smarttechie dec 11 issue

EMPOWERING TECHNOLOGY LEADERS OF TOMORROW thesmarttechie.comDecember 2011

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Guru Talk: Sanjay Shelvankar, ScaleneWorks Entrepreneurs & Visionary Leaders: Naveen Jain, Intelius

Willingness to failAbility to Succeed

gives me theVinod Khosla

Siliconindia a a leading technology media house brining a Enterpreneure year Book 2011 , to Enable the Indian Entrepreneur to share their Wisdom , experience .It will be a reference book for the technology professionals . Siliconindia builds on a broad range of topics relevant to the business fraternity & addresses its readers through the echelons of the world of business. In addition to these corporate executives at various levels, analysts and VCs also form a significant part of our readership in India

What does the Entrepreneurs Year Book Entail?The basic challenge for entrepreneur is to reach out to right guy at right time. We help

you by sharing the details about the company and give more insights about the com-

panies in almost all the verticals of IT. The year book will comprise of the contact details

of the company and a one page profile too.

For more details Contact: [email protected]

Hurry Up !!!Last chance to bea part of this book.

Launching on last week ofDecember 2011

Vol 7 Issue 12 � December 2011

Publisher Alok ChaturvediEditor-in-Chief Pradeep Shankar

Managing Editor Vimali Swamy

Deputy Editors

Christo Jacob Jaya Smitha Menon

Editorial StaffHari Anil Vishwas Nair

Sr. Visualiser Dipin DasVisualiser Hebert Emmatty

Circulation Manager Magendran Perumal

AdvertisingVirupakshi Pattar Shakuntala VikramShrikant Pandey Vasanth Raj

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Editor Pradeep Shankar, No. 124, 2nd Floor, South Block,Surya Chambers, Airport Main Road, Bangalore 560017.

Copyright © 2010 SiliconMedia Technologies Pvt Ltd, Allrights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part of any text,photography or illustrations without written permissionfrom the publisher is prohibited. The publisher assumes noresponsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs orillustrations. Views and opinions expressed in thispublication are not necessarily those of the magazine andaccordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher.

EMPOWERING TECHNOLOGY LEADERS OF TOMORROW

www.thesmarttechie.comThe Smart Tech ie |5|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 1

Editorial

The world has become less predictable.Things change more often than wethink. In January this year if you asked

someone whether Egypt, with 40 years ofdictatorial rule, would change, they wouldhave said ‘not in the next 40 years’. WouldLibya change, not in the next 10 years! Yes,world is changing more often than wethought. Similarly, back home, no one couldhave imagine the anti-corruption drive led byAnna Hazare could take the country bystorm.

Perhaps India might soon see its own ver-sion of the Arab upspring or occupied WallStreet movement. It is just a matter of time.

While there is uncertainty and chaos,there is more opportunity for people whoadapt quickly than those who follow processand old models. Countries, companies andindividuals, which challenge the conven-tional, transcend mediocrity; altering oldframeworks of work will emerge as winnersin the new world order.

Can every light consume 75 percent ofelectricity it does today? How can air-condi-tions consume 75 percent less energy? Canengines drive on half the oil they consumetoday? What if we did not need doctors to dohealthcare? Can education happen withoutteachers? The list can go on and you canthink of several unconventional things in al-most every category. If one has to lead therace and win the game, you ought to be con-tinuously reinventing.

Political leaders across the globe arelooking at ways for job creation. They seethat not only are young firms the source ofmost new jobs, they also keep older firms vi-brant and provide the greatest promise for in-novating our way through the world’stoughest challenges. They are not only thegreatest source of new wealth for oureconomies, but since all boats rise on an in-coming tide, they offer our greatest hope in

the worldwide quest for a better society. Toseize the opportunity, one has to have the gritand determination to make the change. Forinstance, everyone thought nothing woulddisturb the landline world in India. Bhartitook advantage of new trends in telecomspace to emerge as leader in the mobileworld. And they continue to reinvent theirbusiness every few years.

While one prepares to adapt to the newworld order, it is important to have convic-tion is whatever we intend to do. In his book,On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burtonchallenges the notions of how we think aboutwhat we know. It talks about entrepreneursand ideas and how to convince oneself totake risks. Some people are genetically in-clined to lead things. It turns out that believ-ing in ideas you get and taking the risksassociated with it is the same gene whichmakes you believe in religion, where you arewilling to believe in something withoutproof. It is an essential part of entrepreneur-ship to have conviction about what you do.Once you are on the journey, you do it asthough it is your religion.

You have to have schizophrenia, which iscombination of arrogance and over-confi-dence of what you can do and be paranoid ofeverything that can go wrong. Getting thisright is the key to be a successful startup orindividual, especially in the new world,which is changing faster than we think.

Please do share your thoughts with us.Pradeep ShankarEditor in [email protected]

Reinventing in the New World

The Smart Tech ie |6|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 1

33Driving Innovation at the WorkplaceBy Sreehari Seetharam Sastry, Attachmate-Group

36Leading with User Experience By Shashank Deshpande, Clarice Technolo-gies

[Technology] 38Right to Quality Education– Right An-swer, RightTechnology By Manish Upadhyay & Amitava Maitra,LIQVID & Edtech consultant

[Feature] 40India, a Hell for Businesses: What needsto be done?By Hari Anil

[Technology] 42An Intelligent Approach to MonetizingMobile Broadband By Joanne Steinberg, Tekelec

[Event] 45Gadgets galore @ siliconindia DigitalGadget Show

[Management] 46Jet-Fueled Technology: Managing Work-forces in a Global Business Environment By Umesh Vaidyamath, INSZoom.com

[Leadership] 48IT Leaders and their ChallengesBy Devendra Deshmukh, e-zest Solu-tions

[Business] 50Technology and Management of Digi-tal MarketingBy Srinivas Chari, Xerago Ebiz[Technology] 52Convergence of Process Automation,Data Analytics and CloudBy Sreekanth Lapala, TenXLabs

[Feature] 54Enough with Employees, we needmore EmployersBy Hari Anil

[Leadership] 57When Business meets AcademiaBy Siddharth Goel, iKen Solutions

[Tech Products] 58

[Business] 60Indian IT: Achieving Non-LinearGrowthBy Jagdish Mahapatra, Cisco India &SAARC

[Feature] 623Ps of Marketing are dead!!By Vandana Subramanian

[Guru Talk] 8TRENDS to watch out for in 2012By Sanjay Shelvankar, ScaleneWorks

[In Focus] 10

[Tech Buzz] 14

[Venture Beat] 16

[Leadership] 22Managing super talent and developingworld-class product – A non-trivial task!By Venkat Mattela, Redpine Signals

24Leading through InnovationBy Shouvick Mukherjee, Yahoo! India R&D

26How entrepreneurs become visionary leadersBy Vishwas Nair

28An Entrepreneurial journeyBy Asvini Kumar, Thinksoft Global Services

30A paradigm to great technology leadershipepitome, Technopreneurship!By Thomas Jacob, Qutesys

Contents: December 2011

Page 20 coverstory

Willingness to fail

Ability to Succeedgives me the

By ST Team

Grab your chair by registering now at http://www.siliconindia.com/events-contactus/SME-summit-Bangalore-SMEsummit.htmlFor speaking and sponsorship opportunities write to [email protected] or call 080-43112164.

Speakers

SME SUMMIT2011SiliconIndia is organizing ‘SME Summit 2011’, all over India, in the month of November and December. Technology is changing at an unprecedented rate and SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) have enough on their minds than to try and keep track of it all. SMEs acknowledge the importance of finance and technology in improving productivity. They do know right usage of both can bring in cost optimization, operational efficiency and energy efficiency.

As the name suggests, SME Summit will help SMEs gain that education and make sense of the finance and technology landscape. At the event, finance and technology companies can engage with the senior management executives from SMEs directly. The event is an ideal platform for companies to effectively communicate the new SMB offerings, the aware-ness of which could yield business results for both parties.

After the resounding success of the SME Summit in Banga-lore, Coimbatore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Pune editions, this time we are organizing the event in Mumbai on December 5th, Indore on December 6th, Baroda on Decem-ber 7th, Ahmedabad on December 8th, Jaipur on December 12th, Ludhiana on December 14th, Chandigarh on Decem-ber 15th and Noida on December 19th.

Siliconindia is organizing the SME Summit 2011 by undertaking associate partnerships with many associations like,

• The Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry• Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC• Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FKCCI)• Textile Association (India)• M.I.D.C Industries Association (MIA)• Butibori Manufacturers Association• Federation of Industries Association Vidarbha• Electronics City Industries’ Association (ELCIA)• Bijapur District Small Scale Industries Association (BASSIA)• Hinjewadi Industries Association• Deccan Chamber of Commerce Industries & Agriculture Pun (DCCIA)

TOPICS• A New Business Technology Paradigm: The New Promise of Information Technology • The Changing Role of CFOs in SMEs

siliconindia

Platinum Sponsors

Gold Sponsor Associate Sponsor Media PartnerHoliday Partner

The Smart Tech ie |9|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 1The Smart Tech ie |8|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 1

GURU TALK

i2i (India to India), Resource/staffaugmentation opportunities and isthe toughest to fulfill from a hiringperspective

Technology in RecruitmentThe most surprising fact is thatthough most organizations leveragethe use of technology in every otherbusiness process practiced today,recruitment is one space that stillwaits to see the light of a truly end-to-end automated process. Eitherthe will to implement technology isnot there or simply put, there seemsto be a serious vacuum of thought-leadership

For any successful program to beimplemented three critical items areneeded – People Capability, ProcessMaturity and Tool/Technologyadoption. The latter being the mostimportant element to usher in scala-bility, predictability, transparencyand accountability into any process.

Hiring is an effort-intensive ac-tivity. The internal recruitment teamfacilitates the rest of the organiza-tion in orchestrating the end result– i.e. hiring of good talent. Ask anyhiring manager in any organizationand most would agree that they donot have transparency into the hir-ing process – and the reverse is trueas well – most recruitment func-tions complain that 60-75 percent oftheir time goes not in hunting forgood talent but in giving endlesscustomized status updates andlengthy meetings with internalstakeholders.

Technology is meant to solvethis issue by bringing all stake-holders onto a common platformthereby ensuring complete trans-parency and near real-time statusupdates. This apart, a tool will en-sure that hiring related progress andassociated risks can be flaggedahead of time and risk mitigationmeasures taken proactively by theentire organization.

Most hiring managers see therecruitment activity as a rejectionplatform – they usually look atwhat is lacking and how can I rejectan incumbent candidate - this trendis slowly changing in a few pro-gressive organizations where thehiring managers do a comprehen-sive & accurate assessment of the

candidate’s competencies and har-vest the best candidates with mostlearnable traits, even though theymight only be 70-80 percent readyfor the job at hand. Thus movingthe entire recruitment activity froma rejection to a pro-selection plat-form.

This pro-selection strategy canbe achieved by adopting advancedmethodologies (eAssessments)such as Item Response Theory andGraded Answers, scenario-basedassessments, technology assistedoutsourced interviewing etc. Videoresumes are catching up especiallyin ITES/Hospitality segments

Predictive techniques (chi-square analysis, Cochran’s theo-

rem), usage of dashboarding cou-pled with cutting-edge analytics,highly-effective alert systems,what-if scenarios for planning etc.,that are used in supply chain indus-tries will be increasingly used inthe recruitment functions. The in-dustry is seeing a silent movementtowards this trend – especiallywhen it comes to reducing offer re-nege ratios.

Advice to organizations that areexperiencing recruitment chal-lengesPlease invest in your recruitmentdivision. Do not see recruitment asa clerical activity. Your entiregrowth strategy will be in jeopardyif you do not have thought-leader-ship and technology adoption inthis function. Pay premium if youhave to and get good recruitmentprogram managers that can growwith your organization. Choose re-cruitment managers that have abroader vision and that are pro-out-sourcing. The whole world is mov-ing there and if the organization hasto be nimble and at the sameachieve scalability – outsourcingtactical tasks of the hiring processmust be seriously evaluated – forthis the need of the hour is recruit-ment managers that do not see out-sourcing as a threat to theirexistence. On the contrary theyshould be able to leverage vendorswell to achieve their critical suc-cess factors.

Progressive managers routinelylook at adjacent industries/domainand learn from unusual sources byborrowing and adapting best prac-tices to their needs. Recruitment isnothing more than a mere supplychain problem. If one can observeand learn from the many successfulmanufacturing industries that havemanaged to master the supply chaintechniques, recruitment can be amore pleasurable occupation.

Beyond the obvious answers such as hiringfrom Social Networking channels orthrough improved Employee Referral pro-

grams – the new trends will be in the realm of in-creasing recruiter productivity, thought-leadershipin hiring passive candidates and technology adop-tion into the overall hiring process.

Non Permanent RolesMore and more mid-level talent are voluntarilyopting out of being on permanent roles – in turnbenefiting from higher take home salary and moreflexi-times (work for eight months on time-boundprojects and take an extended 3-4 months time offfor re-skilling and vacations). Also organizationsare beginning to tap these high-capability subjectmatter experts (SME) to execute critical projectsas opposed to using them as a stop-gap hiringarrangement. Most developed nations have thismodel working well, India is slowly waking up toits possibilities

Who will hire most?OEM/ISVs and MNC captives will be the highestrecruiters in India at least for the next couple ofyears while the Indian IT services industry beginsto regain its old glory. This poses a unique prob-lem to the services industry – they will need to hiretalent on their roles and place them at theseOEM/ISV/MNC captive customer’s premises. Hereis where the established services organization willface intense competition from the hiring/staffingagencies that have a lean structure with very min-imal overheads. Couple this with the earlier pointwhere highly-capable contract staff availability isprevalent and you will see why it is going to be atough couple of years for such services organiza-tions that do this type of glorified “placement busi-ness”. This business is referred to as local-onsite,

TRENDSto watch out for in 2012

By Sanjay Shelvankar

Sanjay Shelvankar

The author is CEO, ScaleneWorks

“Most hiring man-agers see the re-cruitment activity asa rejection platform– they usually look atwhat is lacking andhow can I reject anincumbent candidate- this trend is slowlychanging”

ANNIVERSARY SSPPEECCIIAALL


in in

India has had a significant dom-inance over the KPO (Knowl-edge Process Outsourcing)

sector for many years now. How-ever, a recent report by analyst firmOvum says that a number of KPOhubs have emerged in many Asia-Pacific countries during the lastfew years. These potential hubs in-clude countries like China, Philip-pines and Sri Lanka.

“A major challenge facing lifesciences companies is the growingcost of R&D and, as a result, agrowing number of pharma compa-

nies are turning to outsourcing andoff-shoring as ways of reducingthese costs. China is an attractivelocation for companies that run andmanage all phases of the clinicaltrial process, as it offers a signifi-cant pool of potential patients in animportant emerging market,” saysEd Thomas, Analyst, Ovum.

