Archive for the ‘NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0’ Category

Exploring Business Opportunities in Germany at NASSCOM 53rd EMERGE Friday’s 2.0

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Nov
13

As the Official Blogger for the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0, many people ask me, that I would surely have a plethora of knowledge with me, as I have the opportunity to attend all the sessions and also since I LIVE blog the sessions, I must be highly attentive.

Today I again am excited to bring forth the high worth and value knowledge which gets created at the NASSCOM EMERGE Friday’s 2.0 and am glad to be making it alive for all of you who could not be present at the session, though we would love to have more participation along and expand the community.

Today we have Ulrich Bäumer, Partner, Osborne Clarke and BITKOM representative and Asha-Maria Sharma, Senior Manager, Service Industries, Germany Trade and Invest GmbH, giving us an insight into the German ICT environment and business verticals for partnership as identified by Germany Trade And Investment (GTAI) for Indian companies and important aspects of What works and what doesn’t in M&A, overview of the legal and practical ways of doing business in Germany.

The room is full and well, its interesting to know how many people in the room want to understand the German market. So we have the session with a brief introduction on what Germany Trade and Invest is.

  • Promoting Germany’s advantages as a prime location for foreign investors in hi-tech industries
  • Collecting and processing economic data and information about industries, tender procedures, legaal frameworks etc.

Interestingly, the investors consultancy part of the company, is into much diversified scope:

  • Renewable Energies and Resources
  • Chemicals and Healthcare
  • Mechanical and Electronic
  • Service Industries

We are now getting to know what it is all about being in Germany, with the geographical location to the travel time. To know how blackberry and Vodafone and such large companies are actually settling in Germany. Pros and Cons of different places for your business ill be different and you need to understand that, with relevance to your business.

We are talking clusters in Germany now, I am interested to know this space, as its pretty big a space in India as well and some really interesting work is on with respect to them.

Germany offers different incentive packages to re-imburse an investment project’s expenditures

With the market volume of above 133 billion Euros Germany’s ICT industry ranks second in Europe. These are interesting figures. in 2008 German companies closed a good number of BPO and IT deals, hence there is a plenty of space.

Germany is the most lucrative software market in Europe, accounting for 26.1% of the EU market value. We are talking about the diversification of software market in Germany.

There is a good presence of the SME industry in Germany and it could surely be of interest to many of you

Talking Green!

Green ideas in IT and Green through IT, is what we are working on this and should you have products under this umbrella, you should definitely explore Germany.

Software Security is one area which we are really concerned about. We have had cases with data loses with social networks and as anyone, we Germans are surely much sensitive about our personal information, hence there is good space in the domain. Embedded systems market is of a fairly good size in Germany and you will also find clusters in the Southern part related to the domain.

Germany has by far the highest number of internet users in Europe creating large potential for business

  • E-commerce
  • Gaming market
  • Online Advertising

I am personally amazed with the numbers on the slides, especially for the gaming and online advertising, which is showing a huge surge. German companies are moving from Print to Online.

  • Market growth areas: Green IT + E-Energy + E-health
  • Mobil apps: Increase in non-voice-services
  • Embedded systems
  • IT Services and Software

And now we are talking about the automotive industry in Germany, which to mention also is the home for Mercedez. The small manufacturers are spread across Germany and there is no one hub/ cluster.

I suggest the best way to get in touch is to attend conferences and other events to know the suppliers and other specific information you require about your business.

And now we have Ulrich, thanking everyone in the room, for whom this is the 12th visit to India. I advise SME’s in Germany also to get to India. And Ulrich shares the agenda for the session:

Interestingly we are going to discuss, Co-operation between Indian and German Companies. We have a very different law in Germany and its completely different in almost every way than what you have in India. Hence you need to understand the basic laws which are very important before you sign up your first customer in India.

You must definitely thank your peer Indian IT companies, who ventured into Germany 10-15 years back, coz they had to persuade German people, for the price and quality and hence for you guys its easier now to reach out to the German companies, which buy Indian IT not just because of the price, but for the quality as well.

So we have started with the introduction for the Law company which is Osborne Clarke. Very ineresting to know how many people they have helped set up in Germany. There are surely some very interesting and Big Indian names on the list that we have on screen.

Co-operation in Germany

  • Merger
  • Acquisition
  • JV
  • Partnership
  • Build Operate Transfer – It Outsourcing
  • Indo-German Strategic Alliance

Many of our M&A’s have been extremely successful and have been running for 10-15 years. Ulrich is sharing the previous success stories that they have created, and these also include some real big Indian corporate names.

So now we are discussing Common Law and Civil Laws in Germany which are surely an absolute necessity for you to set up in Germany.

Common Law (inductive)

Problem -> Judgement -> Ratio decidendi

Civil Law (deductive)

Statute -> Problem -> Application

I am very impressed with the way, Ulrich has simply explained the entire difference between the Common and Civil Laws and how can you in simple measures look at what you can expect when you reach the German shores, or establish out of India. Ulrich is very interestingly raised the awareness of the people in the room and sure all are all ears!

Now we are getting an insight into the European Legal System. Well, sure the German Law is definitely different from how we operate in India. And now gets answered the question, of many a people who wanted to know about Branch offices and how to set them up in Germany.

The outsourcing market is growing in Germany and I think in 2010 the curve will continue to grow up

Good to see how the Indian IT Services industry has grown and set foot in Germany. And well this figure has raised since 2007. Service providers have now crossed out to the other side.

Have you ever thought about off-shoring: 27% of the part said to this that they have larger projects already LIVE which have been off-shored. If we do off-shoring, we do it to India, is what the 67% of the people who answered this sample survey said. Some really interesting figures, being shared by Ulrich.

I personally dont see a single Chinese company, to overtake any of the large Indian IT service companies. China will NOT be a challenge in the near future for the Indian ITeS market.

In the Non Voice market, I dont see players as large as those in India, challenging the Indian players.

Language barrier is a comfort issue, in my experience it has been like: 80% of the deals across the table have happened in English. Its always good to have a native speaker, but its not a necessity.

Ulrich again shares the 8 key issues which you can face in your outsourcing contract in Germany.

  • warranty
  • Liability
  • Acceptance
  • Delay
  • Change requests
  • etc.

Talking about warranty, liability and guaranty. Well, yes the entire room is interested in this conversation. Ulrich presents the whole idea of liability with very simply presented examples. Well liability without any limitation under German law, implies fully, if you have not mentioned anything about it in your contract. Eyes get raised at such a point.

The data protection laws in Germany are surely something to learn from. The labour laws are surely pretty strict in Germany. The session is interactive and there are good questions coming from the audience.

And now we end with the session with the audience still very interested and questions pouring in with respect to IPR and other related to the IT services.

Its been a good session and I feel good to know about Business in Germany, thanks to Asha and Ulrich for their precious time.

The Special NASSCOM CEO’s forum with Mr. Bill Gates on Transforming India Through Technology Celebrating NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 50th Session

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Jul
24

Som Mittal, Sachin Pilot & Mr. Bill GatesWell, here I am LIVE blogging Transforming India through Technology by Mr. Bill Gates the special NASSCOM CEO’s Forum at Hotel Taj, New Delhi. The room is full to the brim and I am glad to be LIVE blogging one of my inspirations as an entrepreneur.

Okay, so I have the stage set in front of me and Mr. Bill Gates is talking about technology and now he is praising India and the national identity project. Looking at this visionary, his words are making a deep impact to the entire room, he is talking about the technology and the future.

Interesting to know how Microsoft labs is innovating. Where can IT help those, who are in the most need. This is an area where its very easy to go wrong. Its very easy to say that we have the software which will help them. Its easy to fool yourselves that this thing will really count. Therefore all this would take time for the benefits to come out.
Kiosks are an ambitious goal. Interestingly Bill is talking about simplicity of systems and how dramatic changes are happening in coming down the learning curve.

Many of these ideas don’t work, but we need to look at what we can do.

Work Of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
Is very much about the needy. 20% of the children who are born here, don’t get immunized and hence ehty die. They don’t get the right nutrition. I am particularly impressed with Bill’s amazing knowledge and the way he is present to the small things which are making a huge impact to the society at large.

