There are many dimensions to India becoming a Product Nation. A thriving local market is critical, which are shaped by changing consumer preference and policy. Also important is increased trade in areas of comparative advantage. Digital consumer market in India that opened few years ago saw its waves and cycle of valuation however it is already witnessing its next shift from India Metro to...
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...
The Dream of a Product Nation, to give India its true Identity and enable Bharat to be the crown jewel of the World, took seed in Feb 2013. An idea to harness the energy of many volunteers inspired by the Open Source movement took the shape of iSPIRT and Product Nation. The Spectrum of Volunteering spreads from Bad-to-Good-to-Great. Adam Grant in his book Give and Take highlights this mindset of...
Seven years ago a band of volunteers came together to move the Indian software product ecosystem into the next orbit. Three years ago this movement became a think tank, iSPIRT. We pioneered the idea of building public goods without public money in India. Today, India has many software product Unicorns and many more are in the making. We are doing one M&A a month. India Stack is reshaping many...
In this polytheistic world of entrepreneurs, who is the Startup Initiative for? There are many types of entrepreneurs. There is the self-employed vegetable-vendor type, the Thelawala. Then there is the small businessman in Okhla or Peenya who has grown to be in GST net. And how can one ignore the technology entrepreneur who graces the pages of ET every day . Even these tech startups come in many...
It’s Independence Day today, and the last year has been one of the most exciting years in India’s product ecosystem. Just last week, the news that Sundar Pichai has taken over as the CEO of Google has been another shot in the arm for Indian techies. If ever it was the time for Indian product companies to raise the battle cry to take on the world, it is now. In conversations with other people in...
A ‘first of its kind’ marquee event to kick-start the next innovation wave in India, where Bengaluru takes the lead in showcasing Public-Private Partnership. With iSPIRT, we are happy to announce the launch of InnoFest – a day long Innovation festival jointly organized and sponsored by Public and Private Enterprise. The event, to be held at the Indian Institute of...
Efforts of iSPIRT’s List-in-India Policy Expert Team have reaped the desired results. The securities market regulator, SEBI, has announced relaxed norms for a separate platform to allow “new-age companies” having an innovative business model and belonging to the knowledge-based technology sector to list in the country. The existing legal framework has considerable challenges for a successful...
In a recent article in ET, Mohandas Pai and I suggested that if India does not produce enough product companies, our economy will not be sustainable in the future. The data is compelling. To quote from that article, “Boeing and Airbus alone generate almost as much profit as all global airlines put together. Pfizer’s profits are more than those of the top 100 hospitals in the US. Cisco’s profits...
You’ve heard of famous napkin sketches such as the Southwest airlines route map or Robert Metcalfe’s Ethernet diagrams. But did you know that iSPIRT also started out as a series of such sketches? It was a late wintersun afternoon in December 2012. I was sitting in Bangalore’s Karnataka Golf Association across Sharad Sharma and Avinash Raghava. It was the day after a marathon few weeks of us...