Apart from China, Philippinesalso is emerging as a key player inthe KPO sector. It has carved itselfa niche market in various areas in-cluding healthcare outsourcing.This market is expected to grow at

a great extent as there is a notabledemand coming from the U.S. be-cause of the recent reforms in thehealthcare regulations.

Sri Lanka also has started con-centrating on developing skills invarious areas and sectors. Thecountry is now rich of accountantswho are capable of providing highend complex equity and credit re-search. This has enabled them toprovide both offshore andnearshore delivery to the vendorsproviding them access to the size-able and untapped talent pools.

Will India continue to dominate the KPO sector?

With over 100 million internetusers, India is now the thirdlargest internet user glob-

ally; coming behind China and theU.S. Statistically, one in every ten In-dians will be an internet user by theend of this year. A survey has re-ported that by December, 2011, therewill be 121 million users who willaccess the internet at least once aweek to check emails, chat or logonto a social network. In urban areas79 percent of computer literate peo-ple seem to use the internet for atleast once a month. According to theresearchers affordability comes easyas internet friendly devices are in-creasing at a rapid rate.

There were times when internet

connection was limited to a few andgetting one itself used to a herculeantask. Now, there is a significant in-crease in the number of serviceproviders with improved services, andthis has made it easy and affordable toget access to the internet. The govern-ment has always been trying to makethe internet accessible to the massesand this dream seems to have cometrue. Surprisingly, there are more in-ternet users in the rural sector than thetop eight metros put together.

The internet boom is now open-ing gates for online marketing, con-sumers and retailers. Entrepreneursclaim internet to be a powerful toolfor changing the business landscapein favor of India. Most of the startup

companies look at India when start-ing a business instead of flying to theU.S. About two billion people use theweb all over the world out of which25 percent is from china, 12.5 per-cent from the U.S. and 6 percentfrom India.

India in the Big League of Internet UsingCountries

Indian American Aney Paul wins thedemocratic primary in New York’sDistrict 14 beating her opponent,

Spring Valley’s Hank Stewart, by 239votes. The elections were held on the 8thof November, 2011. “It feels good, I feelhappy, but it's just beginning. The firststep is over, but there's still more work todo. We'll work as a team and we will winagain,” says Aney.

The Federation of Malayalee Associ-ations of North America (FOMAA) were

among the first ones to congratulatedher. “Aney Paul's victory is truly an in-spiration for the Malayalee Americancommunity,” says John Uralil, Presi-dent, FOMAA.

Aney Paul has lived in Nanuet forover 24 years and is a nurse at the NyackHospital. She is also the president of theNew City Library Board. She has beencommitted to the service of the societyfor more than 30 years and has been rec-ognized immensely for it.

Aney Paul wins Legislative District 14 Primaryin New York

According to a new compilationof 2010 census data IndianAmericans made up 18 per-

cent of the Asian American popula-tion in 2010, up from 16 percent in2000. They led all Asian Americanhouseholds with highest medianhousehold income. According to2007 to 2009 data, Indian Ameri-cans led all Asian American groupsin the country in median householdincome at $86,660. Taiwanesehouseholds came second with$77,596.

Taiwanese and Indians also ledin per capita income among AsianAmerican groups, with $38,312 and$36,533, respectively, followed byMalaysians ($33,264) and SriLankans ($32,480). BangladeshiAmericans had the biggest percent-age increase over the decade, sky-rocketing 157 percent, according tothe study, "A Community of Con-

trasts: Asian Americans in theUnited States, 2011," by the AsianPacific American Legal Centre andthe Asian American Justice Centre.

The Pakistani population had thesecond highest population bumpwith a 100 percent rise. The SriLankan and Indian American popu-lations increased 85 percent and 68percent, respectively. Among theSouth Asian groups, Pakistanis hadthe highest rate of naturalization at57 percent, while just 50 percent of

Bangladeshi Americans, 47 percentof Indian Americans and 43 percentof Sri Lankan Americans were nat-uralized. About 200,000 Indianlegal permanent residents wereeligible to become citizens in2008. The leading six Asiancountries for immigrant visas is-sued from 2001-2010 were:Philippines, 350,694; China,286,008; India, 267,403; Viet-nam, 193,049; Bangladesh,84,643; Pakistan, 69,202.

Only 22 percent of IndianAmericans five years of age and

older from 2007-09 were limitedEnglish proficient, compared to 46percent for Bangladeshis and 28percent for Pakistanis. Taiwaneseand Indian Americans led all Asiangroups in higher educational attain-ment, with 73 percent to 68 percent,respectively, having a bachelor's de-gree or higher.

Indian Americans Grow to 3.2 Million, Top in Income


in

Dr. Shaik Jeelani, VP, researchand Sponsored Programs atTuskegee University in Ala-

bama received the presidentialaward 2011 for mentoring. Presi-dent Obama on Nov 15 named nineindividuals and eight recipients ofthe presidential award for excel-lence in Science, Mathematics andEngineering mentoring. The men-tors will receive their respectiveawards at a White House ceremonylater this year.

The award recognizes the im-portant roles that mentoring plays

in the academic and personal de-velopment of students studying sci-ence and engineering specificallythose who belong to groups that areunderrepresented in these fieldsthat are mentioned. The expertiseand encouragement that these men-tors offer help in preparing the nextgeneration of scientists and engi-neers to ensure that tomorrow's in-novators benefit from the talent ofthe United States.

Obama said that the organiza-tions and individuals play a crucialrole in the development of our 21st

Century workforce. He also addedthat the Nation owed them a debt ofgratitude for helping which ensuresthat America remains a worldleader in science and engineeringfor years to come.

These candidates were nomi-nated by colleagues, administratorsand students in their institutions.The recipients receive awards of$25,000 from the National ScienceFoundation to advance their men-toring efforts. The mentors and or-ganizations announced representthe winners for 2010 and 2011.

Dr. Shaik Jeelani Receives 2011 Presidential Awardfor Mentoring

Ever since Ratan Tata an-nounced his decision to retire,there have been wide specula-

tions about who will fill his shoes. Itis a great responsibility, somethingbeyond most people can fathom andthat might have been the reason be-hind the time delay in announcingthe successor. Finally the boardseems to have driven its way throughthe issue and came up with the name,Cyrus Pallonji, son of the construc-tion magnate Pallonji Mistry. With18.5 percent stake in the company,Mistry is the biggest individualshareholder in Tata Sons, and isknown as the Phantom of BombayHouse due to his serene yet assuredway in exercising power.

Cyrus Mistry has served as a Di-rector of Tata Elxsi, from September

24, 1990 to October 26, 2009 andwas a Director of Tata Power untilSeptember 18, 2006. He serves asChairman of the Board of ShapoorjiPallonji Group and Afcons Infra-structure and has been a director ofTata Sons since September 1, 2006.These positions are only a part of hislong and rich portfolio. After beinga Director of SP Group for twodecades he has now decided to stepdown from that position and legallydissociate himself from the SP groupin order to assume this new respon-sibility.

He is often credited as the manbehind scaling up and diversifyingSP Group and this would obviouslyhave been the reason behind RatanTata favoring Cyrus as his own re-placement. Cyrus Pallonji will be

working along with Ratan Tata fornext one year and officially takeover the role of Director of Tata Sonsin December 2012 after Ratan Tata’sretirement. Cyrus Pallonji will havevery large shoes to fill; Ratan Tatawill be putting him in charge ofIndia’s largest business empire thatis worth around $100 billion.

Ratan Tata to Give Way to Cyrus Mistry Career change is often the tough-est and most difficult decisionfor a professional, an issue that

was addressed by the Career Workshoporganized by siliconindia on Novem-ber 19, 2011. The event saw theHuman Resources heads of various ITcompanies share their experience onhow to utilize talent in a right way andglide through the career journey.

The speakers shared their experi-ence on what facilitated them to be-come established corporate leaders.They addressed the issued faced whilemoving across various careers, so asto ensure that the attendees make theirnext move perfectly.

The event took off with a sessionon "How to make a successful careerchange?" by Sanjeev Sehgal, SGM-HR Strategy and Operations, TargetIndia, who focused on how to preparefor a change, the various career stages,and how to create value. He said thatpeople who make career choices justfor a prestigious title end up disap-pointed as that change would not givethem the inner satisfaction that theycrave for from a job. Rather concen-trate on an organization with whichyou agree on certain values, as thatwould help you enjoy your work.

Latha R, Talent AcquisitionLeader, IBM, talked about her journeyinto IBM after being rejected twice,and how she saw an opportunity in anunknown territory (Credit control).She says that becoming comfortable isthe signal to move on and do some-thing different as that would help youexplore more prospects.

Sanjay Shelvankar, CEO, ScaleneWorks, beautifully brought about thedifference between the changes in ajob and a career. People change theirjobs for money, location; but thechange in career happens when they

decide to challenge their limits. Themost important aspect for any changeis self-assessment, which can be doneby answering few questions: What isimportant for you? What is your per-sonality type? What are your skills?These questions will answer whichrole is the best suited for an individ-ual.

The last session on "How to makea successful Transition-From Techie toManager", was kick started by SheelaKL, Head of HR, Collabera, whotalked about the various challengesthat await en route the transition. Inorder to become a manager, a techieshould be aware of the life of a man-ager and be prepared to face the re-sistance from the team. Patience andresilience are the key traits whichwould ensure a smooth transition.

Bhushan Madapura Sathya Nag,Head, Unisys University, felt thattechies are the most important compo-nent of any organization, as they bringthe business. He talked about the var-ious ways a techie can become aleader techie i.e. by being a techiehimself, being in a team of techies, en-couraging other techies to work on

your team, manage a team of techies,develop a team of techies, and developan organization of techies. Successfulcompanies like Apple, Microsoft cameto the fore as they built a strong teamof techies, who gave in their best totake the companies to the position theyare at today.

Praveen Parameshwaran, Head-Offshore sourcing, UST Global, talkedabout how he found his calling in thetechnological space. His presentationat one event on the various networktopologies, gave him an opportunity topartner with Indian Aluminum Com-pany, to give insight to the senior levelmanagers on the transition to thepower of computers. This made himrealize that it is tough to convince peo-ple with a preset notion, and the life ofa manager is not an easy task--not onlydo they have to absorb the reason forthe change, they also have to maketheir team understand and get themconvinced about any trending topics inthe company. Though the change froma techie to manager is inevitable, it de-pends on the person on how he makeshimself prepared to face the chal-lenges ahead.

A Career Transition ain’t that Tough

in

The Smart Tech ie |14|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 1 The Smart Tech ie |15|D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 1

IIHT (Indian Institute forHardware Technology) to-gether with Microsoft launchedits one of a kind certificationprogram in cloud computing.This program is aimed at help-ing the IT professionals to ac-quire expertise onvirtualization, IT infrastructuremonitoring and managementwhich also includes cloud de-signing and deployment skills.The training institute also an-nounced their launch of“Learning-as-a-service” pro-gram using Microsoft virtual-ization technologies which will

be powered on Dell enterpriseservice solutions. The instituteaims at providing the service at“subscription” and “pay onlyon use” basis and can also beindividually customized forany IT learning environmentcapable of supporting 20,000individuals simultaneously.

The alliance with Microsoftalso promises career and shortterm courses to enhance theskills and job opportunities forthe students who enroll for thesame. Nestor InfoTech andEDS are the technology part-ners for this initiative. Mobile internet software

technology and Applicationservices provider companyUCWeb announced their ex-pansion in the country withtheir launch of UCWEB 8.0version for the android de-vices in India. UC becomesthe first in the world to usethe “cloud computing”framework server-client hy-brid computing. Powered byU3 Kernel technologies, UCWeb promises to deliver en-hanced performance relatedto speed, energy consump-tion and safety. The companylater plans to introduce itshardware capacity and stronger HTML 5 rendering abilityinto U3 kernel to increase the speed of the UC browser.

Yu Yongfu, CEO of UCWeb said that the companysees a great traction in In-dian mobile internet spaceespecially with the increas-ing mobile penetration inthe Indian market with theintroduction of new smartphones and the advent of 3Gtechnology. He also addedthat the company is activelylooking at partnering withall the leading telecom com-panies. It aims to achieve acustomer base of 100 mil-lion by 2015. UC Web al-ready has partnered withover 500 companies in India

including Google, Getjar, Nokia, ebuddy and nimbuzz to pro-vide end to end mobile internet services to local users.

Huawei, a global information andtechnology solutions provider has set upits Global Operations center in Bangalore(India). The GNOC (Global Network Op-erations Center) will provide business so-lutions in India and around the world. Itwill provide various facilities, technology,applications and resources for globalManaged services. The GNOC has beenset up in a centralized location and will

operate multiple networks of dif-ferent countries. The Huawei of-fice in India will have variedfunctions like Front office, Backoffice, Performance Manage-ment, Operations, IT/IS andmore.

“Huawei India GNOC isbased on Huawei’s leading cloudsolution. It will simplify the enduser’s experience aswe aim to enhance

the centre control of the dataand operation and provideflexible access points inGNOC. Under this system,costs will be greatly reducedwhile the level of security,quality and maintenancegoes up” said Max Yang,CEO, Huawei India.

“Huawei India GNOC will be a majorseeding ground for global resource com-petence development. India as a source ofEnglish speaking engineers will providethe human capital and organization capi-tal to be utilized for worldwide operations.This GNOC itself will be a knowledgecapital for the Huawei Organization.” YaoWeimen, Vice President, Corporate af-fairs, Huawei India.

Aditi Technologies, a software product andapplication development services provider, hasacquired Seattle-based cloud-computing start-up, Cumulux. Paddy Srinivasan, CEO of Cu-mulux joins Aditi’s cloud advisory board andwill drive and build the Azure business forAditi. Cumulux is a cloud based serviceprovider which focuses on helping the cus-tomers build, operate and manage solutions onplatform as a service (PaaS) cloud platforms.It was founded in 2008 by Paddy Srinivasanand Ranjith Ramakrishnan.

“Aditi and Cumulux complement each other.The synergy of global scale and strong MicrosoftDNA make us one of the top Azure serviceproviders in the market. Aditi gives us and ourcustomers deep competency and scale in leverag-ing Azure to build large scale complex solutions,”says Paddy Srinivasan, CEO, Cumulux.