Science is coming up with new vaccines. We have also got the govt to look at more investment in health, education, infrastructure. Broadband, kiosk encouragement. India is taking its confidence and is very innovative. There is even a sense a competition, and Bill says that he thinks its very healthy.
Competition with India and China, we are looking at what they have done good and what we could learn from them. Interestingly, Bill has now touched the word startup and how universities are working along them.

Can we double the number of kids getting immunization?

Education is an area where we haven’t seen much advance,. 100 years ago you had a chalkboard and a teacher writing on it. How different is education today? May you could get  notes on the net. But it hasn’t radically changed.
The Microsoft group is working some very innovative ideas and we are taking some of the best teachers globally and creating videos and providing them for free. So the students have the best lectures. By just having the study groups that are lot more interactive, and this is a big part that can be shared and the competition is making it better and better all the time.

Just think of the impact that this will have. Training a farmer on the rice seeds that can be planted. Im particularly impressed with Bills simple but amazingly high vision.

I think we can set very concrete and ambitious targets.

Its okay to be optimistic because , this is a period where we have more and more smart people. It is fantastic that this country has not pulled back the investment on education and technology and we are taking things to the next level.
I am optimistic as ever and next time im here we would see some bright innovations in making things faster than we can predict them.

And now we have Mr. Som Mittal taking the session into the Q&A mode.

Q. India will have the largest youth population in the world over 20 years, and we have to make sure of adequate infra and good teachers. How can tech help?

A. Bill: there are some of these wireless approaches that will get more economic overtime. Interenet cafes are a big resource that we can look at. We also need to keep in mind as the cell phone becomes more and more powerful, we can look at taking this device to a new level while still keeping it in a price range that is still attractive.
Quality teacher, that is a tough problem. It’s a personnel system and we need to be good about testing them in terms of their ability. We have got a crisis in the US. The country has done well partly becoz we educate the best students. Education was a thing that pushed US into such a strong position and now we need to renew that.
And this surely is not a easy problem. Keeping in mind how important education is, which in India is a much eager issue, I do think that in terms of measurements and training some technology would facilitate it, but it’s the system which thrives on quality.

Q. Does Bill gates want to completely shut of all the tech?

A. And the room laughs. I am not a 24/7 computer person. And I read a lot. I am not that big on text messaging and am impressed with young people who do it. I love e mail. Ideally a lot of great ideas when I go off right reading articles when I am completely isolated from everything, even emails.
All these tools of technology let us waste our time if we are not careful we have to be disciplined in using them and not get offtrack.
Overall I never feel overwhelmed with technology.

Q.  Sangeeta from the audience: one of the more fascinating aspect is your ability to combine the knowledge of technology into healthcare and especially in India, I would like to know more about it?

A. Bill: a half of what the gates foundation does is more of healthcare related. Bill is talking about, Indian companies and how these are great participants in the network. In healthcare delivering through technology is very difficult. This requires reaching out to communities and creating an environment of trust and this is difficult.
Over last 5 years we have learnt a lot and have created a model that we can apply to the presnt challenges. Heavy business intelligence is surely one of the many practices which are coming out of the work. Some of the statistics are surely showing progress, including the work of keeping HIV in this country leveled, though small, but surely it is happening.

Q. Mr. Mittal is now posing a question about how technology is coming and if there is something going to come which would dramatically change that?

A. Bill: The dream of healthcare has always been to have the person with the expertise be in the same location where the patient is. For a lot of things, the idea pf connecting the cell phone being used for a simple thing like blood test and al lthe data is sent in somewhere where it could be worked upon. The cell phone can also be turned into a microscope….i am amazed at the things Bill are talking about.
What we need is a combination of drugs and vaccines which are critical.  By having these virtual systems with which we can turn and reach to patients. In US we have developed a model and how to manage and develop these systems.

Q. I am overwhelmed with the coverage given to the topic of healthcare. Chairman batra hospital with his two questions:

  1. in a country like this, where I have the privilege of participating in the national decision making, I have the problem of having access to patient records at the point.
  2. how does technology bring in a change in attitude where observing and putting information in the reocrsds and how clinical research could be worked upon through IT?

A. Bill: I think the first application that the ID system might have is getting the immunization up. The idea of just carrying your cellphone and get to know who is missing the immunization in this area and surely it does require a lot to be done for this. But I think it could be piloted in a large area within three years. It seems reasonable enough to me. Those workers are very open minded. There are also lots of privacy issues, which would need to be tackled as well. And privacy laws in the US says we don’t want medical records.

So in the more complex systems the task would be difficult, but things could be thought through very carefully.

Q. President Obamas’ Bangalore to buffalo? In a global world can artificial barriers be created?

A. Bill: well, im sure Indian politician can rather create jobs in Bangalore than buffalo. Fortunately job market is not a zero sum market. The total number of jobs will grow. If we were sitting in 1800 we will not have been able to say that there would be lawyers and other professions. But we do know that as innovation goes full speed, then jobs get created as the society gets rich, even though we cannot predict in advance.

If a country does not let smart people let into its region with immigration laws, its damaging to that country. In the long run the smart people that we took from the IIT’s a couple of years back, we got bad press in the US and in India.

The US congress is very tough in immigration, but I think there should be differences for smart people. The Canadian govt has a policy that a person with MS with hundred thousand a year, they want the person.
Who knows that the things may change and I cannot predict it. Microsoft is very vocal that it would be a huge mistake. In case of India the country is not restricting the cross movement of smart people.

Q. You did mention about the UID project, that we just launched. What will be your advice to Nandan.

A. Bill: I am seeing him tonight. And I’ll be fascinated to know what he is looking at. MS will be surely interested in associating to the project. We need to make sure the technology is used in the perfect way in this project. There are ways to do inexpensive cards, the digital chip technology is one method.
There are though pluses and minuses of these things though and MS labs is working on some innovative projects in the direction. In the US the computers might know a lot about you.
The banking and the healthcare should be two applications should be at the top of the list that we would like to see.

Q. Mr, Munjal from the auto industry? I would like to address the issue of distribution to the needy, the govt does a lot but we all know that most of it does not get to the user. So  in India how are you facing this issue?

A. Bill: We are not just in India. But we are also in Africa, and there what really lacks is the roads and it’s a disaster. The green revolution could not have had a broad impact it had if it had not been for the roads. The basic infra investments, you just cannot get away  from that. There is nothing like in the magic world of IT that will make the physical things go away, but food, cars, will always be the physical things which are the most efficient things to reach out.
There would be innovative models that would be followed in India. Today the inefficiencies in the distribution is fairly high in India.

Medicine is easier than Money

It’s a very tricky issue to get involved in looking that the money gets to the people who need it and not to the already based. It’s a tough problem. The govt here has to act in various ways of reporting back information.
I think cell phones are a great way to know that the service was not delivered to the right people. We can create a database that somehow people would start believing that there would be a strong follow up and it would not be as easy executing the same and not many have thought of this yet.

Sachin Pilot: the real trouble lasts in the last mile distribution. If you have things digitized where you need to have social audits and you would have things transparent. You would have to create ways like federal govts, state govt, panchayats.

Leakages are there, but we need to keep innovating and have more transparencies.

Q. Social Networking? You see it moving where for business?

A. Bill: SN is kind of a buzz word to be honest. Electronic communication has had many versions and now we have got in the framework of who are my friends, this is highly assymetric. Those relations but are not really flexible. There are 10,00 friends at facebook and I let it go.
We are working with facebook and now Bill mentions twitter. This stuff continues to evolve. An equivalent is taking place in the business world where you can be connected with you team. There is some sort of crossover happening. Your community and company are somewhat separate. You may have a fairly different persona at your workplace than what you are.
Its not such a big boundary connecting it with the cell phone. I think there are lots of innovations happening in the space.

Q. The mobile in India, how can you simplify the message to adopt of a Rs. 5 polio vaccine than a 10 cent ringtone?

A. Bill: People probably know that it looked almost different 3 years back, but now we are almost eradicating polio in India. If mothers know they are protecting their child from paralysis and we really spread the word and generate the general demand.
We generally educate people and how we reach out to communicate that with all the clutter of the promotional campaign. It’s a challenge. What I see is young people doing a lot of these things both in India and in the US. And I feel we need more people like this, and there is massive room for innovation, in making sure these issues get the right promotion they deserve.

