some high returns quickly. That’s a theory that I am going with, for now.
Here’s a snapshot of the Global Telecom market. It helps to keep this chart in the back of your mind.
PS: India is the lowest in terms of “Wireless Data ARPU”.
Credit: I stole this from Alec Saunders’ Blog.
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