Compiled By Vishwas Nair

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Oracle has announced the launch ofOracle Enterprise Manager 12c, sup-posed to be industry’s first solution tocombine management with cloud lifecy-cle management. The Oracle EnterpriseManager 12c enables integration of bet-ter business and introduces 200 new fea-tures and 500 enhancements designed totransform today’s data centers into fullyintegrated and automated clouds.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c isan integrated for testing, deploying,troubleshooting today’s IT environ-ments. It offers a simple solution for

running Oracle stack, from applicationto disk, in cloud environments. It man-ages everything in enterprise datacen-ter-from the hypervisor to the operatingsystem, database and application tier.The Plug-ins can manage third party ITcomponents such as Cisco and Juniperfirewall and Netapp storage. The con-nectors enable Enterprise Manager toshare information with other manage-ment systems like IBM Tivoli, CA Uni-center and HP overview.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c al-lows cloud stakeholders to create busi-

ness services which consist of manycombinations of infrastructure as a serv-ice (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS). Itprovides wizard-driven, role based capa-bilities for managing and consuming anenterprise cloud. The key capabilities in-clude cloud planning tools, automatic set-up of shared pools and system resources,built-in service which allows transparentaccess to cloud resources. Oracle Enter-prise Manager 12c encompasses cloudmanagement across physical and virtualenvironments for x86 as well as SPARCarchitectures.

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Compiled by ST Team

Happiest Minds, an IT solutionand service firm based out ofBangalore, has raised Rs. 225

crore in Series A investment. Thefunding round was led by Canaanpartners. Intel Capital and AshokSoota also participated in this fundinground. The funds would be used to de-liver advance technology solution andservices, hire talented employees, set-ting up additional infrastructure, andincrease global sales and marketingefforts. Representatives from bothCanaan partners and Intel capital areexpected to join the Happiest Mindsboard. The company aims to be thefastest IT services firm from India toreach Rs. 500 crore in revenue.

It was founded in 2011 by AshokSoota and backed by other co-founders. The company offers re-search and development, software

product engineering, remote infra-structure, testing, and consulting.“Canaan Partners and Intel Capitalhave already demonstrated their abil-ity to add considerable value to Hap-piest Minds. We are very pleased thatthey have partnered with us to buildIndia’s next-generation IT solutions &services company,” says Soota. Priorto founding Happiest Minds, he Co-Founded MindTree, and was a Presi-dent of Wipro InfoTech andConfederation of Indian Industry. Healso served on the Indian Prime Min-ister's task force for development ofthe IT industry. He is currently amember of the Advisory Council ofWorld Intellectual Property Organiza-tion in Geneva.

Vikram Gulati, CEO and MD ofHappiest Minds, also brings decadesof experience in the IT services in-

dustry to the company. “The shiftingtechnology landscape provides an ex-cellent launch pad for HappiestMinds. Our initial conversations withcustomers have only strengthened ourbelief in the route we have chosen,”says Gulati. In a short span of its op-erations, the company has alreadygathered substantial business momen-tum and has customers in the U.S.,UK and India and has its presence infive locations.

Happiest Minds Raises Rs. 225 Crore in SeriesA funding

dealsandyou.com, a Gurgaon-based group buying portal hasraised around Rs. 85 crore in

series B round of funding fromMayflied Fund and Norwest VenturePartners. Nokia Growth Partnersand Intel Capital also took part inthis funding round. The companyplans to use the funding to become amore aggressive player in the e-commerce space, and would investthe amount in four strategic areas,namely technology, infrastructure,talent, and branding.

dealsandyou.com was founded byHarish Bahl, Tarun Sobhani, and Sam-pad Swain in 2010. Bahl is the Chair-man of the company and is well knownas a serial entrepreneur who has laidthe foundation for Smile Group,HealthPA, and Creons Advertising.Sobhani, a veteran in the media salesand marketing arena is the Director ofthe company. “We at dealsandyou.comare pleased with the venture commu-nity’s continued confidence in ourteam’s ability. Each of our investors isa great addition to our syndicate, and

their backgrounds and experience willbenefit our company as we enter ournext phase of growth,” says Bahl.

Gaurav Kachru, with decades ofexperience in the industry, is taking thecompany forward as its CEO. “We arevery happy and encouraged by thefaith our investors have shown in us.The raised capital will help us con-tinue to build a strong customer fo-cused business with greaterinvestments in technology and infra-structure, which will help better serveour customers,” says Kachru.

Dealandyou.com Raises Rs. 85 Crore in Series B FundingScaleneWorks People Solutions,

a Bangalore based recruitmentproduct and services provider

has successfully raised first round offunding from a strategic PE recentlyand are poised to grow by 80 percentthis year. “This infusion of funds wasnecessary to accelerate developmentof our flag-ship Recruitment automa-tion product ‘ReSOLUTE’. We areseeing great interest in this cutting-edge product that intelligently com-bines productivity improvement toolswith Business Intelligence dash-boards,” says Ashish Tiwari, Co-founder and VP, ScaleneWorks.

Founded in 2010, ScaleneWorkshas carved out a niche in the strategicRecruitment consulting and Recruit-

ment Process Outsourcing business. Inthe last 18 months ScaleneWorks hasworked with more than 30 customersincluding many of the top IT organi-zations.

The company has also recentlyformed an advisory board. Scale-neWorks’ advisory board has indus-try veterans like TGC Prasad,alumnus of TISS 92 batch, who hasworked as Country Manager,Global Vice President for Misys Plcand was on the board of Misys,India. He has also worked withcompanies such as Wipro, Coopers& Lybrand, PWC, IBM, MindTree,and Alcatel-Lucent in various sen-ior management roles globally.Prasad will be also guiding Scale-neWorks’ senior management teamon many areas. He is the author ofthe best-selling books, "UnusualPeople Do Things Differently" and"Along the Way".

ScaleneWorks Raises First Round of Funding

f ashionandyou.com, an onlinefashion and lifestyle e-commercebrand based out of Gurgaon,

raises around Rs. 200 crore in SeriesC funding. The funding round wasled by NorWest Venture Partners andIntel Capitals. Sequoia Capital Indiaand Nokia Growth Partners also par-ticipated in this round of funding.The company will use the fundingfor its growth initiatives, includingacquisitions, starting new businesscategories, as well as accelerating itsgrowth in existing categories and ge-ographies.

“We are very excited about eachof the partners we've chosen and the

opportunities this financing creates.Our partners recognize that we haveonly begun to scratch the surface ofwhat we can offer to global and In-dian brands as they race to connectwith the Indian consumer,” saysPearl Uppal, Co-founder and CEO,fashionandyou.com. The new capitalwill enable fashionandyou.com tofurther accelerate its member acqui-sition strategy and solidify the sup-ply chain and distributionmechanism to provide best in classservice to its 2.7 million and growingmember base. “With this new capital,we have everything we need to ex-ploit the opportunities offered by this

vast and rapidly-growing market andto develop fashionandyou.com into aworld-class e-commerce power-house,” added Uppal.

fashionandyou.com is owned bySmile Group Venture and GoldsquareSales India and was launched in Jan-uary, 2010. It is a by invitation-onlyprivate sales club, which partnerswith high fashion and luxury brandsacross fashion apparel, designerwear, accessories, footwear, watches,jewellery, fragrances, kids, and homedécor. The company employs morethan 450 people spread across officesand distribution centers in Gurgaon,Mumbai and Bangalore.

Fashionandyou.com Raises Rs.200 Crore inSeries C Funding

Ashok Soota

Ashish Tiwari


There is a whole new set ofstartups mushrooming inthe nook and corner of theSilicon Valley with thedream of finding an alter-

nate source of energy, and make theworld a greener and cleaner place to livein. And fuelling these dreams is noneother than Vinod Khosla, the man behindthe $1.3 billion plus venture firm, KhoslaVentures. A visionary and a legend in theValley, Khosla is perhaps better knownfor his successful run as the co-founderof Sun Microsystems, as the general part-ner for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byerswhere he was one of the most recognizedventure capitalists, with several success-ful early stage investments under his belt.

But achieving this success was nocake walk. Be it his first entrepreneurialstint, starting a soy milk company, at theage of 20 or his failed investments incompanies like Asera, Dynabook,BroadBand Office, Excit@Home,Kholsa has had his fair share of failures.Perhaps this is the reason he doesn’tmind failing, because for him if he suc-ceeds, it would better be worth succeed-ing. For him it is the "consequence ofsuccess," that matters and this explainswhy he does not object to investing insome startups with a 90 percent proba-bility of failure.

Taking risks and adapting to failure,as he often says, forms the DNA of anentrepreneur. Having been a part of theentrepreneurial community for so long,

he has many pearls of wisdom to share,especially about the entrepreneurialspirit.

Entrepreneurship, according to him,is predominantly a game for the young.The fire burns best among young entre-preneurs and it is because they have notbeen conditioned to the traditional waysof doing things. This allows them to takerisks. “When you work long enough, youget to know everything the way thingsare supposed to be, and you forget thatnew things can be invented,” he says.“The biggest danger in doing things islistening to experts. You first have to re-ject all conventional wisdom,” he adds.

Today at 56, he may be on the wrongside this age equation, but prefers to seethis as a challenge. In his recent talk atNasscom Product Conclave at Bangalore,he spoke about what it takes to be an en-trepreneur. Following is a brief excerpt.

Why do you want to be an entrepre-neur? We all have several reasons andmotivation to go down this path. Finan-cial gains, freedom of not working forsomeone else, fame, passion to do or cre-ate something new, or the interest to workwith friend, all these can be motivatingfactors. These are all valid reasons and areacceptable. What is unacceptable is, notknowing why. Never venture into entre-preneurship if you are not sure about whatyou are trying to accomplish by it.

If you have an idea that you believein, then jump into it like it is your reli-gion. Do not let anyone tell you that it

cannot be achieved. In my experiencelarge shifts always tend to happen. An ar-ticle in New York Times said 650 millionpeople in India have access to cell phoneand only 350 million have access to toi-lets. This shows the enormous shift thathas happened in the Indian mobile space,and no expert could have predicted this.In 1990 no one could imagine emails; in1995 many major companies told methey would never be interested in internettechnology. Now, can we imagine aworld without internet and emails? Theseare all examples of large shifts that havehappened in the not so distant past. It isbecause of shifts like these that I believewe can reinvent the country. You shouldnot be cynical, you should be optimisticand should dare to imagine the future thatyou want, and then there is a very goodchance that you can create it. When Ilook around I do not see problems, I seeopportunities. Every major problem canbe a major opportunity. The key is thewillingness to take risk.

When you take risk, sometimes youfail, but that should not be the end. Fail-ure is the essence of change. My willing-ness to fail is what gave me the ability tosucceed. I take risk and if I fail I lose only1X my money, but if I succeed I canmake many times my money. My mottois that, I do not mind failing, but when Isucceed it better be worth succeeding, itbetter worth changing something. Bepassionate and do not give up when youfail. Your product or company should be

Willingness to fail

By ST Team

cover story

Ability to Succeedgives me the

Vinod Khosla

like your religion, you willnot abandon your religionwhen you come into a cri-sis, and this should be thecase with your company aswell. If you think that largeshifts or changes are notpossible, that is because youare thinking reasonably, youwill have to be unreason-able and it can be done. Allprogress depends on the un-reasonable man. Expertswill always tell you something cannot bedone, but you have to understand theirpredictions have been wrong many atimes. Believe in yourself and go forward.

The world has changed a lot in thelast decade and we are in a very new andexciting era now. There are many mag-nificent markets if you start thinking outof the box. A few areas that make me re-ally excited are, reduction in data over-load, big data analysis, tools that cater toemotions of people, education, TV 2.0,SocialNEXT, NFC, democratization ofpublishing, utility, health, and market-place. I call these the cool dozen. Thesefields have a lot of potential and we willdefinitely see a lot of startups establish-ing there. The opportunity in reducingthe amount of data is enormous andmany breathtaking technologies aregoing to come in this area. Similarly, bigdata analysis is also a need of the day, isgoing to be even bigger in the near fu-ture. Emotion, as an area has a lot ofscope, there will be a lot of feel goodproducts coming in this space. Education

sector is on the verge of a catastrophicchange and I believe in future educationcan happen without teachers. In the U.S.a very large percent of people who watchTV will have a second screen on their lap— it can be their laptop or phone ortablet, and this presents a large opportu-nity for startups. Facebook is just the be-ginning, there is a whole set of nextgeneration of social applications comingand it will be far bigger than what Face-book is today. Interest graphs helps in un-derstanding what a person is interested inand lets companies give him option ac-cordingly. Products and startups that canlet this happen will be received very well.NFC, regardless of skepticisms, is goingto grow exponentially. The nature ofhealth industry will change dramaticallywith more gadgets and apps coming tothe field. Indian health industry is goingto be valued between $100 billion to$300 billion in the very near future. I be-lieve, soon health diagnosis will be doneby computers and the result will be de-livered to the patients’ cell phone. Simi-

lar changes will come in retail space also.The opportunity all these sectors offer isgoing to be enormous and startups betterbe prepared to exploit them.

In all the glitz and glamour of entre-preneurship, never forget your coreteam. These people represent your com-pany. Finding people who are similar toyou is rarely difficult, but what is reallyneeded is a diverse set of people. It isabout engineering the gene pool of yourcompany to perfection. You need peo-ple who think differently, who view theworld differently, who read differentmaterials, who are in an entire differentwavelength of thought than you are.When I started my company I was likea glorified recruiter, I spend about 40percent of my CEO time recruiting. Butthat is a very important part of buildingyour company. You need to personallypick the right people and remember,your company will only be as good asits core team.

Look for people who critique you.Examine failure modes. Collect all the

ways you might fail, andbuild contingency plans.But then again, a lot ofthe success of a new ven-ture is out of the hands ofthe entrepreneur. Thereare probably three or fourthings you can controlout of ten that matter forthe success of your com-pany. Competitors con-trol another three or four.The rest is just luck.


Opportunities for Technology InnovationThough his prime interest today is undoubtedly the Cleantech sector, but Khosla saysthere are several other sectors where wannabe entrepreneurs can make a mark. Hereis his list of areas that are equally promising.• 1 Technologies that reduce data overload• 2 Big data analytics.• 3 Tools that cater to the emotions of

people• 4 Education• 5 TV 2.0• 6 SocialNext

• 7 Tools for sharing one’s interest. • 8 Health • 9 Near field computing• 10 Publishers• 11 Utility segment • 12 Simplifying the happenings in

the marketplace

Khosla Speaks:• I have failed more times than I have succeeded in all the things I have tried. It is just that everytime failed, I did not give up trying new thing is what made me successful • I have set aside the idea of being called a venture capitalist, because I am not in the financialbusiness. I am in the venture-assistant business. My goal is to be the best assistant there is foranybody trying to build a large, technology-oriented company• While being foolish enough to dream the dreams, an entrepreneur should be smart enough toget every critique he can, every skeptics opinion about what can go wrong, and plan for his/herliabilities in addition to his/her assets.• Where most entrepreneurs fail is on the things they don’t know they don’t know.• I think the single, most important fact about doing a startup is being clear about your visionand not letting it get distorted by what pundits and experts tell you.

December 9, 2011 • Delhi

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LEADERSHIP

Managing super talent and developingworld-class product – A non-trivial task!