Q. Would be great to hear your views on bringing everybody together sharing the common goals to make something big happen?

A. Bill: I think that there is a lot of cases gathering people with similar skill sets is not difficult. When you mentioned energy, it’s an area im putting a lot of time recently. Getting cheap energy is highly crucial. We need low cost energy. We want energy that costs a quarter that it costs today and it has no bad effects on environment.
I met GE CEO last week, talking about the same. I am also backing a lot of startups working on these ideas into energy. There are lots of innovative guys who are working on these solutions and some which I am backing.
All we need is need 3-4 of them to create big breakthroughs and fortunately we have a lot of talent in India, US, China and we need to get the govt in dialogue in promoting these innovations. Only innovation is gonna let you have create such possibilities.

The more time I spend on these innovations, the more optimistic I get.

Q. Pradeep from Cybermedia….factors making Bill move from foundations to MS?

A. Bill: NO. I love the work happening and I spend some of my time in this great stuff. But the idea of health is still in the earlier stage. How do you take successes and built structures around them.
This is a field that’s more or like computing in the 1970’s. its not a case where the framing of a entrepreneur is not as necessary than healthcare and reaching out to the people who need it the most. And I am loving my work with no second thoughts. That was my attitude when I was at MS and now I am fanatical full time about the foundation.
MS needs to take their own decisions now.

Q. What is the future of search?

A. Bill: its Bin. Search is not the ultimate today. The 10 links are not what people want. Even though its cool, search should still be dramatically better and its great that MS has signed up higher grade people and do innovative work.

Q. 30 years back did you see yourself doing the same work that you are doing today? What was your inner voice? What motivated you to get this off?

A. Bill: Great question. There are several things that put me on the path.

  1. If you see the circumstances that people live in are so disparate. My view is if you give these things to your kids, its bad for the society and not just for your kids.
  2. A big influence on me were my parents who exposed me to some amazing things.
  3. Warren buffet cemented me on such things. And due to him we have double the resources that we had otherwise. And thankfully while I was at MS we had a team of dedicated 600 people who were working smart. I am having a lot of fun doing it.

I hope that there is something here that wil l have an impact whether on the rich people in the US or rich people here.

49th session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 Discussing Solutions that have worked for Product companies

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Jul
14

Here I am Live Blogging the second Un-conference session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 at the NASSCOM HQ in New Delhi. This session is the second in the series of the initiative by NASSCOM for creating a common ground for the Product companies in India. The topic we are discussing today is: Solutions by Product Companies.

We have Ankur Lal, CEO Infozech Software, leading the session along with Arvind Jha of Movico Technologies. We also have Mr. Sharad Sharma – Chair, NASSCOM Product forum.

Okay so we have Mr. Sharad starting the session with a few laughs. Like many of you Im in the mode of becoming an entrepreneur again! I am also currently an entrepreneur in residence with CANNAN PARTNERS.

Sharad, is now sharing his thoughts on how the community can come together in creating an ecosystem. We as NASSCOM ahould also be looking at the other side of the table. i.e. he demand side and not just the delivery side of the equation. Sharad shares an interesting side story of 3M. In the early days of the CD media becoming popular this man he went to the chair and showed the CD and he was turned down. But the next time he did by positioning it the way that its the surface and not the CD/media that is there. Wallah, the rest is history.

What’s Cooking?

Mr. Sharad is now sharing on how NASSCOM is looking to create possibilities for the industry. interestingly Sharad is sharing some very bright ideas which he and the team at NASSCOM are trying to implement specifically aimed at SME’s and SMB’s. Sharad is surely sharing some really good ideas which if given life, could surely lay down a good path and make the journey smoother.

And since this is an Un-conference session, we now have the participants sharing their thoughts on what Sharad just shared with the community.

Sharad: One of the request that often comes back to NASSCOM from product companies is “Can you help us get buyers”. What we have found is, ther real value that NASSCOM can bring is to really grow the market and hold events where buyers and sellers could meet. What we can do is examine on behalf of these companies we could promote the voice.

Lack of project management and product marketing talent in India is a point shared by one of the participants in the room. Its because of the ecosystem. I definitely dont want NASSCOM to sell my product, I need help in developing the ecosystem.

Sharad: Our buyers are afraid of buying products from the small companies.

“No product that I know of has been successful, that has not been developed in the shadow of friendly sophisticated users”

Sharad: What is happening is that we dont have traction to the products, services are not present like force which could help us reach out.

Arvind: Product management and marketing is going to come out of your domestic customer knowledge. I believe that we will have the largest success for a product in the mobile side as we are the largest user base of mobiles.

Participant: Why not think about launching the next Google/Yahoo from India.

Arvind: There is nothing restrciting us from being there.

Ankur: We are the leaders in terms of these 400 million users. I would not be surprised if we have these small Google(s) coming out of India in another couple of years from now.

Participant: I see more and more companies fading out to the more lucrative services space. The DNA of the Indian industry to reamin/focus into the services domain is something which impacts the product.

Ankur: The challenge is that a small product company has to be dealt with safe hands. In the US there is this small companies fund. the government there supports these small businesses. What you need is a forgiven customer.

Challenges faced by Product Companies

So now we are discussing the challenges faced by product companies which we also did discuss the previous session on the product companies here at NASSCOM. Arvind is leading this part of the session, with the entire room being concentrated to the challenges and surely everyone in the room is agreeing to the same.

Arvind: In the spirit of what has worked, we should look at what companies can look at from these successes.

And now we have companies sharing with the room, their products and experiences

Participant: The planning that we do for the product business cycle is not complete. We dont really understand what to do after we have built the product.

So we have Tarun Anand, CTO, mScriber, its s speech training application. Tarun shares how they have been working on the same for the past 2 years and how they realised that its just the tip of the iceberg. We were lucky to get some early customers, but its harder for us to get the second set of customers.

You just have to wait it out and you have to watch what happens

What we realised, is that even if you have an engine, you still have to go to the customer with the 4 wheels, and the rest so that the customer just plugs in the key and moves on. So we partnered with companies which helped us achieve our objectives, and since we did not have the complete product stack, and hence these partners helped us reach there.

Its really important to see what your route to market is

Our biggest challenge right now is cash flows and we need to address the same.

And now we have RateGain, a company into the Hospitality and Travel Technology Products Company and we have the CEO and Founder sharing his thoughts.

We operate in these niche areas, these products have these niche requirements as a result of which we are pretty successful. And now we have RateGain sharin gthe various offerings they have.

While we were gaining knowlegde, we found that every hotel was published on some website, and we took the intelligent way out, which was more of creating a channel in between for the hotels to reach out with their information.

Sharing the Business Model

We have something called the rate tracking tool, so anybody selling anything online, you would want to know if there are competitive products on competitive prices available? Well, we customized this for the hotels. We found one commercial use of this technology and hence we started with hotels, but now we are launching it for different variants.

Interestingly what we now have is a screen shot of the reports that the product generates for the user. And I must say, is pretty interesting for a good competitive analysis.

  • How did the product come about?

In the US at a point when I returned from there, there were travel sites emerging, and I wanted to build the technology targeting the US consumer and build a metasearch site. And we flipped the Bmodel and created the product for the hotel industry.

If you are working on something new and innovative, customers in the US are pretty collaborative and understanding

Why did it work?

  1. Emerging market need
  2. Niche area/ No limited competition

Recommendation for others:

  1. MR, Market sizing
  2. Test market the product
  3. Agile in bringing product to the market
  4. Greenfield opportunities
  5. SME on board
  6. Passion

We leverage a great great Channel Strategy. We have identified strong players in the hospitality domain and tied up with them.

Okay and now we have RAWZOR standing at the line

Our’s is a product which is similar to winzip but for photographers. We spoke to all the photo editing softwares, to add support to our format, though there was no money involved, but it helped us gain industry support.

There was a lot of resistance from the market, you cannot go on day 1 to Adobe and expect them to support you.

Why did we try this?

First few friends looking to join a startup.

Where did it fail?

  • Lack of experience
  • Lack of discipline

What worked and Why?

