A lot of "change" is happening in India these days and trust me it's the best time to be part of this change, atleast we get to see 'how exactly things actually "change" in a country'. And that too in a country like India (with world's 20% population & world's largest democracy), a country which has always been believed to be run in a particular way. A common saying in India has always been, 'Yahaan aise hi chalte aaya hai, aur aise hi chalega'. To all those smart chaps who believed in this saying like the last generations, here comes the "change" - atleast to the law and order situation.
Like we all see in newspapers and television these days, a lot of large scale scams are in limelight, and a lot of finger pointing is happening all over the country. Seems like all the big agencies, news channels, political parties & large corporates of the country are involved in some way or the other. Is it surprising, really? I am not surprised and I know you are not surprised either, since we all have been brought up with the lesson that in India, we will have to pay some "under the table" charges at all the levels. What do you think these all charges add up to - simple 1000 rupees for 100 crore people makes 1 lakh crores.. Huh! I never thought it that way.
Then why is there such a big fuss about all these scams, and why are they confusing us? May be because we all as a nation have always been part of them, but never really accepted them as existent, and now every one is playing the "innocent game". Or, may be because some of us were so busy in our own lives that we never really bothered about these scams, and now are surprised how is it possible when so many legal agencies exist. Or, may be because we were brought up with the philosophy that everyone is doing some thing wrong, ignore that and focus on your own development, and now we are all confused when so called "accepted norms" are being punished.
If with these scams, 90% people want to say - "what a shame to them and the country?" May be we should check our own records and see how many times we or our parents have paid 'extra' bucks or used 'extra' powers to influence some decisions for our advantage. It's fed deep in our roots, where we pay 100 rupees at the traffic signal to the Pan shop, or 500 rupees for the driving license to the license broker or 1000 rupees for other day to day documents. This entire system is existing right here, and we all as a nation have always been part of it.
But there is a subtle difference happening fundamentally. We never accepted these facts as a nation and I think it's part of the "change" that this all is happening, since I believe that the first part of any change is the acceptance of facts in the real world, and that's what all these scams are really doing. These scams are looking at us directly in our faces, and saying it's the right time to bring everything to transparency, and contribute to the change. May be we all are corrupt, may be we all have been corrupt, but let's not take that ideology to the next generations. May be this finger pointing by the highest court of our country to the Prime Minister, Chief Ministers, CBI, Media houses is a right step forward. May be this is really called "democracy". May be there is a message that not every one is corrupt yet. May be there is a message that a "change" is knocking at our doors. Lets welcome the first step in the "change", and see the new legislations/rules or the steps of development that will follow. The one who orients in the direction would lead the nation.
There are few politicians in the country who simply don't understand the basic concepts of macro economics like brand image of the country in international arena or happiness index of the society, because what they care about is their 1 lakh votes. This is the current state of MNS, a local political party in Maharashtra, India.
Rediff quotes - "The 13 Members of Legislative Assembly of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena on Monday, 9th Nov 2009, created a ruckus in the Maharashtra assembly, after Samajwadi party MLA Abu Asim Azmi started to take his oath in Hindi, in spite of their demand that all legislators take the pledge in Marathi.As soon as Azmi began taking the oath in Hindi, the 13 member-strong MNS contingent rushed towards Azmi, snatching the mike away from the podium"
Today's shameful act by MNS MLAs has not only shown disrepect to the Marathi / Indian culture but to the law and order of the country. The way our leaders of MNS behaved today in the parliament made us feel ashamed in front of the entire world but I think we should not lose hope from our country's law and order. I hope there would be strict actions taken against these MLAs and the political party. This poses a follow-up debate - Is MNS on the verge of being banned?
Raj has threatened the legislative assembly saying, "If any MLA does not take the oath in Marathi, the House will see what happens,". Is this acceptable in any economy where law and order exists. Are these guys Indian Talibans?
Some views from people I know and which I found intriguing:
MNS should be banned by Supreme Court and if not then PMO or President, else I will go and start shooting these street gundas
If action isn't taken against Raj Thackeray and MNS then we will never feel like a democracy again. If action isn't taken on this incident then how can we ever feel like the law exists
I love this city and we all do so how does it matter if we say Bombay or Mumbai
This is a cosmopolitan place and we should all be able to live peacefully together
We would love to hear your views on this shameful act of MNS...
Million Dollar Idea - Most of the would-be entrepreneurs in India wait for it to take the plunge in the wild start-up world. I have talked to many passionate individuals to verify this assumption and found it only partially true. Other reasons mentioned by most of them was a lack of great team and a missing ecosystem where entrepreneurship is supported.
