silicon india dec 10 issue

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA DECEMBER - 2010 SILICONINDIA.COM

PUBLISHED SINCE 1997sil iconindia

Uday Challu, CEO

In My Opinion: Upinder Zutshi, Infinite Computer Solutions VC Talk: Venetia Kontogouris, Trident Capital Leadership Special

s i l i con ind ia |3|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 0

[Business]Preparing for the Rise of In-dian Product PowerhousesBy Juby Thomas

[Management]Focused leadership is the Keyto Create Killer Products forGlobal MarketsBy Ram Narayanan, Yahoo! India

Manage your most TalentedEmployees & they will man-age the RestBy Pragyan Acharya

[Business]

Why is Innovation Still AChallenge in India?By Anonya Roy

Change is the Only ConstantBy Pradeep Kar, Microland

[Management]IT leadership- from Projectsto Value CreationBy Ramesh Loganathan,Progress Software

What They Don’t Teach atthe B-Schools aboutLeadership!C.Mahalingam,SymphonyServices

Leadership RequiresContinuous Reinvention ofYourself and Your CompanyBy Walden C. Rhines,Mentor Graphics

Controls & EmpowermentBy Sandeep Dhar, Tesco HSC

[Management]

Strategy in the New WorldBy Satya Prabhakar,Sulekha.com

[Entrepreneur 101]Leaders as Strong RecruitersBy Gunjan Sinha

[CIO Profile]

The Game ChangerBy Jaya Smitha Menon

[SI 20 Profile]

[In My Opinion]WinningthroughDifferentiation:ACEO’sPerspectiveBy Upinder Zutshi,Infinite Computer Solutions

[Infocus]

[CEO Spotlight]

Thinking of Hosting intoCloud? Think TwiceBelieve in Your ‘Idea’

[VC Talk]

Entrepreneurial LeadershipBy Venetia Kontogouris,Trident Capital

[Business]

The Man with a Mission forMassesBy Jaya Smitha Menon

[Management]HowdoCEOsThink?ByDr.AnandDeshpande,PersistentSystems

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Contents December2010

12 Cover Story

iYogiConsumer Services

Indiathe �rst

brand from

Uday Challu, CEO

32 44

By Vimali Swamy

PublisherHarvi Sachar

Editor-in-ChiefPradeep Shankar

Managing EditorChristo Jacob

Deputy EditorJaya Smitha Menon

Editorial Staff

Eureka BharaliHari Anil

Vimali Swamy

Sr.Visualizer Raghu KoppalSubscription Manager P Magendran

MMaaiilliinngg AAddddrreessss

SiliconIndia Inc44790 S. Grimmer Blvd

Suite 202, Fremont, CA 94538

T:510.440.8249, F:510.440.8276

siliconindiaDecember 2010, volume 13-12 (ISSN 1091-9503)

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DECEMBER - 2010

Editorial

Is India on the Perils of Microfinance?

Mahathma Gandhi once said "India's soul lies in the vil-lages of India." It seems that the new generation entre-preneurs have realized it for they are looking at ruralIndia as a big opportunity to flourish the country as well

as their business through microfinance. Unlike the initial years of Mi-crofinance industry (MFI), this space has undergone a transformationfrom charity to profit-based in the past few years as the players are fac-ing increased competition in the rat race to reap profits. But does thistransformation help rural India to achieve the goodwill?

Indian microfinance institutions have grown at a spectacular ratebetween 2004 and 2009, with an average size portfolio increasing 107percent on a year on year basis, while number of clients increasing 91percent. As per the statistics, the Indian MFI would cross 11 crore bor-rowers and $30 billion in loan portfolio by 2014 and will require ahuge capital inflow both in debt and equity. The growth is expected tocome from underserved states that are witnessing a flurry of activity,and also from a range of new financial and non-financial products thatare being introduced in the sector. The full potential of microfinancehas not been fully explored in geographies such as Uttar Pradesh, Biharand north-eastern states of India. The microfinance penetration in Indiais merely 3.6 percent, and 60 percent of the portfolio is concentratedin the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

While the reason holds good for flourishing rural India, the lead-ing players at the forefront, can learn from mistakes. Replicating thecurrent model will not work, as Crisil (a credit ratings organization)estimated that collections in Andhra have plummeted below 20 per-cent from nearly 99 percent to the ordinance, with MFIs finding it dif-ficult to make contact with borrower groups.

Money is lure and it is easy to pool more customers at the bottomof the pyramid, since access to money is very difficult there. So effec-tively managing and utilizing will be a cumbersome job. For microfi-nance players, they would have to really work on a model that istransparent for the players so that it can be successful in repaymentprocess, which will adversely help in their growth. Moreover puttingan effective council for these players to control on the interest rateswill help to monitor on worsening the economic conditions.

Lets not repeat another subprime mortgage in India!

Please do share your thoughts with us.Christo JacobManaging [email protected]

s i l i con ind ia |7|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 0s i l i con ind ia |6|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 0

enue. The client can then shift its re-sources and energies from these ma-ture products and focus on their coreinitiatives.

The way it works is that the serv-ice provider obtains the license ofthe product, injects additional R&Dfunds to enhance it and eventuallybreathes new life into a matureproduct. This collaboration allows aclient to continue to grow its strate-gic initiatives, without sacrificingmature lines. Interestingly, in thissystem, the vendor does not makemoney from its immediate customer,but recovers it from the end cus-tomer from the market.

A successful long term relation-ship with the client is a key factor

here, as it enables a serviceprovider to understand aclient’s portfolio in totalityand identify products withsignificant installed base.The client in turn alsoneeds to build a deeplevel of trust in the ven-dor’s capability of de-livery and continuedpartnerships.

However, a solidvalue proposition re-quires significant duediligence before avendor actually com-mits to taking overthe entire life cycleof supporting andenhancing the prod-uct. Factors like thelevel of investmentrequired, expectedgrowth over the nextfew years, addressingthe buyers concernson change of owner-ship, realignment ofclients R&D expendi-ture, feasibility to shiftwork offshore and the

future roadmap ofthe product need to

be addressed.In a majority of cases, a substan-

tial investment is required by theservice provider to generate growthin these products. It is imperative tofactor in the people cost, infrastruc-ture cost and other operating costs.Pricing on the basis of real costs en-sures profits don’t needlessly haveto be trimmed. As these productshave a proven revenue record, anoutsourcing model helps to bettermanage their costs.

The products need to resonatewith the needs of the customers andhave a significant differentiating ele-ment. The pricing should also be seg-mented for altered markets toleverage a better competitive advantage.

Once executed, this is a win-winsituation in effective relationshipmanagement. It results in reducedcosts, ability to focus on core prod-ucts, new market opportunities beingaccessed, better productivity, manualprocesses being automated and im-proved time to market. It also givesthe client access to IT skills which arenot affordable in-house or not avail-able and thus reduces their capital ex-penditure. The end customer is happydue to the continuity of the product,the client is pleased due to its re-sources getting freed and the vendoris thrilled because of the share in therevenue it gets as well as ownershipof the IP.

For the successful establishment

of an outcome based pricing model,it is essential that there should be col-laboration and sharing of informationbetween the two parties. The serviceprovider needs to understand thebuyer’s landscape perfectly and en-sure that measures taken align withthe strategic business outcome. Thisrelationship works on severalgrounds, with the buyer’s determina-tion to succeed, the supplier’s com-mitment to the buyer’s success, twoway effective communication and anin-depth understanding of the subjectmatter.

These creative and strategic part-nership models create greater incen-tives for the service providers tochange their thinking and increasetheir risk taking appetite for newer

avenues of revenue. The vendor’scompetitive advantage is his com-plete understanding of the client’secosystem. Strong governance andrelationship management between theparties is essential. Over the course ofthe next five years, outcome basedpricing is predicted to encompass 40-50 percent of the contracts, as againstonly 5 percent currently. The plan-ning and budgeting must factor in thefluctuating nature of revenue of someof these products.

Significant value has been addedto businesses with outsourcing overthe past few years, and with outcomebased pricing, outsourcing has comea full circle to its initial vision of en-hancing value.

The key is to not reinvent the wheel but make a differentiatedspace for oneself. This would require a series of strategic decisionsand a conscious effort to steer away from the trodden path. Oppor-tunities not only need to be identified but also captured and exe-cuted in a novel and innovative way. Despite the challenges, thesolutions should enable one to be distinguished from the pack andcreate building blocks for success.

A risk / reward sharing model is one such differentiated pricingmodel that encompasses all the essential elements of volume, usage,business processes, customer satisfaction, cost savings and revenueshare, thereby creating a win-win situation for all the parties in-volved i.e. the client, the service provider or vendor as well as theend customer.

This model enables a vendor to take over those products of aclient which have a limited shelf life, but continue to be essentialto many customers due to their proven record of generating rev-

The transition of a startup to a small cap organization andits eventual progression into the midcap space is markedby its vigilance and ability to identify and tap profitable

businesses.

Winning through Differentiation: A CEOs Perspective

iinn mmyyopinion

By Upinder ZutshiThe author is MD of Infinite Computer Solutions

Upinder Zutshi

The key is to not reinvent thewheel but make a

differentiated space for oneself

Over the course of the nextfive years, outcome basedpricing is predicted to en-

compass 40-50 percent of the con-tracts, as against only 5 percentcurrently

““

si


in in

“India will have its own Sili-con Valley in five years,”said Vivek Wadhwa an Ad-

junct-Professor at Duke University.According to Wadhwa from the 250firms he met this year, 25 to 30 per-cent are bringing out world-classproducts. As of now there is noGoogle coming out of India, but thatwill happen in the next five years, headded. The spurt in products is aspillover from services.

People with deep domain experi-ence from services business are set-ting up products firms in India and soare the U.S. returnees. The country’sgrowth is not limited to IT; pharma-ceutical R&D space and aviation arefields of strength to India. The coun-try is also playing in the next gener-

ation consumer appliances market.Indian government has made very

little effort to encourageR&D business, butmultinationals such asCisco, EMC, IBM andMicrosoft are doinghigh-end work in thecountry. India is suc-ceeding despite poor in-frastructure, securityconcerns and cripplingeducational system. Thesecret recipe of India’ssuccess is high work-force development pro-grams followed by major IT servicescompanies. They have sophisticatedrecruitment system that involves aseries of psychometric tests. They

then invest in training employeesthroughout the different phases of

their career,says Wadhwa.He believes thatthe next bigthing in Indiantech will comefrom smallerproduct and notlarger servicesfirms. His re-search alsoshows that 85percent of In-dian students in

the U.S. wish to return to India asthey feel that companies in Indiaoffer them better prospects.

Vijay ‘Jay’ C. Gandhi becamethe first Indian American fed-eral judge in the Central Dis-

trict of California, the largest federaldistrict court in the U.S. by population,when he took oath of office in a cere-monial courtroom in the U.S. federalcourthouse. Gandhi is the second In-dian American federal judge in U.S.history and the first in California.

Gandhi will have jurisdiction overa district covering seven counties in-cluding Los Angeles and Orange, withan estimated 19 million residents.Gandhi was selected to the post onmerit and will be serving an eight-yearterm at the end of which he will besubject to reappointment to his post.Gandhi previously worked 12 years asan attorney at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky& Walker LLPwhere he was a partnerand Vice-Chairman of the firm’s Or-

ange County office. A graduate of theUniversity of Southern California LawSchool, Gandhi had also clerked forU.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoytin the Southern District of Texas, be-fore joining Paul Hastings.

The oath of office was adminis-tered in front of nearly 200 people byJudge Audrey B. Collins, the chiefjudge of the district. Shortly aftertaking his oath, Gandhi was officiallyenrobed by his mother, Uma Gandhi.

Several speakers shared thoughts onGandhi’s integrity and character mo-ments after the ceremony. GeorgeKing, a federal judge in the CentralDistrict, spoke of Gandhi’s publicservice record and commitment tothe community and Former PaulHastings partner and current judgePeter Stone offered his views onGandhi’s work at the firm as well asthe cases they had worked on to-gether.

Indian Silicon Valley in 5 years: Vivek Wadhwa

Vivek Wadhwa

Jay Gandhi, California’ First U.S. Indian Judges

Jay Gandhi

An electronic platform for gov-ernment payments to and fromindividual households could

save an estimated Rs 100,000 crores forIndia, says a McKinsey report.

Saving this much money an yearcould mean a reduction in the country’sfiscal deficit by more than 20 percent,or it can boost its welfare spending byover 25 percent, or fund the entire costof the Food Security Act.

E-payment will ensure that around80-100 million poor households inIndia will have unparallel access to se-cure and convenient benefits directlyfrom the Government without the in-terference of intermediaries. Accordingto the report titled ‘Inclusive growthand financial security’, the present costfor the implementation of national e-

payment infrastructure stands at Rs70,000 crores and so the system couldtheoretically pay for itself in just oneyear.

“A national e-payment system is acritical step in achieving India’s longstanding and fundamental goals of in-clusive growth and financial securityfor its poor. The benefits to all stake-holders of a modern, reliable and wellfunctioning payment platform are nu-merous and substantial,” the report

said. According to the report, agreater penetration of an e-pay-ment set-up is likely to encour-age greater participation from therural poor citizens and bring thecentral government closer to itsgoal of reducing poverty andhunger through its welfare, foodand housing subsidy schemes.

The McKinsey & Company reportsuggests that electronic payment sys-tems improve the effectiveness of gov-ernment services to the poor, provideimproved efficiency in other govern-ment functions such as tax collection,maintain law and order and create newbusiness opportunities by enabling thedelivery of new products and services.