Multiple discoveries of the right things to do

I believe we should look inside the team. If you are not good enough in what you are doing, then the level of integrity, honesty and discipline takes a hitm which surely was a challenge for us. People dont know the right things to do and the right things. Its putting people in the right framework to get the right things out of them.

And now we have the founder of Busy Software, Mr, Dinesh, sharing his success story. We have never had big hurdles, though profits have not been huge but somehow things have been moving smoothly.

The problem that we have is that of scaling up. Our challenge is that this market is dominated by Tally which is almost similar to the market and it is available at Zero price.

Now there are benefits to this situation and there are the problems. Such a situation increases the market size, which was good for us. Our pricing strategies is being focused on what Tally has dictated till now. Now the difficult thing is how to sell and how to get into the considerable field of the consumer.

How to get into the consideration set of people – this is our major challenge

Initially we kept the price very low almost 50% of what Tally was. We were not the smartest marketing guys around, but we were sure that we could get the product replicated and we were fool enough to replicate a free software. For us the differentiating factor was getting “Sales Tax” as an inclusive offering.

Our objective was to make people use the software, and we started spreading 90 days free software trial with full functionality on. People tried our software because he has a pain point, thus we pointed on this aspect of the consumer thought process.

Did Tally not include those features?

Well, yes they did, more than 8o% of the features are available, but since we are architectured right from the beginning, and hence that gives us the edge over Tally.

Ankur is now leading the discussion, and we have a request from participants for Ankur to share his story!

What is it that keeps your customer awake at night, if you know this and your product answers the call, well, you have your business – Ankur Lal

And now we have Ankur Lal, sharing his experience. The big problem is, its ironical, software development costs are cheaper in India, if they were expensive, we would not have been discussing this. If you can replicate and duplicate, that is product business.

Participant: we purely lack strategic planning, you begin with a myopic vision in starting out. Interestingly we have people sharing through product management and project management.

The discussion in the room has now shifted to how the ecosystem is getting shaped and it finds people like us at these platforms. And now we have Ankur concluding the session introducing the EMERGE community, and the NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave which is also the 50th session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0.

I am glad to be LIVE blogging the 49th session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0, as today I complete one complete year, LIVE blogging the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0, surely all thanks to Avinash, NASSCOM

Building Software Products for India – 48th Session of NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (Kumud Goel, KLG Systel)

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Jun
13

LIVE Blogging the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 48th session, and well we are going to make it interactive says the session lead Mr. Kumud Goel who is also one of the founding members of NASSCOM and the founder KLG Systel a leading power solutions company in India.

Incidentally its a great day, coz the NASSCOM EMERGE Community turns one today, I must congratulate Avinash (NASSCOM) for the same and now we have the session underway :)

Mr. Kumud Goel a technology veteran for over 25 years, is leading the session. We have Ankur Lal, CEO, Infozech Software introducing to the audience and well as usual we have the participants introducing themselves to the entire audience.

I am surely glad to be LIVE blogging the 48th session and well, always get excited to feel as we near the 50th session. Interestingly we have quite a diverse audience related to the product space today.

I am a case study of failures – shares Mr. Kumud and though this was said at the end, I would want to start my blog with it.

Kumud is interestingly sharing an incident from his life and my respects to the man as for young entrepreneurs like me, its surely highly invigorating and a great learning to interact with learned people like Kumud. And well, let me not keep it a secret anymore. Kumud is sharing the story of NASSCOM.

When we went to COMDEX years back, nobody used to talk to an Indian

That is when this desire of fighting these people came in me and I had a lot of experience in programming and I started my company which had only emotions behind it and no business plan.

On my first wedding anniversary my father told me that you have no money in the back and hence I gave away my dream of creating software for the rural India. At that time most Indian company did the right thing by making things for the foreign market but we were again at the step when we were looking at a product for the Indian market.

After 25 years of my experience I today feel taht what is more important out of a business model and a feeling is feeling, coz I believe that the business model shall follow

Once you have made an emotional decision of making a product for India, there were two drawbacks…I was at the Silicon Valley two weeks back and I met this guy who is regarded as one of the best deal makers in the tech space, and he told me that Kumud what you are doing is worth 500 million dollars and since you are sitting in India it is worth 20 million dollars. I had to go to the IBM’s of the world and get a recommendation that my technology is good.

All the great companies in the US have come about and have based out of the fact that the government has helped them. The SME’s in India who innovate do not have their path as easy.

The tendering system in Government of India is such that an SME cannot ever go up.

Today US is making money out of innovation and not selling someone else’s goods. Kumud now shares a highly interesting insight into the Chinese government way of working and wow I am amazed. Well, I think this is an applausible moment and I am saying this for the first time in a NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 session, Kumud has broken the wall and is now talking about what NASSCOM should really be doing for the SME’s.

Start-ups and small companies have to get reservation in the government and NASSCOM should take care of that

There Is NO CORRUPTION in INDIA

Do what they want you to, don’t fight them…its your dream, coz you are giving them a poison which will kill them automatically. Corruption is not a hinderance, it is a way to survive. And for the first time I am supporting Kumud on this coz he shows tthe audience the bigger picture.

  • Your cash flow has to be positive, your spirit should not go negative, you have to live through those initial years. for sometime you need to live like a rat if you want to survive.

And now Kumud shares a story on a book he read “the saga of Dharampuri”, which he is relateing to the Indian IT industry. We have so gotten accustomed to the white man that we cannot think of anything out of it.

This life for ME is so shameful that after being 25 years into the industry, I still don’t have a world class  product

The govt. of India will spend 5000 crores dollars to the MS’s of the world and lets say there are 5000 SME’s from India, now if I divide 5000 what do you get? But how many companies are standing today for it?

Psychologically we need to start thinking of ourselves as better people than the foreign lands. We need to just break out of this trap, coz we actually are better than anybody. If you need to create the best OS from India, you need to have that feeling into you and only then it would happen.

The Indian out there is GOD shares one of the participants from the audience.

You have a dream, great! But you anyhow need money to make sure that you survive and take your dream further. You need to somehow find a way by hook or by crook, to reach that 50-100 crore level, otherwise your so called innovation would die.

I made 3 websites when I had 15 crores in the bank and I wen t overboard, we advertised like hell and people came to us. But because we believed into our stuff so much, we never realised the internet bust, and I went bankrupt. So now we had no money, but we had a dream!

Audacity, Audacity, Audacity and Arrogance

We raised money for about 11 million dollars and that came to us only because we had audacity.

The next I thought what is the next problem in India. And I chanced upon power. You need to be like the James Bond, who would take it the way as if the world wont be no more if my software wont be there. I went and borrowed 137 crores and I developed cleantech technology. And I bet my life on this.

And I bought myself a BMW, because I was going to change the world.

Personally I was broke, my stock is pledged, house with a bank, my wife and kids were the only tangible assets I had. And then I happened.

Innovation is like a black Hole, after a certain time you are dead. But once you are dead what can you do – STOP WORRYING!

You have created the aura of being the biggest player in the power industry and since you have already invested into it, you can demonstrate what you have already implemented. For 25 years you have been waiting to say it and when the big companies of the world come for you, to partner, what do you say…Go to !@#!

If you want to be an Innovator, You have to be a great Gambler as well

Anybody who does not listen to you has to become irrelevant!

The last lesson would be – your dream has to be bigger than the world, you will create the biggest product, all you need to do is to make sure that you get some cash in.

Kumud ends the session with some NASSCOM bashing, which he started the session with on a lighter note. I am certainly with Kumud, as this would surely be great for the entire SME community in India.

Small companies should file for patents and should do them religiously. This shall make sure of a winning road for you.

Now we have the participants sharing their thoughts on the entire topic and I can see the thoughts coming in together in the similar direction.

And now we have the session in the Q&A mode.

Thanks Kumud for an amazing session, I have been blogging the NASSCOM friday’s 2.0 for long, and certainly find you one of the best speakers, sharing from the heart.

NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 47th session on Essential Tools of Sale by Paul Shoker

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May
16

LIVE Blogging the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 47th session, with Paul Shoker speaking on The Essential Tools of Sale at the NASSCOM Headquarters, New Delhi. The room expectedly is full to the brim and well, this is one of the most heavily attended session I have seen in my 10 months blogging the sessions LIVE!!

