Vijay Anand | The Startup Guy.

The Indian Innovation Roadmap: Disclosed

// December 22nd, 2009 // 8 Comments » // India, Open Source Innovation, Technology

Its been a while since I’ve written here. I am not going to apologize for it. The reason being simple. I once by accident went back a year and on what I “was” thinking, and i realized how fast the space of startups, innovation and clarity was emerging. I am not even seeing the evolution of concepts, ideas, and reality happening. In some cases, it feels like the sky is falling, and out of nowhere things are happening. And thats scary. Its been sometime to pull out of the race, and to look at things to gain perspective. And I only think I understand things a wee bit better. I am sure I’d have to go back to that space once again, and repeatedly from time to time to keep this perspective afresh. Its important.

I once used to have the question in my head as to why cant we create a product and brand like the Mercedez in India. And then we got the Nano. Not at all the same thing, is it?

I cant stop by sit back and think what would be the scenario if we had indeed launched a car that ranks shoulder to shoulder, or even beats the quality of a Mercedez. Why Benz, lets make it beat a Bugatti Veyron, if our fancies need to fly a little. I am not so sure we would have succeeded. Am sure the first question and comparison that would come out, is the price. And India has been so successfully been marketed as a low-cost Utopia that even if we make a Mercedez, we would have to make it cheaper than the Benz.

Now is that technically feasible? Yes it is. And that is our End game in a lot of ways. But where do we start? We start at low-cost.

A lot of people get very upset and turned-off at the notion that we were, and in a lot of ways still the low-cost destination. And so should I – if that is the end game. But it isnt. Let me give you examples.

HCL once used to be nothing more than a pure outsourcing arm for Cisco in the telecom division. Today they have moved up the value chain to establish a joint-venture with Cisco (Setting up HCL-Cisco) that they co-own, and in some cases license patents and IP to Cisco. And trust me, that doesnt happen overnight or by chance. It takes leadership, strategy and direction to make that happen. Which is why I am hoping that entrepreneurs, especially startup entrepreneurs will get to hear this, cause you have to start thinking that way to get there.

So look at the Nano. Tata owns Jaguar, and Tata owns the Nano. Amazing, I must say, and it all makes sense. In order to make the Mercedez, you first have to make the Nano.

Why? Because building a brand takes time, and enroute to that, you have a brand to break – the brand that India is low-cost. And how do you do that? Thats what “Disruptive” technology stands for – by definition. Anything that can Disrupt people’s normal, everyday thoughts in terms of a breakthrough in technology, thats capable of breaking business models as well – thats also more or less the reason why technology entrepreneurship is so glamorous. Because it can bring down prices, do sexy things, grab attention and make people take notice.

So seriously, whats the link from a Nano to a Benz? The Nano is important, because its a crucial step to get to the Benz, and the crucial step and mindset breaks when you get people to say the first Wow. And the Tata Motors Company, has successfully managed to do that. Get the world to say a Wow. And that is the first leap for any of our companies, be it whatever domain to do. The wow could be quality measures, cost, design, Interaction mechanism, or the simple science behind it. But it has to begin with the Wow. Get that in, into your product somehow.

The second bit is the value engineering. How do you mass manufacture something, and still manage price points and quality. If you think this is a mechanical engineer’s curse, think again. Most web companies will bleed and die because of their “cloud” bills. That silly recursive function that takes that extra compute cycle, will come to bite you in the wrong place, if you dont fix it. This is where specialists kick in. This is where experience comes in, and this is where price point remains still. This is definitely India’s second move. And I’m already starting to see plenty of companies do this.

The Third move will be in Feature Engineering. Whatever you did in the first bit, you want to do the reverse of that, with the supervision of the second phase engineers. You want to put stuff in, but not the old stuff, make a leap and bring in the next generation of things that make it easier on the user, the manufacturer and everyone who comes near a ten foot radius of it. And this is where the next generation of Benz, Jaguar, and Bugatti’s are born.

The interesting point will be that, without step one, we would never have step three, because the evolution of talent, processes, and engineering will simply not be there. And If we try to jump directly to step three, what we will end up will be a fake imitation of a luxury product, twice priced, and having to fight the mindset of it being in the wrong place (it should be low-cost instead).

