Just over 12 years ago, I sat on the sofa outside my office in Infosys, and explained to Tom Friedman about how the playing field was getting levelled through technology. This inspired him to write ‘The World is Flat,’ an international bestseller that sold millions of copies and captured the zeitgeist of the era. It was an era where technology and political change brought everyone closer. The...
June 27, 2016
An Alternate View Of The Future
27June
June 27, 2016
The iSPIRT Roundtable @Pune – 11 Startups share Metric Driven Growth Secrets
As a startup founder or growth marketer, you obsess over metrics: what is my lead-generation rate, how many customers did I win or lose, how is my monthly revenue growing, or how many customer referrals did I get? Analytics is critical for your business, without which you’re flying blind. However, data overload is real and you might not derive the right actionable insights. To simplify metric...
June 24, 2016
#MadeinIndia Inventory Management Software
24June
Inventory or stocks are the lifeline of a company or business, and managing it properly is what makes the difference between company’s success or failure. Regular usage of inventory management software can help in the same, and can keep a check on overstocking of product and outages.
June 20, 2016
What is UPI after all?
20June
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...
June 17, 2016
The SaaS Juggernaut: Advantage India
17June
An Indian software company serving majorly clients in the US or Europe is not an unusual thing anymore. However, if anybody were to guess the location of the India office, a company that counts amongst its clients about 100,000 small businesses globally, they would most probably chose Bangalore or Hyderabad. However, Appointy, which is an advanced web-based scheduling software tool and has around...
June 16, 2016
Meeting Product Startups #Ahmedabad
16June
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...
June 15, 2016
Vijay Mallya’s Domino Effect: The Real-World Consequences of Late Payments
15June
(Originally posted here) Vijay Mallya, the Chairman of United Breweries, exited the country on March 2nd 2016 – defaulting on loans worth Rs.9000 crores to 17 banks. The media storm which subsequently rained down upon the Mallya name would befit the crime, if it wasn’t painting an incomplete picture. Given the frenzy and the weight of the government apparatchiks brought down to bear on the...
June 14, 2016
“Getting traction for Product Startups” — iSPIRT Playbook Round Table | Notes
14June
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...
June 13, 2016
DIPP – New Secretary catalyzing the past efforts, for Startup Ecosystem.
13June
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...
June 9, 2016
Because designers need to know *about* code
09June
This is a about a long raging debate on the process of designing and developing great products. In a recent Medium post, Jesse Weaver said something very simple but powerful — we need more designers who know *about* code. And I agree! Not only because I myself like to experiment with code but also because of the following. “The reason designers should know about code, is the same reason...