By Venkat MattelaThe author is Chairman and CEO, Redpine Signals

Having managed some of the most complexproducts in high technology areas, I stronglyfeel that there is no better place to find talented

engineers than in India. However, there is also a per-ception that the very same engineer has the least in-clination or motivation to make a world-classdelivery. Another anomaly is that the same engineer,working in any of the developed geographies, con-tributes to world-class work quality. Furthermore, forthe size and scope of high technology work that takesplace in India, number of technology products com-ing out of this region is not very encouraging. Whatare the potential reasons?

“A great product is created not just with the aid ofinherent talent of individuals but with a collectivepassion of like minded people who are motivatedenough to excel in their profession”. “At some pointof time during the execution of a project, individualtalent becomes almost irrelevant compared to otherprocess and experience related items” – my own viewpoint.

Creating an environment to build products re-quires progress in multiple fronts. I am going to touchupon some of the issues that we have experienced.Again, these are not golden rules that work in all en-vironments. In India, we have seen a huge change incompensation structure of professionals in the last 20years. For example, today’s fresh graduate’s monthlysalary is more than a manager’s salary two decadesago. Though much of it is explained through propereconomic models, unlike in developed regions acrossthe globe, the difference in compensation is hugeacross different disciplines. This creates an environ-ment where one discipline is considered superior overthe others. A world-class product development re-quires experts working in all disciplines. Further-more, we have different types of enterprises whosecompensation structures vary drastically. These en-terprises include – entities trying to support MNCswith talent, companies providing technology services,divisions of MNCs, startups trying to develop designcenters in India to save costs etc. Gross disparity insalary structure across companies coupled with dis-parity of salary for different disciplines will create anenvironment that is not stable for world-class prod-uct development. Today, a lot of quality engineering

work towards product developmenthappens in India. However, engi-neering work is a small part of thetotal product development cycle.Other areas of product developmentinvolves studying and understand-ing current and future markets, de-ciding what to do, why to do andwhen to do. Developing skills inthese other product developmentareas requires a lot of money, ex-pertise and infrastructure and ittakes many decades to master them.Key points to note are – How do wemotivate engineers to excel in theirjobs and how to motivate them tostay longer to achieve somethingbigger; What infrastructure isneeded inside and outside the com-pany to help build a better environ-ment and most importantly how dowe get experienced managers to ex-ecute products in India.

In India, staying at a companyfor a longer period of time dependson many complex cultural and so-cial factors than merely compensa-tion. I believe India is a society thatstill respects technology more thanmarketing or sales development.Scientists are respected more thansales people. This mindset is dif-ferent in developed countries whereany job well done is appreciated in-dependent of area of work. I seeeven today people more interestedin design work and less interested indoing other areas of product devel-opment like system validation. Re-moving this cultural gap requiresmany years of success stories ofcompanies. Today, our engineershave seen only the differences insalaries of one particular disciplineover the other. They need to seemore companies making successstories and more engineers inde-pendent of discipline making moremoney. In Silicon Valley, the salarygaps across various disciplines aresmall and when a company suc-ceeds everyone becomes successful.

This is a great environment to makepeople excel in whatever area theyare good at and automatically cre-ates experts in multiple areas, it inturn creates a society that is con-ducive to create world-class prod-ucts. In India, challengingtechnical environment coupled withhighly qualified managers to guide

does help to start this process. Wehave engineers working with uswho joined us just after their gradu-ation and continuing with us untiltoday. Smart engineers see beyondshort term gains and position them-selves for accelerated futuregrowth. In my opinion, I havenever seen an outsider overtake an

insider independent of any qualifi-cation for higher position. MostCEOs of successful companies onthe planet are home grown!

Creating product developmentexperience in India is a challenge.Experience in India is measured bynumber of years independent of theexpertise gained. I genuinely be-lieve that experience is grosslymisunderstood and especially sowhen people relate salary to num-ber of years of work experience.Product development experiencecomes from involving in the pro-fession for a longer time and seeingthe product succeed in the market.Having a proven design methodol-ogy and expert managers are key tobuilding experience across thecompany. Typical problem inbuilding experience in India is thefact that the attractions of otherjobs or other opportunities as soonas you expose an individual tosomething close to world-classwork. We have seen many smartstudents when exposed to some ofthe advanced work went to topnotch universities for higher stud-ies within a year instead of build-ing valuable experience for theircareer. Qualified and experiencedmanagers managing the show areone sure way of building experi-ence. Furthermore, echo-system ofinstitutions can help industry bycreating joint programs related toproduct development. This willhelp in accelerating experiencebuilding process.

In essence, when a company en-gages in activities which addressescareer goals of individuals and issmart to create sustainable environ-ment for the business and partici-pates in enhancement of theecho-system or infrastructure aroundit, it sure will be able to develop aworld-class product. At the end, allthese help business and make the en-tity a successful one.

“A great productis created not justwith the aid of in-herent talent of in-dividuals but witha collective pas-sion of like mindedpeople who aremotivated enoughto excel in theirprofession”


Venkat Mattela


things right, to quadrupling our im-pact. To find a purpose that didn’tjust excite us, but was also alignedto Yahoo!’s larger goals, taking uscloser to what we were trying toachieve as a company.

Sorting through the possibilities,we found our purpose in transform-ing the India center into a market-centric innovation hub. Keeping inmind the business landscape, wehave since redefined our strategy towin in India, but always keeping itrooted in our purpose.

Your team always looks to youfor direction. This can come whenyou know your purpose and howyour team can fit into the largerscheme of things. And remember,your purpose can be distinct fromyour immediate goal.

Once you know what you wantto do, reaching your goal can de-pend on how well you empoweryour teams, remain customer cen-tric, build a culture that leads to thechange you want to see and as im-portantly, show your employees thechange they want to see.

Innovate for CustomersAs a leader, demonstrate thecourage to challenge the status quo,experiment and take risks with newways to meet customer needs. Youcan not just ask customers for whatthey want and then try to give thatto them. Be pro-active, foreseetrends and bring the future closer.

Help your teams look insidetheir customer’s environment andunderstand how they use products,where they spend their time andwhat their problems are. In conver-sations with employees, I reiteratealignment to our product goals andwithin that, ideas that solve “reallife” problems. I believe this is thekey to make innovation count.

Build winning teamsWhen you move into a role where

you lead managers, you make one ofthe most challenging shifts in yourcareer. As a leader, how do you en-sure excellence in every one of yourmanagers? A poor manager is thenumber one reason people leave acompany and one of the biggestcontributors to low performance andengagement. You can not afford tohave technically brilliant peoplewho are not focused on managing,or equipped to lead their teams. AtYahoo! one of our key leadershipstandards is building winning teams,and we guide our managers to dothis.

At the end of the day, everyonewants to be part of a high perform-ing team. The onus is on you as aleader, to help them maximize theirpotential.

We are enabling our employeesto enhance their existing capabilitiesand gain domain expertise. As aleader, I see a dual responsibility. Itdoes not stop at giving your peopleopportunities. You have to thenequip them to successfully “con-vert” these opportunities into the de-sired results. An employee told me,“I have an idea, but will I get thesupport and help to take it forward?”Part of empowering your people isto create a support system for them.To foster this, we have a team dedi-cated to facilitating innovation andits adoption – the single point fromwhich any idea can begin its journeyat our center. They go by the nameYahoo! Entrepreneur Network(YEN), and for the past year, haveworn multiple hats to spot innova-tion, nurture, track it, aide collabo-ration and break down silos withinthe organization.

As a leader, encourage your em-ployees to, to ask why, why not andwhat if? Great ideas can come fromall levels of an organization, not justfrom the top. Be open to ideas andpractices from anywhere in the com-pany. Center-wide, we’ve ensured

that channels of communication re-main open across levels. We alsowant our people to be equal ownersin innovation. We have designedprograms that are inclusive – so in-novation could flow in from any-where in the organization. Thesehave gone a long way in facilitatingcollaboration and cross-pollinationof ideas.

Deliver with AccountabilityA dedicated innovation program orculture change initiative alone cannotdo the trick, unless they are backedby results. What we have chosen is“result-driven” culture change. Whenemployees see team mates innovat-ing with results to show, we arebanking on it having a ripple effect,sparking the passion and hunger tosucceed. This brings us to perhapsthe most critical leadership standard– delivering with accountability.

The final piece in the jigsaw isthe promise and commitment thatsomeone out there is accountable. Ibelieve this has to begin with theleadership, before it trickles down.Set high standards for your own per-formance and accountability.

As a leader, establish clear com-mitments with others so that “who,what, how well, and by when” ismutually understood. Innovation isformally tracked at our quarterlybusiness reviews, not just on quanti-tative, but also through qualitativeparameters. Where measures wereearlier productivity and process cen-tric, they are now “outcome based,”with the end goal in view. There areclear owners responsible for grow-ing innovation at the center.

Results have reinforced the orga-nization’s vision like no amount oftalk can. In the last four years, theBangalore center has yielded a 50percent average Year-on-Year in-crease in idea submissions for patentconsideration. Actions do speaklouder than words.

Innovate or perish – that is thesingle rule we live by. But how acompany charts its course to

success depends, in large part, uponthe leadership of the organization.

Leaders play a critical role increating and living a culture thatnurtures and values innovation.They are ambassadors of change.But the question for leaders today isnot just how to drive innovation –but how to drive innovation andmake it self-sustaining. That is whyit is essential for every organizationto build the leadership capabilitiesrequired for this.

At Yahoo!, we believe our mostimportant resource is our people.Our leadership standards –Show theWay, Innovate for Customers, BuildWinning Teams and Deliver withAccountability – guide our leadersas they empower our employees toinnovate and excel.

Show the WayBefore choosing your path, I believeit is essential to find your purpose inan organization. Along with passion,this becomes a powerful catalyst forsuccess.

As a first line manager – and thiswas my experience – there are twodimensions guiding your actions.The first is ownership of a project;you are completely focused ondoing the best you can to make it asuccess. The second is your team.Your focus is on getting the jobdone, while balancing the interestsof your team and motivating them todo the best they can.

As a leader, step back to look atthe big picture and arrive at yourteam’s purpose in the organization.When I relocated from Sunnyvale toIndia some years ago, Yahoo! inIndia was at the cusp of an opportu-

nity. There was a strong talent poolto leverage. We were doing thingsright and executing well. But whatwas our purpose? It took some in-trospection with the team to dis-cover how we could go from doing

By Shouvick MukherjeeThe author is VP & CEO, Yahoo! India R&D

LLeeaaddiinngg tthhrroouugghh Innovation

LEADERSHIP ANNIVERSARY SSPPEECCIIAALL

Shouvick Mukherjee


across. The only problemI noticed was that peoplehere in India are con-stantly “reinventing thewheel”. People keep re-peating the mistakes theirolder generation haddone. We need to createan eco-system where thesuccessful people have tohelp the startups to taketheir companies forward.The reason being, nobodyin history has ever suc-ceeded without the help ofthe society. It is not onlythe successful peoples’ re-sponsibility but also theirobligation to give backsomething to the society.And part of their obliga-tion being helping asmany entrepreneurs asthey can. There are twoways with which we cando it. One way is to do iton a scalable basis and theother is to do it on a localbasis. If we are planningit on a local scale, the en-trepreneurs need each other to helpresolve issues and the successfulones need to help and provide men-torship to the growing entrepre-neurs. Through this both can learnthe lessons that are common beingan entrepreneur. This also needssome amount of seed fundingwhich will result in giving the bud-ding entrepreneurs a great potentialto grow and understand their busi-ness through these mentors. Thesepeople now need to promote eachother’s products and generate rev-enue through an eco-system that isrelevant to them.

“Great entrepreneurs focus in-tensely on an opportunity whereothers see nothing. This focus andintensity helps to eliminate wastedeffort and distractions. Most com-panies die from indigestion rather

than starvation, i.e., com-panies suffer from doingtoo many things at thesame time rather thandoing too few things verywell.”

It is important for us torealize in which sector theexponential potential lieswhich in result helps us torecognize the incomingtechnologies from all overthe world. For example,genetics, studies con-ducted on intelligence,neuroscience and, helps usin applying the science invarious other platforms in-cluding education which isof utmost importance. Theauthorities and the parentsneed to alter the patternand ways we educate ourchildren. This would bringpositive changes in our so-ciety. Similarly, in health-care sector we need atechnology or softwarethat can diagnose the dis-ease better and faster than

the technologies that are being usednow. Moon Express, is currentlyworking on a mission that is set tobring Helium-3 and Platinum andother important elements from themoon back to the earth.

We need to build stronger infra-structure to experience greatprogress in our country. We need tocreate a mindset of solving theproblem. We need to be fearless inwhatever we do in order to seesome positive changes. Using newmethods for education would helpus in a great extent. Coming with apeculiar way of changing the edu-cation platform is the best possiblesolution. The ecosystem needs tobe strongly connected in which wewitness hundreds of entrepreneurshelping each other experiencing apositive change in our society.

As a child I experienced first-hand the severe effects ofpoverty and illiteracy, espe-

cially upon women and children.My parents taught me the impor-tance of education and that it was akey to improving an individual’slife. Very early, it made me under-stand that success is simply notdoled out but it must be earnedthrough hard work, persistence, ed-ucational commitment, and even alittle good luck and timing. Iworked for Microsoft until 1996,till I had different angle to viewlife. I wanted to be a billionaireand hence started off with a com-pany-Infospace with my own fund-ing. The company was listed amongthe most successful companies andindeed I became a billionaire.

Sometimes we never see whatfailure is and often fail to recognizeit. Before defining failure we needto discuss what success is. Successis not about how much money wehave in the bank but it’s about howmany peoples’ lives we have im-pacted through it. Success is expe-rienced when we do things whichare never done before. If we haveto make things work, if we have toimpact hundreds and millions ofpeople we have to do things differ-ently. If we look at the problem asan infrastructural problem we can-not impact it because it requires alot of effort. When we convert thisproblem into a knowledge problemwe experience a lot of changesthereby starting to impact the envi-ronment on a positive perspective.

Hence, it becomes important torealize what failure and successmeans to a person and what he doeswith it. It is the duty of every en-trepreneur to go through thisprocess of growth in order to fulfillhis dreams.

An entrepreneur is not a personwho starts a company but he is theperson who actually solves a prob-lem. It’s all about execution and itis a state of mind. A person whosees a problem is a Human Being,person who finds a solution is vi-sionary and the person who goesout and does something about it isan entrepreneur. I am really happyto see the number of entrepreneursin India not only because of theideas but also because of the pas-sion at which their ideas are put

By Vishwas NairLEADERSHIP

“In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option. We need to change this attitude towardfailure - and celebrate the idea that only by falling on our collective business faces do we learn enoughto succeed down the road.” – Naveen Jain

HHooww EEnnttrreepprreenneeuurrss bbeeccoommee VViissiioonnaarryy LLeeaaddeerrss

“ A person whosees a problem isa Human Being,person who finds asolution is vision-ary and the personwho goes out anddoes somethingabout it is an en-trepreneur.”