I remember standing on the stage at Proto.in in 2007 asking where are our companies that can make a Merc and Ipods. The Answer – They are coming, and the first generations of them are just born. To be in India, to be in the products space, and to thrive in it, it helps to keep this in mind. It took me a while to get this, but thats also cause I see this trend happening around me – Playing out in real life.

I can imagine the look that you have on your faces reading this. Where is our market then? Isnt the US the most wealthiest market to go tap into? Am sure you have that look on your face, judging me for that. You might want to sit down for this. I think there is a strong misconception. While the western “developed” markets might be the richest, the emerging markets are the biggest – they make for 5/6th the world, and make up in large numbers. It’s almost the long-tail in the truest sense of the word and according to the definition of Pareto distribution (Economic divide on the 20-80 rule). And listen, if it works in India, it will work in most of the emerging markets. And fortunately for us, the high cost of innovation, the inability to grasp emerging markets and the masses, all play against the research labs of the far west.

If anyone can make it happen, and playing with the advantages that we have in terms of the ability to communicate better with the rest of the world, the collaborations we have with abroad, the support that we can garner from the govt (alright alright, we can improve on this bit) and most importantly, our inherent need to innovate, we are probably the best suited for it. And if we are bold enough to take that first step, our journey has finally begun – well hurry up, cause there are already folks getting a headstart on that – Mark my words, the Nano will lead the way to the next generation of Jaguars!

Setting Expectations For the Future of Computing.

// April 15th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Business, India, Mobile, Technology

The experts in Marketing would usually say that, marketing, pricing, the sales process, and the customer satisfaction that follows that can all be related with a simple equation.

Satisfaction = Reality – Expectations. (Thanks!)

And they would be right.

I remember a call from my dad’s friend about a year ago, to come over to his house to check out his new computer that his Son had gotten for him. His children live in the US and they had gotten their parents a computer so as to take advantage of Skype, Webcams and all those cost effective ways of communicating, which would mean more long hours and detailed conversations amongst themselves. His complaint was that the computer sales guy sold him a slower computer when he marketed it as the fastest computer available in the market.

A little bit of clicking around, and lo and behold, it was a duo core, bloated with RAM, hard disk space and a nifty 19″ monitor, bundled with the entire multi-media suite. All was right here except for the expectations.

When I did mention that, this does seem like a fast computer, his simple question was as to why it takes so long to “turn on”. His comparison: “I push the button on my TV and its on, in about five seconds max. I doubt its as fast as they claim these computers are”

This certainly is a serious case of expectations set wrong, but I believe is also an insight. If we are serious about the next one billion, then we need to address this. The reason why India has more cellphone users than computer users, is also because mobile phones in a way did give people the “instant on” reaction that they were expecting – which might not last for long, now that we are getting more complicated OSes into mobile phones and also taking it down the same route as PCs.

Technologists often quote that the mobile phone is the New PC. I think that entire ideology is wrong. PCs have to become what Mobile phones were, and hopefully are still. We are still far away from computing becoming a utility. If it has to evade every household, it has to become what the television is. Thats the expectation we need to satisfy.

We Really Don’t Dream Big Enough.

// November 2nd, 2008 // 12 Comments » // Entrepreneurship, India, Proto.in, Technology, Web 2.0

I grew up with a poster in my room saying “The size of your world is as big as your dreams”. It was always there when you woke up to remind you to think beyond the box. It still hangs there in my room at my parents place. It’s the thought that came into my mind when I was browsing through the net, listening to some of the folk’s interpretation of Entrepreneurship.

It seems  to me as if there are a couple of theories floating around these past few weeks.

a) Entrepreneurship is overrated. Entrepreneurship is romanticized, and the often tweeted and retweeted phrase seems to be “My son is without a job, ah! he is an entrepreneur”. Well, That’s probably pushing it far, and yep, perhaps we are breaking the elitism that was once associated with being an “entrepreneur”, but isn’t this what we wanted with all the publicizing that we did and urging one another to chase their dreams? I do see that this could dampen the ones that pride in elitism, but as far as things go, there will always be a gulf between those who can dream, ideate and implement, and those who just wear the badge and do nothing. And really, the more the merrier in this party.

