At the beginning of the year when we wrote down our thoughts in the 2016 Annual Letter about aspects such as break away from copy paste entrepreneurship, innovation bridge with Silicon Valley, progress on open market policies, etc. we thought we will score a few wins in the year. The pace of progress has surprised us. In many areas we have exceeded our best expectations. The last few months...
One of the persistent threats to India’s software product ecosystem is from the constant push by MNCs for allowing software patents in India. India’s nascent software product industry is growing rapidly and is on a trajectory where we can see global brands like Amazon, Google and Facebook emerge in the next 10 years. One of the persistent threats to India’s software product...
The Modi Government has made bold moves on the world stage. Its now time to make one at home! By Mohandas Pai & Sharad Sharma New-age startups are making waves. Flipkart has redefined retail. Ola is changing how we travel by taxis. PayTm is at the threshold of disrupting banks. Forus Health is attacking blindness with gusto. Eko is bringing financial inclusion to millions. Team Indus is on...
We need products, not services, to be global leaders, and the good news is Druva, Freshdesk, Capillary, Rategain, Savari and Julia are all either global leaders or the primary challengers in their respective categories. For some months now, electronics has edged out gold, machinery and pearls to become India’s second-largest category of imports (after oil). Our aerospace and defence imports are...
In this polytheistic world of entrepreneurs, who is the Startup Initiative for? There are many types of entrepreneurs. There is the self-employed vegetable-vendor type, the Thelawala. Then there is the small businessman in Okhla or Peenya who has grown to be in GST net. And how can one ignore the technology entrepreneur who graces the pages of ET every day . Even these tech startups come in many...
It’s Independence Day today, and the last year has been one of the most exciting years in India’s product ecosystem. Just last week, the news that Sundar Pichai has taken over as the CEO of Google has been another shot in the arm for Indian techies. If ever it was the time for Indian product companies to raise the battle cry to take on the world, it is now. In conversations with other people in...
iSPIRT is not a tradebody. It is a think tank focussed on transforming India into a Product Nation. To describe the set of things we do to make this happen, we have created four Home Tour videos. They will give you a good idea of what iSPIRT is doing today through the voices of some of our anchor volunteers. There was a trigger to create these these Home Tour videos. Recently the tribe of product...
I’ve seen all sides. I’ve lived in big companies. I’ve been a technology entrepreneur. I’ve also lived inside dozens of startups as a proxy entrepreneur, aka an angel investor. And I’ve seen hundreds of software product startups as a grass-roots ecosystem builder in the past eight years. My conclusion is that in the end it comes down to just two things: Mindset and Conduct. Entrepreneurship is a...
In a recent article in ET, Mohandas Pai and I suggested that if India does not produce enough product companies, our economy will not be sustainable in the future. The data is compelling. To quote from that article, “Boeing and Airbus alone generate almost as much profit as all global airlines put together. Pfizer’s profits are more than those of the top 100 hospitals in the US. Cisco’s profits...
The Next Google, Made in India If you look at the Indian business landscape, you will see several successful services companies in fields like airlines (e.g. Jet, Indigo), health care (e.g. Apollo, Manipal), mobile phone services (e.g. Idea, Airtel) and IT Services (e.g. TCS, Infosys). Many of these companies are comparable to global peers, if not potential world beaters. What we don’t have are...