Naveen Jain

Based on the Naveen Jain’s Conversation at NASSCOM Product Conclave. Jain is the Founder & CEOof Intelius. He was previously the founder of InfoSpace and MoonExpress.


Thinksoft origins : However, resist-ing a strong temptation to accept joboffers from the branded MNC’s, in1993, I started Thinksoft as a boutiqueoutfit , with a couple of dozen em-ployees , focusing on business ori-ented IT support projects for theFinancial sector , mainly related tofunctional testing, user documentationamong others. It took five years to es-tablish the basic business model andtrack record and by 1998 we wereready to scale up.

I decided to take on board and in-corporate some of the key learningfrom my two earlier ventures into thebusiness plan:a. The domestic market was not

ready to invest in IT services, productsor consulting. Hence it was wiser tolook for clientele outside India in thedeveloped markets of U.S. and UK.b. It was very important for the com-

pany not to have debt but to be wellfunded in terms of its own equity.c. The company needs to invest in

good infrastructure and a support team(finance, HR, Admin and more)d. Make a five year business plan

and not have a short term outlook andstick to the knitting through thick andthin.e. Diversify away from a single large

customer to reduce riskIn 1999, along with two new co-

promoters on board, we formedThinksoft Global Services. With 40employees and one large multina-tional client, we scouted for venturefunding and a UK based venture fundbacked our growth plans, took a 30percent stake, thus significantly in-creasing our chances of becoming asuccessful player. Our first year ofoperation was in 1999-2000 andthe very next year 2000-01 we had300 percent growth and had in-creased the customer base to three,all of them being Fortune 100 bank-ing firms, which was a considerableachievement for a small niche firmfrom India .

Growth years: The year 2009-10was a very significant year in thehistory of the Company for a veryspecial reason. We became a ListedCompany, with a successful IPOcum offer for sale to the public inSep 2009, followed by our sharesgetting listed on the two major StockExchanges of country, viz., NationalStock Exchange of India and Bom-bay Stock Exchange. It made us thefirst and only Indian company, spe-cializing in delivering Testing Serv-ices to global financial sectororganizations, to be listed on a stockexchange in India. Our VC’s werealso able to exit with a handsomecapital gain.

The journey from VC funding toIPO took all of 10 years and result-ing in a 20 fold rise in revenues , atwenty fold rise in staff strength andthe broadening of the customer basefrom an initial single customer to 50plus customers, not to mention aunique track record and brand recog-nition. We had started with a rudi-mentary business model proven witha single large multinational cus-tomer, we obtained VC funding,opened our first international office,got our second major customer,strengthened our sector focus, bootstrapped infrastructure at home, cre-ated a delivery organization andgeared up for the challenges in thedecade ahead. • Market crises: the dot com bust

and the Sept 9/11 attacks together re-sulted in clamming shutdown of themarket opportunities for three years,for new players on the block. Onlyincumbents had access.• Positioning crisis: independent

software testing was a new conceptand had no place on perceived ValueChain and this was reflected in itsomission from IT budgets. We had toreally go round educating prospectsabout the benefits of our offering.• Around 2005, there was a wave

of vendor consolidation by clients in

the U.S. market and we had tochange our strategy to focus more onthe European and Middle East mar-kets. • Next, we experienced client attri-

tion –we lost a large client, which wehad built up over the years due totheir being merged into another en-tity.• For the best part of the decade,

midsized IT firms, including ourcompany, suffered heavily from Peo-ple issues - Availability, Attrition,work culture that was low in pro-ductivity and innovation.• To top it all, in 2008 the world

economic crisis led to the reductionin Global IT spending , cancellationof non priority projects, pricing pres-sure, stretched receivable cycles ,volatility of currency exchangerates, vendor consolidation and im-migration policy changes by devel-oped countries. This led to flatrevenue for a couple of years until2010. However, The Company man-aged to sustain itself through all ofthis and remain profitable.

What are some of the things Iwould do differently if I could goback to the year 2000 and start allover again??1. Invest more on Sales and marketing.2. Create Intellectual property.3. Invest on owned premises rather

than leasing.4. Benchmark industry cost struc-

tures and beat them.5. Install enterprise automation on

Day one.

Looking back on the last decade, Icannot resist the temptation to quoteBuckminster Fuller: “Little does the caterpillar knowthat it is one day going to become abutterfly.”Looking forward, I want to be ableto do some of the things which Imissed out on during the hectic lastdecade - chasing personal dreams,pet projects and interests.

Backdrop: After achieving a “goldstandard” school track record, Idreamed of joining the armed forces(being inspired by the then Prime Min-ister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s slogan ‘JaiJawan, Jai Kisan’). For various rea-sons this did not fructify and I endedup joining the IIT Madras only to dis-continue the course after a year.

Cutting a long story short, againsta backdrop of strong family opposi-tion, armed with a National MeritScholarship , I ended up signing up fora B.Sc. Hons. Course in Physics andMaths in Hyderabad. Logically, Ishould have gone on to fulfill my fa-ther’s dream of seeing me blossominto a research scientist, but this wasnot to be. With a freshly minted de-gree, I entered a two year stint dab-bling in arm chair student activism,

amateur editorial work, and an expo-sure to rural India through travel to theinteriors. Though many thought this tobe a waste of time, I consider this tobe a very important phase in my life,shaping the formation of my core sen-sibilities.

Subsequently I took up a job as amanagement trainee with Aeronauticalgiant HAL and worked there for a cou-ple of years. They had an excellent ex-ecutive training program and it is herethat I got interested in computers,management, finance and allied mat-ters. Inevitably, this led to my resign-ing the job (I had to borrow a princelysum of Rs 10,000 to pay my em-ployer’s bond) and joining the PGDMprogram at the IIM at Bangalore.

I truly enjoyed this period of mylife, especially the interactions withmy exuberant and driven batch-mates.Other highlights included my summerproject getting the Alumni award for“the best project” and a team of threeof us winning the third prize in the1981 “National Competition forYoung Managers”.

My first 2 ventures: Computers werefew and far between in those days andwe had to use an IBM bureau serviceto get our class assignments done. Iwas intrigued by the owner (an ex IB-M’er) of one such service bureau out-fit and decided to start a computerservice bureau then and there. Sowhen I graduated in 1981, (one ofonly 3 persons in my batch who didnot take up the campus placement) Iset up the shop along with anotherIIM colleague.

We took an expensive bank loan topurchase our first computer, got twomore of our batch mates to quit theirjobs to come onboard and establisheda good reputation in the Bangaloredata processing bureau scene. Thesudden coming of the IBM PC totallydecimated the Bureau service businessmodel and brought a fresh wave ofsoftware consultants on to the scene.Down to the last rupee in the bank, wehad to abandon the uncompetitivebusiness and run for cover.

The Indian Institute of Manage-ment was then in the process of up-grading its IT infrastructure and I gotinvolved with this effort for about ayear. Later on I joined an Indian techfirm set up by Silicon Valley returnedStanford graduates. My entrepreneur-ial experience paid good dividends asI was able to build a national productsupport team from scratch under ardu-ous conditions both internal (organi-zational – politics, budget constraints)and external (market conditions) na-ture.

I worked for a few years and theentrepreneurial bug bit me again. Inow tried my hand at the domesticproduct software space in Bangalorewith three products for SMEs only togive it up at the end of three years, dueto customers not wanting to pay forafter sales support and maintenance,giving rise to a “only pains for yourlabor" situation . It was one of the lowpoints in my life, having failed at acouple of things and now in my midthirties, depending on my salary earn-ing better half to support our family. Iwas at a crossroad.

AAnn EEnnttrreepprreenneeuurriiaallJJoouurrnneeyy

LEADERSHIP By Asvini KumarThe author is Managing Director, Thinksoft Global Services



Setting up an IT Testing Servicesventure during the challengingtimes made me search for the

characteristic traits of successfulleaders from history, which have beendeployed successfully for centuries. Irealized that the Leadership is allabout "organizing a group of peopleto achieve a common goal". So, it be-came evident for me that the valuesof leadership is not intended towardsincreasing the wealth, prestige, poweror scope of something. It is nothingbut concentrating on achieving a“common goal”.

Transition from a Learner toTransformer: Being in the IT services industry formore than a decade and as a techno-commercial enthusiast who wit-nessed the IT services businessesgrowing, I started adopting newmethodologies and measurementsdeveloped after influential reviews,that were ultimately reestablishingthe viable approach to the act ofleadership that was aimed at settingup a “common goal” than setting upan enterprise. The transition from an“Learner” to a “Practitioner” and

then to a “Transformer” in the IT in-dustry was a drastic shift and to etcha mark among the successfulTechnopreneur requires a diversedcraftsmanship in the technology do-main. Savvy leadership, is all aboutlearning early in their careers that itis not about self-aggrandizement,rather it is more about enablingthose around you and placing theminto positions from which they cansucceed. To succeed and possess fa-vorable traits of Leadership, initiallyI will have to define the roles of ac-tions against self and grooming your

LEADERSHIP By Thomas Jacob

AA ppaarraaddiiggmm ttoo ggrreeaatt tteecchhnnoollooggyy lleeaaddeerrsshhiipp eeppiittoommee,, Technopreneurship!

The author is Director, Qutesys

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harbingers for every levelmakes the business sus-tainable. However, Iwould be glad to share aset of new methods andmeasurements developedafter influential reviewsthat ultimately re-estab-lished the leadershiproles internally.

The leadership traitsare classified intoLearner, Engager, De-signer, Optimizer andTransformer. Each of them has dis-tinctly defined roles to play such aslearning from principles of knowl-edge, engaging the experience intothe system, designing the processes,optimizing the resources and trans-forming opportunities to worthybusinesses respectively. This en-ables the entire ecosystem, spanningboth aspects of executive and gov-ernance, making the enterprise workas a metamorphosed unit towardsachieving a “common goal”.

Right Approach Yields Success:As the roles were defined, the ap-proach to deploy them across the or-ganization gained a momentum.Therefore, only a defined course ofconduct was mandate for each role.The business was more into trans-forming the existing systems toreach new heights, and hence de-signing reinforcements rather thantraditional approaches had to bedone. As engaging the right set ofpractices at right time will give

earnest outcomes on time, buildingthe proper set of customary ways ofoperations in a similar way wasneeded; making it optimized to seizethe opportunities before your com-petitors reach out. Once through,transforming opportunities at the en-terprise degree gives a successfullist of well-chosen clientele.

As entrepreneurship in technol-ogy domain, is vibrant & volatile,nourishing aspirations into samemust be always backed by a rapidperk up. While the conventionalview of leadership is rather satisfy-ing to people who "want to be toldwhat to do", critics say that oneshould question the rationale behindit.

Being a Unique Brand ValuesMost:Exploring the uniqueness in a flatmarket is the key to be a successfulTechnopreneur (Technology Entre-preneur), so that your brand out-shines those of its competitors. The

art of Technopre-neurship is some-thing widelyappreciated, bychurning the Cen-tury’s most valuedentrepreneurs likeBill Gates, SteveJobs, Larry Elli-son, Jeff Bezos,Mark Zuckerberg

and many more yet tocome. Nevertheless, find-ing the factor of unique-ness is a part of worthyinvestments in innova-tions within the organiza-tion. As a leader in thetechnology domain, oneswho aspire need to walk astep ahead, so that theybecome an inspiration fortheir successors.

Augmenting the valuefor your business by

building a unique brand gives asense of accomplishment. This getsappreciation from a senior leader forthe expertise in mobilizing the teamto action and achieving intended re-sults. When organizations hit road-blocks, people issues can complicateproductivity as well. This is wherethe leadership context rises to thefore, by binding your unique brandunder one umbrella. Creating andmanaging the team requires that theleader apply appropriate attention;and when the team succeeds there isa great deal of satisfaction.


The market for BI soft-ware in India is fore-

cast to reach revenueof $81.5 million in

2012, a 15.6 percentincrease over 2011, es-

timates Gartner.Worldwide it is fore-cast to grow 8.7 per-

cent, about $12.7billion in 2012.

In today’s dynamic marketplace, In-novation is an essential mantra toenhance business competitiveness

and sustainability. A developing businessenvironment that supports innovationcan not only contribute to employmentcreation but also to overall economicgrowth. Also, promoting multiple andvaried forms of workplace innovation iscritical because organizations today op-erate in challenging environments,prompting the need for increased flexi-bility and knowledge-based work.

I believe creativity also plays a piv-otal function in the innovation processand can help establish the company as aharbinger of performance and positivechange. In order to guarantee sustainablebusiness success, companies today needto look at the bigger picture by giving se-rious consideration to nurturing humancreativity, investing more in human re-source development and involving em-ployees in strategic business developmentinitiatives.

Organizational Innovation

Need for Innovation: From a manage-ment and organizational perspective, theconcept of workplace innovation can en-compass a wide range of approaches.Various types of teamwork, employeeempowerment schemes, continuous skilldevelopment and learning plans, flexiblework organization arrangements andtransparent communication practices canimprove working conditions to achievegreater competitiveness and business sus-tainability. However, innovations oftendemands major and far-reaching changesin the underlying organizational philoso-phy. Even making the decision to adapt aparticular form of organization can be thestarting point of a transition process,which takes time.Definition of innovation: Teams oftenmake the mistake of carrying a narrowdefinition of ‘innovation’. They tend tothink in terms of patents or in terms of the“next $5 million product idea”. This re-

sults in teams getting disillusioned aboutthe time and resources required and theirinability to contribute to innovation. Inorder to build a culture of innovation it isgood to define innovation as anything thatprovides additional value to the customeror to the company’s business. It is good totake baby steps and encourage small in-novative ideas and initiatives. As the feverof innovation catches on over time, youwill see that the teams are able to inno-vate more proficiently.Commitment to the Cause:Another es-sential ingredient is belief in the processof innovation and an unambiguous com-mitment to work towards it. There needsto be a genuine willingness to sustain theeffort. While outside encouragementmay help, a genuine internal convictionis needed, both on an individual as wellas from an organizational level. Supportfrom all management levels is indispen-sable in helping to bring about successfulorganizational changes. While innova-tion is often treated as the last dessert in

By Sreehari Seetharam SastryThe author is Managing Director, India Development Centre (IDC) Attachmate group

DDrriivviinngg IInnnnoovvaattiioonn aatt tthhee WWoorrkkppllaaccee

LEADERSHIP ANNIVERSARY SSPPEECCIIAALL


a seven-course meal, it is important forcompanies and teams to understand thattoday’s innovation is tomorrow’s “bread& butter”. Only when this is well under-stood, will you find that it is given thedue priority and the required importancein everyone’s objectives. Only then can itmove from a phase of ‘Good to have’ toa ‘Must have’. Need for Involvement: Changes in theworkplace affect the core of the organi-zation and should involve all stakehold-ers from the beginning of the process. Itis important to give employees a directand participative role. Full informationand consultation, as well as open com-munication can be paramount here.Whether the workplace change is insti-gated from the top-down, or from thebottom-up, a good social dialogue andagreement on the strategic direction to befollowed is essential. A range of differ-ent indicators needs to be collected inorder to address the concerns of variousgroups, including top management, linemanagement, employees and otherstakeholders. It is also important that thisinformation is appropriately presented, toeach group in order to convince them thatthe change is in their interest.Monitoring the Process: It is importantthat the process and results of workplaceinnovation are continuously monitored.Although it can be difficult to providemeasurable evidence of the advantagesof new work systems implemented bymerely measuring financial results, it ispossible to follow up on certain parame-ters to evaluate the progress made. Suchmeasurements may be based on statisti-cal indicators such as productivity andemployee turnover, or on employee sat-isfaction over a period.