b) There is also this other camp, that seems to think that, Entrepreneurship is too Web 2.0-ised. I can emphatize with this camp.  I dont think entrepreneurship in India is equated with a venture in the web 2.0 world, but most of us derive our first impression from the media that we consume and web 2.0 is essentially Media and new age consumption of those content. You get hit by it in the face over and over again, till you find something interesting. That doesn’t mean that there arent other sort of ventures going on out there. Manufacturing is still one of our strongest sectors and there are plenty of neat things cooking up in that camp. So for those of you freaking out with the thought of drowning in Web 2.0 Gyaan, take heeed, there is a bigger world out there – you just need to step out more.

c) There is a third theory out there that there are a lot of NRIs returning home. And Rajiv Gandhi is rightly quoted that whatever happened a few decades ago was not brain drain, but brain banking. Along with those returning is returning a renewed sense of nationalism, pride, and a whole lot of global interaction practices, that really help us get our quality of work a notch higher to match global capabilities. The complaint is that, along with them comes the baggage to convert the cities of India, into New York and Boston, or London. They do have a point. But sooner or later as these fresh entrepreneurs hit the Registrar of Companies to get their incorporation work done, they will know that things work slightly in a different order in this country.

So, really gentlemen (and ladies), there is not much to fret. You can relax and enjoy the process as our landscape changes before our eyes.

We Really Don’t Dream Big Enough.

What I want to talk about really is not the concerns, but my own concern as to how we aren’t dreaming big (more…)

The Future of Living: How 3G Could Help.

// October 19th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Entrepreneurship, Ideas to Toss, Mobile, Open Source Innovation, Technology, Web 2.0

3G. WiMAX. There is an inevitable showdown waiting on that camp. That’s probably also the reason why the deployments of WiMAX hasnt picked up by much. If you ask me, there is credit to deploying the 3G – or a network that is based on the telecom network. Why? Reliability. Ever picked up a landline and missed the dialtone? Thats what I am talking about.

With the economy slowing down a little, I guess the 3G talk is going to be dampened a bit here in India. But I dont think it should be. The consumerist trend hasnt slowed down and Indians have woken up to enjoying the usage of digital media, devices and services, that 3G as a service could very much consolidate and bank on. This post is partly written with the knowledge I’ve gathered being on both sides of the camp, as part of the Telecom group (and the plans that they are making with IMS – IP Multimedia Subsystem) and where the web, and industry have evolved.

Lets start with a Picture.

Ubiquitous Computing, will not be just a term anymore. Centralized, easily accessible, and convergence. I think that’s the three keywords which are almost mantras in the new lifestyle that is emerging.

Trends:

Follow the numbers on the diagram with the explanations below.

1. Your mobile phone is not just a phone. Ask Nokia and they will tell you that. If we start with the way of 3G, its also the means to a broadband pipe, and 3G is just the beginning. HSDPA, LTE, and all the planned roadmap of the GSM Data Network, seems to be only getting faster and faster. Now, why would I advocate relying on my mobile’s data network as the crucial pipe for everything?

(more…)

What Yahoo Should Possibly Go After. Part II

// October 17th, 2008 // No Comments » // Business, Entrepreneurship, Ideas to Toss, India, Technology, Web 2.0

This is a continuation to a Post that I had written Earlier.

“Yahoo could emerge with an edge, if they leapfrog into other verticals following the same web-based advertisement network.”

For a company which has entrenched itself in the media space, managing advertisements networks i probably the holy grail. I wouldnt recommend that Yahoo give up that leverage. Instead of going head on with Google and losing out on that battle, all they need to do is leverage that asset in a different vertical.

I wrote about perhaps using advertising networks, especially multimedia (audio/video) ads in Radio and television networks. One could argue that the ad server requirements, the infrastructure requirement and cost of operations would significantly vary because of the medium. I’d agree to some extent. But there is also a way to deploy the already existing asset, as-is, into different verticals. Read on.

(more…)

The Startup WorkForce : A Proposal to the Community.

// October 12th, 2008 // 35 Comments » // Entrepreneurship, Ideas to Toss, India, Open Source Innovation, Technology, Web 2.0, tips

This is a wonderful time to be starting up. You will come across very few people who will give comparisons to all the benefits they get working for big corporates. Its one such time. Hiring will be slightly easier, and retaining them will be even more easier.

Even in the midst of all that, it does seem that a lot of the Startup Companies are hardpressed for resources here in India. Here’s a solution.

A few of us have been talking about putting together a centre that trains people (as blank slated as freshers) on the common technologies that people use while building products – the usual PHP, Python, AJAX, MySQL, etc etc and getting them upto speed on mashups, APIs, documentation, and moving forward. That is the level of skill that most of the startup community folks are looking for it seems. Or am I wrong here?

