Bangalore was the next stop for the iSPIRT product round-table around the theme of “Getting Traction for Software Products”. The goal of this round-table, hosted by Niraj Rout (Hiver/Grexit), Natwar Maheshwari (Around.io) Avinash Raghava and me, was to get peer feedback from a group of startups at a similar stage. In this format, around ten participants meet and each one gets around twenty...
The payment gateway friction in cross-border trade of Software products
The payment gateway problem in exporting online from India It is not easy for Indian Software product companies to export products online and receive payments in India. This is true for both the downloadable Software product or Software as a Service (SaaS). Experts say there is no legal or policy hurdle from RBI. Yet, there is friction. An Indian payment gateway service provider denies foreign...
Playbooks is one of the key pillars of iSPIRT bouquet.
Playbook in iSPIRT denotes entrepreneurial learning meant for Indian software product startups to become world class and be successful. Roundtable is a format of learning intended for startups that have reached a happy confused stage. In this format 8-12 non competing startups are brought together to discuss deeply on a topic that holds them from jumping to their next level.A facilitator, who is...
How AdPushup Uses Content Marketing To Power Growth #PlaybookRT
Close to about 15 founders gathered on 1st October at the small and cozy office of AdPushup to participate in a Playbook Roundtable on Content Marketing. This was Ankit’s first playbook with iSPIRT and he did a phenomenal job. AdPushup is a SaaS company that helps web publishers increase their ad revenue by letting them test and optimize their website’s ad layout. Their expertise has been content...
India Stack for Smart Cities – Usage and Learnings that can be applied
Sanjay Jain, Pramod Varma, Ranga Raj With a lot of momentum being built around Digital India and Smart Cities, we offer a contrarian view of how government agencies and stakeholders should approach this complex problem. While there are many facets towards the journey of Smart Cities – some that are non-technology related – political, bureaucratic, architectural, social, cultural etc., and...
Announcing The 2016 India SaaS Survey – A Joint initiative by Signal Hill & iSPIRT
According to a recent report by Google and Accel Partners the SaaS market in India is expected to cross over $50Bn by 2025, driven largely by demand from Western markets, in particular from US-based SMBs. Indian firms are noted as uniquely qualified to serve this opportunity given the available talent, mobile-first mindsets and language skills that enable cost-effective inside sales. In realizing...
Asserting my Maven code-of-ethics and being a Proud Maven at iSPIRT
I am Pallav Nadhani from FusionCharts. Like my fellow entrepreneurs, who dream of making India as a Product Nation and building a great ecosystem together, I found my calling answered with iSPIRT Playbook round-tables. I volunteered to become a Maven so I could share, learn and disseminate the best-practices I had learnt in my entrepreneurial Journey, with other fellow entrepreneurs. Playbook...
50 Companies. 3 Days of Bootcamp. 1 Year of Mentorship. #PNgrowth2016 is back
We’ve done this for two years. It has been successful. But we still felt that it could be improved. We went back to the drawing board. We thought hard about how we could do this better. And we’ve come back with something that will be more powerful, and even more demanding from our product entrepreneurs. #PNgrowth2016 will feature only 50 startups, giving each startup more facetime with the...
Recurring Billing for SaaS. Is it available in India?
Recurring Billing – demystified for SaaS companies Abstract For any SaaS Startup with India market focus, the biggest bottleneck today is recurring billing. It is not available as an open, over the counter service from payment gateways. Most startups have to work around to solve this problem. The workaround may be using an expensive international payment gateway or it may be incorporating...
Payments 4G (aka UPI) The Best is Yet to Come!
Last week was a landmark week for all Indians and by sheer coincidence; the country witnessed the launch of two generational shifts. The one that has everyone excited is Jio, a pure, data-only high-speed mobile network. The other that perhaps will have equal transformational impact is its peer in the world of digital payments, the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). As soon as I had my first...