Innovation and employee benefit Innovation includes product innovations,service innovations, and organizational(procedural or process) innovations, mar-ket-led or market-push innovation andtechnology-led innovations (for whichmarkets must be developed). The classi-fication is based on the degree of their

impact, viz., incremental, radical, or sys-temic. It is not very easy for employeesto come up with new ideas during astretched schedule and under heavy workpressure, when resources are limited andwork takes a lot of time. Therefore, it isimportant to encourage employees totake some time out from their daily rou-tine towards idea generation. Innovation promotes employee growth:not every idea may be worth taking for-ward. Many a time ideas which havetechnology insights and bring value to anexisting product or enhances its features,are not implemented simply because ofa lack of business viability. However, it isimportant that the culture of innovationis imbibed and inculcated among em-ployees to help organizations grow big-ger and better. Encouraging innovation also helps em-

ployees in their personal growth andgives them a sense of achievement. Thepower to think differently provides alearning opportunity to employees whocan use that knowledge and capacity togrow faster within an organization. Ontheir part organizations benefit from theavailability of new business ideas and avery satisfied set of employees. Innovation breaks monotony: Employ-ees who work on one project for a verylong time often complain of monotony.They would want to be part of or con-tribute to other projects. Encouragingemployees to involve themselves in proj-ects other than theirs, gives them an op-portunity to highlight their skills. Thisadds to employee sense of fulfillmentand achievement and provides the teamworking on the project with ideas that arenew and out-of-the box, furthering thebenefit of implementation.

In order to promote innovation, or-ganizations can actually set-up groups,often referred to as ‘Innovation Coun-cils’ and that play a catalytic role inideation, idea validation, fortification andconcept demonstration. This team workswith the team leads of each business unitto explore how to adapt the idea to forpractical business. These groups are

often led by technical experts to provideassistance on implementation. The coun-cil further helps the teams bring in newideas right up to a demonstrable stage,and then present it to the management. Proof of Concept (Demo): A new ideathat is merely on paper or in the form ofa presentation does not gather much con-viction and confidence for business pur-poses. Such ideas fade away after a fewdiscussions and presentations. A newidea gains more confidence and interestwhen brought to a demonstrable stage.The team should be able to take an ideaforward to some extent before it can gainthe attention of the management and ex-pect them to back the idea with invest-ment of resources. Rewarding innovation:While it is truethat employees should be able to demon-strate the usefulness of an idea to thecompany’s business, it is also importantfor the organization to also encouragesteams to come up with ideas consistently,identify the best ones and to rewardthem. This in turn generates goodwill andencourages employees to think and leadinnovation. This also prompts employeesto spend extra hours to discuss and gen-erate new ideas.

ConclusionThere is no simple universal formula forsuccessful innovation: it is nonlinear andworks at many levels. It is important forevery company to imbibe the culture ofinnovation as a fundamental part ofgrowth. Innovation is uniquely humanand cannot be done by machines. Inno-vations are not random; they occur in re-lation to the past, present, and futureconditions of an organization. Compa-nies that understand this basic truth standto gain in the long term.

In conclusion, Innovation should beat the heart of every initiative by a com-pany and should be hierarchy agnostic.In other words, it needs to be adopted asa ‘way of life’ among all stakeholders ina company, in order to ensure the com-pany’s success and growth in a rapidlyevolving marketplace.


her devices? If a key sub-system fails,can we still return something relevantto the user? Can we design a web appinterface that auto-adapts to any screensize? How can we make it all justwork?

For us, every detail adds up to thefinal user experience: from interfacedesign, to interaction models, to coreapplication engineering, to architec-tural decisions… all the way back toour mental model of the user.

[2] Thinking ‘users first’ de-risksproduct investments Our customers who make consumerproducts, like many others worldwide,design actual User Interfaces as theirfirst act of product development. Theyrelease early and release fast. They it-erate rapidly by testing and tweakingfeatures, using powerful user-centereddesign methods in tandem with actualproduct usage data.

They also constantly try to figureout how to make their product experi-ence intrinsically persuasive; for moreinstalls/sign-ups, more usage, moreupgrades, more referrals and longer-staying customers.

On the demand side, consumershave already gravitated en-masse topath-breaking user experiences. Nowin enterprises too, we find more tech-nology decision makers seek tangiblebenefits of “User First” thinking. Theynow evaluate product user experiencebefore buying, for high user adoption,short roll-out time, more productivity,and to mitigate risk of late-stage issueslike high support costs or outrightabandonment.

In effect, enterprise-grade technol-ogy now needs consumer-grade userexperience.

[3] Cross-platform, cross-device ar-chitecture by default In the next five years, smartphoneswill become the first computing de-vice people ever purchase. Also, it’ssafe to assume that hundreds of mil-

lions of people will also own a tabletor a P.C. or all three. And all these peo-ple will expect the tools and informa-tion they use to be naturallyaccessible, on the go, and on any de-vice of their choice.

This brings us to the heart of theepic paradigm shift in Computing:most products will have to deliverseamless Cloud–Smartphone–Thick-client experience, by default.

Therein lurks the devil. Smart-phones and Tablets throw open amaz-ing new opportunities but they alsoraise the bar on user experience. Prod-uct creators now need to factor inwhole new kinetic interaction models,unpredictable user diversity, variedform factors; not to mention reducedattention spans, and a glut of choice.

That said; we’re already seeing alot of customer innovation, like mobilecompanions for enterprise products,apps with “baked in” social media, re-sponsive web design, sending entireplatforms into the cloud and wholenew content/app delivery mecha-nisms.

[4] Software is King, but Data is theGrand Wazir In Marc Andreessen’s words, “Soft-ware is eating the world… all of thetechnology required to transform in-dustries through software finallyworks and can be widely delivered atglobal scale.”

Patently true. But while Softwareis changing the World, Data is chang-ing the Software itself.

Already product creators tweakfeatures based on performance andusage data. Some are designing prod-ucts as systems that self-adjust usingreal-time data. We already see exam-ples of cloud services that auto-scaleto fit changing usage conditions.

Still further, Data itself is becom-ing a linkage entity. For instance, userscan already use their social graphacross the Internet. Web apps, gamesand other products that connect to this

data, can ‘know’ the user and person-alize her experience accordingly. Thisstill seems a bit sci-fi, but is likely tobecome a ubiquitous software designpattern.

Data could well become the newhyperlink.

[5] Competing through global prod-uct teams It’s an art: running a cross-borderproduct organization. But once mas-tered, it generates great competitivevalue through access to more high-cal-iber talent and faster speed to market.

As cross-border product develop-ment partners, we believe high-techsuccess depends on old-school val-ues... Trust is paramount. We doeverything we can, to foster trust-based relationships. For instance, ourcustomers have full visibility into ourrecruiting process and we take jointhiring decisions. Each product teamoperates with autonomy and main-tains internal collaboration channelsthat are open to all team members. Weactively cultivate respect for Intellec-tual Property, insist on honest com-munication, and operate withtransparency.

That said, there is a big elephant inthe room when people consider a globaldevelopment model: the promise ofsheer cost saving. When it comes toproducts, we think speed to market andsheer quality of execution matter farmore. In fact, true cost saving dependsheavily on these two things.

So, we believe trust is currency,speed with quality is power and costsaved is icing on the cake.

We’re here as partners At Clarice Technologies, we are proudto work with customers at the fore-front of product innovation; deliveringexemplary user experiences. We canhardly wait to find out what’s next… Do email your comments [email protected]. Wewill love to hear from you!

It's raining Apples, Mangoes andIce Cream Sandwiches. TheClouds are getting fuller and big-

ger and more varied. Winds of changeare blowing through every crack ofevery screen out there; nurturing inno-vation, ripening products and awaken-ing the forces of creative destruction.

This, ladies and gentlemen, issunny weather.

Three years ago, we were ‘drinkingthe kool-aid’ We believed, how people relate totechnology would fundamentallychange, as computing innovation be-came principally user-driven. We be-lieved a software product revolutionwas imminent. And, we believed userexperience would come to governproduct success.

It just felt right to be in the busi-ness of building software productswith exemplary user experiences.

But even as optimism-biased en-trepreneurs, we didn't think this wouldhappen so fast, and at such a massivescale... Like today, estimates say that a

billion smartphones are now active.But it seems this will pale in compar-ison to what will happen five yearshence, because as many smartphoneswill be sold annually by 2016.

Imagine that: a billion new smart-phones a year. How will that changeyour world?

For us, as user experience design-ers and technologists, it already has.

A humble submission and five bigthemes Our customers are our heroes. We owethem our amazing vantage point, intothe inner workings of perhaps thebiggest paradigm shift in computerhistory. We humbly share the perspec-tive this gift affords us. We find in-creasingly, software product leadersmeditate upon five big themes, in theirquest to create breakthrough softwareuser experiences: 1. Make design transparent and tech-

nology, even more invisible. 2. A ‘users first’ philosophy de-risks

product investments. 3. Architect for cross-platform and

cross-device use, by default. 4. Software is King, but data is the

Grand Wazir that controls theendgame. 5. A global product team can gener-

ate immense competitive advantage.

[1] ‘Transparent’ design and ‘invis-ible’ technology Consider Typography – “the art andtechnique of making language visible”(and one of mankind’s oldest tech-nologies.)

Type design essentially makesfonts ‘transparent’ so that people caninstantly recognize whole words andunderstand ideas without having to in-terpret single characters. Also, withmodern font technology, text from anemail typed on a PC can also be dis-played by a smartphone and printedphysically on paper. It all just works.

Zoom out, and these twin ideals oftransparency and invisibility apply toevery aspect of product experience.Say someone buys a song from an appstore. Can it magically appear on all

The author is Founder & President, Clarice Technologies

LLeeaaddiinngg wwiitthh UUsseerr EExxppeerriieennccee

LEADERSHIP By Shashank Deshpande ANNIVERSARY SSPPEECCIIAALL


TECHNOLOGY By Manish Upadhyay & Amitava Maitra

Right to Quality Education– Right Answer Technology

The authors are Co-founder & COO, LIQVID & Independent Edtech consultant respectively.

There has been way too muchhype about RTE (Right to Edu-cation) than a substantive de-

bate. The fact that it has taken solong to recognize is more of a reasonfor shame than hype. The state of ed-ucation as it stands now is woeful. Ithas mostly taken monumental effortsfrom NGOs like “Pratham” to actu-ally quantify the problem and pro-duce hard evidence to this effect.The government though in the knowhas made ineffective effort. But trag-ically enough there has been com-plete tacit admission of guilt withinthe system. The most tragic and per-verse proof of complicity howevercomes from the systems of assess-ments and examinations. To take an

example: a student who scores even100 percent in his 12th class examsconducted by CBSE has to take an-other set of exams for a career in themedical profession – conducted byonce again – CBSE through thePMT. The same government bodynot only acknowledges the redun-dancy of the 12th class exam but hasto create a different one to measureknowledge and aptitude in Physics,Chemistry and Biology – the verysubjects tested for in the 12th.

The RTE if implemented in itscurrent form with the current mind-set will only further the malaise.Rather than quality education for allit will only ensure at best mediocreeducation for all and at worst bad

quality education on a far largerscale! For any education system tohave excellence there has to be qual-ity in all the facets – ranging fromthe curriculum, pedagogy, books, in-frastructure, trained and skilledteachers, robust students perform-ance assessment processes and over-all monitoring and evaluation ofeducational programs.

For the delivery of quality edu-cation on a large scale there has to bean extensive injection of technologyas an enabler of change. Technologyand technological systems have toaid the design, development, imple-mentation and also the administra-tion and governance of education.For example the use of ICT canvastly accelerate the training ofteachers in a relatively low amountof time and in a cheaper way. Lowcost ICT solutions in the classroomcan significantly improve the qualityof teaching and technology systemscan address issues such as teacher at-tendance and student performancemonitoring. Overall, the integration

of technology will ensure that thereis reliable data within the system tohelp in meaningful long term moni-toring and evaluation.

There’s a popular misconceptionthat only computers can be the soleharbingers of technology despite thepresence of more easily availableand relatively less costly technolo-gies such as radio, television and theemergence of new low cost devicessuch as tablets and mobile phoneswhich can use existing telecom net-works or the internet as a backbonefor the delivery of quality education.Some of the notable examples are:Same Language Subtitling (SLS)

by “Planetread” is simply the idea ofsubtitling the lyrics of existing filmsongs (or music videos) on TV, inthe ‘same’ language that they aresung in. SLS is delivering regularreading practice to 150 millionweak-readers in India.Kikajou Projector –a solar pow-

ered projector designed by “Designthat matters”. The projector im-proves and expands access to educa-tion by transforming night-timelearning environments in rural, non-electrified settings. The pilots havebeen run for night-time Literacyclasses, in Mali, Africa. English is Fun- a Radio based pro-

gram run by “Bihar State Govt.”Seven million students attending65,000 primary schools in all the 38districts of the state have access to a122-episode English learning pro-gramme through Radio sets. Thestate government has given Rs.1,000 ($25) to every primary schoolto purchase a radio set. A Portable tablet based English

Learning Lab by “English Edge” -The Lab is a trolley that comes withcentralized charging, in-built Wi-Fidevice and can house up to 40 tabletsloaded with English language con-tent. There is no investment neededfor a physical space for class-room/lab and an institute run a com-

plete day’s class without any inter-ruption, even in the absence of elec-tricity. The trolley (with tablets)moves to the place of learning andconverts the classroom into an inter-active, activity-based learning envi-ronment enabled by high quality -user generated video recording andvideo analysis of group activities,like Role plays, group discussions &presentations. There are other interesting educa-

tional technology examples such ascollaborative community basedlearning through Farmville (a “Face-book” application) and newer Aug-mented Learning based mobiledevices applications such as shoot apicture of any monument / Objectand get the details about the objectinstantly.

