We have multiple definitions of platform, but in today’s world where reaching out to people is so easy and absolutely free, one can argue that in today’s context a platform is a vehicle to extend people’s voice beyond the ears closest to you. The channels that we use to have were very expensive – all required expertise, money or both whereas the new channels are over internet – mostly free. This...
Lean way of sales
“Not meeting desired sales target?” is perhaps the most important question in any of senior management meetings. But how do most companies react? Answer: “Re”setting the targets,“Re”structuring marketing campaigns and finally “Re”placing sales team (starting from executives ending up replacing sales director) and what will happen by doing several “Re’s” together…absolutely nothing. On the...
Getting business to use technology and improve productivity – Knowlarity Communications
Inspired by the vision to help small businesses make better use of technology, Ambarish Gupta gets talking about how his Cloud Telephony product Knowlarity, fills a crucial gap in business struggling to use costly and cumbersome technology to improve productivity. In a world gone all mobile and integrated, Knowlarity’s hardware free, web based solution, frees you from the traditional PBX machine...
Lessons on Pricing for Product Startups – Consumer and Enterprise!
Since the time Philip Kotler wrote his valuable tome on Marketing, technology has evolved so much that new pricing models like Freemium pricing are possible for both Consumer-oriented and Enterprise-oriented product startups. In addition, Free Trial pricing models and conversion to paid ones are common in both. In a price-conscious society like India, pricing can mean all the difference between a...
ProductNation is now Proudly Powered by iSPIRT.in
I am happy to inform you that ProductNation will now be part of iSPIRT – a think-tank focussed on transforming India into a hub for new generation software products, a thought which finally is seeing action. Welcome to the new look of the website where we have made it easier for our readers to find stories that interest them and share it with friends and professional colleagues. Do drop by...
Have a plan B to sustain yourself, while you are trying to make it big as a Product Startup says Amarpreet Kalkat, Frrole
Ciafo is a software products startup, based out of Bangalore focused on building consumer products for the web (including the mobile web). Ciafo has three products – Travelomy, Wayr, Frrole. In this interview, Amarpreet Kalkat, Co-Founder, Ciafo discusses aspects of building a B2C product from India and shares some of his learnings with startups. Frrole is an information exchange medium...
#FoundersMeet 3 – Collective learning of 20 Early Stage Startups
Background – I was fortunate to be invited for the #FoundersMeet 2; informal get-together of 7 startup founders last year. This time around Anirudh, Sid, Nischal, Deven and I suggested to move it beyond our circle and extend it to 20 startups to come together and share our small success stories, failures and challenges. We also wanted to create a strong connect for ‘Mumbai-Pune Start-up...
Q&A with Communication Platform Waybeo Technology’s CEO
Waybeo Technology Solutions was launched in December 2009 and was selected by Nasscom as one of the top 15 emerging, innovative companies in India in 2012. Its product, BounzD, is a global inbound communication platform enabling instant voice assistance to customers using a variety of mobile devices. In this interview, CEO Bushair AP discusses aspects of staying focused in the journey of product...
A Platform Thinking Approach to Building a Business
Every business is an engine. It needs to do a certain set of things repeatedly to create value. If you haven’t figured out that set of repeated operations, you probably haven’t created a scalable business yet. Ford needs to repeatedly assemble cars, Google needs to repeatedly run its crawler, Facebook needs to repeatedly get users to interact with other users. THE BUSINESS ENGINE AND REPEATABLE...
3 trends that we noticed from over 500 Indian startups that we reviewed
Over the last few weeks we reviewed over 500 startups and talked (phone, skype, etc.) with over 100 startup founders. This was our shortlisting process to get to 15 companies that will make it to our Spring 2013 batch at the Accelerator. First, we reviewed a lot of travel startups. Especially the problem of helping travelers with trip planning. A list of things to do, places to see, restaurants...