Ashok was perturbed. In Jan 2006, an eastern European company had taken his source code, made minor changes and started selling it under an alternate brand name at a reduced price. Ashok’s company Chartengo was a pioneer in Adobe Flash based charting software that helped users create charts for data visualization. Its charts were perceptibly superior to any available on the market. The company...
April 25, 2013
To open source or not….
25April
April 24, 2013
Andy is a mobile robot platform that uses a Smartphone at its core.
24April
Andy is a personal robot enabled by the intelligence of an Android Smartphone or any Android device. Personal or hobby robots till date have been unaffordable due to the high costs of the hardware involved. Abheek Bose, Andy’s creator shares the journey of building Andy and the factors that influenced its development. What happened earlier in your career that led to your founding Andy...
April 23, 2013
Hike Messaging App – 5M users since 12/12/12, and counting!
23April
BSB is a start-up funded by Bharti & SoftBank building mobile products for the Indian market. Hike is a messaging app which allows instant messaging and group chat on your phone with friends who have Hike, as well as those who don’t have Hike. We caught up with BSB’s head of products and strategy, Kavin Bharti Mittal (KBM), to talk about Hike, right before he was getting ready to launch Hike...
April 22, 2013
Drinking from the firehose at iSPIRT PlayBook Roundtable (on Effective Product Management) at Delhi
22April
When nearly two dozen product enthusiasts sit around a table passionately talking for 4-½ hours, expertly addressed by two product veterans – Amit Somani and Amit Ranjan, you can expect an information overload. And, it did seem like drinking from the firehose, trying to capture all the takeaways in the intense back and forth, where even a tea-break seemed imposed. A blast it was – this...
April 21, 2013
Notes on Product Management – insights from Slideshare / MMT / ex-Google PM
21April
Avinash Raghava, who is doing a wonderful job of getting product start-ups together all over India, organized a product management roundtable with the help of Aneesh Reddy(CEO, Capillary). They invited Amit Ranjan (Cofounder, Slideshare – acquired by LinkedIn) and Amit Somani (Chief Product Officer, Makemytrip, ex-Google) to share their insights with a small set of entrepreneurs. Credit for all...
April 19, 2013
Pricing dilemma
19April
A year back I was involved with a leading mobile apps company on an issue related to product pricing. The company developed customized mobile apps for business. At the time it had a staff of 20 programmers and reasonably successful – having on its customer list several top global corporations like cola companies, few leading banks, advertising giants and others. It had revenues close to USD 1...
April 18, 2013
The Other E-commerce Guys
18April
“Fifty years ago the nice housewife still prided herself on knowing the right place for everything. There was a little man in a back street who imported just the coffee she wanted, another who blended tea to perfection, a third who could smoke a ham as a ham should be smoked. All have vanished now; and the housewife betakes herself to the stores.” – Clive Bell, English Critic and Writer, in...
April 17, 2013
5 Essentials of SaaS Revenue Models for Product Companies!
17April
Enterprise as well as Consumer Software is moving fast towards a Software As A Service (SaaS) model. Who would not like paying a per user, per month charge as opposed to doling out huge amounts of money for licenses upfront and paying 16 to 20% Annual Maintenance Charges year after year! But the short history of SaaS companies is already full of companies that grew too quickly, or chose the wrong...
April 16, 2013
Users or Customers?
16April
If you’ve been around the internet startup world for long enough, you’ve probably engaged in the user-customer debate at least once. Who’s the user? Who’s the customer? Who should we be focusing on? I’m going to start off a series of posts talking about the basic elements of Platform Thinking and this being the first, I’d like to talk about the User-Customer...
April 15, 2013
CollateBox: Cloud-Based Software Simplifies Small Biz Collaboration
15April
Small businesses with growing lists of data are the ideal customer for U.S.-incorporated CollateBox, a software product of India-based WOLF Frameworks. Sunny Ghosh, co-founder and CEO, describes CollateBox’s value proposition and the factors that influenced its development. This article is brought to SandHill readers in partnership with ProductNation. SandHill.com: Please describe your product...