Policy makers in the field of ed-ucation have traditionally been ig-norant about new and emergingtechnologies and technophobic onan average. While the National Pol-icy on Education has laid out usingICT for teacher training and teacherretraining, its implementation hasbeen very poor. A draft for the Na-tional Policy for ICT in School Ed-ucation was released only in 2009with the slated objective of promot-ing ICT in school education. Prob-lems in policy making have beenfurther compounded by the fact thatpolicies on ICT usage in Educationin India are implemented throughthe often uncoordinated and dis-parate efforts of the Ministry OfHuman Resource whose primaryfocus remains education and theMinistry of communication and In-formation Technology which looksat the implementation of ICT.

While the telecom revolutionwas spearheaded by the private sec-tor, its inability in providing qualitytechnology led education at afford-able costs has been shameful. Manyan education company in India hasgotten away with both dumping

computer hardware which becomesrapidly obsolete with time and pro-viding low quality content and soft-ware which neither gets used norfetches significant returns evenwhen it does get used! Both gov-ernments and even private bodieshave abetted this by not institutingproper monitoring and evaluation(M&E) mechanisms. As a result ofthis measures of success or failureof a project are never objectivelydefined. The absence of M&E hasmeant that most large scale ICT en-ablement of schools projectsamounting to more than hundreds ofcrores through the Build Own Op-erate Transfer (BOOT/BOT) modelhave failed because of a lack of anysort of accountability.

There are no easy one-size fitsall solutions but surely India needsto create trained manpower by set-ting up degree and professionalcourses in Educational and Instruc-tional Technology. Rather than de-pending on the coordinationbetween two different ministries theIndian Government should ensurethat ICT for education is completelyintegrated into MHRD policy mak-ing and implementation. It has toleverage technology to rapidly re-purpose content and localize it atthe most granular level possible –state, district and so on. It has to en-sure that it uses a cascading ap-proach where policy makers,personnel from ministries and regu-latory bodies and teachers are firsttrained and equipped in ICT beforestudents can reap the benefits. Indiaalso has to first learn to integratelow cost technologies as a steppingstone to computers centric ICT im-plementations.

While it will be very naive to as-sert that technology is the only an-swer to the problem of providingquality education for all it will beequally foolish to state that it’s nota necessary part of the answer.


Manish Upadhyay


FEATURE By Hari Anil

India is on a mission, to be thebiggest economic power in theworld in the not so distant fu-

ture. The government is makingpolicy changes and is welcomingforeign direct investment in thecountry more than ever before. Thecountry is growing at an enormouspace and is fast becoming a favoredbusiness destination for many inter-national players. The country seemsto be on the right track, but it canget there faster, if it cared a bit more

about certain aspects that hinderthis prospecting business scenario.

Recently, World Bank's 'DoingBusiness 2012' ranked India at 132in 183 in a global 'Ease of DoingBusiness' ranking. For a countrythat has big plans for its future, thisranking is nothing short of failure.One of the country's immediateneighbors, China, came at the sec-ond position in the list and this re-flects the growth the country haswitnessed in the recent years. Even

Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal,fared way better with 89, 105 and107 ranks respectively. It is not justthe World Bank's ranking thatpointed out the issues that arethreatening the very prospective fu-ture the country is hoping for; in thelights of the World Bank report,CNBC recently ranked the countrysixth among the 'World's 10 worstcountries for business.'

While all these stand true, thereis another aspect also, UNCTAD

forecasts Indian to be one of the'five attractive destinations for in-ternational investors over 2010-12'.This shows that beyond all the is-sues the country is putting forth,the global companies and countriesare still interested in it. So, if thecountry manages to keep the issuesin control and unleash its full po-tential, the dream of becoming thebiggest economic power can be at-tained sooner. The few areas thatthe country presently tremendouslylags are enforcing contracts (182),dealing with construction permits(181), starting a business (166),paying taxes (147), resolving insol-vency (128), and trading acrossborders (109). These issues have tobe resolved with war time urgency,to put the country back in the fasttrack of growth, and to do this thecountry needs a government that isnot crippled with corruption.

It takes about four years in thecountry to enforce a contract; thiswhen compared to the one year av-erage in OECD countries, gives aclear picture of how difficult the In-dian system has made it for thecompanies to work through them.When it comes to getting a con-struction permit, the country doesnot make it any easy for the in-vestors, they will have to gothrough about 34 differentprocesses and spend on average227 days to get it. For those whowant to start a business, the coun-try has put up enough hurdles in theway, which makes an Olympic hur-dles course look like a child's play.Time taken in the payment of tax,254 hours, when compared toBrazil's 2600 hours may looks sim-ple enough, but the 33 paymentsper year when compared to the nineof Brazil makes it no bit easier forthe companies. Resolving insol-vency, on average, takes aboutseven years in the country, thisalong with the low recovery rate

makes this a nightmare situation forthe country. The time and cost re-quired to export from and import tothe country, is very high and thismakes trade across borders a wish-ful dream for companies operatingin the country.

What India needs is more liber-alization. As we learned from thelast 2 to 3 years' developments inthe U.S., a through and through lib-eralization like that will be a mis-take. Yet, the Indian governmenthas to streamline its processes andmake it not so excruciating a taskfor businesses to follow. A lot ofthe programs like a single windowfor all permits and National Inno-vation Council, can have a greatpositive impact on the businessprocesses of the country, but manytimes these just end up as papertigers, or vanish in thin air. Thegovernment will have to make surethat any proposed programs will beexecuted and will be available tothe needed. Another big problemfaced by people who aspire to startbusinesses is money; to get the

needed monetary support in time,mostly, is an impossible thing. Sev-eral written and unwritten goldenrules are deployed by banks, todeny any and every loan requeststhey can possibly deny. If banksliberalize their loan approval crite-ria a little bit more, that would helpbusinesses a lot and the countrywill witness rise of much morebusinesses.

But, why are these not changingand why is the government notstreamlining the process in order toopen up the country's economy forbusinesses? Due to corruption! Thecorruption in the bureaucracy andin the government itself has been abattle India has been fighting, eversince its independence. Recently,with the almost $40 billion 2GSpectrum scandal, it seems to havereached its tipping point. Wideprotest and outrage is presently lin-gering in the society with the ambi-tion to eradicate corruption.Hopefully, in the aftermath of thisoutrage will emerge a country, onethat will be a great place to do busi-ness in!

India, a Hell for Businesses:What needs to be done?

“The corrup-tion in the bu-reaucracy andin the govern-ment itself hasbeen a battleIndia has beenfighting, eversince its inde-pendence.”

Mobile device sales inIndia is forecast to

reach 231 million unitsin 2012, an increase of8.5 percent over 2011

sales of 213 millionunits, according to

Gartner. By 2015, saleswill surpass 322 mil-

lion units.


According to Google estimates inMarch this year, more than 40million users in India access the

Internet through their mobile phones.The company is also predicting that thisnumber will increase to 300 million peo-ple accessing the mobile Internet by2015. Further, Cisco has forecasted thatmobile data traffic in India will increaseby more than 100 times by 2015, grow-ing at a compound annual growth rate of158 percent.

In India and beyond, new smart-phones, tablets and machine-to-machine devices are allowing people toengage with social networks, conductbusiness and manage their day-to-dayactivities on the move. This new and in-teractive mobile experience is bringingabout a revolution in mobile broadbandservice models as providers experiment

with innovative ways to monetize theirofferings, attract and retain customers,and efficiently manage network re-sources.

Four trends are driving new servicemodels: personalization, simplicity,open ecosystems, and casual usage. Thesuccess of these models depends on adeep understanding of subscribers, serv-ice focused on customers rather than de-vices and the ability to personalize andadd value to over-the-top (OTT) appli-cations. Gaining this level of insight re-quires service providers to make afundamental shift from being “networkproviders” to “service and content en-ablers.”

Personalized Tiered ServicesTiered services enable providers to de-liver plans that link customers’ usage

and preferences with what they pay.Tiers also provide more transparencyinto service usage and cost, creating op-portunities to increase revenues as usageincreases. By combining network andsubscriber intelligence with sophisti-cated policy management tools, opera-tors can meet the requirements ofdifferent customer and market segmentswith a variety of personalized servicetiers that include:• Bandwidth tiers based on the volume

of data a customer uses. One example ischarging $15 for 200MB and $25 for2GB. When the quota is reached, opera-tors can offer subscribers a temporarybandwidth boost or a promotional offerfor the next tier up.• Application-based tiers where cus-

tomers pay based on application use,such as ten videos and 20 hours of gam-ing services per month combined withunlimited social networking. This ap-proach reflects how customers use theirphones, and operators can zero-rate ap-plications to allow for unlimited usage. • Speed-based tiers are based on aver-

age speeds, such as $60 for 5 GB at 1.4Mbps. Service providers can also up-sella speed boost for limited periods of timeto increase loyalty. Speed-based tiers alsomake cheaper plans accessible to morecustomers. As an example, operators canoffer a prepaid plan with a low connec-tion speed for customers on a limitedbudget, or a plan for the casual user whowants occasional high-speed access. • Time-based tiers are defined by the

number of minutes the customer spendson the mobile data network. In thismodel, quality of service (QoS) is essen-tial to ensure that the user is not penal-ized by slow network speeds. Operatorscan also use this method to manage net-


TECHNOLOGYThe author is Director of Strategic Marketing, Tekelec.

By Joanne Steinberg

An Intelligent Approach to Monetizing

Mobile Broadband


work congestion by applying differentrates based on peak hour utilization,time-of-day and other service tiers.• Device-based tiers apply policy rules

to prioritize service delivery on certaindevices such as smartphones, whichoften generate higher revenue per user.

In all of these models, providing cus-tomers with usage monitoring solutionsand notifications through messaging isimportant to help them understand howtheir use relates to what they are beingcharged and how their priority service isperforming. This visibility is critical toensuring customer loyalty.

Multi-Device CustomersService providers also have the opportu-nity to evolve from device-centric to cus-tomer-centric mobile broadband servicesby providing subscribers with one planthat spans many devices. This approachcombines customer and device data man-agement to assign multiple device iden-tities to one profile. It also usesperformance analytics to track and ana-lyze individual and group usage with ad-vanced policy management techniquesthat include:• Quota pooling to share one quota

across multiple devices based on time,bandwidth, or application usage. For ex-ample, a family of five members canshare a 5 GB quota per month regardlessof the device used.• Multiple concurrent quotas across

different devices such as 20 videos, un-limited social networking and webbrowsing and 200 hours of voice over In-ternet Protocol (VoIP) calls per month.• Quota top-ups and monthly roll-overs

for a group or family plan.• Enhanced notifications to the cus-

tomer on multiple device usage.By simplifying mobile data plans in

this way with fewer subscriptions, oper-ators can accelerate the monetization ofmobile broadband services and providegreater transparency into group usage. Inthis way, service providers can also re-duce their costs by simplifying and re-ducing billing requirements.

Adding Value to Over-the-Top Appli-cationsOver-the-top applications offer signifi-cant monetization opportunities; Googleestimates that Indian mobile usersdownload 30 million applications perweek. Using OTT applications, serviceproviders can charge subscribers for en-riched applications and priority deliveryof preferred content. They can also ben-efit from revenue sharing by providingcustomer intelligence, performance andusage analytics, and customer service toapplication and content developers andmobile advertisers – all while respectingcustomer’s privacy through governancerules and opt-in policies. Realizing thepotential of OTT applications requiresthe following capabilities:• A consolidated, real-time view of the

customer, including profiles, prefer-ences, location, presence, network, de-vice, applications, service entitlementsand usage provided by a scalable SDMsystem.• Guaranteed QoS for OTT applica-

tions provided by advanced policy man-agement features such as applicationprioritization enhanced multi-servicerating and zero-rating.• Enhanced performance analytics for

applications to measure usage, networkperformance, location and demographictrends, insight on revenue-generatingtransactions, device performance andother data – all of which can improveservice uptake.• Network and service application in-

terfaces that expose internal assets to ad-vertisers and application providers, suchas QoS for video and subscriber data,and analytics for advertising segmenta-tion and application personalization.

Casual Usage and Loyalty ProgramsThe convenience and flexibility of on-demand, casual mobile broadband serv-ices combined with special rewards area compelling way for service providersto attract new subscribers and increasethe loyalty of existing customers. Offerscould include:

• Service passes that provide accessto specific services and applicationsfor a set amount of time or bandwidthusage, such as a roaming day pass fortravelers or 2 GB of video and unlim-ited web browsing for the day.• Loyalty programs that make sub-

scribers feel special and reward tar-geted customer segments, likebirthday and service anniversarybonuses, speed boosts and unlimitedbandwidth during off-peak hours.• Special promotions to accelerate

the adoption of new services or en-courage different mobile usage pat-terns. Examples include unlimitedaccess to a new application for threemonths funded by advertisements orunlimited services at certain times ordays when the network is underuti-lized.

These programs require policy andsubscriber data management to metermultiple usage limits per customer andto zero-rate services based on applica-tion, time and volume for differentcustomer segments.

Service providers have a uniqueopportunity to become service andcontent enablers. By unleashing net-work and subscriber intelligenceusing performance, policy, and sub-scriber data management capabilities,they can accelerate the monetizationof mobile broadband services. Newservices that are personalized, cen-tered on the customer rather than thedevice, and leverage casual usage andloyalty add value to open applicationecosystems and create a path to driverevenue growth and greater serviceadoption.

Joanne Steinberg is a seasonedtechnology industry professional withover 20 years of experience workingin Canada, the United States and Eu-rope in the telecommunications andinformation technology sectors as wellas for the Government of Canada. Herroles have ranged from strategic mar-keting and business development, toeconomic and technology policy.

EVENTS

Digital Gadget Show an avenue toshowcase gadgets and relatedecosystem was provided by Sili-

con India on 1st October 2011. The showhosted industry experts and gadget guruswho spoke on the future of consumerelectronic products & related ecosystemssuch as apps & content.

Intel was a key sponsor and part-nered this event as ‘App Partner’ show-casing its app store called AppUpSM.Intel’s AppUp centre is best defined as“your source for PC Apps” and offers avibrant choice for finding, downloadingand managing applications that are op-timized for PC s, Laptops and Net-books. Downloading the AppUp℠store is easy and shopping for apps issafe, secure and tailored to fit the con-

sumer’s needs. More info is available atwww.appup.com

Intel also supports a vibrant and largeapp development community. appdevel-oper.intel.com offers everything a devel-oper needs to develop & distributeapplications via Intel AppUp℠ includingSDK, powerful tools, and a vibrant sup-port community.

While AppUp was showcased at theevent basis a large and attractive booththat saw hundreds of curious visitors, theevent also served as a platform for Intel toannounce the winners of their App Festcontest. A simple and attractive contestthat required consumers to install anythree apps from the app store and takepart in a simple quiz stood a chance ofwinning a grand prize of a Ford Figo,

among others. The prizes were awardedby Narendra Bhandari, Director APAC,Intel Software & Services Group. RujraBhatt from Mumbai was the lucky win-ner and walked away with a Ford Figowhile Shameel Abdulla from Bangaloreand Satinder Singh from Delhi came insecond and third respectively and won aBajaj Pulsar and a Scooty Pep+.