If I am right, then there is a simple way around it. Every chapter of OCC in the country is doing quite well. I heard from Santhosh that Pune is a 300 people group now (though I do suspect that the turn out ratio would be still less), but who knew Pune had 300 people who would be open to being part of a community right? And the same case has gone on with Bangalore, Kolkatta, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, and even now and then with Mumbai.

Here’s the thought. What if in one of the OCCs a dozen of the startup companies, especially the folks who can code and code really well, commit that they will run a two month training program for people in these languages? It is going to take a bit of time and commitment, but there are a lot of resources already on the web, and with a couple of screencasts, and proper documentation, you could essentially also use it as training material for the next batch of people that you hire in your company later on.

What I am proposing is that a batch of technology entrepreneurs, each taking a week to cover different aspects of the course, could put their hands together to collaboratively solve an issue which is haunting a great many of them. (more…)

What Yahoo Should Possibly Go After. Part I

// September 12th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Ask Vijay, Business, Ideas to Toss, India, Open Source Innovation, Technology, Web 2.0, tips

So I know that there are a gazillion guys out there in the whole wide world, who have given “open” advise to Yahoo as to what they should do. I am neither an expert, nor am vested into the company to have such generosity towards them

A friend of mine and I, over some conversations were discussing about some of the bigger brands that we see around us and something along the topics of Return on Equity. Not sure if you are aware of, but Microsoft has a 52% return on equity. Yahoo has roughly about 7% and falling drastically and Google has one which stands at around 26% – and growing steadily. Whatever you may say, Microsoft has played this game with a whole new set of balls and one most people simply won’t understand. And if you ask me, they are a much better company in terms of strategy and products compared to Google, anyday.

Yahoo could emerge with an edge, if they leapfrog into other verticals following the same web-based advertisement network.

But that’s not the focus of this post.

The conversation was that, if a company has Advertisement as its core strength and has built a competence in it, then its going to be very hard for the company to drop that and adapt the advertising network of its partner/rival. Well, for the case of survival they might, but since they do have the core competence, the resources and the minds that can think in that direction, what could they possibly do, was the question.

Fact: Yahoo makes most of its money via advertisement, and that too on banner ads.

This becomes an issue when you have so much internet portals and properties, but just simply have to fill them with advertisements in order to make them viable. And in this day and age of APIs, nobody might even come visit the site to get hit by the advertisement. You are forced to rethink in terms of strategically placing the advertisement within the content, but thats a very very hard thing.

My Take: I think this is probably the same route as making fiber out of rocks. There might be some way to do it, but whatever it is, its one rare, long process.

I’d say, flip the coin, and lets look out to the horizon. Go after other streams, television and Radio… to be precise.

(more…)

The “Chennai” City Wall Project.

// September 10th, 2008 // 8 Comments » // Chennai, India, Technology

You must know by now that we get involved in quite a bit of work related to the city. I believe that a city is a representation, collection and expression of the people living in it. If you walk into a city and cannot hear the voices, and expressions of its people, the city … aint quite alive. And I love having cities which are alive.

Mahesh Radhakrishnan, a friend of mine who is behind MOAD and is one really talented architect and I often meet to discuss about something we can do to solve these issues.

One latest such initiative is to setup something like this in Chennai. We are going to need some hands on this, but if and when it comes out, it will be quite something to boast about. What do you think?

This is an installation done in (Helsinski) Europe. We are planning to build the same at a fraction of the cost.

Youtube Link of the Wall in Action.

Ideas to Toss: Energy Storage FAT?

// September 9th, 2008 // 7 Comments » // Entrepreneurship, Ideas to Toss, India, Open Source Innovation, Technology

It’s quite possible that I am just plain simply crazy, but if you bear with me and try to understand how my brain and thought process works, I think there is most certainly an idea here.

Energy is a Pressing Matter and Hot Topic in all Circles, but I think the basis of our problem isnt focused on.

So I was sitting through a Sustainability Conference in IIT Madras today and there was one talk on Energy Consumption. The talk essentially mentioned how we ascertain energy demands by our peak hours. The problem being we need that at the most, and at times when its not the peak, we have to “shed” the load, and it usually ends up being dumped into the grid, and thanks to our grids not being designed properly, it usually ends up overloading half of rural India. That’s a different story all together.