E-Payment Systems Can Save $22 Billion

Indian Medical Industry tobe $14 Billion by 2020

Indian medical industry may touch$14 billion by 2020 on account ofhigher private investments in the

sector and strong economic growth.According to the study by Federationof Indian Chambers of Commerce &Industry (FICCI) and Pricewater-houseCoopers (PwC), the marketstood at $2.7 billion (Rs 12,350 crores)in 2008.

“Strong economic growth, in-creased burden of diseases, higherpublic spending and private invest-ments in healthcare and increased pen-etration of health insurance are the keydrivers for the growth in the sector,”the study said. The report reveals that

there is a huge scope for innovation inthe industry, as there is a big demandfor it in the local market.

The study said that the epicenter ofthe innovation in this field is shiftingtowards emerging economies likeIndia and China, since the advancedeconomies like U.S., UK, Germany,France and Japan do not have the needfor frugal innovation. “Also, theemerging economies will have ahigher spending on R&D in the future,which will provide the trigger for in-novation, therefore witnessing morefunding from venture capital, privateequity,” states the study.

The report said, besides the suc-

cess in medical technology innovationwould depend on factors like a sup-portive investment community, creat-ing capacity for quality research anddemand and supply of health services.

The study also suggested that forthe growth of the sector, it is importantthat the government increase publicspending in healthcare to three percentof the country’s GDP from the currentone percent and evolve medical tech-nology clusters with common facilitiesfor calibration and testing facilities tobenefit small entrepreneurs. si

Cloud hosting is at itspeak now-a-days andeveryone is either set-ting up a private or pub-lic cloud or is in

discussions to get into one. Moreand more companies/serviceproviders are storing their docu-ments and content into cloud. In fact,Gartner predicts that by 2012, 80percent of Fortune 1000 enterpriseswill pay for some cloud-computingservice.

Users upload their documentsinto these clouds to easily share, col-laborate and mange content. Serviceproviders are choosing public cloudstorage providers like Amazon EC2,Rackspace and Microsoft Azure fordaily data storage needs. The advan-tage of course quick setup and go tomarket with no need to worry aboutdata backups, downtimes and best ofall no scalability issues. You payonly by amount of storage and band-width used.

While the advantages are enor-mous for this low-cost and less up-front capital investment approach ofstoring content, but it is just one-sided story. The costs for storing andserving content can very quickly pileup if enough care and considerationis not taken while choosing the cloudhosting vendor. For example, thecost for uploading a 1GB document

into EC2 or Azure is about 35 centsand then accessing this document 4-5 times over the life span of docu-ment can cost up to $2, and this is allfor just a single 1GB file. Think ofthe costs involved when you are up-loading/downloading hundreds andthousands of documents from withinyour application.

Service providers do not thinkabout this initially as the advantagesof these public storage clouds, likeconsistent backups, reduced capex,full archrivals and no need to setupredundant servers or disaster recov-ery centers, overweigh their deci-sions at the initial time. But soonafter, as business starts growing, thebandwidth charges turn the low coststorage clouds option into a nightmare.

So what would be the solutionthen? What if, we could make use ofthe advantages these storage cloudsoffer and at the same time controlour bandwidth costs. The answer liesin the new revolutionary conceptcalled Elastic Content Viewing orin simple terms content streaming.

Content Streaming is not newand we have been using it for a whilenow. When you go to a site like YouTube the video is streamed to yourbrowser and you start viewing it in-stantaneously without the need todownload complete file locally first.

Elastic Content Viewing is this sameconcept now being applied to otherfile formats like Office documents,PDF, AutoCAD files. Elastic View-ing allows you to view documentsfrom where they are, without theneed to download it completely,much like audio video files and of-fers progressing content download-ing as user views the content,thereby reducing your bandwidthcosts drastically.

With the enormous growth ofcloud hosting & sharing, challengelies in becoming a low cost opera-tion and new trends like ElasticViewing are helping in keeping a tabon the costs.


Both Life Sciences and Sup-ply Chain Managementare increasingly witness-ing an enormous change inthe global markets.

Driven by increased globalization, macroeconomic factors, regulatory mandates,and huge strides in technology and theemergence of new business models, bothof these domains are rife with opportu-nities.

Now when the economies are gradu-ally recovering, Life Sciences are wit-nessing a lot of emerging trends such asincreased emphasis on regulatory com-pliance and standards, adoption of elec-tronic data interchange standards andsupporting technologies to help facilitatequicker approvals, heightened qualitystandards, emphasis on focus on researchof new technologies for the medium- tolong-term, realignment of budgets to-wards data integration and mining effortswith an eye towards maximizing revenueopportunities, consolidation of vendorswith a focus towards best of breed ven-dors for specialized outsourcing, and in-creased outsourcing of tasks which wereearlier performed in-house like - projectmanagement, vendor management, qual-ity assurance. Similarly, Supply Chainindustry(SCM) is witnessing a transfor-mation. Now, the focus of SCM hasshifted from improving internal func-tional processes to coordinating variousactivities across a dynamic network oftrading partners leveraging effectivetechnologies and best practices.

In the coming years, we believe it is‘SaaS’ which is gradually bringing in the

transformation and is surely going to benew mantra of success. The current mar-ket scenario reveals that the SaaS marketglobally is poised for continued stronggrowth, with the availability of a plethoraof SaaS applications and related services.Given the pent-up demand for SaaS ap-plications amongst enterprises, the mo-mentum generated by vendor activity,participation by telecom companies aspartners, and the hype around cloudcomputing, SaaS will proliferate quicklyin the coming years.

The last decade has seen huge in-vestments into IT but with limited suc-cess for many customers. With varieddegrees of process maturity, talent avail-ability and the lack of the right IT sys-tems customers have grappled withgetting the required results. SaaS andbusiness transformation solutions aregetting the attention because of the prom-ise of result oriented solutions approach.The IT vendors are building domain ca-pability to not only provide businessprocess improvements, implementationand integration but also in running theoperations and providing customers withresults.

The world today is rapidly changingand evolving and the pace at which this ishappening is only going to increase.Business models are constantly beingchallenged and the advent of new tech-nologies is rendering legacy concepts ir-relevant at an alarming pace. Many largecorporations are gradually finding it dif-ficult to maintain their leadership posi-tions. It has been observed that in 1960 ittook 35 years to replace 35 percent of the

Fortune 500, and in 1999 it took 3 -4years to do so! Understanding the rapideconomic development today is verycritical for an entrepreneur. According tome, two challenges are envisioning thefuture and raising capital.

Envisioning the future - identifyingthe right business opportunity by fore-casting the future is the key to the begin-ning. This is not so easy when everyoneelse is dwelling in the past or present andthere is skepticism for the future.

Raising Capital – Investors cannot beconvinced if the idea is not strong. Herelies the importance of convincing themwith an idea which will show them thefuture potential

I believe it is the idea combined withvigor that matters today more than any-thing else for an entrepreneur. If you haveyour ‘idea’ and you firmly believe that itcan bring about a change, it is definitelygoing to click, come what may.

Thinking of Hosting into Cloud?

Think Twice

CEO spotlight

Prateek Kathpal Founder ofAdeptol, a document viewingtechnology provider

Ram Yeleswarapu is President &CEO, TAKE Solutions

Believe in Your

CEO spotlight

‘Idea’

si si


Brands are not created every-day. And the attributes thathave created successfulglobal brands like Fedex,

Starbucks and Nike are driven by reli-ability and consistency, while creatingan emotional engagement with theconsumer.

For Jai, a tech support executive, aday at work means handling multiplesessions from customers in the U.S.,Canada, United Kingdom and Aus-tralia that are challenged by the in-creasing complexity of technology intheir home. He is true to his name andbackground -- he is Jai Sharma fromIndia who is happy and proud to helpcustomers around the world. This isthe case with each of the 4500 techsupport executives working withiYogi, across its eight delivery centersin India, providing tech support di-rectly to customers. It is the first di-rect-to-consumer services brand fromIndia, providing remote tech supportservices to home and small businesscustomers.

Indian outsourcing gathered steamwhen large teams of Indian call centerstaffers with made-up names and per-

sonalities would answer your cus-tomer service call for big charge onyour credit card. It took the world bystorm and saved millions of dollars formany western companies. But nomore. Now a new company, iYogi, istaking the global tech support marketby storm with a different businessmodel that embraces its Indian rootsand brand, while leveraging superiortech sophistication, expertise and itsproprietary platform to remove userfrustration. The end result is great techsupport at a great price. “We wereclear from day one on our goal to buildthe first global consumer servicesbrand from India,” says Uday Challu,Co-founder and CEO, iYogi. “Usingthe powerful combination of remoteInternet access and our global deliveryplatform, iMantra has enabled us tomake a real difference as our ownbrand, not as a disguised third-partyservice under a big-brand umbrella.”Today when a customer in the US callsseeking technical support he/sheknows that she is talking to someonefrom iYogi about 14,000 kilometersaway in India.

According to the U.S. Census Bu-

reau data, 117 million Americans whoare above the age of 45 present a readymarket for direct-to-consumer techsupport. iYogi, a tech support startup,spotted this need early and cashed inon it. Founded by techie Uday Challuand marketing professional VishalDhar in 2007, iYogi is the first direct-to-consumer services brand from Indiaand recognized as the fastest growingremote tech support provider in theworld. iYogi deploys a 4,500-personoperation on its global service deliv-ery platform answering tens of thou-sands of complaints every day fromtechnology users, mostly in the U.S.The company has managed more thantwo million tech support sessionssince inception and today it handlesaround 20,000 support inquires everday. iYogi has more than 325,000 cus-tomers in the U.S., UK, Canada andAustralia, who have subscribed to an-nual contracts for round-the-clockservice for their PC’s and multiple de-vices that are serviced across eight de-livery centers in India includingGurgaon, Pune, Hyderabad, Ben-galuru, Chennai, Chandigarh, andKolkata

iYogiConsumer Services

Indiathe first

brand from

COVER STORY

Uday Challu, CEO

By Vimali Swamy


The GenesisThe company was founded whenChallu and Dhar met on a flight andquickly found they could work to-gether on entrepreneurial ventures.Challu had earlier run a third-partydesktop support business in the 1980sbut shut it down because it proved tobe ahead of its time. But now, hesensed the emerging opportunity in re-viving that business in a modern form.

Borrowing from the outsourcingmodel of charging dollars per hour ofwork, the two created iYogi as an In-dian brand that sells tech support serv-ices online to users of computers andother gadgets in the developed world.They also used the cost advantage tocompete with several US firms such asGeek Squad. Providing a subscription-based service, a first-time caller is of-fered a one-year package costing from$10 per month per computer to a flatrate of $399.99 per year for multiplecomputers in a home or small busi-ness. The service available anytime,allowing unlimited on-demand accessto tech experts that are extensivelytrained to manage almost every situa-tion. iYogi’s platform-as-a-service of-fering is delivered through iMantra,which integrates complex layers oftechnology, processes, services, and aunique proprietary knowledgebase fora seamless experience for customers.The DifferentiationSo how is a four-year old startup dis-rupting the outsourcing space that hasbeen dominated by the likes 24/7, Pro-geon, Genpact or companies like Ac-centure who have had their supportcenters set up in India. For one, youwon’t find a technician adopting afalse persona while handling customercalls. Secondly, it has invested inbuilding a scalable delivery platformthat provides a consistent experiencein a new service category – third-partyvendor independent tech support.iYogi offers comprehensive support

for a wide range of technologies, in-cluding hardware, Windows operatingsystems, software, peripherals andmulti-functional devices.

For iYogi, the business partner isthe individual customer who calls andnot a US headquartered MNC. “Un-like an outsourced customer supportcentre for computer vendors, techni-cians at iYogi take support calls be-cause subscribers have opted for ourcomprehensive one-stop solution,”says Challu.

iYogi’s service offering providessubscription-based tech support plansfor digital homes and small busi-nesses. Its global delivery platform,iMantra, combines a suite of desktopapplications called Support Dock withon-demand tech support delivered

through proprietary technology infra-structure and its patent-pendingprocesses which provide both scaleand a consistent experience for cus-tomers. Highly optimized processescombine iYogi’s unique triage modelwith tools that proactively managetechnology for its customers and re-duce time for delivery.

“Support Dock is a suite of desk-top applications that provide on-de-mand tech support and single clickaccess to manage, optimize and securecomputers and networks and proac-tively manages the health of the ma-chine,” explains Vishal Dhar,Co-founder and President Marketing,iYogi.

Through its proprietary platform,the company addresses the large andever-growing market of digitally de-pendent consumers and businessesacross a comprehensive range of tech-nologies. It currently manages thou-sands of customer interactions everyday and assists consumers with solv-ing, managing and integrating tech-nologies. iYogi also helps customersmigrate to new technologies and cloudapplications, and empowers them withusability assistance. A seamless inte-gration of voice and data, combinedwith iYogi’s knowledge base and per-sonalization engine, forms the infra-structure layer of its platform. Built onindustry standard platforms, iYogi’sinfrastructure has demonstrated scala-

bility through its years of rapidgrowth.

“Consumers today are expected toplay the role of a system integrator.With growing dependence on technol-ogy and the increasing number of PCsand devices that need to speak withone another, consumers are trying tobuild networks for the new digitalhome. Along with these challenges,the consumer is also faced with a bro-ken ecosystem for support that is fragmented by silos that make it difficultto get a single-point solution for allyour technology support needs. Westarted the company with a vision tooffer a one-stop engagement to con-sumers that is comprehensive with anincredible experience,” says Challu.

