India has come a long way in online payments in a very short period of time. With the launch of NEFT and IMPS, cash transfers between accounts has been made electronic, paperless and instant. NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) has recently launched UPI (Unified Payments Interface) as a new way to transfer money in India. This blog post’s content is based on a recent webinar conducted...
Over the last few months, I have interacted with a couple dozen awesome product startups in India as a part of product roundtables organized by iSPIRT, a non-profit industry group for software product companies in India. The roundtables that were in Pune, Delhi and Ahmedabad included around 8–10 product founders getting direct feedback about their products from their peers and experienced product...
It was a warm Saturday morning in Ahmedabad and about 15 to 20 people had gathered at CIIE, IIM-A for this closed-door-day-long session where people who’d been-there-done-that were coming in, at their cost, to share (Read ‘Discuss’) their journey and more importantly, engage into a meaningful conversation about problems faced by Product Startups and their solutions; mainly centred around Traction...
Mr. Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary of DIPP in a learning-session with iSPIRT. He formerly headed the Forwards Market Commission and has subsequently served as the secretary of performance management at the Cabinet Secretariat. He has been the key driver behind several reforms including the FMC being merged with SEBI. Mr. Ramesh Abhishek, is the new Secretary of DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy...
Every few years, we witness a fierce attempt to re-ignite the discussion of patentability of software (something that the Indian Parliament had rejected in 2005) by the usual beneficiaries of such a system: the mutli national holders of patent thickets, old system integrators, lawyers, and patent agents. These incumbent holders of patent thickets love to confuse rule-making by crying wolf and...
Over the past couple of days, a lot has been written/discussed about the so called ‘startup tax’ and its perceived ill effects on the startup ecosystem. Under iSPIRT’s new initiative, PolicyHacks, I attempt in this note to demystify the legal/tax jargon around this tax and to clarify the proposed rule for the benefit of ecosystem participants, particularly startups. What is the law? Simply put...
I usually start my weekends with an intense workout regimen. This one was also quite intense but in a very different way. I attended the 71st edition of ‘Playbook Roundtable’ on Saturday the 28th of May, 2016. Incidentally, this was my first time at any Playbook event. From the time I received the invite, I just had one question: how should I prepare to give it my very best? Little did I know...
“Digital” is an inevitable and progressive catalyst of change. Whereas internet-based online transactions have existed for some time now, the transformations at a national scale are morphing many more areas together into a “digital economy”. The transformation is about 100% dematerialisation up to the ‘last mile’, with near 100% continuous involvement of the internet and is built upon cloud...
Vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems such as Silicon Valley, Route 128 are characterized by a free flow of experiential knowledge between expert and novice entrepreneurs. Experiential knowledge can provide much needed advice, mentoring and moral support to novice entrepreneurs, putting them on an accelerated path and fueling the ecosystem. In mature ecosystems like Silicon Valley, this is possible...
There are instances, when Software exporting companies operating outside an export oriented scheme (STP, SEZ, EOU etc.) are advised, that there is no need for them to file SOFTEX forms. The young entrepreneurs in Startups, obviously get confused on this. In some cases, companies stopped getting SOFTEX certification done, after complying in past when they moved out of STP/SEZ schemes, owing to...