Okay so we are a go with Paul shaking hands with the entire audience and glad to start the session with Ankur Lal (Founder and CEO, Infozech Software Ltd.) Im always amazed with Ankur’s persona :)

“We always seek to go in front of a customer but when we are there, the heart bumps….we fall short of words”

- Ankur

So here we are starting with the session, interestingly enough we already have some real interesting questions by the participants. I wanna know what my clients are telling me, I wanna know what my customers are saying, I wanna know what my customers customers are saying…says Paul

When I first started selling I was 21 years old….and I still sell.

Im going to take you back to basics…Im in for the ride Paul!!

  • Where do you play
  • DNA of a consultative sales professional
  • Value proposition attribute you are competing on
  • Common sales cycle vs Consultative approach
  • Sales planning – approach and tactics
  • Suspect – prospects weighting
  • Common mistakes a sales professional can make

Well, this is what Paul is really going to share with the room! I have worked in almost like 20 countries. Everytime there’s been a different culture and a different sales cycle. So Paul is gong to share it all with the audience today!

There are four stages and at the end of the day we need to make a simple call:

  1. Intent
  2. Focus
  3. Relationship
  4. Value

The chart moves from left to right from Transactional (at stage I) to Collaborative (at stage 4)

Paul explains the pointers with an example! That of a telephone line. I was collecting 50 compliment slips from 9 to 6 in the evening when I was selling in London! Now i had to call each one of them the next day and I miserably felt shocked. And then I thought out of the box! And Paul shares some really amazing points here at this stage!

I went and met the finance head for Rolce Royce and I sold him nothing but, business issues!

It took me 18 months to close a 250million dollar deal…its does not come easy, trust me

DNA of a sales professional, Paul shares the real Gold now!

  • Confidence, self belief and passion
  • Hunger and have he ability to move out of a comfort zone
  • Pro active and self motivated
  • Focus and execution – too many people working on too many opportunities
  • Dream big and have a prize you wanna shoot for. Make it personal!

It took me 3 years to be a millionaire, I drove the best cars, lived in the best houses – why, because i made it personal

  • Believe in your company, propositions, its values etc.. and that all these things add value to your customers entire value chain
  • Professional, articulate and personal

People aren’t punctual in India, and I have seen this!

  • Speak the customers language
  • Network
  • To effectively listen and communicate value

You go listen to your client and dotn say anything, you will be chocked what you will learn

What is the biggest attribute you will link your value proposition to?

  • Are you trying to sell on Quality
  • Are you trying to sell on Service
  • Are you trying to sell on Cost

What is the differentiating that you are offering around, questions Paul to the room. This will help you to effectively set your sales strategy says Paul, and the entire room is listening with pin drop silence!

Paul is now sharing the difference between a common sales cycle and a Consultative approach

The Consultative guy:

  • Qualifies the need

He knows what are their business drivers | Qualify yourselves | establish customers business drivers

  • Sales strategy and relationship mapping

How do I need to get to a decision maker – and Paul answers the question that you do not need to reach to the decision maker, there is probably an all together different person that you intended to reach out to

  • Setting traps and Mines

How do you think  BT, IBM, Capgemini are winning these multi million deals, coz their guys are doing the real consultative selling, they are reaching out to the influencers

Let your customers BUY YOU first and then your product!

  • Accelerate or De-accelerate

Paul is sharing the real code book of the high flying consultative sellers!

  • Negotiate, close or walk away

The art of a sales guy is to articulate his value

Sales Planning

Consultative sales professionals approach

  • Do we have a value proposition linkable to the customers business objectives?
  • Qualification analysis – analysis of opportunity from 4 points of view, each answering different questions:
    • Can we add value
    • should we pursue
    • can we compete
    • are we aligned to win
  • Competitive sales strategy
    • identification of the four types of sales strategy
    • direct
    • indirect
    • divisional
    • containment
    • development of a strategic opportunity plan
    • development of a competitive counter tactics

We were competing with IBM on a big deal and we knew we cant go head to jead, thus the only thing we had was an indirect approach which meant changing the rules of the game! Which also meant that there is only one par of the deal that you want! We said lets just divide and counquer. I have actually sold purely on value, shares Paul!

  • Leveraging politics
    • separating influencers from authoritarians
    • identifying the key influencers
    • how to develop a political sales strategy

Have we tried to identify the right influencers and design a god strategy around the politics, which by the way, every company has, big and small!

Some key internal questions you need to ask yourself, shares Paul

  1. How is the competitive landscape changing?
  2. What service could be under threat, why and which accounts?
    1. You need to understand do I have a satisfied customer, and if not, well why not?
  3. What is the key challenge that you may face to deliver?
    1. the biggest of the companies make this mistake which is fundamental
  4. What help do I need from executives or board member in the next 1-3 months

How to QUALIFY an account history?

  • customer name
  • established
  • market share
  • financials
  • customer base
  • who is their biggest competitor
  • how are they structured
  • what is their overall strategy
  • business drivers

Opportunities, Qualification and Tactics

  • qualification
    • do we have a value proposition linkable to customer business objectives?
    • how do we intend to differentiate
    • who will be our competitors
    • what is the size of the opportunity – at times too many assumptions are made
    • so we have the financial resources to pursue
    • can we compete
    • are we aligned to win
    • who are the key influencers
    • who are the decision makers
    • who are the show stoppers
    • what sales tactic will you deploy

Impact selling

  • understanding the customers business INSIDE OUT and OUTSIDE IN

Mines and Traps – Paul is now sharing an interesting example which comes from his life, a client that he dealt with! I have set the mines because I knew the features that my competition could never give. I made it a point that I ask my customer who all are you seeing, and I liked to be the last one to approach the client, as I had to know my competition and I knew it as I am an expert in the domain, and well I was clear in my approach that I was here to sell in just a meeting and not ask for another session, and this is how I scaled up!

  • How your proposition can make an impact to the top or bottomline

Tactics

  • Mines and traps…eg so that could be an important feature?
  • Accelerate….speed up the sale to close
  • Decelerate…slow down…you need to change the ground rules
    • This is where the art of negotiation comes in says Paul

Interestingly, Paul is now sharing about Proactive engagement! The slide on the screen is giving clarity on what a good sales guy is all about and Paul shares three fundamental magical words: Re-qualify, Re-qualify, Re-qualify

– this is the philosophy that I have used over the last 20 years

This is what I use – Suspect, Prospect weighting and this is especially for startups

  • 0% fact findings
    • linkable propositions and realtionship mapping
  • 10% opening (Suspect or Prospect)
  • 20% qualification
    • how serious, budgets, decision makers
  • 30% defining SOR
    • lay the traps and write the RFQ
  • 40% bid proposal
  • 50% proposal presentation
  • 75% LOI (letter of intent)
  • 85% Contract negotiation
  • 100% signature win

Paul is now sharing with the room the most common mistakes sales professionals make:

  • they fail to listen – trust me shut up and listen
    • ask the right question and look at the body language
  • they fail to re-qualify
  • they fail to ask for an order – people fail to ask
  • negotiate
    • be an entrepreneur, there would be more respect for being straight
    • i cant give you a discount but perhaps I can increase this on the service levels
  • walk away – learn to walk away, the fear of loss for the customer, will make him ask you, what to do, dont be arrogant and just humbly walk out

Never knock your competition

The session is now in the Q&A mode and well, I must add, I loved the session, coz I started as a sales entrepreneur and I share some pieces with Paul. Thanks Paul!

Confessions of a DOT Com entrepreneur – Deep Kalra, at NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 37th session

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Feb
18

“We won’t leave the room, till we answer all the doubts”
One of the success strategies shared by Mr. Deep Kalra, a man who made planning your journeys easier, faster and cheaper, and the process, a whole lot enjoyable, in the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0, 37th meet at New Delhi.

Mr. Deep Kalra, the founder, MakeMyTrip.com shared his learning’s, challenges faced, business models, entrepreneurship, the Internet, team, regrets, achievements and a turnaround story!

The session kick started with a welcome address by Mr. Ankur Lal, Founder and CEO Infozech Software. We had a gathering of around 33 people, which added to the diversity in experience and learning’s.