The Big OpportunityWithin three years of its inception,iYogi seems to be on a rapid upwardswing, as evidenced by a customerbase that is growing at 300 percentyear-on-year. Most of iYogi’s growthstems from consumer business in theU.S., the UK, Australia and Canada.Currently targeting multiple geogra-phies, the company sees a massive op-portunity. There are currently morethan 1.2 billion PCs in use worldwideand there is an increasing dependencyon technologies we use everyday.“Additionally, the ecosystem for sup-port is changing as traditionalproviders are no longer the preferredoption,” says Challu. So, the samemodel is delivering growth countryafter country. “Our focus is on deliv-ering a personalized service for the in-dividual, and the approach isgeography-agnostic,” he says.

For a company of its size, iYogi isquite aggressive in marketing. Its ini-tial growth was focused on direct mar-keting on the Internet. The companyhas built a scalable model for acquir-ing customers online. It currently de-ploys one of the largest onlinemarketing team in India, and over the

past three years developed a deep un-derstanding of consumer behavior.iYogi’s online marketing team man-ages large database of keywords, land-ing pages, toll-free-numbers, andbuilds content assets that assist in self-help and aid the decision makingprocess for buying it’s subscriptionplan.

“We track about 300,000 key-words on online search engines andthis database continues to expandbased on consumer adoption of tech-nology and user behavior”. The com-pany has about 2,000 toll-freenumbers and has decided against out-sourcing its online marketing or opt-ing for automatic online marketingtools. “The less you think you know,the better. Platforms get reinvented in

this medium and one needs to contin-uously push the boundaries and inno-vate,” he says, adding the companycan’t risk losing direct touch with thecustomers.

Apart from this, iYogi partnerswith companies that are at the front-lines of addressing technology adop-tion and related problems. Withmultiple engagements these channelpartnership range from large OEM’s toISV’s and retailers. iYogi services arecomplimentary to its partners that areenhancing lives through products thathave integrated in our day-to-daylives. By offering on-demand assis-tance for setup, diagnostic, repair andusability, iYogi and its partners deliveron a common cause - to empower theconsumer through technology, with acommon tenant of delivering a qualityexperience. “Our current ramp-upplan, based on existing marketingchannels, is to increase our base ofcustomers by 15 percent everymonth,” says Uday.

What next? Apart from expandingits presence in 12 new geographies, in-cluding Europe and Middle East in thenext eighteen months, India is wherethe company’s eye is. “We are nowworking on our go-to-market strategyfor the India Sub-continent region. Wewill also be looking at partnering withISPs and OEM’s to reach the end con-sumers,” says Challu.

India today is recognized as thebest destination for enterprise out-sourcing for technical support, as wellas other processes. Large OEM’s andsoftware vendors have built scalableprocesses for managing their technicalsupport requirements. These processesare built with the imperative to deliveron customer expectations of vendorbased tech support; while managingthe costs, with eroding margins astechnology becomes commoditized.Leveraging technology innovation anda low-cost, highly skilled workforce inIndia, iYogi is able to deliver on the

Vishal Dhar

The market forsupport services isworth $26 billionin the U.S. alone,says NPD group-projections

The basic distinc-tion betweeniYogi and its com-petitors is one willnot find a techni-cian adopting afalse personawhile handlingcustomer calls.

COVER STORYCOVER STORY


most compelling technology servicesoffering. iYogi is expanding its serv-ice offerings by commoditizing tech-nology services across multipletechnologies, price-points, languagesand formats.

It plans to increase its staff size andhandle new software platforms formobile computing. iYogi hires the besttech experts that undergo an extensivelearning and development program todeliver a great experience. The com-pany boasts of a 95 percent customersatisfaction rate and a personalizedservice for its consumers. The scale-up will be a challenge because the de-mand is rising so rapidly that its ownhiring can’t match that pace. So onlyhalf of its technicians are employed byit directly. The other half work at out-sourcing partners such as IBM Daksh,Infinite, e4e, Ventura and Genpact butare deployed on iMantra platform.This helps the company reach top tal-ent in multiple geographies and inte-grating them on its platform to delivera seamless service.

iYogi has built a management teamthat has demonstrated cross border ex-perience in managing large-scaleprocesses, addressing big opportuni-ties. “We invested in iYogi based onthe management team that I can com-

pare with the best in Silicon Valley andit’s a tremendous ratification to seethem deliver on metrics quarter afterquarter”, says Doug Higgins, Partner,SAP Ventures. “I am confident thatthis company is on its way to createIndia’s next success story,” he adds.

In May 2009, when iYogi acquiredthe U.S. based PC Clean Machine, aPC concierge company, the founder ofthe company Larry Gordon joinediYogi. He said, “iYogi and PC Cleanshared a common approach of utiliz-ing highly skilled talent with leadingedge tools, thereby delivering servicesto a global audience that has new lev-els of expectations. It made strategicsense to come together and align withthis common goal." With more than 20years of experience, Larry has playeda variety of strategic roles in market-ing, sales and building global alliancesat Capgemini, Kanbay and Cognizant.As the President of Global ChannelSales for iYogi, Larry is focused ondeveloping a partner network that isaddressing the customer pain-point.

Now, former Rediff.com CFO JoyBasu has also joined iYogi. Comment-ing on why he joined, Joy said, “I gothooked on the ambitious plans iYogihas for ramping its business, leverag-ing on its strong growth and multi-ge-ography expansion.”

With the blazing trail that iYogi isleaving, it is no wonder that the com-pany has been quickly and success-fully able to raise about $27 million inthree rounds of funding by venturecapital firms such as Canaan Partners,SAP Ventures, SVB Financial Groupand Draper Fisher Jurvetson. It is alsogetting feelers from software andhardware manufacturers for tech sup-port through the classical outsourcingmodel. So what makes the investorsbet on iYogi’s unconventional ap-proach to outsourcing? “The ability todisrupt the market, most of which hasa local base,” says Alok Mittal, Man-aging Director, Canaan Partners.

“They have a clear picture of whatthey want to do; the CEO thinks bigand wants to create a global tech sup-port brand from India. One of the keyinflexion points for iYogi is reachingmore verticals. That will determinewhere it lands three years from now.”

Vendor Independent third-partytechnical support is a new service cat-egory, with Best Buy’s Geek Squademerging as the largest player with anestimated revenue that is more than$1.2 billion. iYogi estimates the mar-ket for tech support services exceeds$30 billion today with remote techni-cal support as its fastest growing chan-nel for support.

According to projections by theNPD group, a consumer and retailmarket research firm, the market forsupport services ranging from instal-lation, break-fix and repair, usabilityassistance and security services isworth $26 billion in the U.S. alone. Asnew technologies and gadgets arrive,iYogi’s target customers will only needmore support. But Challu and Dhar areconfident that as the opportunities con-tinue to rise, they will be ready to takethe bull by its horns.

As consumer electronics and com-puter systems become more pervasivein our lives and increasingly complexto use, many consumers are faced withchallenges while installing, operating,maintaining, and repairing productswithin these categories. The marketfor information technology supportservices targeting the consumer and athome is highly fragmented, and, thetraditional providers of support serv-ices, OEMs, VARs, System Integra-tors, and Retailers have all been forcedto cut down on their support capabilityor have completely gone away, as theresult of diminishing margins broughtabout by the commoditization of thePC and other related devices. As such,consumers have been forced to lookfor alternatives to traditional providersof support services.

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A global deliveryplatform, iMantra,combines a suite ofdesktop applica-tions with on-de-mand tech supportto provide bothscale and a consis-tent experience forcustomers.

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COVER STORY


As a venture capital in-vestor, one of the firstthings that I look for ina potential investmentis the entrepreneurial

qualities of the founders. Do theyhave the intelligence, the drive, thevision, the skills and the persever-ance to take an idea or concept anddevelop it to the point where it willbe accepted and even demanded bythe market? There are many charac-ter traits common to successful en-trepreneurs that allow them to seepossibilities that others can’t, thatmake them work harder and longerthan most, and that allow them tojuggle many different tasks at thesame time. Many people believe thatentrepreneurs are born with the in-nate abilities required to be success-ful and that it is something thatcannot be learned in school. While Ibelieve it is possible to learn the spe-cialized skills and get the requiredknowledge to invent new productsand processes, it is difficult to start anew venture without the unique abil-ities of the born entrepreneur. For in-

stance, many universities developvery important and interesting newtechnologies that lie dormant untilthey are “rediscovered” by someoneeither within the university, or morelikely from the outside who sees thecommercial opportunity in the con-cept, and more importantly is willingand able to take the idea, dedicate100 percent of their time and effort,and convert it into a viable product.

Once a concept has been in-vented and developed, and personal,seed or angel funding has been se-cured and a skeleton crew hired toprove the commercial viability of theventure, one can get a good idea ofwhether the concept will be success-ful. By this point the product is usu-ally developed enough to getvaluable feedback from potentialcustomers regarding their willing-ness to purchase the product. This isusually the stage at which a large in-stitutional investor, or venture capi-tal firm, will get involved with apotential Series A funding. The in-stitutional investor will now typi-cally require that the young company

start behaving more like an estab-lished corporation with all of the re-quirements expected of similarcompanies including such things asmore detailed financial statementsand controls, a formal hiring policyand programs, an organization chart,well defined allocation of time andduties, sales pipeline and budgets,and more.

Unfortunately it is usually verydifficult for the typical entrepreneurto make the required transition at thisstage in leading the company for-ward. The personality traits thatmade him or her a good entrepreneurare usually not the same ones foundin a person who has the right leader-ship skills to take the company to thenext step. Some academicians haveexamined the concept of “entrepre-neurial leadership” as a crucial com-ponent of successful companies andhave studied ways of teaching it in a

university environment. What are thebehavioral characteristics that allowsomeone to motivate and instill theirvision in a group of followers? Thechallenge for a successful companyis to find a leader who can instill thedrive to succeed and excel among hisor her employees, combined withgood corporate governance, while atthe same time nurturing the entrepre-

neurial drive and

spirit of innovation that made thecompany a success in the first place.One of the few people who havemade the transition successfully isSteve Jobs at Apple, who has beenable to become an inspirationalleader not just to his employees, butalso to the many consumers whohave made Apple such a global suc-cess. Apple’s board of directors un-fortunately did not appreciate Job’sleadership skills when they replacedhim with a corporate manager, onlyto ask him to return when it becameclear a few years later that the com-pany desperately needed his particu-lar brand of “entrepreneurialleadership”.

Several academicians have in factidentified three traits that exemplifysuccessful entrepreneurial leadership:proactiveness - not waiting for cir-cumstances to define what you areable to do but rather anticipatingchanging currents in the market beforethey happen; innovativeness - theability to recognize changing needsand develop new ideas and solve newand old problems in new ways; and

prudent risk taking - the ability to takecalculated risks in developing a newidea or going after a new market.There are many established companiesthat have tried to systematize or insti-tutionalize one or all of these charac-teristics and the most successful havebeen able to embrace all three, usuallybecause the CEO is himself an entre-preneurial leader. However, balanceamong the three is very important as

there are many examples where com-panies have failed through an overem-phasis on one of these characteristics– AIG and Enron come to mind forhaving tried to be too innovative andtaking too many risks.

The successful CEO is someonewho not only embodies all three ofthese characteristics, but also some-one who can adapt to a changing en-vironment and temper the autocraticand sometimes dictatorial behaviorrequired of a leader. At the sametime, a CEO needs to instill loyaltyand drive among the employees whoare more responsive to, and now evendemand consensus building andgroup empowerment rather than sim-ply being told what to do. It is fortu-itous that many of the recenttechnology innovations, such asFacebook, Twitter, the iPad, Sale-force’s chatter, and cloud computingto name only a few, make it easier forcompanies to foster innovation andrisk taking within the organizationwhile at the same time instilling thediscipline and accountability that isessential for long term success.

Entrepreneurial

Leadership

VVCC TTaallkk:: By Venetia KontogourisAuthor is Senior Managing Director of Trident Capital

Venetia Kontogouris

Severalacademi-

cians have identifiedthree traits that exemplify successful entrepreneurialleadership: proactiveness,innovativeness andprudent risk taking.

The personality traits that makesone a good entrepreneur areusually not the same ones found

in a person who has the right leadershipskills to take the company to the next step.

““

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Defining leadershipTo me leadership is about creating avision, a vision that you want to im-plement. Leadership is also aboutarticulating these vision into smallpieces, communicate it to largenumber of people and then break itup into pieces of work. At the endyou have to excite, encourage, moti-vate, create a dream and finallymake it happen. There are all kindsof leaders; political, social, businessand so on. They are all products oftheir era, their experiences, theirown ecosystem, and the challengesthey try to solve. Bigger the prob-lem, bigger the opportunity for lead-ers. More than anything, I believeleadership is about building the self.Leadership in the 21st century isgoing to be very different from thatof the 20th century. Leadership of the20th century focused on commandand control, whereas leadership ofthe 21st century is all about collabo-

ration, communication, co-opera-tion; mainly because the internetand the accessibility of informationand the power of communicationhas changed the dynamics of socialstructure, productivity and businessmodel.

A need to re-haul the educationsystem The power of communication and in-formation accessibility has made itnecessary for the educational systemto be revamped. When you thinkabout education, what comes to yourmind is always a blackboard, chalk,classroom, teacher, textbook, examand all that. But the times are chang-ing. My 6 year old niece goes to the

Google for information. The modusoperandi should change. Teacherstoday spend 90 percent of their timein preparing and delivering content.

So, take the teacher out ofpreparing and delivering content.Content can be delivered on cell-

phones, internet kiosks and othermodes anytime, anywhere and in anyform. Then you create a whole newconcept of learning that kids net-work themselves in groups; theydon’t go to classes, but follow aschedule. The teacher then becomesa mentor and not just a deliver ofcontent.