Though I partially agree that a decent idea is some thing worth waiting for, but am not sure whether it necessarily needs to be a starting point. It can come with healthy discussions with the people you consider your core team. Great team is not some thing that we are born with. It can follow once you decide to take the plunge and start talking to people about your dreams -there are many people like us living around sharing the same vision.
Other reason which pulls the thought of entrepreneurship down - the current Indian ecosystem, is something that I found alarming since we need support from the industry veterans to change that. Everything said in newspapers seem like a marketing gimmick; we know the hard facts that the ecosystem to nurture entrepreneurs still don't exist in the country. There are VC/PE firms to infuse money in the start-up world but there are hardly any Angel investors/seed investors.
I had a chat with a VC some time back and his logic was that it's easy for us to invest 10 million dollars 5 times than 1 million dollars 50 times since it saves energy in hunting down the potential companies and later managing them. My immediate question was who needs 10 million dollars as a seed fund and he said "that's why we are not a seed fund" :)
Interesting, I guess management of time and energy of the VC firm is determining who needs to be funded today and at what stage. I am not saying that phase B or C funding is not required et al. All I am trying to mention here is that we need to nurture talent right from the start to make a Google come out of India. The very fact that most of the start-ups in India look out for $100k to $500k seed fund is because, in India, it's huge money and is good enough for a service company to sustain in the initial phase, but since the fund managers are interested in giving more money, they neglect these applications considering them trash or 'good but not interested' category.
We are missing the Indianized version of VCs - local money lenders or sahukars, who understand the Indian mentality and who could help in evolving talent right from the start. Narayan Murthy has taken a nice step in this direction though I am not sure about his targeted token amount.
We hope to see some Indianized VCs in the coming times who would help in cultivating the talent in more Indianized way. I hope we would get an answer to the 'No-Google from 1 Billion' syndrome, provided we get the right ecosystem.
I blogged this article of Indian Express mainly because of two reasons, one that it is an attempt to highlight the current state of law and order in Bihar, and other that it paints skewed or only half image of the story. The heading of the blog itself is misleading since it mentions that people are being harassed which is correct but I guess this is the first time in the history of Bihar when the government is trying to bring in transparency in the system; CM has set up a call center for RTI applicants.
I am thankful to the journalist of this article 'Santosh Singh' who brought this issue in lime light, but a misleading heading can lead to biased opinion about current state of law and order in Bihar. We know that its not the best in the country but it is definitely improving and there are some NGOs and independent bodies who are contributing to the state. We should boost up their morale by praising their efforts, and not highlighting the terror or harassment, which is true for states like WB, UP or Delhi also.
Excerpts from article:
In Bihar, often a time, information officials harass RTI applicants by filing false cases against them. The Bihar Human Rights Commission (BHRC) has now recommended that all these officials be placed under suspension.
BHRC member Justice Rajendra Prasad wrote to the state government on October 29 directing it to “look into the complaints of harassment of RTI applicants by lodging false criminal cases against them by, or at the instance of, state public information officers”.
The allegations, Justice Prasad wrote, constituted “a serious violation of the human rights of the people of Bihar in general, and the existing and potential seekers of information under the RTI Act, 2005, in particular”.
All information officials “to whom such (RTI) applications were given” should be “immediately suspended” and “departmental proceedings (should) be initiated against... (them) within four weeks of receipt of a copy of this order”, Justice Prasad recommended.
“...All criminal cases filed against RTI applicants (should) be dropped wherever such cases have been initiated after the date on which such applicants or their family members gave applications under the RTI Act”.
The Commission has asked the government to send “a report of the actions taken... within six weeks from receipt of copy of this order”, failing which it would be “constrained to invoke provisions of Section 18 (b) of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993”.
Section 18 of the Act deals with “steps after inquiry”, and includes provisions such as approaching the high courts or the Supreme Court.
The officials under the BHRC scanner range from the District Magistrate, Muzaffarpur (who was in charge in 2006) to sub-divisional police officers, circle officers and block development officers, down to officers-in-charge of police stations.
The Commission acted on a complaint by Bihar Right to Information, a voluntary group devoted to taking RTI to the people since 2007. Group coordinator Parveen Amanullah told The Indian Express: “We wrote to the CM thrice, took up the matter during his janta darbars, but there were follow-ups in only two cases.”
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has won accolades from the central government and other agencies for setting up the country’s first RTI call centre — a pioneering concept that has been replicated subsequently.
Professor Nandini Vaidyanathan, an alumni of Delhi [ Images ] School of Economics, has spent 20 years in the corporate sector, working in a cross-section of industries -- security, media, pharmaceuticals, gas, office automation, equity market and animation -- all over the world.