Deep started the session with an approach, expected of a seasoned entrepreneur. He divided the session into 3 buckets which contained a story which he started and towards the finish had motivated the participants.

  1. Detailed discussion about MakeMyTrip
  2. Challenges faced along the way
  3. Learning and Takeaways

“Everyone in the world after achieving a certain level of education and experience wants to be an entrepreneur, the reasons may be many”
- Deep Kalra

Deep started with his journey, wherein he discussed about his life as a learner (a student) who started as an economist and “tumbled into a B-school”. He shared his thoughts on the emergence of B-schools introducing the process of taking in laterals from the industry who bring along with them practical experience which helps while you understand the management concepts relating to your experiences.

An IIM-A graduate of the 1989 batch, Deep belongs to a batch of graduates who are today some of India’s most reckoned success stories.

With a career start with a reputed multi national bank in India, Deep got his first learning’s which impacted his life immensely. A confession he made “all this while earning handsomely and learning from immensely successful people, he was always clear that banking was not his defining career choice”. As with every entrepreneur, a strong urge to free himself from the straitjacket, Deep started his stint as an entrepreneur by representing a multinational company dealing into Bowling Alley equipments in India. He was convinced the concept would catch on and the product was sellable.

Soon came the first learning: The product was great, the money was there, but the market was not ready! Hence Deep shared a learning that however specialized a product or service you may have, a solid market research is without any doubts necessary.

An intelligent speaker, Deep had the audience in splits with his wits of presenting his experience doing business with Delhi Businessmen, who are smart!

A very important issue of “Peer pressure” was touched upon by Deep with extreme subtleness. He shared his version of how peer pressure affected him as:

“I was not affected by how much
my peers were making, but about the fact
that I was losing out on my own personal development”
- Deep Kalra

Filling the Vacuum!
Deep, in order to fill this vacuum in life went ahead and joined a multinational as the Head Business Development. Innovation was his motto and Deep proved with his grit and determination, which were properly backed by facts and figures, that the company could be a successful turnaround using the Internet as a tool, which at that time was not something that the Indian consumer would have been very comfortable with!

After a brief stint of 15 months, Deep found his calling!

Before everyone in the room, could hop onto the fast paced F1 that Deep’s interesting life was emerging out to be, he smartly put the brakes and shared a few crucial lessons, which acted as tickets for the participants to hop on for the ride ahead!

“Big companies won’t get on the internet, I realized
change was difficult for them to introduce within
the existing processes. The moment you become large the chips get scattered”
- Deep Kalra

Be Lean, Be Fit!
Vision is never static; in fact the corporate vision should always keep changing with the changing structures of the corporate, as per the market conditions.

Nimbleness and Change, is necessary to be incorporated into the business model.

“You slow down somewhere down the way”, said Deep while he was explaining the growth of a venture and of the entrepreneur.

1999 was the year Deep was struck – with an idea!
After extensive research into the market conditions, Deep was convinced about the idea of either an online Financial Stock trading business or something to do with travel. With a flexible vision and all the life’s learning’s, Deep’s vision took shape with a venture capital funding of $2million for a 70per cent stake in MakeMyTrip.

A lucrative offer, a good salary, a dream getting fulfilled, life could never have been better, was Deep’s first reaction. It was a Win-Win situation for him.

A smart team to be supported by, Deep started off with a website and a vision of defining the travel space in India by becoming the largest company in the travel space. The company was earning good with a sound bank balance, what better for an entrepreneur right?

WRONG said Deep!
A majority of their business was coming from the NRI market and in India; consumers were only lookers and not buyers! Hence the Indian operations were making not much sense as the market was just not mature for such a concept. Deep could have pumped in more money easily but he decided otherwise, and said to his top management “We won’t leave the room, till we answer all the doubts” to where we are wrong! The decision was not an easy one, but was taken and the India model was put on hold for sometime.

A dream gone sour?
With the markets not doing well and the DOT COM Bubble already creating ripples in the subcontinent, Deep was faced with a situation which few had ever imagined. The VC’s backed out and the additional $1million promised never came.

Deep and the team had two choices, either to shut down or else have faith in their concept and buy back the 70per cent equity stake and keep the ball rolling!

As they say “When you set out to do something with all your heart and passion, everything around you supports you”!

Deep got funds from Angels who really proved right to their title “Angles” and bought back the 70 per cent stake, with a team which was not the same as it was sometime back.

How easy is it to take a 100percent cut in your earnings and for the top management a 50percent cut in their salaries? Ask Deep and the team at MakeMyTrip, and they will tell you what sailing on the boat named faith and confidence is when you have nothing else.

The Build-Operate-transfer model was touched upon by Deep and he advised everyone on the “Lure of Lucre”!

You cant Do It Alone!
A team which takes Serious Equity, a prospective for you who is ready to take cuts into hard cash for ESOPS, is the best employee for you!

2004 was the year of reckoning and establishment for MakeMyTrip in India, when the market opened to new models of online travel.

TRY!
Deep was of the suggestion that an entrepreneur should at least TRY! It was this attitude which made him get into the online travel space in India, with a fact backing his belief, that an ordinary Indian gets onto the Internet to book 5000 tickets daily using his/her credit card, in the Indian railways!

Learning’s
- Challenges
“Bootstrapping was the best time during the venture, when we had put all our life’s savings”

– Scaling up
Scaling up is a big challenge for any emerging venture which is looking towards a strategic expansion

Nicely heated up debated sessions have been regular features at MakeMyTrip.

There’s no Hiding!

  1. Get good guys
  2. Share your wealth (ESOP’s)
  3. Hire guys who truly challenge you

“All your Yes-Men are truly useless. It’s about management by exception”

Failures
“The biggest regret and failure was that we outsourced our technology”

None of us knew how to build a web site!

The session drew to a close with an interactive platform for the participants to get their queries answered by Deep himself, which was of a big help.

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/07/14/confessions-of-a-dot-com-entrepreneur/

Ajay Jain at NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (38th session)- on how to Use Online Professional Networking to get Ahead at Work! Linkedin the tool

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Feb
18

“It is not about who you know or what you know, but who knows what you know”

Remarked Mr. Ajay Jain, a man who firmly kept the foundation for the discussion on the 38th Friday’s 2.0 session on “Using online professional networking to get ahead at work” at New delhi.Mr. Ajay Jain, the author of “Let’s Connect, (using LinkedIn to get ahead at work)” shared his learnings, his passion for writing and how NOT overlooking intricate things can make your day!

“Indians Build Relationships”

The concept of offline networking and relationship building, remarked Mr. Jain, is still a preferred mode of establishing new relationships in India. Citing the success of the various offline networking chapters across India, Mr. Jain provided an insight as to how the Indian business scene is still the traditional way.The same gave direction to further discussion, which Mr. Jain generated quite an interest with, by introducing LinkedIn as a highly efficient and properly guarded tool for professional networking.

“LinkedIn is like a Business Conference” How to use LinkedIn to your advantage?

Like the Ten commandments, Mr, Jain established 10 effective steps!

  • Your ever expanding Rolodex:Social contact building

All that comes your way….well no! LinkedIn gives an account only 3000 invites throughout the lifetime of your account, which makes sure that the professional ethic remains. - Have a LinkedIn-Thon @ office, if you have created a new account and are thinking as to how to grow your network! The idea that Mr. Jain shared with the community.

  • LinkedIN Answers: A global focus group

Mr. Jain highly recommended the feature of LinkedIn answers which has multiple benefits, both for the community as well as the person answering the question.The answers get rated and the same puts the answering person profile in the limelight, and after a certain top rated answers in a certain domain, the person is profiled as an expert in the domain.

  • Networking Plus: Meet people

Mr. Jain, shared an idea yet again, being a travel writer himself, he travels and meets a multitude of people all across. LinkedIN he said, could be highly instrumental in meeting people while you travel. You can send a message across to someone where you are traveling, to catch up at a certain place for a coffee!

  • Branding and Marketing: Yourself

The topic generated enough interest in the room, to get ahead professionally or to a platform, Mr. Jain, presented to the members, unique ways of leveraging the power of online networking to get ahead at work.