Moreover, you just can’t produceleaders by just producing mathe-

maticians and scientists and engi-neers and doctors. India needs lead-ers at many, many levels. We needleaders all over. We need leaders ineducation, science, industry, NGOs,government; leaders at district level,state level, and leaders for youth.This will happen only if we redesignour educational ecosystem.

Innovation at the bottom of thepyramidInnovation at the bottom of the pyra-mid is something which the world,even now, is not seriously concen-trating on. Until now, design hasbeen only for the rich; the best brainsare solving problems of the rich. Iwork with the Institute of Design (atthe Illinois Institute of Technology)and I asked the director (PatrickWhitney) why don’t you go and de-sign better slums?

He decided to visit Dharavi slumin Mumbai and was completelyshocked at the opportunity for de-

sign. He put together a team of about10 students and one simple designidea that came out was to help poorpeople who don’t have space to storewater. Since they don’t have tapwater, they have all kinds of drums,‘dabbas’, cans and other things tostore water. So, they (Whitney’steam members) said how about if wedesign an inexpensive plastic bagthat can be used to store water andhung from the wall. You can save allthe floor space that people can use tosleep, cook and all that.

Thoughts on Innovation in IndiaToday the nature of innovation haschanged. Innovation is multi-disci-plinary. Its about collaboration. It isgrowing at a faster pace than everbefore. India is a country in a hurry.With a 1.1 billion population, grow-ing at 9 percent, 550 million belowthe age of 25, expanding from allsides and demanding low cost solu-tions

When I entered the telecom in-dustry in the 1980’s, we just had 2.2million telecom connections for a750 million population. But todaywe are adding 7-8 million cellphones every month. The cost struc-ture is such that when the world islooking at $11 ARPU (Average Rev-enue Per User), India is survivingand flourishing at $5 ARPU. Todayour need is scalable, speedy and lowcost solutions.

A lot of innovation is happeningat the bottom level. But many are notscalable. Our aim now is to harnessinnovation and make it more scala-ble. India has huge potential to fosterinnovation, its main strength beingdiversity. Diversity, according to me

is a fertile ground for innovation.

Innovation in India vs U.S.Innovation in India and U.S. is to-tally different. A lot of innovation inU.S. happened in the area of defense,even transistors and internets wherecreated to fulfill the defense require-ments. We are not talking about suchinnovations. Even a Silicon Valleykind of innovation is not what weshould envisage in India. In U.S., thebest brains are busy solving prob-lems of the rich. We don’t have such

problems. We should focus on inno-vations which could help in solvingproblems of the poor which is not avery romantic proposition, since itdoes not involve monetary benefitsor media publicity.

Roadmap for encouraging innova-tion in IndiaAt the national innovation council,our first task is to focus on innova-tion as a platform for everybody.Then we want to focus on innova-tion which can bring in inclusivegrowth which ultimately gets trans-lated into affordability, accessibility,scalability and many other relatedconcepts. Then we want to create anecosystem for innovation. We arealso creating a billion dollar fundfor encouraging inclusive growthbased innovations. Also we haveidentified 20 universities to seed in-novations. Similarly, 20 clustersacross the country around differentverticals to seed innovation. In allthis, our main aim is to make thisinitiative reachable, accessible andaffordable to the masses.

The Man with a Mission for

MassesHe is hailed as the Telecom Czar of India who revolutionized the Industry which is today standing tall as oneof the key drivers of Indian economy. He is known as the Game Changer who is believed to possess the abil-ity to transform and redirect the field he steps his foot into. Meet Sam Pitroda, the articulate leader, whoconceptualized and triggered the thought of growth at the bottom of the pyramid in India.

An entrepreneur who has over 50 patents to his credits, Pitroda has sketched a unique path of glory andgratification for himself. While the best brains of the world were busy solving problems of the rich, he es-poused a mission for the masses of a developing country like India. Today Pitroda is embarking on his nextbig mission as Prime Minister’s Advisor and Chairman of National Innovation Council.

In an exclusive interview to siliconindia, Pitroda talks about the need for identifying leaders at all levels,India’s growth trajectory and his ideas on innovation.

BBuussiinneessss:: By Jaya Smitha Menon

Sam Pitroda

The power of communication and informationaccessibility has made it necessary for the educational system to be revamped

You just can't produce leaders by just producing mathematicians, scientists, a engineers and doctors. India needs leaders at many, many levels.

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How do

CEOs Think?

Itravel regularly to meet our customers. Normally, we workwith the VP Engineering and the CTO of product Compa-nies. I meet them regularly and most of the time ourmeetings are technical discussions or discussions about

specific projects we may be working on.As the market was slow, most of our customers were not in a

position to discuss specific projects. Most projects were on hold,and our customers were under pressure from their CEOs and

Boards to reduce costs. This meant that they were pushing us forrate discounts.

As our customers were pushing usfor rate discounts, we used the oppor-tunity to get our contact points to getus meetings with their CEO in ex-change. Systematically, since January2009, Hari and I have met more than a150 CEOs and heads of business.During these meetings we were able toobserve how CEOs think. This wasthe best thing that happened to me. Iquickly realized that the CEOs have avery different approach to their busi-ness as compared to the VP Engineer-ing and the CTO.

Our customers are of all sizes frombillion dollar companies to start-ups.The CEO and heads of businesses wemet corresponded well to our cus-tomer mix. By and large, CEO be-havior is independent of the size of thecompany we met.

Let me share with you the high-lights of what we observed from ourmeetings. There are many corollariesfrom these basic observations which Iwill subsequently share with you.

1. CEOs like to focus on a few im-portant items.CEOs are very concerned about theirown bandwidth and want to focus on afew important items and leave the restto someone else to handle. For itemsthat are top-priority, the CEO is deeplyinvolved and wants to track the initia-tive in detail and at a fine level ofgranularity. For all other items, theCEO would much rather have some-one else take complete responsibilityof the task and wants to know onlyabout exceptions.

We observed that managementbandwidth of the senior managementin the organization is a very big con-cern for the CEOs. They are keen toconserve management bandwidth andwant to ensure that adequate manage-ment bandwidth is being devoted toimportant tasks and is not being spenton the not so important activities.

2. CEOs want to focus on growth ofthe companyUniversally, we observed that growthis the most important item for allCEO. They are far more focused on

the top-line of the Company and not asfocused on costs cutting and efficiencyimprovements. We realized that out-sourcing and offshore developmentwhen positioned as a cost efficiencyexercise is not exciting for the CEO.Those are items for the CFO or the VPEngineering. We observed that wecould get the CEOs attention when wehad proposals that could boost rev-enues and growth for their customersrather than provide just cost efficiencybenefits. We also observed that mostCEOs are market focused rather thanbeing focused on internal efficiency.CEOs want to spend more time in themarket to understand market trends asthat would help them develop sharperinsights for future planning.

I quickly realized that to get theCEO’s attention, it is important tooffer the CEO some suggestions ongrowth of his company rather than justcost benefits.

3. CEOs are interested in solving the‘entire’ problem for their customer.We observed that when CEOs sell,they are selling a relationship ratherthan a transaction. They want to in-teract with their contemporaries –CEOs and other C-level executives ofthe customer and are keen to under-stand the challenges faced by the cus-tomer. They want to provide acomplete solution to their customers.In many cases, and especially whenthey do not have a complete solutionfor their customer, they are open toworking with other partners to solve

their customer’s problem. They real-ize that if their customer views themas a true partner, a partner who can“solve” their problem, business willeventually happen.

In contrast, most sales executivesare focused on completing a transac-tion. They are completely focused on“the sale.” In the process they are verykeen to sell their own products some-times at the expense of being con-cerned about solving the customer’sproblem. Sales incentives play a roleon how sales executives approach thesale.

It was very clear from our meet-ings that to get sustained interest fromthe CEO, we must focus on findingways to solve their problems. Insteadof focusing on pre-prepared serviceofferings, it helps to be creative inthinking of ways to address the cus-tomer’s problem. In several cases werealized that we did not have serviceofferings that solve customer’s prob-lem. In such situations, stepping backand referring someone else who maybe better suited to help the customersolve their problem was much appre-ciated by the CEO. Even though wemay miss out on the transaction, I amsure it will help us get business fromthem in the long-term.

I have been reflecting on these ob-servations and have realized a fewcorollaries on how to engage withCEOs.

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By Dr. Anand Deshpande

About AuthorDr. Anand Deshpande,Founder, Chairman &Managing Director,Persistent Systems

Growth is the most important item for any CEO;the focus is more on top-line of the company thancosts cutting and efficiency improvements.

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The entrepreneurial scenario continues to grow rapidly. In1996, the global software market was worth $95 billion. Ac-cording to International Data Corporation (IDC), in 2000 itwas estimated to be worth around $180 billion. This growthin itself has had a number of important implications both for

the industry and more generally in terms of economic development. Thisrapid growth, however, has also created problems for the industry. The in-dustry remains chronically short of skilled manpower. In Europe alone,it is estimated that the industry is short of about 500,000 skilled workers.Japan and the U.S. are also severely short of computer service person-nel. This shortage continues to provide good opportunities for countrieslike India to take-up this slack and provide skilled people to fill the gap.

Even the R&D sector is becoming much more globalized and U.S.R&D in particular is being “externalized” – more and more of it takingplace outside the wall of big companies within their own R&D labs. Allthese have provided a platform for countries like India to grow innova-tively and increased the demand for leading innovation driven organiza-tions in the country. Companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro and others whomade use of the opportunity have come a long way. There are also sev-eral organizations that are mushrooming in every corner of the country.Even though the entrepreneurs in the country have got several ideas ma-jority of the ideas remain just as ideas due to the difficulties in their exe-cution.

Since 1999, innovative leaders andentrepreneurs in India have dreamt ofcreating a software product powerhouse,moving away from the labor-for-hireservices model to create own productsthat are winners on the global stage. Fi-nally such a dream came true in 2008,when India headquartered Zoho, aprovider of on-line business, productivity& collaboration applications, was short-listed as one of the top 10 enterpriseproducts of 2008. Zoho had only 10 peo-ple in America and yet they managed toachieve big enterprise accounts in headto head competition with Microsoft andGoogle without taking a dime of exter-nal money - having bootstrapped it fromthe start. Thus was the stepping stone andwithin 2 years of time India managed tobring a drastic change in its entrepre-neurial scenario.

Talking about the crux at which in-novation in Indian ecosystem standstoday, Sanjay Nayak, CEO& ManagingDirector of Tejas Networks says, “Thetime has come to unleash the creativepotential of our scientists and innova-tors at grassroot level. Only then we canmake India truly self-reliant and a leaderin sustainable technologies. India hashuge opportunities ahead and electron-ics itself has got $400 billion by 2020.Even if it goes upto 2022 that doesn’tmatter, what matters is the growth from$45 billion to $400 billion.”

During his visit to India, Bill Gatesonce said that India needs to move awayfrom low-cost labor toward high-end re-search and development work. He sawthat the future for the Indian IT sector liesin expanding its capability to handlehigh-end R&D work. And now we cansee his vision come true.

Today, technology is transforminginnovation at its core, allowing compa-nies to test new ideas at speeds and pricesthat were unimaginable even a decadeago. The price of failure has come muchlower now and in return that has becomean advantage for the companies who arewilling to try new things.

There is a huge shift in the globalmarket as well. Innovation will shift toglobal locations where it is more effi-cient. The emerging markets like India &China are driving the growth today. In-novation needed to address emergingmarket needs, like bringing products thatare affordable, should also be able tomeet high-quality solutions. Multina-tional companies also require new “scaleat speed” approaches to penetrate the de-veloping world’s increasingly prosperousconsumer markets. The rapidly growingranks of middle-class consumers spanacross a dozen emerging nations, not justthe fast-growing countries which includealmost two billion people, spending atotal of $6.9 trillion annually. Nextdecade this will increase onto $20 tril-lion. This will be about twice the currentconsumption in the U.S.

This offers an opportunity for earlywinners to gain lasting advantages. Tobecome winners they have to be distinc-tive, companies need to figure out howto grow, sharpen their brand image, andat the same time improve their return oninvestments. “We should develop a com-mon feeling that if someone else in theworld can do why can’t we do? Theremay be cases where 99 percent willspeak about why we should not do. Butwe should search for the 1 percent ofpossibility and explore it,” adds Nayak.This might be most challenging but thereare also certain advantages to take upthese challenges. As per him, there arethree ‘Ms’ that are critical in this context.

Market: Among the majoreconomies in the Asia-Pacific region,India’s private domestic consumption asshare of GDP, at 57 percent in 2008, wasthe highest, according to an analysis by

the McKinsey Global Institute. A higherprivate consumption-to-GDP ratio showsthat domestic consumption of goods andservices is a major contributor towardsreal GDP. In India, domestic consump-tion is one of the key reasons why theeconomy was able to register the currentlevel of growth, a good enough attractionfor both domestic and overseas investors.

Manpower: India has the best talentpool in the world, got highly talentedworkforce both in technical as well asmanagerial fields. As compared to thedeveloped and some of the developingcountries India has high proportion ofpeople in the working age-group and ef-fective usage of the talent pool will beanother key to success.

Money: India is in dire need of a newwave of entrepreneurship that willbreathe fresh life into our businesses, and

breed immense wealth for its start-upsand their investors. Globally, eventhough home-grown family-owned con-glomerates and few companies have keptthe Indian flag flying high so far, positivemacro-economic environment and ven-ture capital funding can take the countrymuch more ahead.

