Nasscom Emerge-out conclave 2011
This was my third opportunity to attend NASSCOM conference. Everytime, I come back from each of such visits with good tips, learnings from practicing people and guidance from industry leaders. It was the same this time also. Only difference is that i want to store the experience, which I tend to forget over period of time. Not everything, I heard is relevant to me now, so this stored experience shall become a good place to come back and connect to the past.
It was a perfectly organized event with excellent welcome, provided excellent pen to write on a notepad with well captured agenda and participant names, timely snacks and delicious lunch and a great knowledge sharing experience. I could not attend it beyond 4pm for some urgent work at personal front, so only part of the whole event is captured below. Will update it as per inputs received from readers from time to time.
We had an opportunity to hear
- Dr. Som Mittal
- Rajendra Pawaar
- Chandra Shekhar
- KK Natrajan
It was Nassom emergeout forum — 4th edition in NCR, 8th in series as they said it. Focus of this conference was Cloud, Mobile, Social
Apart from that conference started with elements of future growth
- Skills
- SME
- IT for India
Following are few notes on things that were shared in the forum:
Out of 1300 firms registered with NASSCOM, 1000 are less than 50cr. They called upon more people to join as member to the forum. Further breakup to capture SME playground:
- 3 years, <5 cr, 100 of them
- 50 cr, < 10years, 600 of them
- Cost of operations
Key issues today being faced by SMEs are
a. Investment
b. Access to market
It provides spaces at lower cost, funding with easy collateral so that it helps SMEs in market development, Training costs, Group insurance
GDP — $4.24 trillion with PPP for India — 3rd in world
IT direct contribution — $88bn which is 7% of GDP, 2.5 mn people contributing to it.
Till now, we (Indian IT population) have been serving people outside this country into their products, we didn’t generate enough IPs or products. There is a limitation on the electronics/hardware side also and design capabilities in both side SW & HW.
We have a Huge Domestic Market to address, which whole world is looking at to benefit from, so why not Indian entrepreneurs also e.g. Telecom — 850 million subscribers
We missed Internet Broadband. IT and Telecom are hugely successful as compared to other sectors. They have two different stories for their success. They are Indian destiny to become world power. In case of Telecom it has been de-regulation and in case of IT it has been external demand.
Though there has been very good macro economic indicators showing good picture of our country, there are challenges to support that claim — it is not an inclusive growth.
Third area is low skills based vis-a-vis our population, enabling people to make money using it. Key participants to make it happen include all three players viz. Govt. Private, Civil society.
Mobiles are being promoted as next platform for transactions to make accessibility of services to all. We have Electronics service delivery act to enable that. Govt. wants to achieve financial inclusion through mobile. As infrastructure still takes time to come at particular level, mobile driven changes can be expedited.
Government is working on Open data policy. Government currently executes tight control on this information. This may be a big enabler for promoting market and business in India. As it gets open, govt expects private sector pitch in further and build on top of that.
Government is working on
Policy on open standards. This shall further help participation by small players.
If economic level does not increase that much, but broadband penetrates as did mobile phones, then imagine the number of opportunities it creates for Industry. As we think about this opportunity, we need to think in terms of enabling these people to make earnings out of these opportunities. Some figures to capture the landscape
2.5 lacs of panchayat (with fibre access)
+
6 lacs of broadband wireless last mile
=
Rs 30000 cr investment and all villages inclusion — duration of 3 years
It shall be huge opportunity to come in next 3 years.
Government is also planning to support migration to IPv6, Mobiles as Identity card, credit card, bank, eGovernance, Mobile delivery gateway
Other draft policy that is on it’s way out by early september
Mobile governance policy
Government is also working on establishing
- National knowledge network — connecting all libraries
- e-education, e-health, skill development mission
- Community based development, enabling below poverty line to earn. A good example in sight is Airtel.
