As of April 20th, 2016, Exotel is four years and 10 months old as an organisation. In the start-up investor jargon, Exotel is a VC-funded, high-growth start-up. Our home-grown on-demand cloud telephony services, powers over 1000 businesses of all sizes and shapes. Now, if that’s a lot to take in in one go, welcome to the startup world. This sense of overwhelm is the reason employees and...
June 7, 2016
There is no such thing as a startup culture
07June
June 6, 2016
Software Patents rigamarole- non-starter for start ups!
06June
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...
June 3, 2016
Demystifying Startup Tax
03June
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...
June 1, 2016
Why did I love this Saturday?
01June
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...
May 31, 2016
1 Critical Analytics Mistake
31May
Why some well funded/big companies miss business targets? Companies tend to focus 80% of their analytics effort on analysing “Historic Indicators” versus identifying “Leading Indicators” to grow business. This is biggest mistake I see wrt how some companies leverage Analytics. 3 Examples of how Analytics Numbers should be used: Spot Contrarian Points: Usually, consumer businesses experience low...
May 30, 2016
Identifying King Customers and building your business around them isn’t that easy!
30May
“Throughout history, it has never been easy to identify a deserving king!” I attempted to address this in my previous post, in the context of customer strategy. I proposed Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) as the key metric to identify king customers. However, I’ve found this philosophy extremely difficult to follow, which is why I wrote this post. It’s okay if you have not read my previous post...
May 26, 2016
Why We Started A Change.org Petition Fighting India’s Late Payment Culture
26May
(Our petition against India’s late payment culture can be found here) The Late Payment Problem We’re going to keep this short. Now that 97% of Indian SMBs were reportedly paid late in 2015, the late payment culture in our business environment has gotten out of hand. Today, India officially carries the longest average payment delays in the Asia Pacific for B2B SMB invoices, 51% of...
May 26, 2016
fluxday — the internal task management & productivity tracking app of Foradian is now opensource
A no-nonsense, free & opensource task & productivity management tool for growing startups fluxday was developed by Foradian starting in 2013 and was a critical part of Foradian’s hyper growth and success as a B2B software startup in EdTech space. With a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 323 per cent Foradian was listed in Deloitte Tech Fast50 India consecutively for two years. We...
May 24, 2016
Building Ecosystems, Not Just Products
24May
When you analyze successful consumer and small business products, they succeed as a part of eco-systems and not just stand-alone products. Consumers and small businesses don’t buy products, the engage in an ecosystem. Facebook is an ecosystem. It is a network of users, groups, businesses and advertisers. Email is an ecosystem, smartphones are an ecosystem, even computers are an ecosystem. This is...
May 23, 2016
Payment Bank + Technology = Faster Profitability
23May
Something very exciting is happening in India.Several Payment Banks are about to launch their operations with a dream to provide banking & transaction services esp. to millions of rural and semi urban un-banked & under-banked households. This is expected to greatly boost domestic remittances, rural savings & reduce dependency on cash. One of the most important questions these banks is...