It is the challenging responsibilityof Leaders to find ways to leveragethe unique “India Advantage”through hiring the right team, tack-ling the adversity, customer orienta-tion and commitment. In fact thereare much more things that we can do.We need to spot the opportunities,pool in our existing resources, bothprivate and public, to create an envi-ronment where risk-taking breeds andflourishes. This would set the rightfoundation for the next wave of en-trepreneurship in India.

Preparingfor the

of Indian Product PowerhousesRise

BBuussiinneessss:: By Juby Thomas

Innovation needed to address emergingmarket needs like bringing products thatare affordable should also be able tomeet high-quality solutions.

India has huge opportunities aheadand electronics itself has got$400 billion by 2020

si


As I look out of my carand see a sleek and com-pact Tata Nano drivingthrough buzzing roads ofBangalore, it is one of

the prime examples of innovation ledthrough exemplary leadership with anobjective – start local with global ap-proach. This product has triggered arace among global car-makers to de-velop cheaper and efficient cars. Thisinnovation would not have been possi-ble but for a visionary leader, who canguide the teams to align the company’sgoals with the customer needs.

Exemplary leadership within teams,projects, product groups is gaining im-portance among companies with globalaspirations. Start-ups have to look atleadership models of companies, whichhave developed successful global prod-ucts. The importance of strong leader-ship is growing in India across sectors,including IT, Healthcare, FMCG andothers, which are witnessing strong en-trepreneurial activities.

With internet reach expanding rap-idly, the focus of product companies inthe IT sector has shifted to ‘start localand build globally-scalable products’ towiden the customer base. If an Indiancompany or the Indian arm of an MNChas to take advantage of this paradigmshift, strong leadership is essential.

Organizations in India have to de-velop the ability to analyze new mar-kets, build globally-acceptable productsand then market them effectively. Theleadership required to guide these or-ganizations has to ensure that a rock-starteam is put together. We are already see-

ing examples of this phenomenon.

Product Manager – the leader of theproduct teamWhile there are very important roles ina product organization across the func-tions of Engineering, Quality Assur-ance, User Design and more, I wouldlike to focus on the role of a productmanager in the leadership team andhis/her role in the development of a suc-cessful product.

A great product manager starts withthe customer, figuring out who they are,understanding their environment; whatthey find valuable; what problems theyhave and so on. The product managerpulls together the rest of the teamaround these insights and defines needsof the customer. The product manageralways manages by influence and notby direct authority, thereby making theleadership capabilities stand out.

A few key characteristics of successfulProduct Managers:� Customer is at the center of the uni-

verse� Keen sense of the market window of

opportunity� Prioritizing – important and urgent

vs. important and not-urgent� Very good at honest measurements

of the success of their products� Biggest evangelist and cheerleader

of the team

A product manager faces several lead-ership challenges, some of which arecritical to the success of a product. Thegreatest challenge is to pull together all

the team members and make them focuson the problem, which they are trying tosolve. The product manager shouldhave a sense of the talent available in theteam across all functions and help bringthe right talent into the team.

In the Indian context, this role is rel-atively nascent given that technologyproduct companies are just starting toemerge. Some companies with focus onthis role have introduced successfulproducts. But there is a tremendous in-terest among people considering prod-uct management as a career option.

Product Development & Manage-ment

Once the right product developmentteam headed by an efficient leader is inplace, the next task is to identify the

product for the relevant

market. Many start-ups go wrong in their

approach to build globally scalableproducts. An insight has to be gainedinto the customer through market re-ports, customer & market visits, by en-gaging others who service the samemarket, and conducting primary re-search among the customers. These in-sights help derive unstated needs, whichmay be driven by local conditions, cul-tural context or socio-economic criteria,which are the key to a successful prod-uct.

Let’s take the example of 3G-en-abled video service. Bangalore has oneof the highest two-wheeler populations;and many well-paid professionals com-

mute on bikes, but are unable touse the services during

their commutetime. Perhaps

such appli-cationswill bes u i t -able

for Mumbai where people commutelong distances in public transportationwhere they need entertainment and havethe downtime to use the services.

Understanding Customers’ Require-mentsWhen developing a product, we lay em-phasis on understanding the customerand the requirements from all perspec-tives though our offices are spreadacross the globe.

Recently, we developed a propertyfor Indonesia, which is culturally di-verse and forward. During our research,we found out that people searched theinternet for entertainment and celebrity-related content. Such users even visitedUS sites, which unfortunately, did nothave content on Indonesian celebrities.

It gave us an insight into the mindof the customer. We launched the In-donesian property only after thoroughlyunderstanding the customers’ require-ments. We continue to research the re-quirements of customers to maintain ourcompetitive edge. While we were ex-ploring the Indonesian opportunity, wefound the needs were the same in othermarkets, including India. This resultedin the product being rapidly deployed inother countries where we were able tohit a market window of opportunity.

Our cricket property is extremelypopular in India. A pre-launch surveyrevealed that cricket fans wanted a reli-able score-card. Once we launched thescore-card and users became familiarwith it, they wanted to read news aboutmatches played around the world; a dis-cussion forum, games and so on. Now,we have over 5 million visitors toYahoo! Cricket every month. Constantfeedback from customer and innovationbased on it helps create a successfulglobal product.

Multi-pronged strategy A product manager should have a multi-pronged approach to develop a topclass product. The foremost mantrashould be to build global but imple-

ment local, that is, be able to use thesame platform to develop global prod-ucts. A product, which has global va-lidity, enables any company to exploreinternational opportunities. Organiza-tions have to learn from experiences toexpand their footprint and focus ontheir core competencies.

The next wave of internet growthin India will be driven by the local lan-guage speakers. Internet usage amongthe English-speaking population hasalmost reached the saturation point.So, ideally, the next set of productsshould be targeted at the local lan-guage speakers and many companiesare developing interesting solutions.The challenges of a product managerare not only growing externally, butinternally in terms of identifying andcapturing niche markets with the bestproduct.

Sharing leadership practices of suc-cessful product managersSuccessful companies have to sharebest leadership practices of their prod-uct managers in view of the changingbusiness environment; and in theprocess extend benefit to start-ups.

To that end, Yahoo recently spon-sored a first of its kind Product Camp(called P-Camp), which was very wellattended by practicing and aspiringproduct managers. One of our productmanagers is creating an industry plat-form to exchange the views and ideasrelating to leadership. He is laying thefoundation of the Indian Product Man-agers Association (IPMA), andlaunching new chapters in differentcities of the country.

To sum it up, an organization has tonurture strong leadership skills to de-velop world-class products. While ittakes a team to conceive and deliver suchproducts, the Product Manager has tokeep the team focused on the customerthereby putting the organization in a po-sition to succeed in the market.

Focused leadership is the Key to CreateKiller Products for Global Markets

Ram Narayanan

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By Ram NarayananAuthor is VP-Product Management, Search & Marketplaces andEmerging Markets, Yahoo! India

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What comes to yourmind when youhear the term‘Leader’? Proba-bly, you would

reply at the spur of the moment that, heor she is someone who can make peo-ple work and combine their efforts andtalent to achieve certain goals of an or-ganization. It might be the whole ideabut that is certainly not everything todefine a leader. Today, we live in aworld where talent is everything to sus-tain an organization.

To manage every talent is a differ-ent task altogether. In such a case, theapproach towards every talent is achallenge for every leader and manag-ing the most talented is the biggestchallenge because if they are managedproperly, the entire organization or alarge chunk of it gets managed. VikramShah, President and Director, NetAppIndia believes, “Nearly, 30 percent ofthe people in an organization are themost talented ones. Once these 30 per-cent are managed properly, the rest of

the organization will get managed bythem.” Deriving the maximum valuefor the organization from the highlytalented people is the most importantkey to a leader and to keep their moti-vation level elevated all the time oneneeds to massage their ego, adds Shah.

Based on his experience, Shahidentifies some of the traits of highlytalented people and suggests solutionsto deal with them. It is not only the or-ganization which expects from thembut even their expectations from theirown caliber and from the organizationis much higher. Their performancemay have a high impact on the organi-zational growth but there is high main-tenance required for such talent as theyare usually seen to be more impatientand need attention from the authoritiesof their organization. There is hardlyany need to motivate them as they area highly motivated group of people andat times their motivation level discom-forts the management.

As the highly talented people thinkdifferently, they put their ideas into ac-tion and do not want to follow

processes and organizational hierarchy.Though they have the capacity to dealwith complexities, they are complexthemselves but if a leader can under-stand them as they express themselveseasily when they slip into frustration.“Since the most talented employees areoften tagged as ‘high maintenance’people, many might perceive that theylook for more income. If you ask me,salary is immaterial to them. All theyneed is appreciation and recognition intheir organization,” says Shah.

The greatest challenge for anyleader in managing the most talentedemployees is to identify the needs ofthe organization and align them withthe target of the employees, so that theneeds of the talented people and the or-ganization are balanced.

“Talented people are the ones whoown the outcome,” says Vijay Anand,Vice President, India DevelopmentCenter, Intuit. For a leader, it is veryimportant to understand the mass ef-fectively, so that the talented people arenot overlooked by the organization.

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By Pragyan Acharya

When Watts Humpreydefined innovationas “The process ofturning ideas intomanufacturable and

marketable form,” he subtly maintainedthe worthiness of ideation only when itcan be actuated in real world scenes. Ata broader level, the goal of innovationis to do something better, invent some-thing new. The end ultimately is not forthe sake of producing new things butenabling an efficient and effective wayof solving problems and addressing so-ciety’s needs.

No technology development is a re-sult of fling of seconds, rather it’s an in-cessant effort of years that developsinto a good product. Millions of invest-ment on a glitzy product will have noimpact on the hi-tech advancement. Itis the qualitative investment that mat-ters than quantitative capital invest-ment. For better quality we need bettertalent-pool. A look into the industry willwitness a growing tendency of majorMNCs flocking the Indian market toget their R&Ds in shape, all thanks tothe low-cost talent-pool. The report re-leased by NASSCOM and ZinnovConsulting states that the major frag-

ments of the MNCs’ Indian subsidiariesthat are engaged in R&D and engineer-ing operations make up $4.8 billion inexport earnings. But is that enough?Cost-effective talent pool will not bethe ultimate USP for India in the longterm. The need of the hour is qualitytalent-pool, and a good number ofPhDs from the country, the number ofwhich is immensely low in the country.

40 years back, almost two-thirds ofthe graduates from the premier engi-neering institutes in India were seenrushing to U.S. for their furthereducation and almost half of

them pro-ceeded to do aPhD. The caseis no more samein India today. Theinterest in higher edu-cation itself has reducedto one-third, as everyonehas a job in hand even beforethey are out of the grad-schools. Our success iscoming in the way of ourinnovation. In the quest ofsmall time gratificationwe are missing out on thelarger picture. The U.S.

produces about 1,500 PhDs in com-puter science annually and China about3,000. By stark comparison, India’s an-nual computer science PhD productionlanguishes at roughly 100, the numberis slightly higher as that for Israel, a na-tion with roughly five percent of India’spopulation size.

The biggest challenge for the coun-try is the lack of industry investment.Research gains more prominence dur-ing the academic level, however, insti-tutes do not have enough capital tomaterialize the ideas. There is a hugeneed of better flow of corporate moneyinto the academia and help the younggrads build-up on their idea and alsorenew their interest on further research.Talk about industry investment and lessthan 20 Indian firms stand among thetop 1500 R&D investors in the world,with of course Tata Group – the ‘Nanoinnovators’ standing at the top amongall the Indian firms. The sad part is noteven a single firm features among the

Top 50 in the list. There shouldbe an increasing hand-shake between the in-dustry and academiathrough intern pro-grams and facilitat-

ing more publications ofresearch papers and aptlyrecognizing the best onesto encourage the innova-tive minds of the country. Being a forerunner in

technology and development is amust for India, as Harold R. McAlin-

don said the world leaders in in-novation and creativity will

also be world leaders ineverything else. Sonow it is time that theindustry sits up andtakes notice and worktoward achieving thegoal of innovation

coming from India.

Why is

Still A Challenge in India?Innovation

BBuussiinneessss:: By Anonya Roy

There should be an increasing hand-shake between the industry andacademia through intern programsand facilitating more publications ofresearch papers

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ChangeConstant


After my MBA I startedmy career with Wipro In-fotech selling computersfor a princely salary of Rs2350 per month. I was al-

ways a creative person and saw an inter-esting advertisement to join a start teamto set up a computer retail chain calledComputer Point in 1985. From there Iwas fortunate to be part of the team that’sset up Sonata Software for the sameowners of Computer Point. I was in mylate 20’s and did not want to get con-strained in a job besides I always felt thatI had potential to do more as well as earnmore. And I had always believed in thesaying, ‘Nothing ventured, nothinggained’. So in 1989 I started Microland,as a network Integration Company.

Microland pioneered networking inIndia in the early ‘90s and had introducedseveral global technology brands likeCompaq, Cisco, SynOptics, andNetscape amongst several others intoIndia.

A lot has changed since we startedour business in 1989. For one, customduty on hardware then was 255 percent,and today it is in the 10 percent range.Today the opportunity is huge; there is anexisting ecosystem of venture capital/pri-vate equity, mentorship, talent and con-sultants/advisors available. But back thenwhen we started, the market itself was

limited, and venture capital had yet notemerged. We were very fortunate to havegot equity infusion from the State Bankof India Capital Markets which helped usbuild the business. two years later, ICICIVentures (then called TDICI) bought outSBI Capital Markets and became in-vestors of Microland. In 1996 Microlandhad planned to make a public offeringthen the MS Shoes scam broke out andwe decided to do a private placementwith some leading institutions at thesame valuation. Hence, stayed as a pri-vate company, which we still are.

