The fact that the Finance Minister specifically underscored the Software Product Industry (SPI) in his maiden budget speech is testimony enough of the Government’s resolve to make significant and dramatic changes to achieve rapid economic development. Here are two reasons why we believe the Government is moving in the right direction. One. Empowering the masses. There is no reason why software...
India’s enterprise software industry has been slowly bubbling since the 1980s but has generally failed to deliver a large number of high impact, high value companies. We do have some companies that everybody talks about – iFlex, Tally, Zoho – but these are far and few between. I believe that we are seeing a new scalable wave of enterprise software companies coming out of India and there is a...
“The best way to do something ‘lean’ is to gather a tight group of people, give them very little money, and very little time.” – Bob Klein, chief engineer of the Grumman F-14 program. I first came upon this quote on Paul Graham’s website, and it always intrigued me, the small detail about the money – it could be little or a lot, but money is a factor, and a...
Those who know me well have heard a lot of stories about my experience at Zoho when they transitioned from AdventNet to Zoho. I worked there between 2001-2004 when it was quite a new thing in the indian product ecosystem to talk of Product Management etc. During that period, the company went through a very significant phase of transformation which I was fortunate to be part of, see & learn...
ProductNation interviewed Kumar Vembu, Founder and CEO of GoFrugal Technologies. In a candid conversation, Kumar shares his experiences of dealing with Indian retail market and shares key mantras for succeeding in the Indian market. Read on… Could you explain the rationale behind venturing into the Indian retail space through GoFrugal? I started GoFrugal during the late 2004, inspired by the...
I was catching up with Avinash (@avinashraghava) earlier today and we were chatting about product startups in the country. If you’ve been in this ecosystem, and seen the evolution of product companies, some interesting changes happened over the past few years. Back in 2001, at AdventNet, the Product Manager role was created, and so was the Usability Engineer role (which were primarily UX...
Some years ago, Infosys and Wipro put Bangalore on the global map. Now, Bangalore is once again marching ahead. It is creating a new kind of technology ecosystem, which is culturally different from what exists today. Today’s tech-ecosystem is about a few ‘hathi’ firms doing IT Services. Metaphorically, this is about manicured lawns, straight rows of carefully planted flowers and an occasional oak...
When I started JamBuster with Suneeta in 2004, I wanted to build a technology management software products company in India. Little did I know, that we would be part of a three-wave phenomena in software industry in India. The first wave of this is the software outsourcing, now a bit old story, but still the legend by itself. By different accounts, the outsourcing of software development by...
The trend of pure-play SaaS providers and on-premise software ISVs diversifying into SaaS is on the rise. SaaS revenue for global top 10 ISVs forms 40% of all software revenues. According to Gartner, the SaaS revenues will grow annually at 17.5% to form 24% of all software revenues in 2016. This would amount to USD 22.5 billion up from USD 14.5 billion in 2012. While SaaS makes a perfect business...
It is a cliché to say product management is both art and science. The product manager’s function encompasses a range of tasks, only limited by the company’s vision. Deep Nishar, Senior VP, Products and User Experience, at LinkedIn, told the audience at Nasscom Product Conclave 2012 that, “product managers should have brain of an engineer, heart of a designer and speech of a diplomat.” The product...
