Looks like Indian companies are getting ready for next challenge, building a world class product company out of India.
This is my general observation, IIT, IIM guys and other technology geeks who return from US look for “Startups”. I have been meeting/hearing and even noticing this change in the conference and workshops I attend.
I had a chance to attend NASSCOM Workshop for Product Startups: Escaping Early Stage Traps. The workshop leads by Sharad Sharma Managing principal http://orbitchange.com/ and founder and CEO of Tizor Systems http://www.tizor.com/
The key takeaways from the workshop are
Looking out for Product Traps: Weak Product architecture, Incomplete team, Unclear market strategy
4 dimensions: you got work towards providing balanced effort towards, Product, Team, Market Strategy and Investment. If you have a great team with a great idea without marketing strategy your chances of withstanding the market force before they drive you out is very low.
Culture and mind set: if you want to start a product Development Company with the typical offshore development guys (guys coming from instruction lead development Vs Innovative development).
Though the fund raising aspect was not discussed much due to time constraint, but the difference between the US based startup and Indian based startup was well brought out with examples.
One of the panelists was Sanjay Swamy; CEO http://www.mchek.com/ provides an on-demand solution for mobile payments and two-factor authentication. The company has a vision to leverage the booming mobile market (200 million mobile users in Indian), augment everyone’s financial universe by creating a mobile payment platform. Their Tag line, "Your wallet in your mobile phone". After online banking and B2C, M2B, now its time for M2M (or C). Worth keeping a close watch on this company.
This is what Dr. G. K Jayram says, first chairman of Infosys during 1982-85, currently Dr.G.K. Jayaram is the founder–Director of the Institute of Leadership & Institutional Development (ILID) at Bangalore. http://ilid.org/.
"Transformational Leadership is ability to go beyond regular activities and create a transformation in thinking. You are leading everyday at office and home and elsewhere. TL requires 3I:
Intensity - passionate about life
Integrity - diff between right and wrong from moral stand point and
Intelligence - professional intelligence to create a great org
Optimal mix of frustration and hope brings progress.”
I think this is what is required for our new breed of blooming product companies to be successful - The Transformational leadership, last but not the least VCs blessings.
2 comments:
Hi Santosh,
I somehow missed this event but i did manage to attend the the NASSCOM product workshop organized on Sep 1st about "What and How to build challenges of a product business".
It was really worth attending as a part of the start-up company. I could hear the experiences of seasoned campaigners like Subhasg menon from SubexAzure, Sanjay and Ravi Kyran of Texas.
Now i am looking forward for the NASSCOM Product Conclave to be held in November.
Was just wondering do you have any information (tips) which can be passed on to me from the workshop you attended?
I am sorry for the delayed response. Whenever I get a chance, I attend conferences, usually I update the summary and analysis on my blog, if you are looking for specific information, please gets it in touch with me via email (santhguru@gmail.com)
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