We grew our business very rapidlyand crossed the Rs 150+ crore mark inrevenues under eight years. We were afairly successful company in the net-working hardware business and had re-ceived several awards and had nationalrecognition for our success. We buildnetworks for banks (as many as 18 ofthem at a point of time), stock exchanges,leading hotels and several corporations.

In the later part of the ‘90s, the in-dustry was going through a structuralshift. Hardware warranties became threeyears from one year. International tech-nology companies opened offices inIndia and started the policy of multi dis-tribution. The internet economy startedopening up.

It was the early days of the interneteconomy. Clearly the net was dis-inter-

mediating the middle man. The middleman had an arbitrage of information thatwas inaccessible to the customers, andwhen this would change, the buyerwould have more control over the buy-ing process.

Looking ahead, I clearly saw that thisbusiness would become a commoditybusiness. Simultaneously, we saw thehuge potential of the internet economy.Because of our partnership withNetscape in late 1995, we had the earlyexperiences of the immense opportunityof the internet economy.

Based on these we took a very bolddecision to get out of the hardware busi-ness and change the company’s course toexploit the opportunities in internet econ-omy. It was not an easy decision. We hadto convince our employees, our in-vestors, our customers and any change,however small they were, would disruptthe company. Those were things thatmost entrepreneurs feared and wouldnormally stay away from. But I was not

afraid to set a new course for our com-pany as I had a strong intuitive feel thatthis was the right decision to take. Sev-eral well-known companies were also inthe same business as we were, but theynever saw the imminent market shift anddid not change, as a result they do notexist today.

Our new vision was being an incu-bator of internet businesses. In No-vember 1997, we launched our firstinternet company calledPlanetasia.com. This was followed inrapid succession by the launch of atechnology portal called ITSpace.com,followed by the mainstream broadbased portal called Indya.com, andthen an Internet Media company calledMedia2india.net followed by a net-working technology products companycalled Net Brahma Technologies.

Each of these businesses were suc-cessful in their respective areas. Weraised over $75 million of venturemoney in this period to invest in these

businesses. In the second half of 2001market started to shift again. We fore-saw this coming and moved very rap-idly and quickly sold four of ourcompanies. Indya.com was bought byRupert Murdoch of News Corporation,Planetasia.com was sold to a US con-sulting company and the new companyis called Collabera, Net Brahma wassold to a Silicon Valley based companycalled MetroOptics and Media2Indiawas merged with a company investedby Euro RSCG, an European adver-tisement company; which is now aleading online advertisement companycalled Ignitee where we still own eq-uity in.

Then we looked around to see whathas changed in between 1998 and2002. Till 1998, the Indian story waslargely around hardware. The softwarestory emerged with the arrival of theY2K opportunity, Indian companieshad very successful public offerings onUS stock markets, the internet econ-

omy arrived with every third founderbeing of Indian origin and most impor-tantly the telecom infrastructure gotbuilt leading to the arrival of the IndianBPO companies. It was clearly only a matter of timewhen offshoring infrastructure man-agement would be the future, and sowe once again took a bold decision torebuild Microland (aka MicrolandV3.0) as a provider of InfrastructureManagement Services. We are a spe-cialist provider employing close to2600 professionals of InfrastructureManagement Services with offices allover the world, growing rapidly in anarea, which, I believe, is the best spaceto be in the IT outsourcing markettoday.

I believe staying a privately heldcompany helped us a lot in terms ofmaking the transition from hardware tointernet economy and then to IMSspace, as it is easier to convince five in-vestors than 50,000 shareholders. Wenever changed just for the sake ofchanging but because of the realizationthat due to the shift in the market if wecontinue down this path we will be anirrelevant marginal company.

There are few things I have learntin my entrepreneurial journey whichcould be useful for aspiring entrepre-neurs. First, not trying is a bigger riskthan trying and failing. Second, rais-ing capital is the responsibility of theentrepreneur and not the finance man-ager; this is something a lot of entre-preneurs don’t focus on. Thirdly andmost importantly, hiring exceptionaltalent is the entrepreneur’s most im-portant job and entrepreneurs shouldspend lot of time doing that. And alsowhile you are building a business al-ways think of the larger picture andend game, think of the brand imageof your company early enough or elseyour company will start being associ-ated with something different thanwhat you would have liked it to be.Lastly have fun in your journey anddon’t take yourself too seriously.

is the Only

BBuussiinneessss:: By Pradeep KarAuthor is Founder, Chairman & MD, Microland

My experience in building Microland, again and again

Pradeep Kar

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The Indian IT industry isover 2 million strongnow! Comprised of someof the best minds in thecountry (unfortunately, in

that process also starving other scienceand art disciplines of good talent).That over the past two decades hashelped create an industry that theworld has now taking serious note of.Amidst all this, if one were to lookback and see what we have actuallyresidually created, it is just organiza-tional and people capability to deliver

on large scale IT projects. Just that!Nothing much else in terms of othervalue like IP, products and innovation!This is kind of a serious lost opportu-nity for such a large high-talent pool!And the only value that the industryleverages today is the revenue poten-tial that the cost-arbitrage brings. Withstrengthening rupee and the rising coststructure, this is rapidly decliningthough! Industry has to recognize thisand make some fundamental shifts, to-wards more of IP and value creation.

This puts serious demands on the

IT leadership. Given the projects andIT management focus, the leaderswere more “execution” centric. The IPand value creation imperative calls fora completely different mindset — onethat is more innovation and solutioncentric. Leaders that are much moreentrepreneurial and out of the boxthinkers. Both in terms of starting newstartups and products as well as intra-preneurs within organizations that takeon a more innovation driven approachto delivering the business objectives oftheir organizations. Be it in looking for

innovative approaches to the end cus-tomers solution requirements- as op-posed to the earlier fixation ofmaximizing billing time-, or to lookfor common IP or frameworks t hatcan be built and used across projectsor even across clients, to even look-ing at carving out IP from projectsto a more generic product platformto even persuading their manage-ments to actually invest in newproduct opportunities.

To enable this IP creation, seniormanagement in the IT industry need tolook at this afresh. There cannot be anincremental shift from present models.It has to come with serious impetusfrom senior executives of the com-pany, with funding and transforma-tional empowerment of the middlemanagers to explore IP and other valuecreation possibilities, with the boardand the executives pumping back prof-its into new product or IP creation andwith the engineers in these companiesrallying behind these initiatives.

The change in mindset has to startfrom colleges. Recently, at the NASS-COM product conclave, when a jour-nalist asked me if the oft statedproduct-wave has actually started, Itold her that one clear sign I would

look for will be when a significantportion of graduating engineers lookat either starting up by themselves orjoin a startup. Then this shift is realand based on momentum and per-ceived value in the opportunities. Lotof efforts are afoot all across. FromNasscom completely moving thefocus at the Products Conclave fromMNC majors to new completely onstartups (this year’s edition had about500 startups in attendance), to grass-roots level startup eco-system move-ments like HeadStart and Proto, toother industry organizations likeITsAP (in Hyderabad) having a seri-ous initiative to showcase and awardgood products the March 2010 editionhad over 60 startups present). Fewleading colleges in the country arenow joining the IITs and IIITs in set-ting up incubation centers. One of themost exciting products to be built inHyderabad, Notion Ink’s Adam that istouted to compete with apple iPad, isbuilt out of an academic incubationcenter in Hyderabad. Central govern-ment has lot of initiatives like TEPPthat promote incubation centers andproduct innovation. Even state gov-ernments like AP are taking a veryforward looking approach to innova-tion and startups with incentives in thejust released next version of the stateIT policy.

While all this is good, it is still justa very modest beginning. We need thestudents, engineers and the leaders tocompletely buy into the need for theindustry to majorly shift towards in-novation and products. Need a com-pletely change in the mindsets andattitudes. From just getting a highpaying job at an MNC or a stint in USto now also look for the exciting chal-lenges that IP and products pose.Work towards the adrenalin rush com-ing from taking the product to the firstcustomers and onto the world market.From the fulfillment derived from cre-ating a product or technology brand,to ultimately maybe some exciting

IPOs and serious money made! Thiswill happen. Initial shoots alreadysprouting. I was very impressed to beasked to join a pre-placement styletalk at IIIT-H this week to talk aboutthe opportunities and excitement inworking for startups. I was surprisedto find that about 15 engineering col-leges in Hyderabad have incubationcenters actively promoting studentstartups. And the participation at thestartup events like startup-Saturdaysis steadily increasing. I expect this togather more momentum in the imme-diate future.

While we work on the studentangle, as an industry we also need toencourage engineers in the industryalso to think differently. Think value.Think beyond the T&M billing in aservices project. Take it a step furtherto also encourage intra-preneurship.Industry organizations like Nasscom& ITsAP are actively helping in build-ing an ecosystem to support productstartups and IP creation. This must beextended to also get the leadership inIT bellwethers to recognize the needfor this shift and actively encourageemployees towards intra-preneurship.Companies like Google, Yahoo andProgress Software have formal pro-grams that allow exploring new ideasthru to a prototype. These prototypesif successful are often funded to befull-fledged products. The sameshould be extended even within serv-ices companies. This change has tocome from the top.

A combination of catching themyoung- excite students about start-ups,getting mindset change in the engi-neers in the industry and, rally supportfrom the IT senior leadership to allowintra-preneurship will go a long wayin enabling this mindset shift. If fewhundred thousand engineers in the Sil-icon Valley, and probably much lessin Israel, can create world class prod-ucts, imagine what an industry of fewmillion in India can do! Look out forthis in the coming years

IT leadership- from Projects to

Value Creation

Ramesh Loganathan

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By Ramesh LoganathanThe author is MD & VP-Products, Progress Software

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Jim Collins, co-author of “Good to Great” and a few more best-selling books said:”at this moment, leadership has replacedGod in filling our gap in understanding!” Nothing can becloser to the truth than this statement. Despite decades of re-search into this exciting subject of leadership, there still re-

main more questions than answers. B-Schools syllabi on the subject ofleadership have not changed for a few decades now. It is the same oldstuff – nature or nurture, situational or dominant, democratic or auto-cratic and so on and so forth. Not that all this is outright irrelevant,just that most of these models and frameworks seek to put the leadersand leadership on a high pedestal.

In the knowledge era in which we live, leadership requires to bedeglamourized. Leadership therefore becomes a quality that is in everyknowledge worker. Such a belief and behaviors that follow ensure thatorganizations potentially have leadership in abundance. Great compa-

nies have recognized this and trans-formed themselves into becomingleaderful organizations! Conventionalbelief that the tasks of leadership is toestablish a vision, enroll people of anorganization in it, and hold them ac-countable through measurements andrewards seems no longer valid. Such abelief that reinforces the notion ofleaders as an elite group, singularly ca-pable of determining what is good andwhat is not does not seem to fit the be-lief of the human capital era whichseeks to reinforce that everyone haspeak performance potential and is ca-pable of realizing the same under ap-propriate and nurturing circumstances.

Leaders or Managers: Yet anotherabsurdity of understanding revolvesaround raging debates as to whetherorganizations need leaders or man-agers. In discussing so, one tends toput leaders on a high pedestal and lookdown upon managers. John Gar-dener, one of most revered and refer-enced gurus on the subject ofleadership has the following to say:“many writers on leadership distin-guish between leaders and managers.In the process, leaders generally endup looking like a cross betweenNapoleon and the piped-piper, andmanagers like unimaginative clods! Iam beginning to believe this is nottrue.”

Leadership fundamentals: If weagree with the foregoing perspectiveabout leaders and leadership, then thefocus must shift to certain leadershipfundamentals. A suggested list of thesefundamentals is briefly presentedbelow:� Those aspiring to be leaders must

continuously increase their self-awareness. This includes reflect-ing and asking a few importantquestions such as advised by Lead-ership Guru, Warren Bennis ofMarshall School of Business: (a)Do I really want to lead? And am I

willing to make the sacrifices lead-ers must make? Prof Bennis is ofthe view that “there is really nodifference between being an ef-fective leader and becoming afully integrated person.”

� Self awareness is key, but personal

conviction is a must for value-based leading. Emory Universityrecently revamped their leadershipprogram based on a set of sevencore values: courage, integrity, ac-countability, rigour, diversity, teamand community.

� Creativity including an ability tothink on the feet is yet anothercritical fundamental for successfulleadership. Leadership challengesare very unique and diverse.Therefore the ability to search foran answer to the question: here Iam and what do I do now be-comes very important.

� Drawing on the internal capacityto inspire oneself and others iscritical to success as leaders. Whenyou look at leaders who have madea difference, they have all tappedinto this energy, for without inspir-ing oneself, one can hardly inspireone’s colleagues! The precise chal-lenge in organizations today is thatwe are asking managers to engagetheir teams without ensuring thatthese managers themselves are en-gaged.

� Enough and more has been writtenabout the ability to listen, but aswith most leadership fundamen-tals, it has remained more dis-cussed than done. I still rememberwhat our professor taught us 25years ago: “waiting to talk is notlistening.” And precisely that iswhat most of us do when someone

is saying something to seek our at-tention and understanding!

� Ability to reflect on experience onan ongoing basis is yet another at-tribute of those successful in lead-ing others. Hectic schedules andjumping from one activity to an-

other represents the maddeningpace of the world of work in whichmost us spin our lives!