She has been teaching entrepreneurship in premier business schools in India (IIMB), US (Princeton), Singapore (NUS) and UK (LSE) for the last four years. In 2008 alone, she taught over 2,300 students around the world.
She has been working in India, Afghanistan and the Sub-Saharan Africa. She is a mentor with New Ventures India, a joint initiative between World Resources Institute, Washington, CII Godrej [ Get Quote ] green building, Hyderabad and MentorPartners, an on-line enterprise support and mentoring platform for entrepreneurs.
She is also the mentor-promoter of a company called Startups that mentors young entrepreneurs.
Startups is actively involved with micro finance institutions in facilitating business models that transcend poverty lines and loan recovery.
She was in Hyderabad to speak at the TiE-ISB Connect 2009 on Incubation Centres and Mentors at the 'Start Up Your Venture' workshop. Soon after her speech, she was surrounded by young entrepreneurs for advice.
She took some time off from the young future entrepreneurs to speak to rediff.com.
You have spoken to many entrepreneurs all over the world. Is there any difference in the way Indians approach an idea?
I see two big differences. Entrepreneurs in India are more intelligent and better educated. That is the positive difference. But the negative difference is that there is no ecosystem in India that encourages them to be entrepreneurs.
In other parts of the world, when you say you want to be an entrepreneur, nobody raises an eyebrow. In India, if you say you have done your engineering and want to be an entrepreneur, the first thing parents ask is 'Have you gone mad? Why do you want to do that?'
Everybody will tell you that the opportunity cost of becoming an entrepreneur is very high and after you finish your MBA, you are offered fancy salaries and why would you want to give up that? I had a student in IIM Bangalore who told me, 'Ma'am, I have an offer of Rs 26 lakh (Rs 2.6 million). If I become an entrepreneur, I may not make Rs 26 lakh in my lifetime'!
This is the case with educated people. What about the not-so-educated people who start various businesses in their little space?
I work with women in the micro-enterprise space in India, Addis Ababa, Rwanda, Kabul, etc. Kabul is very difficult for women entrepreneurs.
Are these people bigger risk-takers?
They don't look at it as risk-taking. For them there is no other option to come out of poverty and build a meaningful quality life. So, they see entrepreneurship as the only option for a better life. This is how it should be.
I feel this should be the attitude of all. I was saying the same thing to some youngsters who said, 'We are engineers, how do we go about as entrepreneurs?' I said, first, you don't go for placement, be an entrepreneur. That is the only way you do it.
How does being an entrepreneur enhance the quality of life of an individual?
If you are an employee, it will take about ten years to learn all the aspects of business. If you are entrepreneur, you pretty much learn it in one year.
The downside of it is that you get grey hair faster when you are an entrepreneur! The upside is, the learning compression is phenomenal. And that makes you a better person. If you are working for somebody, you may be a marketing person or a finance person or a technology person but if you are an entrepreneur, you are all rolled into one.
The kind of exposure across functions and the ability to think on your feet, the ability to take risks, the ability to visualise tomorrow, the ability to plan for tomorrow -- I think those are skill sets you are able to acquire literally overnight. It's a hard knock. I am not saying it is easy. But you do it the hard way and you learn them at the end of it. That makes you a better person.
How should an entrepreneur look at becoming an entrepreneur -- as a wealth creator or creating something more for society?
Primarily, the motive of an entrepreneur should be creating meaning in life, enhancing the quality of life around him. It is not about making money. He wants to be an entrepreneur because he wants to create meaning for other people and himself. He is creating a better quality of life, the way it can be done.
The unintended consequence of that is wealth creation and wealth distribution, but that can't be the primary motive. Having said that, I don't mean he does it for charity; not at all. Every entrepreneur, every enterprise has to have wealth creation in the agenda. He can't keep making losses for the rest of his life because he can't sustain it. But that is an unintended consequence.
The primary reason why you become an entrepreneur is because you want to create meaning and you want to leave a footprint! That is the only way you can do it.
You said 'they leave a footprint'. In the last few years, can you name a few entrepreneurs who have impressed you?
There are many. In the last three years, I worked with over 300 entrepreneurs. Each one of them is unique. To me, every one of them is a hero. They are doing something phenomenally out there.
What will you tell those young people out there who have a desire to be entrepreneurs?
Go ahead and be an entrepreneur! Don't keep saying, 'I want to be an entrepreneur' and 'One day I will be one'. There is no 'some day'; just go out and chase your dreams!
India might be better known as a software services outsourcing giant to most but if you look internally, there is a new revolution brewing–the product revolution. There are hundreds of startups in the software products space, which are throwing up some very interesting products in the market.