“Dress up your profile, like you do in real life”

Keep your profile updated and leave no chances for networking within the groups that you may have been linked to professionally in the past.In the summary section, be crisp and to the point!

  • Hiring People: Its not a job site

Though LinkedIN is not a Job Site, still said Mr. Jain, the feature of posting and searching for jobs is a high revenue generator.  As a recruiter as well as a prospect, LinkedIn could serve your purpose in an efficient and better manner, as the feature of writing an endorsement, provides a good background to be searching for the right candidate.

  • Finding a job: You Love!

A job you love! Well, LinkedIN could help you interact with your prospective future employer, the employees and may be your reporting manager. You could use it to your advantage in settling down pretty, with the Job you Love!

  • Vendors and Service Providers

Mr. Jain shared an interesting thought which could spell business opportunity for many a participants in the session. LinkedIN could help you find suitable vendors and service providers for your business needs.

  • Running Background checks: A boon for the recuiters

LinkedIN could be a great source of information about prospective employees for the recruiters. the process of background checks could not be fudged on the online platform, as the endorsements for a person come in true, by people whom they have worked together with. Such features make it easier for the future employer to check for the identity of the prospect and also take the authenticity of the employees, relative to the people who have endorsed them.

  • Entrepreneurs: Get investors and opinions

For Entrepreneurs,  which Mr. Jain, himself is, LinkedIn can prove to be a great source of doing market research and netowrk with prospective partners and investors. He again stressed on the Q&A feature, which could be used to one’s advantage and can prove to be a low cost and effective market research tool.

  • Selling and Brand Building: For your company

As an employee, you can be highly instrumental in selling your companies brand value to attract more clients and generate higher revenues. Also the same may act towards making the organization a “preferred employer”.

“The world of business is a small one, LinkedIn made it even smaller”

A few key points that Mr. Jain re-iterated were of Etiquette. He stressed that though online, LinkedIn, still becomes your professional identity. Thus its reflects you online and keeping the rules of the game as in the real world, would help you in gaining traction with the people you wish to network with!The session drew to a close, with the floor open to questions and quite an interesting and knowledge driven debate ensued. With member audience pitching in with answers and solutions.

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/08/11/using-online-professional-networking-to-get-ahead-at-work/

Higher Employee Engagement Today Does Not Necessarily Reduce Attrition

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Feb
18

Higher Employee Engagement Today Does Not Necessarily Reduce Attrition

What happens when you have a room full of HR pro’s from the industry? Well, sparks fly, literally but in the minds! Human Resource, one of the most crucial parts of any organisation today has evolved and how! A team of experienced human resource professionals came together on the 29th august at VYK, NASSCOM office, a revival of the NASSCOM HR Best Practices. Mr. Aadesh Goyal, Chairman, PeopleStrong HR services, graced the occasion, with his thought provoking address to the members present.

Known for his meticulous business ethics, Aadesh, from the very beginning of the session, had the participants engrossed in the discussion.A two-way discussion ensued, which had innovative contributions by the fraternity. With a strong hold into the HR industry, Aadesh started by discussing the basics, which essentially helped in breaking down the ‘myths’, and giving a new shape and direction to what works, and how as a HR professional you need to mould and create customized solutions for your organisation, in accordance with industry standards. A heady mix of “theory” in the form of an engrossing power point presentation and “practical experiences” which discussed in detail how various companies across the board approach the problem and the various successfully implemented solutions.  Some of the key words discussed in the forum which created the ground for the talk were:Employee engagement, Compensation, Right Staffing, Attrition, Quality, Layered process, Deferred compensation, Line managers. The key words, though initially scattered across the table, were intelligently put together by Aadesh.

What would you say if someone told you, “A 1% decrease in compensation in software business would increase profit by 0.6 percentage points”?

Well, Aadesh did just the same, and the participants consented!

The questions at this stage that came up were:

  • How do we create a nice compensation environment?

Even if as an organisation, we are not the best pay masters, still what is that we provide, which would be a major factor in attracting and retaining employees? See what impacts special events have on attrition!A one liner by Aadesh, powerful enough to have people thinking in the common direction. With a discussion over the same, newer ideas on Employee Engagement came to light!

  • What delivers consistent quality?

‘Quality’, a highly debatable topic was very subtly handled by Aadesh.With a simple example of “if you are a packaged drinking water manufacturing company, how do you maintain quality?” Well, answers by the participants threw light on the importance of the topic and various innovative solutions came to the fore. Examples of organizations like HCL, were put across, which boast of such high HR practices, that allow them to make sense of Employee Engagement in the real sense. With attrition being the basis of the discussion, quality again lead to addressing the issue with a highly effective and efficient methodology of keeping a check on quality, while addressing attrition!

“Look at the kind of different attrition engagement techniques for different types of employees” remarked Aadesh.

The common voice consented to the same! Effectively addressing your attrition concerns, controlling costs, Aadesh put forth the suggestion of employing different engagement techniques for the various set of employees.

“I would not put my best engagement techniques, to the bottom most performers in the team, instead utilize the same for the top 20-25 percent of best performers”

The role of line managers?Research shows, in a normal BPO set up a team lead spends 80 percent of his time in preparing reports on his system, fro his boss and the boss’s bosses. If the team lead does not spend his maximum available time with the team on floor in action, well he is not being effectively utilized. Thus the suggestion of having line managers creating and following proper dashboards, which suggest to the senior management, the quality, attrition and various other factors about the base level employees. A line manager is the best person, who knows his subordinates, hence he should have a major responsibility in catching attrition young and in time, thus allowing the management to take effective measures. The same was put together by Aadesh in a structured three (3) layered process. 

Deferred compensation, does it work?YES! Remarked Aadesh. Its just a matter of mindsets. The same action that you consider as stopping someone’s basic salary, can be more structured in a structured salary break up (ex: incentive based) and told to the employee before joining. Aadesh sees the same as an effective tool in addressing attrition concerns, by the organisation.

Shape up or ship out!Though as an organisation, none would like to enter the hire and fire mode, but measures have to be taken to effectively address the attrition concerns! Training and development was discussed in this part of the session! Shape up or ship out the bottom performers, remarked Aadesh. With an interesting case study which brought about a great deal of change in increasing the effectiveness of the human resources, Aadesh captured the brains of one and all present. An eye opener for some of the non IT professionals and others who did not belong to the mainstream HR. The session concluded with a quick point put forth by Pankaj Bansal, the CEO and Founder PeopleStrong which pointed out the still hanging gaps in the HR industry!

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/09/01/higher-employee-engagement-today-does-not-necessarily-reduce-attrition/

How Startups and Emerging companies can benefit from Social web and Enterprise 2.0 – NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (39th session)

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Feb
18

WEB 2.0, Yammer, Mashup, Dapper, Pipes, Widgets, Open API’s, WOMM…

Greek, does it sound?

Well, the 39th session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (Emerging Companies Forum – Marketing) was a big draw, which had people belonging to a wide strata of the industry, participating with varied interests.

The session was chaired by Mr. Jay Pullur, the Founder and CEO, Pramati Technologies Pvt. Ltd. a technocrat and visionary, building teams from the scratch has been a key trait that helped Jay in establishing Pramati technologies, a company known for its innovation and quality.

The session started with Jay introducing innovative products from Pramati in the form of widgets which they evangelized as integral tools for building simple yet highly efficient methodologies for leveraging WEB 2.0

A formal kickoff then followed with Jay presenting the participants with a presentation which was a two sided discussion, with the participants engrossed.

Jay started with defining young companies. A statement which laid the foundation for the discussion “big companies already do all the old stuff well and in good scale”, made quite an impact in the participants and the focus hence shifted to how startups and emerging companies (young companies) could leverage WEB 2.0?!

WEB 2.0 and that too in 2 hours, well Jay smartly divided the presentation into Three (3) parts -:

  1. What is this new WEB?
  2. What does it mean to us?
  3. Why is it challenging?

WEB 2.0, a new style of working!

WEB 2.0 is more about user participation, peer production and not just simple one way publishing.

Social Media
Two simple words, yet they made every mind in the room actively interact and participate. Well why someone would not be interested when you hear “the traffic on my web site has grown 25times over the past 20 odd days, due to the implementation of this FREE widget”!