Leadership is the Hardest Soft skill:Leadership void in organizations is be-coming more and more evident today,increase in leadership developmentprograms notwithstanding. Cannedprograms, packaged in jazzy powerpoints, delivered by trained trainershave at best turned out to be an enter-tainment. Character has to be at thecentre of leadership building. Withoutthis focus coming through, anyamount of skill building will only de-liver a leadership bench that falls shortof what organizations need today. Weare living in what may be increasinglycharacterized as times of raplexity- acoinage that represents rapid com-plexity. This calls for leadership cal-iber of different intensity and intent. We can glean lessons from BostonPhilharmonic Orchestra’s conductor,Ben Zander whose master class onleadership focuses on certain refresh-ingly new ideas: Stepping into theworld of possibility, leading from anychair, giving everyone an A, being acontribution and stop taking our-selves too seriously (Rule No 6!) andsome more. There lies our answer tounderstanding the ever-expandingenigma of leadership and embracingthe most promising fundamentals dis-cussed above.

What They Don’t Teachat the B-Schools

about

Leadership!

Conventional belief that the tasks of leadership is toestablish a vision, enroll people of an organization init, and hold them accountable through measurementsand rewards seems no longer valid

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By C. MahalingamThe author is Executive Vice President & Chief People Officer, Symphony Services

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working to become a leader in areas like wireless communi-cations and embedded processor design and marketing.

Texas Instruments has reinvented itself several times as itsbusinesses commoditized and had to be rejuvenated. This has oc-curred by successful transition from transistors to integrated circuits (ICs);from commodity ICs to digital signal processor-based SoCs; and more recently to ana-log as the wireless baseband market commoditized.

Apple is another example of successful reinvention. The company first made itsname in computers. With its introduction of the iPod and then the iPhone, Apple ex-panded beyond its core competency into new areas. Significant increases in gross mar-gin have followed – the reward for reinvention.

Mobile phone giant Nokia started out in the nineteenth century making paper andwood products, then added rubber products and cables. Eventually it expanded into elec-tronics and by the 1980s was playing a pioneering role in the evolution of mobile com-munications. IBM used to be known for big mainframe computing systems. From therethey led the way in personal computers, and now the company has a large services com-ponent.

The pattern can be seen in all kinds of industries. You cannot rest on your laurels,no matter how impressive they are, if you want to have continued success and prof-itability. Companies that are leaders for the long haul know this.

At Mentor Graphics we continually question ourselves. We ask whether what we aredoing is similar to what our competitors are doing. If it is, we consider whether we needto do it at all. And we deliberately target areas where our competitors are not playing.We moved into embedded software in the mid-1990s because we realized that it wasbecoming an increasingly challenging problem for our customers, yet no one in EDAwas addressing it. We are still the only EDA company to do so.

We are also the first and only EDA company to add thermal analysis products to ourportfolio which use computational fluid dynamics to better address systems design is-sues and help customers solve challenges all along the supply chain, from chips to boardsto systems and beyond. For instance, our products have impacted the design of entirebuildings such as data centers.

In another example of reinventing ourselves, we applied EDA to thetransportation market when no one else was doing so. We saw an oppor-tunity to do for the automotive market what design automation had donefor semiconductors and computer and communication systems.

If I may switch from business to history here, I would like to remindyou of a story concerning Alexander the Great. When he had conquered an

empire stretching from the Balkans to the Nile to the Himalayas, heis reported to have wept because he had no more worlds to con-

quer. If the story is true, then with all due respect for abrilliant general, I would have to say that he didn’t look

hard enough. There are always new worlds waiting,new opportunities – if you are willing to reinvent your-

self to take full advantage of them.

Leadership means being thebest at what you do, butit’s much more than that.In my view, leadership in-volves looking ahead at

an inevitably changing business land-scape, assessing what will be requiredto enable your company to continue asa leader in that changed environment,and then making the hard decisions toget you to that stage. It is a toughertask than continuing to be the best atwhat you do. It is also a riskier task,because it entails reinventing yourselfand the company, moving beyondwhat you do supremely well and tak-ing on new challenges that are notyour core competency.

Those new challenges, which de-mand the development of new corecompetencies, may involve dealingwith new technologies, new marketingor distribution models, new cultures.Moving in this direction can feel likegoing against all collective wisdom.You can end up with everyone (share-holders, advisors, sometimes even di-rectors and employees) recommendingthat you and the company should con-tinue doing what you already do well.Sometimes you give yourself the sameadvice.

This isn’t surprising. After all, ex-ecutives have be-

come successful managers and leadersbecause they have developed certainskills. They are understandably com-fortable with success achieved, andwould prefer to continue doing whatthey already do well. The same appliesto every employee in the company. In-spiring the company to go in a new di-rection is much more difficult thaninspiring everyone to do better whatthey already do.

But reinvention is essential if youwant to survive, not to mention con-tinue as a leader, beyond today andeven tomorrow. The more successfulyou are in one generation, the lesslikely you will be a leader in the nextone, because the bigger the danger thatyou will keep doing what has alreadyworked brilliantly for you. This is the‘Innovator’s Dilemma’, articulatedeloquently by Harvard professor Clay-ton Christiansen. On the other hand,if the company succeeds in reinvent-ing itself, the rewards are enormous.

You can see how this has playedout in the semiconductor industry,where I was a senior executive prior tomy current role as CEO of Mentor.

With a 35 percentannual decrease inthe average costper transistor,new applica-tions are con-s t a n t l y

emerging.C om p a -nies thattake the

lead in each newtechnology soon become leaders in

the total semiconductor market as thenew technologies provide an everlarger share of the market growth.

This is why leadership in the semi-conductor industry has been so dy-namic. Every decade, the compositionof the top ten semiconductor compa-nies changes because new technolo-gies emerge, usually driven by newcompanies. More than half of thesemiconductor companies who havebeen at some period listed in the topten have dropped out along the way(only Texas Instruments has remainedin the top ten throughout semiconduc-tor history).

Keeping a spot in the top ten hasdemanded continual reinvention be-cause the technology periodically un-dergoes radical changes. For example,in the 1950s the top ten semiconduc-tor companies were leaders in the de-sign and production of germanium andsilicon transistors. In the 1960s lead-ership required expertise in bipolar in-tegrated circuits. In the ‘70smetal-oxide semiconductor (MOS)memory was the key technology. The‘80s were all about microprocessors,the ‘90s were dominated by the systemon a chip (SoC). The 2000s becamethe fabless decade. And going for-ward?

If you look at what leading com-panies are doing today, you’ll see theyare reinventing themselves withan eye to the future. Take Intel, forexample. While the company’score strengths are basedupon a totally dif-ferent set of compe-tencies, Intel is now

Leadership Requires Continuous Reinvention of

Yourself and Your Company

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By Walden C. RhinesAuthor is Chairman and CEO, Mentor Graphics

si


As a leader, a dilemmaone constantly struggleswith is between Controland Empowerment.These clearly are two

schools of thought, often at conflictwith one another. On one hand, thereis a case to be made around buildingstrong processes with checks at everystage. Doing so, one is told, results ingreater discipline and process adher-ence which should be good for the or-ganization, especially from ascalability perspective. Those whodisagree, contend that having controlsresults in reduced speed of executionand stifles creativity, both of which arenot good for the organization. Let’sexamine these two schools of thought.

I would like to start by narrating asmall personal anecdote. Many years

back, when I was a junior manager ata leading financial institution, therewas a rule which required a businesshead’s approval for any kind of travelthat was required. This control obvi-ously was put in place to keep travelcosts in check. At that time, I got in-

volved in a project that was being runout of Mumbai, while I was based inDelhi. It therefore required me totravel between the two cities. As perthe process, I used to send an approval

email to my business head and I wouldgo ahead with the travel. On one suchvisit to Mumbai, I happened to bumpinto the business head in the corridorand after exchanging greetings heasked me with a quizzical look on hisface why I had been sending him a

string of ‘silly’ messages. I was takenaback and asked him which messagehe was referring to. He told me thathe was referring to the travel approvalmessages. I tried to explain that I was

just following the process. He hardlylistened to me and said that I was a ‘se-nior’ officer of the bank and that Ishould feel free to travel whenever Ifelt it was necessary and that he wouldapprove my travel post-facto.

Now this was a short but an ex-tremely impactful interaction for mefor more reasons than one. Firstly, itmade me feel really good since bycalling me a senior officer, he showedthat I was important to the organiza-tion regardless of my title. It alsotaught me an important lesson, whichis that - no organizational policy is castin stone and all existing policies canbe questioned and changed if it madebusiness sense. The most importantquestion, of course, was what hap-pened to the travel costs? Guess what,the travel costs came down! Theycame down because in the past I had‘outsourced’ decision making to thebusiness head. As long as he approvedthe travel, my conscience was clearand I merrily jumped on to a flight and

landed in Mumbai. In any case, thebusiness head never had the time toevaluate my travel requests and wouldapprove all of them based on trust. Soclearly, the objective behind the ap-proval process, which was to minimizetravel costs, was not being met.

What happened when I was em-powered to travel was that I now hadthe responsibility to make sure that Ievaluate each potential travel opportu-nity and exercise due diligence, beforeI was convinced that there was an un-avoidable need to travel. I startedmaking use of email and telephonecalls to do things which could be doneremotely and more effectively becauseit was now my decision and not some-one else’s.

Therefore, should one jump to theconclusion that in an organization oneshould do away with all approval re-lated policies? That certainly wouldn’tbe a great idea. In the above example,what would the outcome have been ifI were a person who did not have thebest interests of the business at heart?What would have happened if I did nothave the competence to evaluate orjudge when travel was necessary andwhen it wasn’t? Obviously the out-come would have been different. Sobefore we start loosening controls inan organization, we first have to makesure that our teams consist of inher-ently self- disciplined and well-inten-tioned people. People who are notself-disciplined do find ways aroundprocesses and controls as well, but at

least it is more difficult to do so. Evenmore important, is that we have totrain people to be able to make theright decisions. We need to teach em-ployees how to determine what makesbusiness sense and what doesn’t. Em-powering people with decisions whichthey are not capable of making willdefinitely set them up for failure.

Once you have the confidence thatyou have well-intentioned and capableemployees, you can gradually startloosening controls. This has to be anevolutionary process, which need not-take an eternity to complete. This kindof a transformation can typically beachieved in a large organization in 12-18 months. Controls would still be re-quired but the objective will not be togovern or police but to enable people.Through these controls, the empow-ered employees should have the toolsat their disposal to constantly evaluatetheir own decisions. This in turn willhelp them to detect errors they aremaking and improve the quality oftheir own decision making abilities onan ongoing basis.

The most nimble of organizationsare the ones where empowermentand decision making is pushed deepdown in to the ranks. The higher thehierarchy at which this floats, theslower is the speed with which theorganization moves. Going throughthis process is not easy. Natural in-securities in some senior people attime come in the way of them em-powering others in the organization.At times seniors also tend to under-estimate the capability of others totake their own decisions. Some ofthese changes do require a bit of aleap of faith. One should be open tohand hold and mentor their teammates as they are being given greateraccountability. Errors and mistakesare bound to be made in the earlydays. However, persistence is sureto guarantee success and the painone will go through in this transfor-mation is well worth the prize.

&Sandeep Dhar

The most nimble oforganizations are theones where empowerment anddecision making ispushed deep downin to the ranks

Controls Empowerment

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By Sandeep DharAuthor is CEO, Tesco HSC

Before loosening controls in an organization, first make sure that the teamsconsist of inherently self- disciplined andwell-intentioned people

si

Afriend of mine who was a CFO at a Nasdaq-listed public company made this comment overa cup of coffee, “Success is strategy!” Brevity, itseems, is not just the soul of wit but also of wis-

dom.Strategy is focus and allocation of resources to a

defined set of products/services and systems/processesto market and deliver them. Billions of words and millions ofarticles have been written on effective leadership and strategy.

Ultimately, if a person or a business succeeds,then the approach adopted by that person or thebusiness is lionized as the “right” strategy. Butwe know a couple of things:

a. A strategy that works for acompany today may not workfor the same company tomorrow.

b. A strategy that works for onecompany today may not work foranother company in the samespace.

Given the furious velocity ofchange in technology, consumerbehavior and competitive land-scape, strategy definition has be-


come simultaneously even more dif-ficult and critical. For those of us inthe new media space, this is evenmore difficult because it is far easierfor companies to change directionand business model as there are nohuge investments sunk in land, fac-tories, buildings, machinery and in-ventory like it is in other industries.

Michael Porter, a guru of strat-egy, said he went in search of exter-nal factors that possibly caused aseries of bad decisions in good com-panies. He studied this for 20 to 25years and concluded that it’s not somuch driven by external conditions– but “strategic errors that the com-pany does to itself.” Often, strate-gic errors are most clearly visiblelooking back after some crucial timehas elapsed.

In some ways, defining strategyis like developing a movie script.Robert McKee, the famous Holly-wood scriptwriter says, “A rulesays, You must do it this way. A prin-ciple says, This works and has,through all remembered time. Thedifference is crucial. Anxious, inex-perienced writers obey rules. Rebel-lious, unschooled writers breakrules. Artists master the form.”While no one can assert the rules ofstrategy-definition, there are certainabstract principles that could informstrategy definition. What follows isa few of them that we have deployedto avoid some dangerous pitfalls atSulekha. While this by no meansguarantees continued future success,it is merely to serve as instructionon what had worked for us in thepast.

One principle is: Don’t fight lead-ers offering the same service as theydo. Strategy is as much about whatyou choose not to do as you choose todo. Right from the start, we atSulekha decided we will not wasteour time on providing basic infra-structure services such as Search andEmail. Because, we figured we would

lose the battle competing head-onwith industry leaders such as Yahoo,MSN, Rediff, Sify and Indiatimes inproviding a free, commodity servicethat requires an enormous infrastruc-ture, innovation outlay. Looking back,

this was a smart thing to do. By thesame token, we believe it would be-come increasingly difficult for coun-try-specific players to competehead-on and win against globalleviathans like Google, Yahoo andFacebook.