While i-flex, Tally and Subex might still be the most recognizable Indian IT product companies, there is a whole new breed of firms that is all set to conquer the domestic market as well as dent the international markets soon. According to a recently released Nasscom-Zinnov Software Product Study, Indian software product businesses are approaching an inflection point in their evolution.
“MNCs have created product development setups in India, which have spawned a new breed of product development professionals over the last few years,” says Sudhir Sethi, chairman & managing director, IDG Ventures India. These are the entrepreneurs of the new world today who are putting down their ideas to create product-driven businesses. In the last 22 months, the team at IDG has looked at over a 1,000 new startups of which 60-70% are product startups in the areas of security, digital consumer electronics, telecom, semiconductor, Internet, and mobile VAS. In 2004, this figure would have been less than 40%. IDG has invested in eight startups of which five are IT product companies.
While India’s role in global technology
IP creation has grown steadily, several challenges have constrained the growth of homegrown software product businesses. The domestic market was small and there was a lack of experienced product development talent. The venture capital firms were skeptical of funding product startups and of course the entrepreneurs who were launching these new companies lacked adequate exposure to international markets.
These are things of the past, it seems. Today, a lot of the local technology entrepreneurs have a better perspective on IT products and their demand, having worked on key technologies at large Indian IT companies. Others who have worked in global markets have a better understanding still. They comprehend the gaps, are a lot more networked, and hence sales and marketing is not such a tough nut to crack for them today.
“The domestic market is also developing, and with the Indian economy growing so is the size of the domestic business,” says Saurabh Srivastava, chairman, Indian Venture Capital Association. A number of products designed for the local market to cater to call centres, mobile companies, BPOs are coming out of product startups. Srivastava feels that most foreign VCs actually prefer product startups (product or IP based) because they know that model best. It also helped that in the last 7-8 years, lots of Indian startups in the US because successful. “This helped local Indian startups. VCs now understand that Indian product companies today are serious,” he says.
Interestingly, building a services company in India is hard today because of the kind of competition prevalent in the market. Unless you find your niche, which fits well, it is difficult to scale. As competition intensifies, the profitability and growth of services-based small companies is much lower than their larger counterparts. It is that much more difficult for a small services company to scale, though they can still survive.
In the product space though, things are a little different. There might not be great competition in that segment but the economics of product startups are challenging. While one needs scale to survive, it takes a lot more capital too. “The product play requires one to spend a lot more on R&D to keep it going,” says Srivastava. And that is where the VCs come in. Adds a Mumbai-based analyst, “A software service company requires scale and more employees unlike a software product company. If a product is good even a small company has great future.”
“The Indian market will demand more of intellectual property (IP) and start-ups and emerging companies can tap that. The next decade belongs to companies, which can create scalable IP, which has strong market adaptability,” says Gautam Patel, partner, Battery Ventures, a US-based VC fund, which has been investing mainly in IT companies. The fund plans to invest close to $200 million within two years. Patel says they would be investing in companies that have developed an IP, which has or can have an addressable market, a good management team and has the capacity to scale if need be.
Many companies in the IT sector are already preparing to take the opportunities that are being created in India as well as in other markets. Enterprise communication solutions company, Avaya Global Connect, is looking at introducing more products in its portfolio for Internet Protocol based telephony that caters to SMEs.
Last year, IT product companies received a total VC investment of $156 million, according to data released by Zinnov.
“Product startups are always more interesting higher multiple businesses to look at compared to services. We have looked at many Indian products but are waiting for the right venture investible deal to come our way,” says Mukul Singhal at Canaan Advisors.
Lalit Bhise, CEO, Mobisy, a startup that has developed a platform for Internet applications to work on mobiles feels that one thing that helped many Indian product startups is the lowering of entry barriers. His company is focusing on the Indian market as they know it the best. “When we started we had no clue. We thought of going to international markets but realized we had a chance to sell in India,” says Bhise. Today Mobisy already has a few large Indian clients, and the next jump would be to the international markets.
For Devang Raiyani, co-founder of Blink, the scenario is a little different. The retail market that Blink, which developed an intelligent interactive shopping cart, operates in is not mature enough in India. The firm plans to tap more mature retail destinations initially where the trends are fairly settled and retailers are looking at maximising their returns.
As lot of SMEs are trying to upgrade their systems or becoming more IT savvy, the domestic space for product-based companies is expanding. Kunal Upadhyay, CEO of Ahmedabad-based CIIE (Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship) is very positive about the role product startups will play by offering unique solutions for SMEs. “There is going to be huge spurt in mobile and value-added products in near future. Collaborating technologies with value-addition has been growing in many SMBs due to globalisation. This increases the business opportunity for startups,” says Upadhyay.