‘FREE’ strikes! And it struck!

The greek words which we started this post with now started making sense, Mashups, Dapper, Intel Mash maker, Yahoo Pipes are all WEB 2.0 tools which are the most innovative and effective tools in leveraging WEB 2.0 for the organisation.

Marketing Opportunity – Widget

How does FREE stuff adds value?
-    Social Networking Applications
Jay provided with examples from some applications that Pramati did for the recently concluded Olympics at FaceBook, which generated quite a response all across.

Open social platforms were again an interesting topic of discussion which generated quite an interest in the room. Various platforms were discussed. Including the free google platform, open API’s and web services.

Extending the discussion, Jay proved how widgets could be effectively used in the promotion of products.

2.    Strategy needs understanding of distribution models and uptake of new offerings

“Marketing is changing faster than ever”
-    Jay Pullur

“Usefulness is no longer the only thing that matters, it’s the experience that does”
-    Jay pullur

“Indian startups have not really kept the waves”
-    Jay Pullur

An interesting discussion ensued within the participants, which had WEB 2.0 researchers’ sharing their experiences into what they felt was lacking in the Indian startups and how could the power of WEB 2.0 still be leveraged.

Jay mentioned the Enterprise 2.0 platform which he simply explained as a very complex combination of openness and privacy.

The change in the WEB 2.0 space was very intelligently put across which had the participants in splits and was really a thought provoking idea…”who thought a simple application like twitter could ever work”?
Well, since people today are interested into other people’s lives, thus it’s not just working; in fact we all are Tweeting, day in, night out.

Yammer, Crunchbase, Semantic Web before the participants could say why English suddenly has become out of focus again, Jay explained the various tools and how they spell magic!

PART TWO
The session was now much more interesting as now Jay kept his point through which he gave what the audience wanted…good, but what does it mean to us?

1.    Specialize and grow on the fast track, remarked Jay

With a reference to the blue ocean strategy and other such methodologies, Jay was instrumental in providing the audience with methods of marketing new products and service offerings through WEB 2.0 tools.

PR2.0, Blogs, WOMM (word of mouth marketing) etc. were the cited examples

Beat the downturn, commoditization and Market pressures, remarked Jay

PART THREE
Why is it challenging?

1.    Competency bar is growing up

Before the participants could voice their concerns of implementing such WEB 2.0 strategies, Jay was quick in adding the various challenges that could be faced.

“Invest little to gain a standing” – the statement clearly reflected Jay’s long term standing in the IT industry. The experience was speaking for itself.

Post the formal discussion, Jay shared his experiences with the audience. What was engrossing was Jay’s openness in coming out with the go to market strategies that Pramati implemented while they were in the process of launching their Enterprise 2.0 solution.

Lesson well learnt, and such discussion was received with great response by all present.

The session concluded with a Q&A session and the forum opened for networking which also had Jay interacting very openly.

RocSearch also has done a report on Leveraging User Generated Content – An anecdotal assessment on what works for marketers and what does not…download the report at Rocsearch_leveraging-social-media_may-2008

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/09/15/how-startups-and-emerging-companies-can-benefit-from-social-web-and-enterprise-20/

From caterpillar to butterfly – NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (40th session)

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Feb
18

Dheeraj dharm mitra aru nari aafat kal parakhiya chari”
- Tulsidas

Remarked Prof. Sanjiva Dubey, addressing the 40th Friday’s 2.0 session @ NASSCOM, New Delhi.

The session started with Mr. Ankur Lal, Chief Executive, Infozech software Ltd. introducing the participants to the session and the EMERGE community.

- I am a fellow traveller, said Sanjiv before igniting the present minds. Well it was not just igniting these minds, Sanjiv had a huge task of not only sharing his insights but more so in calming down the anxious people in the room, who all shared a BIG single concern, that of  - what to do in these market conditions?

Sanjiv’s opening line did the magic “an SME won’t turn into an Infosys in a matter of days or months, its rigorous practice”

In these BAD times, Sanjiv smiled with a GOOD news for all, “Every IT giant was an SME”, thus everyone grows! A few examples Sanjiv shared-

  • Google, HP amd Apple were started in a garage
  • Adobe was atarted by ex employees of Xerox and named it after a river that ran by the neighborhood.
Before we go further, how many of you would say that you don’t know this name – Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd.?
Well, I am talking about WIPRO Ltd. in this case.
Thus was set the mood in the room, which made the participants feel that the bad times though have their share of “bad moments” but they come along with lots of opportunities as well.
Coming out with Unique-Creative-Innovative ideas, this is the right time to effectively implement these strategies into the SME’s business plans. Sanjiv in fact emphasized on the importance of the above for not only the SME’s but also every IT company, referring to his book.
All SME’s which emerged into a mammoth organization had just one “creative innovation”, on which the empire was built on, remarked the experienced professional.
Challenges for an SME
  • Limited opportunities for Economies of Scale
  • High Development cost, Low profits
  • Losing customers, no repeat orders
  • High cost of marketing
Enough to make these bad times, sound really BAD!
But Sanjiv keeping his poise, said in bad times SME’s should test these four -:
  • Patience
  • Persistence
  • Pals
  • Partners
Also were shared certain crucial things that according to Sanjiv, should never be done during a downturn -:
  • Don’t panic
  • Don’t let your clients/employees/investors panic
  • Don’t believe everything you read
  • Don;t brush aside everything what you hear
  • Don’t isolate yourself. A team is more successful than an individual
An interesting thought and example that Sanjiv shared, was when he bagged a big contract competing with the market leaders a few years back, by creating and maintaining a “consortium” of companies, which was a lesson towards why a team is more important always.
Remain glued to the ground!
Whenever you’re glued to the ground(you know the situation and how would it affect you) you don’t panic as much.
Sustain a day at a time, which Sanjiv innovatively termed as the ICU(intensive care unit) model!
Your organization is like the human body, with the Brain representing Creativity, Lungs the Cashflow and the Heart, Enthusiasm.
All the vital organs need to be kept alive at all costs to keep going, forging new relationships and leverga these learnings when the right opportunity arrives.
Socialize, serve others and don’t hesitate to collaborate!
We as IT companies are running towards getting into our own niches in the race to prove our niche expertise. But in these times its innovative collaboration which works!
Sign up at the first signal of ecosystem change, be observant and be quick to notice the change, was Sanjiv’s advice to the SME’s. Survical at any cost and rate is mandated.
So, you meet your team everyday? Well, go have lunch and meet them twice a day now!
Innovating the business model by the IT industry
  • From labor based to annuity based
  • From being just a cook, you now need to take care of the entire wedding
SME’s can do so by forging long lasting partnerships with already established IT leaders. Specialize on a particular domain. Niche matters!
Good news, In bad times, you’re not pressured for deadlines, thus what you have is time in hand to do what you could not have done and missed the bus while concentrating on other things in the emerging and happy times.
Corporate Discipline
Instill discipline in bad times. With a slide presentation showing the royal guards, Sanjiv made a point which he emphasized by saying that discipline is of utmost importance and cannot be negotiated upon.
The FIVE S (5S) formula-:
  1. Sort
  2. Straighten
  3. Shine
  4. Standardize
  5. Sustain
In the context of the current market scenarios, Sanjiv essentially made a point which struck the right cord with the participants, who all consented that these things are important. Go build relationships, which was supported by an example from Sanjiv’s personal life, about a client for whom he went the extra mile, and the client still remembers him, (whether times are good or bad).
Flawless Execution
The client saves a lot by getting his work done, by an SME than by a big player, all it demands is flawless execution, responsiveness and customization. And the room was fresh with positive vibes )
Finally -:
Go find a mentor who can help you in tough times, Sanjiv placed the importance of having the right Mentor high up on his list.
Guru gobind dono khade, kaku lagun pau…
balihari guru aapne gobind diyo bataye…
- Tulsidas
The session drew to a close, with Sanjiv again being one with the participants, re-assuring them that we all are in similar times, with his words-:
Main aap apni talash mei hun, mera koi rehnuma nahi hai..
Mai kya dikhaun raah tujhko, mera apna pata nahi hai..

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/10/18/from-caterpillar-to-butterfly/

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