First of all, huge thanks to Vizury for sponsoring great food and the premises to hold the round table. Many thanks to Aneesh, NRK Raman and Srirang for leading the session and providing valuable inputs. And of course, to all the participants for the energetic discussions and knowledge sharing. Here are the key takeaways from my notes. Please note that there are several nuggets of practical...
Start-ups in their mid-growth stage are usually faced with an inflection point, where they find themselves standing in the middle of a transition – from having a bright product idea endorsed by a handful of people (usually investors & early customers) towards a scalable solution that can be sold to anyone. Geoffrey Moore’s work in the book titled ‘Crossing the Chasm’ is pertinent...
If you asked me this question five years back, I would have said unequivocally that you have to establish a presence in the US if you want to do business here. My thoughts on the subject have changed. I believe the answer is, it depends. Let me explain. Since it is the risk-reward equation that tilts the scales in favor of one vendor over another, we have to start out by thinking about how the...
Whenever faced by dilemma over any issue pertaining to sales and marketing, I recall a famous quote by Ben Feldman, who is considered one of the best salespeople in world history. Don’t sell life insurance. Sell what life insurance can do. Just by following this one mantra, Ben was able to insurance policies more than worth USD 1.8 billion in his life! It would be unfair if I don’t mention Steve...
To position the product, you must first have clarity on the addressable market and its breakdown in terms of different industries or user communities (let’s call both of them as ‘verticals’ for simplicity). Then analyze which of them can benefit the most from your product, where your maximum contacts are, and which has the least competition. You can accordingly initiate preliminary sales efforts...
In the continuing series of Round Tables product veterans Samir Palnitkar, ShopSocially and Jatin Parekh, AirTight Networks took the participants through a journey of discovery about why they want to go global and taking a critical look at the challenges they must overcome. It takes a guy like Samir to lay the foundation for such a Round Table, having stoked the discussion with his experience and...
My wife forwarded me an article recently that Booz & Co. had written on India’s leadership challenge. You can read the full article here. This confirmed something I have long suspected. While there are great leaders in the Indian business, there are very few great companies. Let me explain what I mean by that. In the business, we are in, i.e. IT, some companies have done very well...
The trend of pure-play SaaS providers and on-premise software ISVs diversifying into SaaS is on the rise. SaaS revenue for global top 10 ISVs forms 40% of all software revenues. According to Gartner, the SaaS revenues will grow annually at 17.5% to form 24% of all software revenues in 2016. This would amount to USD 22.5 billion up from USD 14.5 billion in 2012. While SaaS makes a perfect business...
It’s not all about leads. The sales process in the B2B landscape has embraced a significant change. A purchase typically involves multiple decision makers, multiple teams and multiple stages. Creating awareness and interest about your products is just the first step of a long process. The bulk of your prospects, while having a fair idea of what their objectives are, are unaware of what your...
Manav Garg’s career exemplifies the statement “where there is big risk, there is big reward”. Throwing up a lucrative, six-figure plus salary and bonus as a commodities trader to start a software company that would build a commodities trading product required guts. Manav took it in his stride and today has built a world-class company that competes globally with its commodities trading software...
