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...
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...
Let me start with a simple question. What is common among these, as of 2006 (and, for that matter, even as of today)? – Visa – Sony Playstation – Orbitz – NASDAQ – Microsoft Windows All of these are known examples of facilitation based multi-sided business models. These are not just products or businesses; these are platforms, in the true sense of the word. These...
I am a foodie. And a big Zomato fan, no pun intended anywhere. Here, I am going to talk about everything we foodies love about Zomato and all the things it could do better. For the uninitiated, Zomato is a restaurant discovery platform with 74,800 restaurants listed across 19 cities and 4 countries, and claims to have served 62.5 million foodies till date. More simply, it is about food and where...
Sanjay Jain, Entrepreneur in Residence, Khosla Labs spoke at the IPMA 2nd annual event. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is an agency responsible for implementing the AADHAAR scheme, a unique identification project. It was established in February 2009, with an aim to provide a unique identification number to all Indians, by eliminating duplicate and fake identities. Biometrics...
I can bet you are familiar with this one, but not its consequences, in product development: you’ve seen project managers in product development teams express frustration at not being able to keep the development on track, on time and on budget. I had earlier written about the kind of expectations people have of product development and its perils – but this problem of project management is worse...
Seems only apt to summarize our 12 learning’s on 12-12-12 #1 – ‘Kitna detee hai’ ? Maruti car runs a campaign in India around “keetna deti hai” (means in local language – how much mileage will i get in?). The first question on the applicant’s mind was – post program will I get a better pay or shift into a company of my dreams. Very few (23% of them to be precise) reported that...
Pricing is a mix of art science. Most product startups have a hard time figuring out their revenue model (freemium or, paid only) and what they should charge. If you chose freemium, you have to be careful that cost of incremental customer is low and it will be great, if this customer also helps spread the word about you. On the other hand, if you choose paid, you run the risk of having minimal...
Despite a lot of matter that is available and the ease with which people network, setting an Product Startup in the NCR region is fraught with challenges that few can perceive in other parts of the country. For one, it is the sheer size of the region, effectively sprawling across three states, dealing with three different governments which pose a challenge. Gurgaon houses some of the larger MNC...
There has been a huge upstart in the number of product companies in India in the last 12 months. 700% is the estimate according to Zinnov Consulting. Most of them, as one keynote speaker at the recently held NASSCOM Product Conclave 2012 said ominously or more from experience being in the Silicon Valley, “will fail”. Why startups fail can be due to any number of reasons but the chances of...