At CIIE, startups get to work closely with specific industries combined with getting regular inputs from a strong mentoring team to help them in refining their thought-process and ideas. CIIE has nearly 15 start-ups in its kitty at various stages of their development. Across India, there are 38 incubation centres today, which are helping product startups refine their business model and develop their product prototypes.
Sangeeta Gupta, vice president at Nasscom feels that with the domestic market growing rapidly, startups today have an option of testing their products in the Indian market before launching internationally. It is like a large beta site to test your IPs. “As the domestic market is booming and IT penetration is growing among the SMBs in India, a large number of companies are starting to develop products to cater to this market,” says Pari Natarajan, CEO, Zinnov Management Consulting.
There are an estimated 35 million SMBs in India and the PC penetration in these is growing at a fast pace. The Nasscom-Zinnov report also says that by 2015, Indian software product business revenues would be more evenly balanced between domestic and export based sales and share of revenues from the domestic market would increase from 32% in 2008 to an average of 41% by 2015 to reach $4-5 billion.
“Key parameters such as proximity of Indian software product businesses to the local market requirements, excellent understanding on localisation requirements, and ease of adopting customised and targeted sales approach would fuel this growth,” says Natarajan.
(Ravi Teja Sharma with inputs from Anirvan Ghosh, Sachin Dave & Tapash Talukdar)
This blog is written and owned by Saurabh Gupta This sensitive topic was in my mind for quite some time now but I always got busy with other things - Media in today's world, today's Indian scenario, plays an integral role to ensure smooth functioning of the country and it was most evident during the Mumbai Massacre (26th-28th November 2008), that continued for ~60 hrs. Media crew (Reporters, Technicians, and Cameramen) tried their best to get the most updated news to the viewers throughout the world.
I have heard people saying that it's all business and hence each news channel wants to increase its TRP; I would say that these are people who are doing their jobs in the best possible manner. When a soldier fights at the border his selfish interest remains that he wants to perform his best for the country and so remains the selfish interest of the reporter. When it comes to the crisis situations like Mumbai Massacre then Military and Media come to the rescue of the trapped people and the people who are worried about their loved ones. They were the bold media personnel who brought home continuous news and events - hats off to them.
It’s said that Media has got the power to turn around thrones and that's evident in the tough times like this Mumbai tragedy and the follow up. Media could have asked the questions (how, why and what next) to the Government when the rescue operations were on but they behaved responsibly that time and ensured that latest news were brought to the loved ones of those who were trapped in the hotels. Now when the time is right, they are questioning the governments (both Central and State) about the casual approach that government took for this whole tragedy.
Warnings were given by IB and RAW to the State Government and after that there was so less security in the South Mumbai area. Above all, Maharashtra Deputy CM Mr. R. R. Patil says that these small things happen in the big cities. This approach clearly reflects that this massacre means nothing to him and his allies. Media is doing its work and it is doing its work too well by ensuring that these questions are asked in front of the country so that faces of all corrupt politicians are shown to the people.
Everything seems to be in place when we talk about Media but there is one thing which is missing - an active regulatory body to monitor the news content shown to the country. There is a regulatory body but it functions only when there is conflict of interests between two parties. When I said we need the body I have got my reasons for the same.
Content Regulation - There should be regulations to edit disturbing pictures shown over television (news, special reports etc) like Cigarettes are banned to be shown on TV. Today we are asking every one to remain united in this difficult time and fight against terror, but think about the kids who see the scary pictures shown in the news channels. They would grow up with terror within them. Some might get mentally disturbed due to these pictures. Channels like AAJ TAK and India TV should be given serious warnings regarding their content.
Ethical behavior - The news channels should not be allowed to bias the ongoing judicial cases by using the extreme terms like faces of death etc. These terms just bias Junta's viewpoint towards the case and the convicts. Incidents have been reported when media has pointed fingers over people and they were declared innocent by the court but in the eyes of Junta, they remained criminals. As an example - each convict in the Arushi murder case was at one time or the other was declared criminal over the news channels.
Rating System - Sensitive news channels should be rated Adults and every program should come with serious age range warnings. There should be strict laws to ensure that children are not allowed to see adult content to ensure that they don't get scared from within.
There are some news channels that assume this responsibility and are the right picture of Media in the country today. Most of us know the channels that show responsible content, debates and viewpoints. Today, India is moving in the right direction and Media is one of the strong pillars to ensure that. Media has helped in providing transparency and accountability in government operations. The latest challenge to the government which is New Age Terror would be addressed properly by the government and if not, then Media would help in providing the channel to question government.
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