Four parts of this strategy:
- Devices (Low cost)
- Software (security, e-commerce, ERP, mApps)
- Content
- Services (cloud, IVR, rural BPO)
Examples of organizations that have done some work in this direction with govt. (amongst many):
We had an opportunity to hear from Ms Ellen Daley from Forrester on her views for the upcoming mobile technologies and Indian environment. She stressed on following areas:
- Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Smaert, Social, Crowd Sourcing
She said, Problem is not dirth of Opportunity but distribution. Today ecosystem with Customer at the center is surrounded by service vendors, device vendors, telecom operators, cloud vendors, ISVs
Crowd Sourcing is becoming increasingly the popular trend of days to come. It is difficult to find talent to work for an organization. Individual developers are becoming important.
Technologies are moving to “Context aware applications”
Contact details that she shared: edale@forrester.com (9818632652)
As part of discussion on bootstrapping versus venture capital, we got an opportunity to hear from young entrepreneurs:
- Saumya Meattle, founder and ceo at Module One India Ltd.)
- Uppal Basu started somewhere first time in 1998 – 2000), M.D. of Nokia Growth partners
- Ankur Sharma, CEO TaxSpanner.com
Few notes from there:
- it is challenging to get iniital team in place
- there is no need to compulsorily bootstrap today, as there is an eco system and people there to do angel funding
- don’t start when everyone is doing it. Probably at that time you are already late.
- make sure you have done homework for financial support before plunging into it. for example: one of the persons in panel said that he was working in C-Dot when he decided to venture. He made a plan and executed over 5 years period, where he went to US, did job and make 1cr of money/capital, came back and started his own firm
- you can capital from his customers, primarily to have their skin in the game.
- you may see partners quitting the game and left alone
- be clear about exit strategy
As part of discussion on selling business we heard it from
- Sanjay Kamlani: who said that he started his business with exit in mind, kept transparency with his team, trusted management and found a buyer who would take care of my team
- Vishwas Mahajan: Compulink — who compared business like his own daughter
- Harish Behl: he was very simple to understand and straight
- Pavan Vaish: Co-founder Daksh, sold his business to IBM, continued as part of management team
Notes from this panel discussion:
- ensure there is sustainable management team that has no dependence on founders.
- checkout — products vversus service play
- check — if there are people calling on you to sell your organization…That’s good enough to evaluate yourself…There is no need to sell till you don’t need to.
- focus on core competence, someone will find you and teach you how to do business.
- business i like your daughter who may have to move to next house when it outgrows you
- make business respectable, take care off y our employees
- don’t focus on money, focus on making something great
- wealth for stakeholders and respect (respect being more important)
- Venture Capitalists can’t be trusted for long as they owe the money to someone else and have to ensure liquidity at some point in time. On the other hand, angel investors don’t have that liability. They also work with you to provide necessary guidance to make your business successful.
- entrepreneurship is guided by two things — Belief and Need
We had a useful discussion on Marketing as would be required to sell products and services in SMEs. Discussion panel was of
- Varun – cofounder of wirkle technologies
- Sameer Jain – founder of .Net Solutions
- Jay Pullur – FOunder and CEO, Qontext
- Maninder Singh Grewal from Religare Technologies
Notes from this panel discussion:
- We should share with customer the plan in which if they spend Rs X today on your product, than they save Rs 2X over a year or a timeframe. Give them a perspective, reason to buy in financial terms. Technical reasons would be embedded already into it.
- For marketing of your product, find something that catches attention, creates star on your product, creates news.
Question to address is “Why someone would look at us?” - Be ahead of the curve, getting attention of customer.
- How to write remarkable content? Having a good customer site helps to get customer calls.
- Match your perception of yourself with what customer perceives about you and your business. As that is what is most important to make sales.
- First order may come on its own by way of news, friends, network. But that does not continue and also will lead to complacency.
- Never compromize on core elements quality for your business
Your comments on adding to it or corrections are most welcome. Hope it will serve us as a good anchor point to connect to this event. Thanks to all the organizers of Nasscom who make it happen.
