Ideas are dime a dozen! It’s all in the execution! So goes the popular wisdom. Indian start-ups and accelerators keep talking about identifying problems and solving them. True. There are great companies like redBus.in that were built using this approach. However, there are other great companies like Twitter that were not born out of any urgent problems that people had. They developed a...
April 30, 2014
Ideas are NOT dime a dozen! At least good ones! Building an Innovation Culture! #ThinkBig
30April
April 29, 2014
Will the Revolution Happen?
29April
Revolution is not an easy word to throw around. Those cheering for a software products revolution in India must look at the historical context. Innovation Factory So many countries and communities have tried to emulate the amazing startup culture that exists in the United States, specifically in the Silicon Valley. The Valley is not only a fountainhead of creation and innovation in computer...
April 28, 2014
‘India Innovates, India Leads’: Indian Talent + Information Technology = India2022
28April
The success of India in future is intrinsically linked to its ability to keep pace with technology. The world has seen an unprecedented change in technology landscape in the last decade and innovation has become more important than ever before. Technology can help build a digital India- a knowledge-based society and economy- by empowering, connecting and binding all parts of India. For India to...
April 25, 2014
Indygo – Customer Acquisition Tips
25April
I met Srinivas Yermal from Indygo. In the conversation he chronicled his journey as an entrepreneur in India. Opportunity knocks from up-close He happened to chance on an opportunity that started from his close network. His chartered accountant once asked if he could help build a practice management solution that would help maintain his growing business. Out came Papilio. Breaking the product As...
April 24, 2014
Analysis of Market Opportunities for Indian Software Products
24April
As a think tank, iSPIRT has been constantly thinking, exploring and encouraging numerous models of software product business, all in parallel. This process leads us to gather three distinct categories of inputs that can then be crystalized and shared with the larger ecosystem – practitioner experiences, market trends and industry strengths. Since all the three factors evolve, the class of...
April 23, 2014
Airwoot – Revolutionize customer support on Social Media
23April
Airwoot is a social customer service helpdesk, using a sophisticated filtering and priority engine that separates social chatter from relevant support queries, which enables brands to deliver real-time customer support on top of social media. On April 3rd, Avinash and I had a telephonic chat with Saurabh Arora on the story behind Airwoot, their current customers and future roadmap. Q. Could you...
April 22, 2014
iSPIRT Seeks Technology Intern(s)
22April
iSPIRT has over 40+ volunteers who belong to different organizations. The volunteers are working on many initiatives that are complex, need a lot of analysis/thinking, experimentation, and outcomes take time. Currently, iSPIRT internal communication and interaction has been happening via email, google docs, attachments, etc. The current set of tools have worked so far, but, we need a...
April 21, 2014
How to “Know” What Your Customers Really Want?
21April
Focus on understanding the situation that the customer wants to resolve, not the customer Product managers are constantly told that they must “know” or understand what customers really “want” or “need”. Did they tell you how? Did they say — understand what problems customers are trying to overcome? Should you focus on understanding the problem, the customer or both? You will be better served if...
April 18, 2014
Future of Mobile Apps
18April
The future of mobile apps is linked to how humans have evolved and communicated with tools. Consider an inverted pyramid as shown in the image above, with two dimensions growing simultaneously. The first being awareness and the second inter-connectivity. Awareness can also be perceived as manual vs automatic interactions with little input from user. Inter-connectivity is communication between...
April 17, 2014
Move vs Hire – establishing a beachhead in the US
17April
I have written many posts on what it takes to enter the US market. Most of my past posts have been around sales and marketing. However, there is a much more fundamental, one might say visceral, approach to entering a new market. How committed are you to it? As the famous anecdote goes of the hen laying an egg (the hen is involved) vs the chicken that gets cooked (the chicken is committed). Does...