The hint was in a passing by comment that the problem with energy is that it has to be consumed as and when its produced. There is simply no way to store it. If you want to store it in batteries and such, its simply not viable for large quantities, since its very expensive.

I have no idea what happened for the rest of the talk, apart for when he showed graphs and numbers – which always catches my attention, but he also mentioned that they were not accurate, which made me go “bleh” and back to my thinking process.

The Idea:

So Energy. The basis is that all energy is created from one form or the other. So Lets accept that we cant break this rule and make newton roll over in his grave. Knowing limitations are a plus point.

Lets learn a little bit of inspiration from biology. We take food, we break it down into amino acids, the smallest and easily metabolic form of food, and then the system burns it into energy as per the demands of the body. Compare it with however it is that we create energy, saying that one form of energy – coal or whatever is converted into energy which is converted into electricity which is probably the simplest form of energy.

If you look at biology, the food that is intaken, if the broken down food is more than the “demand” of the system, then the system quickly converts them into FAT and stores them all around the body – which is what provides all those funky love handles that people put so much energy to get rid of. But quite strictly speaking, its just the systems way of saying that we are consuming more than we need, and it is storing it away for a rainy day. The first signs of starvation and thats the storage unit that the system starts feeding off of.

Whats the FAT version of electricity? That’s the question.

Now, I am thinking that there is a possibility here that one cannot go directly from coal into  free flowing electrons. And we are probably missing a middle step that might help us with efficiency.

Secondly, there must be a way to join these electrons to become something that is more passive and with a trigger break them down into simpler free flowing electrons again.

And you know what? If that is possible… you and I would never have to wait for ages for our phones or ipods t get charged. We can technically dump these “FAT” into our devices, and let the device trigger these substance into electrons so that we get a full charge. But the deal is that, just like it doesnt take the body more than a few enzymes to break down FAT back into Amino acids and use them, we have to have these in a form that the devices themselves can transform without elaborate machinery – aka. combustion chambers and engines.

I think it should be possible. These are days when I wish I was a physicist and a chemist put together. But if, and I think it can be, it is possible, then technically we should be able to catch “energy” as and when it happens – from the lightnings, to tornadoes, to cyclones, save up all the energy and use it for when we need it. We can harvest all of the Sunlight hitting the earth and probably setup plants that can fight some of the global warming, and probably use energy in a way that is not as harmful to the planet as our current barbaric ways are.

What Do Startups Need?

// September 9th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Business, Entrepreneurship, India, Technology

"What do Startups need" is the Question asked these days.

Seems like that’s the kind of question a lot of companies which are looking to support, nurture and grow alongside Startups are asking themselves these days.

I’m invited to be part of a fairly small panel that is to discuss on this very topic tomorrow in Bangalore in a short meetup that Sun Microsystems is putting together.

The more I think about it, I think the sheer number of pages where business opportunities, support systems, efficiencies can be made all seem to just go on and on and on.

I think the key element that it comes down to is not “selling”, but “enabling”. Really, if you think about it and put all the power law distribution to  a graph of economy (financial status and revenues) versus size of the company, it’d be quite easy to see the bigger corporates easily contributing to 80% of the economic wealth that is being garnered. That’s almost a no brainer.

I think the insight is this: An average startup entrepreneur is young, imaginative and full of ambitions and dreams. The key is to enable them. Not sell to them, but help them achieve their dreams. Its going to be pretty much the same way that you would want to support artists to come out with more creativity.

Someone wise once said that the role of a supporting organization to a startup should help startups make truck loads of money and make a small slice out of it. We need to tie in our success with that of the startup. Everyone wins in the end.

So now, most organizations are not gonna want this headache. Go after all the small companies, give them that additional support and handholding, just for 20% of the revenue. But isnt 20% quite a lot? I dont think it would ever make sense for a company to focus on just this 20%, but if they were already saturated with the market share in the corporate world, a 20% extra market share will give these companies a lot of footing, wouldnt it?

Now obviously, the number of companies very much increases. The queue of companies to support would almost be as long as the infinitely long tail itself. Thats when shared resources make a lot of sense. Technology helps to scale. Thats what it does beautifully. And if a technology company says that it cannot cater to this group,.. they woe.. something is truly terribly wrong.

Related Posts from Before:

Selling to the Unaffordable – Part I

Selling to the Unaffordable – Part II