Another principle is: Don’t bet thebusiness solely by overcoming en-trenched consumer or customer re-sistance. Conventional wisdom inentrepreneurial circles says compa-nies wildly succeed when they de-velop new models that the customerhas never thought of. Examples ofSony Walkman, Apple iPad, eBay aretrotted out to prove this point. Butthere is a difference – and it is a cru-cial one – between catering to anunarticulated, latent need of a con-sumer versus overcoming a known,existing resistance. Let us take twoexamples. There is a resistance onpart of Indian consumers to buy andpay online for used electronics goodsfrom strangers because they don’ttrust them to deliver goods as adver-tised. This is completely at variancewith the consumer behavior we ob-serve in United States, for example,where people generally have a higher

level of trust in others. So, a usedgood auction site like in US will notwork in India. Another example isthat big brand marketers don’t believethey can build their brands online;they do believe TV and Print are suit-

able media for buildingbrands. In other words,they see TV and Print asmarketing channels andthey see online as a saleschannel; this explainswhy they pay the formerbased on viewership(CPM), they seek to payonline sites based on re-sponse (CPC/CPA).There is a resistance toviewing the Internetmedium as a brand-building, marketing

channel. So, any strategy that is cru-cially dependent on overcoming cus-tomer resistance will find it hard tosucceed.

A third point about leadership isrelated to the plethora of choices thatare available to the senior manage-ment team at any given time. The In-ternet environment offers the latitudeand ease for companies to try multi-ple things at once. Since irrespectiveof the industry or the situation, com-panies are relentlessly pushed bystakeholders to “grow, grow,grow…profitably” and because mar-ket premiums are usually reservedand accorded to companies that dothat, many try to do multiple things.This can either be good or bad, basedon circumstance. On the one hand,companies have set themselves backby either not evolving over time or bydiluting their focus. There are asmany examples of the former as thereare of the latter.

Overall, defining a sound strategyand sticking to it requires clearknowledge of the past and presentcoupled with a prescient understand-ing of how the markets are evolving.Plus a bit of luck.

Strategyin theNew World

MMaannaaggeemmeenntt:: By Satya PrabhakarthAuthor is Founder and CEO, Sulekha.com

Conventional wisdom inentrepreneurial circlessays companies wildlysucceed when they de-velop new models thatthe customer has neverthought of

Strategy is as much aboutwhat you choose not to doas you choose to do.

si


Much is talked about vari-ous leadership traits, butthe one which is oftenoverlooked in the man-

agement books, is the role of leader-ship in attracting strong talent. StrongCEOs, business leaders and entrepre-neurs are powerful recruiters. Theyspend disproportionate amount of theirtime attracting the best of the very bestfor their organizations.

There are many schools of

thoughts on how to hire great employ-ees for your business or organization.You want to hire employees that makeyou proud, who deliver to the organi-zations success, ones who take little orno effort on part of every one in theteam, and are fun to be with. Hiring

great people is the essence of buildinga great organizational culture – oneemployee at a time.

So, how does one hire right? Howdo you go through the interviewprocess to find employees who youwant to hire and the ones who you

want to reject? Over the years, I haverecommended 5 Step criteria for en-trepreneurs and leaders to look forgreat employees. If you are able to as-sess these 5 elements during the inter-view process, you will more likely bemaking the right hire for your organi-zation or startup, thereby giving yourleadership a shine!

Criteria #1: AptitudeYou are looking for basic aptitude inthe candidate. If the person is verysmart, or intelligent or has number ofadvanced degrees, all that is good, butnot critical for making a successfulhire. Degrees and abilities to solvelogic puzzles all point to raw aptitudeand intelligence. You need to see someof that in the prospective hire, but youwant to be careful not to over empha-size the aptitude in your hiring deci-sion process. A number ofentrepreneurs and managers get im-pressed by strong aptitude alone, andforget to look into other critical ele-ments of what makes a successful hire.You need basic aptitude, more thanthat is a bonus, but not an automaticselection criterion.

Criteria #2: DriveOver the years I have made lots of hir-ing mistakes, and common amongstall of them have been that those can-didates lacked basic self-motivateddrive to excel and win in the market-place. Drive is an internal motivator,which inspires you to win in the world,leaves your mark and legacy. It guidesyou during difficult times to persevere.You need employees who are selfdriven. So, your hiring process mustbe designed to identify people andcandidates who are strongly self-dri-ven. Folks who are on a mission tochange their careers, make an impactin the organization, prove himself orherself or simply make world a betterplace! Let us emphasize drive as astrong selection criterion over just rawintelligence or aptitude.

Criteria #3:CommitmentAnother key trait for successful em-ployees is their commitment to the or-ganization and commitment to themission of the organization. You haveto look for committed people, peoplewho are committed through their ca-reers, who have shown resilience and

commitment in their personal and pro-fessional lives. Commitment requiresone to pursue things which one trulyand genuinely believes in. So duringthe interview process, as a hiring man-ager, you have to look for candidateswho exhibit such traits. Are theylikely to stay committed during toughtimes? Are they more likely to bail outwhen going is not good? Do you be-lieve that they can get committed tothe mission of your organization orstartup? These are very important ele-ments of your interview and hiringprocess. Getting a good read on thesequestions will help you hire well foryour organization.

Criteria #4:Ethics and IntegrityI cannot underscore the significance ofethics and integrity, during an inter-view process. You want to hire peoplewho demonstrate highest level of in-tegrity and ethics. These are the peo-ple who say what they do, they dowhat they say, and you can count onthem for their unwaivered integrityand ethics. They are less likely to playgames in the organization, get into of-fice politics or negatively impact theculture of your organization. Instead,through their integrity and ethics,these individuals will demonstrate

highest level of intellectual honesty.You want employees who demonstrateand come across with high ethics andintegrity. If during the hiring process,if you are uncomfortable on this issue,regardless of how good the candidateis, it is safer to pass on them, than haveto deal it with later.

Criteria #5:Journey of Life-longlearningI look for employees who are curious,as if they are still in high school, folkswho, regardless of their age, title andaccomplishments, are curious enoughto live a journey of life-long learning.I care less about the degrees they hold,I care more about their curiosity andthe ease with which they can get intonew areas of exploration to find thetruth. Curiosity is a trait, which turnsordinary contributors into true innova-tors; folks who will change the wayorganizations do little things and bigthings. Their curiosity can be under-stood during the interview process; byprobing both on how curious are theyabout little things around them, andhow curious they are about the bigproblems or opportunities that they seearound themselves.

As you think about your own lead-ership strengths or the leadership traitsin your own organization, it is alwaysgood to audit how strong is your hiringand interviewing instincts, and how itcan be honed as a process over time.If you hire well, it automatically cre-ates strong leadership and an environ-ment which leads to high performanceorganizations.

EEnnttrreepprreenneeuurr 110011:: By Gunjan SinhaThe author is the Chairman of SiliconIndia.com and MetricStream. An internet pioneer, he wasthe co-founder and President of WhoWhere? Inc., a Internet directory services company acquiredby Lycos in 1998 as well as eGain, an online customer service company. Sinha can be reachedat [email protected]

A person who is very smart or intelligent or hasnumber of advanced degrees need not make asuccessful hire.

It is important to look for committed people,those committed through their careers, haveshow resilience and commitment in their personal and professional lives

Strong RecruitersLeaders as

si


Pershing’s recent worksta-tion NETX360 is hailed asthe iPhone of the financialtechnology industry, whichcan be accessed via smart-

phone. It has released NetX360 appsfor the iPad as well. By the looks ofthe developments, in a year or two,there may even be a NetX360 AppStore.

Technological innovations underway at Pershing (a subsidiary of BNYMellon, the nation’s oldest continu-ously operating bank, and one of theworld’s leading providers of securitiesservices, which has approximately$831.3 billion in assets held in cus-tody) today could propel the firm intoa technology leadership role in boththe broker-dealer and RIA custody

spaces. Behind these break throughchanges which is impacting the indus-try is Suresh Kumar, its CIO. Versatil-ity, sharpness and above all anintuitive power which comes from adeep sense of technology and the un-derstanding of business, with whichthis CIO spearheads the technologicalecosystem at Pershing is putting thepressure on competitors to try andmeet or exceed what Pershing has tooffer.

A keen observer of the technologyspectrum, Kumar recognized that mo-bile computing is emerging as a viablealternative to how people conductbusinesses. He says, “People are be-coming more mobile and informationand accessibility a click away or at fin-ger tips is what people are tuning tothese days. So we are taking advantageof that global platform, and have ourmain product available in iPhone,iPad, Blackberry and Windows mo-bile”.

This edge which Kumar brings into stay at the technology curve and tostay ahead of competition has helpedPershing in many ways. The of Sept.11 hadn’t even happened yet, butKumar, realized that his business-con-tinuity efforts had to be more efficient.Though he had disaster recovery sys-tems in place, what irked him was that

it could be as long as 24 hours beforethings were back to normal. That wasfar too long for his liking, given thatPershing, provides global correspon-dent and prime-brokerage services tomore than 750 institutional and retail-financial organizations, registered-in-vestment advisors andmanaged-account programs. He en-gaged IBM to help with a major over-haul of its business continuity/disasterrecovery capabilities. Pershing had es-tablished two data centers and in-stalled data mirroring and datareplication. This effort needed a lot ofinvestment and finally when the Sept11 attack happened, Kumar’s longterm vision proved right.

Today he is observing the threemajor trends evolving in the technol-ogy space- virtualization, cloud com-puting and open source technologies.“I think the changes that are takingplace in these three spaces are rapidand so we are trying to figure out howwe take advantage of these trends”says Kumar.

He has articulated his thoughts onthese trends very eloquently.Virtualization - Traditionally largecompanies have their own data centersand they also installed hardware andthe software and everything that youneed to create your solution is all inyour data center. The good news is thatin terms of performance and in termsof security, it’s pretty good. But interms of the time to market and interms of overall cost, it is not that goodand from a technology selection pointof view quite laid back. So, virtualiza-tion really makes it easy to deploy theservices and it dramatically reducesthe time.

Cloud computing - Cloud com-puting allows you to be able to getservices on a variable cost basis so,you need to pay for only what you useand if you no longer need it, you don’tneed to pay for it anymore. That ispretty appealing. As well as if you arestarting out a business then you don’t

need to spend a lot of capital to havewhat you need, you can just leveragethis and that is a business goal. Thereis an alignment between the perform-ance and expense which is good. So hethinks the cloud computing conceptand the services that are there is prettyimpressive, but for large companiestheir comfort in using cloud comput-ing for critical resources is a challenge.

Kumar has donned multiple rolesin his career. This IIT, IIM alumni hasbeen often asked by his peers andmedia about venturing into entrepre-neurship. But Kumar says he has livedthe roles of an entrepreneur as the CIOof Pershing. Kumar is not only Man-aging Director, Chief Information Of-ficer and a member of the ExecutiveCommittee for Pershing, where he isresponsible for application develop-ment, program management, processassurance, project management, qual-ity assurance and technology productmanagement but is also the Chief Ex-ecutive Officer of iNautix Technolo-gies, a technology affiliate of Pershingthat provides offshore developmentservices, and Chief Executive Officerof iNautix (USA), a technology affili-ate of Pershing that provides technol-ogy products and services to thefinancial services industry.

Kumar feels that the role of theCIO has evolved to be more complexand hectic. More and more companiestoday have decent amount of exposureto the internet and there is a lot ofchanges taking place in the technologyspace. Hence CIO’s globally facesthree major challenges:

1st Challenge: One of the top priori-ties is information security. We needto make sure not just people knowhow to record, and how to scale andhow to have a highly performing sys-tem, but they also need to make surethe system is secure. And he believesthe information security is one of thebiggest challenges.

2nd Challenge: The other challengehe say is technology obsolescence.The good and bad is that there is a lotof disruptive innovations that are tak-ing place and it is an exciting timefor technologies today because thereis something new, better andcheaper. But the bad news is that it isnot like we can just cant suddenly getrid of what we have and get some-thing new to replace what we have.So he feels the CIOs need to figureout on how to balance it out so thatyou can handle technology obsoles-cence in an effective manner and at areasonable cost.

3rd Challenge: The third challenge isin a way related to, how do you pro-tect your technology investments. Ifyou don’t have the right architecturewhich allows you to be able to re-place components of things at a timeor specific services at a time it be-comes a challenge. So Kumar thinksthat is another focus that you oughtto have the right architecture, so thatyou are able to not be constantly re-quired to change, but you can pre-serve what you have and incorporatewith something new so that you areable to protect your technology in-vestment to get a better rate of returnon the technology investment.

As we signout of this conversa-tion, he is ready and all set to ventureinto his next mission but more per-sonal in nature-Biking for 200 milesfor a noble cause. Here also, his waysof making it a success is similar-set agoal, focus on your mission, workhard and work with passion

The Game ChangerCCIIOO PPrrooffiillee:: By Jaya Smitha Menon

Disruptive innovations isensuring it is an excitingtime for technologiestoday as there is something new, betterand cheaper

With right architectureone can preserve what

one has and also incorpo-rate it with something newthat is able to protect yourtechnology investment to

get a better ROI

Suresh Kumar

si


siTech20

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INDIA INDEXIndex of the top tech public companies in India

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3262-3124-10-31-313-2824-5-3768-16-13-26-213999

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