Gadgets galore @ siliconindia Digital Gadget Show


The city went ecstatic on October15, 2011 when SiliconIndia organ-i z e d

the MobileApplicationConference.Around 800enthusiasticin t e r e s t edmobile de-velopers, in-vestors executiveentrepreneurs, marketers assemble on asingle platform.

This full-day conference explored thenew opportunities that are emerging andasked the larger questions to the industryleaders within mobile, shedding some

light on where the industry is headed andhow entrepreneurs and developers can

take advantage.The Confer-ence focusedon the most rel-evant and es-sential aspectsin Technologywhich was aray of knowl-

edge to all the Appdevelopers to make themselves adept inthe industry.

Speakers from different verticals ofMobile industry like Sunil Rao, Head,Forum Nokia, India

Guenter Zwickl, Head of Technol-

ogy Center, Nokia Siemens Networks,India. Akshay Hunka, Founder & CEO,Hunka Web Solutions, Sukamal Pegu,Developer Channel Evangelist, Inmobiwere present to share their thoughts.

Vserv, MyCityWay, Flurry, Sling,InMobi, Fresherlab, Airtel, 160by2supported this conference to make ita huge success.

Developers learn new tips ‘n’ tricks @ SiliconindiaMobile Application Conference

UUppccoommiinngg EEvveennttssMMAACC MMuummbbaaii:: Jan 07th, 2012MMAACC PPuunnee:: Apr 28th, 2012MMAACC DDeellhhii:: Aug 25th,2012MMAACC BBaannggaalloorree:: Oct 20th, 2012


By Umesh VaidyamathThe author is CEO, INSZoom.com, Inc

Two decades ago, on July 4, 1990, Itraveled on a plane from Mumbaito Kansas City, Kansas, in the

heart of the U.S. Midwest, to take myfirst job in information technology. Manyof you will remember the early ninetiesas the heydays of technology. We thoughteverything was possible – we workedlong hours and we dreamed in code.

In many ways, we can now say thatwe delivered upon the promises of thosedreams. Today, technology, written byprogrammers of decades past and en-hanced by programmers today, fuels theglobal economy. Nearly everything wedo is somehow connected to the infra-structures established two decades agoand built upon since then. And today’sprogrammers and IT professionals, con-tinue to expand upon those originaldreams.

But the growth spurts of the 1990sdid more than just spread the potency oftechnology into every business sector.They also changed the face of how andwhere people work. When the first In-dian programmers, in 1965, traveledfrom Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta toNew York, California and, yes, evenKansas, it was a major event in their livesand the lives of their families. To someextent, it was the same kind of experi-ence for the immigrant professionals inthe 1990s. Most of us were still used tostaying in the area where we grew up, inmaintaining residency in our nativelands. The ones that left were cowboys.We were explorers in new lands. Well,more specifically, one land. In thosedays, the U.S. beckoned; here was whereall opportunities lay.

The changing face of business Today, we live in a completely dif-ferent world. Business opportunitiesare everywhere. They are in theU.S., although less than they weretwo decades ago. They are inCanada and the U.K. They are inRussia, Sweden and Germany. Andthey are in the two newest majorcenters of global economy: Chinaand India. Anyone who has ever hada stopover at the Bengaluru Interna-tional Airport knows first-hand howthe world has changed. Nearly halfof the travelers to that airport aren’tIndian; they are from the U.S. andEurope.

It’s not that the center of businesshas changed, it has disappeared.Today, we are truly living in a globalworld and business leaders and pro-fessionals know through experiencethat business can happen anywhere.It can happen in New York and SanJose. It can happen in Vancouver andToronto. And it can happen inShanghai and New Delhi. Savvyprofessionals have tapped into thechanging face of today’s businessenvironment and have embraced thereality of jet-fueled technology.

With these changes in the mobil-ity of workforces comes an entirenew set of technological problems.Each person, each employee, mustbe managed and tracked. Nationalimmigration regulations must befollowed to the tee. Compliancemust be managed and ensured forthe entirety of that employee’s stayin a foreign land.

The fever fear, technology is hereThe process of managing a globalworkforce’s immigration may seemintimidating. Each nation’s regulationsare different, and each involves layersof paperwork, eligibility and compli-ance requirements, all of which mustbe submitted, tracked and managedthroughout the employee’s entire timein transit and residency.

What visas do you need to travelto Singapore or Sri Lanka? To San

Francisco? How do you maintain anemployee’s compliance requirementswhile he is conducting business inTokyo, Tehran or Toledo? The chal-lenges faced by immigration andhuman resource professionals en-gaged in global mobility today arecomplex and multi-faceted. However,the solution is the same as it was inthe 1990s, which is technology.

Immigration management andcompliance software solutions makesure that key immigration files anddocuments can be shared between allstakeholders – between HR and legaldepartments, employees and theirfamilies, external law firm, consult-ing groups and governmental agen-cies throughout the world. Thesesolutions give managers a way tomanage and track all aspects of animmigration case in a single system,giving them complete control of dataand enabling true transparency acrossthe entire stakeholder environment.

There are six core components toa successful global mobility manage-ment campaign: immigration formsmanagement, internal team manage-ment, compliance mechanisms, em-ployee communication, globalpartner management and reportingsystems.

Immigration Forms Manage-ment: There are hundreds, if notthousands of immigration forms foreach country. Each of these formshas its own requirements, but manyshare the same key information – theemployee’s name, address, companyand reason for travel, to name a few.It is essential that you have access tothese forms, can ensure efficient dataentry and have a system in place toarchive, store and search these forms.Because immigration is constantly influx, these forms need to be updatedon a daily basis. The forms are re-used and hence need to be accessibleby multiple stakeholders within asingle repository.

Internal Team Management: Tosuccessfully manage the multiple as-pects of mobility, you must maintaina robust system of transparency. Dif-ferent people will need to access thesame set of information from differ-ent locations at various points intime. A technology solution that en-ables the sharing of data (and thelimiting of particular sets of thatdata) from any location is paramountto success in the management of aglobal workforce.

Compliance Mechanisms: Immi-gration doesn’t end at the point ofentry; that’s only where it starts.Companies must ensure comprehen-sive compliance management, withsystems in place that provide re-minders and incorporate novel meth-ods to ensure compliance to themany disparate requirements of dif-ferent nations’ regulations.

Employee Communications: Re-dundancy is the enemy of effi-ciency. An effective employee (andprospective employee) communica-tion system empowers employees toaccess, update and maintain portionsof the compliance process. Give em-ployees the power to enter in theirown bio data and check on the sta-tus of their cases, to ensure consis-tency and accuracy of informationand a holistic understanding of casestatus and process.

Global Partner Management:Youcan’t be everywhere all the time. That’swhat global partners and consultantsare for. A technology solution that en-ables communication, transparencyand a collaborative environment be-tween you and your global partnerscreates a more effective and efficientwork environment. Tap into the skillsand expertise of everyone involved inthe global mobility process.

Reporting Systems: If you don’tknow what you’re doing is right orwrong, you have no way of measuringsuccess or improving your work

processes. Technology solutions mustgive you a way to measure your actionsthrough robust reporting systems.These reporting systems also give youthe means to provide essential infor-mation to domestic agencies that, attimes, may require detailed audits ofyour mobility campaigns and strate-gies.

Let technology deliver agilityAs the lines between nations fade andworkforces live in transit, we must finda way to use technology to resolve andsimplify the complex issues that arise.Global business and workforce mobil-ity are now the norm. Tap into technol-ogy to change your business processesand create an empowered and agileworkforce in the jet-fueled world of21st century global business.

Jet-Fueled Technology: Managing Workforces in aGlobal Business Environment

“ Redundancy isthe enemy of ef-ficiency. An ef-fective employeecommunicationsystem empow-ers employees toaccess, updateand maintainportions of thec o m p l i a n c eprocess. ”

MANAGEMENT ANNIVERSARY SSPPEECCIIAALL

Umesh Vaidyamath


Clients today are expecting muchmore than body shopping. IT indus-try in India is more than 20 years oldby now. Client expects people as-signed to his project as individualthinkers, innovative, adding value,understand business, priorities andself-driven. Client does not wantpeople who are reactive. BabaKalyani, one of the leading industri-alists in India said some time ago:“If we do not innovate and are notcreative then our country will beproviding slaves”. I personally thinkthere is lot of truth in it.

I have seen clients doing com-parison amongst same experiencelevel technologist from India and hisor her country. There is vast differ-ence, cultural, time lag, knowledge,language, business understandingand many more. It is only cheaplabor for which they get attracted toIndia. Once they start looking at thetotal cost, they find disappointingfigures and start pulling out of therelationship.

In many IT firms employees aresold for the position, which they arenot capable of and that is whereseeds of dissatisfaction are sown.Slowly all other shortcuts are takento keep project profitable, start act-ing negatively and relationships fail.

Today IT leaders are finding thischallenge difficult to cope with.They will have to find the solutionwithin. Recruiting right talent, up-grading their knowledge, trainingthem on various business domains,creating culture of customer focusand striking balance between client’sexpectations and individual em-ployee capability will help to greatextent.

Manage People aspirations aboutcompensation and growth:In IT, people are the assets. In thisbusiness breaking work in elements,applying time and motion study andrun it like traditional production in-

dustry does not help. Here creativityin people matter. Today challenge isto keep this workforce motivatedenough for delivering what client ex-pects.

IT workforce is white collaredone. I have seen employees leavingorganizations just because they thinkthere is nothing new to be learnt. AsIT leaders have to showcase valueaddition to clients, similarly theyhave to do it for their employees in-ternally as well. Creating culture ofopenness, empowerment, trans-parency and instilling sense of own-ership and responsibility will helpfinding answers to this challenge.Developing environment in the or-ganization which will constantlythrow new challenges at people andthus allowing them to grow individ-ually can be the key to meet thischallenge. It is extremely importantto create a culture of ownership andinnovation to motivate people.

Compensation definitely playsthe role. One needs to work on thisaspect as well. Having transparent,objective and fair set of rules to eval-uate people help them to build con-fidence in the system and enhancesattachment with the organization.

One thing to be understood hereis we are not dealing with machinesbut people. Human being is the mostcomplex equipment ever designed. Ifleaders start dealing with people likemachines, it will pave the road tofailure.

Developing leaders in the organi-zation:In IT SME sector I find this is majorchallenge. On one hand it is difficultto hold on to good people for longtime and on other hand there is justnot enough talent or will to takeleadership positions. People love toremain as a technocrat. They do notwant to move to the leadership posi-tions for the fear of losing their bar-gain-able position.

Many times it is believed that ifpeople are promoted to higher man-agement position they will them-selves learn to become leader. Thiscan be true in case of technology un-derstanding but not for leadership.One can be a born leader or can bedeveloped as a leader over a periodof time. Organizational leadersshould have patience to wait for re-sults and invest enough resources todevelop these upcoming identifiedleaders.

Everyone working in the organi-zation cannot become leader. Weneed to select right interested candi-dates, nourish and groom them. In-stead of focusing on attrition ofentire organization, I will advise tominimize attrition in this group.After all we cannot satisfy 100% ofthe people but we can definitely de-light this small group by meetingtheir aspirations. Once you have thisframework with you, each devel-oped leader has to percolate it downthe organization. Undivided focuson this initiative will yield resultsover a period of time.

Build dependable agile systemsgiving desired results:Building foolproof system is themost important job that leader hasto perform. Leader has to involvepeople working in the system indoing that. Systems defined andnot improved over a period of timeto meet changed expectations ofclient will bring status quo andrigidness. This will also induce bu-reaucracy.

Leaders who want to keep pacewith the competition need to be onthe top of systems and demand in-sistently from people concerned, toimprove processes. Leader need toinvest time in periodic reviews,guide, coach and integrate resourcesto make systems agile, deliver re-sults and meet requirements of vari-ous quality standards.

In today’s fast moving and highlycompetitive era, there are sev-eral challenges that leaders in IT

sector are facing. Here I share myviews on these challenges, espe-cially for those faced by in the SMEsector.

Monetization:Margins in IT business are goingdown. There are plenty of low costproviders, who are providing toughcompetition from all over the globe.When traditional industry is busy fo-cusing on 6 sigma quality levelswhere rework and rejection is almostnegligible, in my experience SME ITindustry is lagged by around 30 in-spection cost and around 25 to 30percent rework cost. Today client isnot ready to pay for it. Client alsothinks that project management cost

charged separately, is overhead andis unwilling to pay for it. Client ex-pects to follow good practices whichshould be inherent part of the waywe do business, which is indicatingSME IT industry to absorb thesecosts in future. It is difficult to getpeople with relevant experience andthen training cost gets added, whichcannot be charged to client.

This is and will affect bottomline as SME IT cannot charge pre-mium rates like giants in IT. Leadershave to find solution to this by build-ing their USP, making value additionevident and managing client expec-tations successfully, thus generatingrepetitive business.

Staying ahead of the competition:Thinking about future needs of cus-tomer and investing time to produc-

tize these services or products willkeep organizations in existence.With ruthless competition around usand number of changing parameterwhich is not fully in our control it isessential for leaders to invest 50 per-cent of their time in solving prob-lems of tomorrow. Observation isthat leaders get engrossed in solvingproblems of today and thus losetouch with future.

Manage Client Expectations:Things in IT are changing rapidly.Technology changes, products keepchanging, client expectations dochange, concepts change, method ofproviding service change and aboveall the people working with the or-ganization also change. It’s difficultto maintain and grow in this chaotic,ever changing environment.

IT Leaders and their Challenges

TECHNOLOGY By Devendra DeshmukhThe author is Founder & Director, e-zest Solutions


Marketing has changed dra-matically in the last fewyears. New technologies

from social media and mobility torich digital media devices, and nat-ural user interfaces are transform-ing how and where consumers andbusiness users interact with content– and therefore how and wheremarketers connect with customers.As a result, digital marketing hasbecome a top concern for marketerseverywhere.

Changing trends in online shop-ping coupled with the unprece-dented challenge for companies toinfluence consumer-buying deci-sions are motivating them to shifttheir offline budgets to digital mar-keting. Companies are embracingall forms of digital marketing –these include online / website mar-keting, social media marketing,mobile marketing, and email mar-keting. However, not all companiesare adequately agile to take advan-

tage of the latest advancements indigital technology while trying tomeet rapidly changing consumerrequirements and ever-reducingtime-to-market. Forces that havecombined to create a perfect stormfor marketing technology are:1. Migration from traditional to

new media2. Changed consumer expecta-

tions 3. Cloud computing and migra-

tion from IT to SaaS


Technology and Management of Digital Marketing

BUSINESSThe author is Co- founder & CMO, Xerago Ebiz

By Srinivas Chari

4. Measurable nature of digital todemonstrate ROI5. Opportunity for new marketing

technology entrants6. High velocity economics of

software innovationTogether these mean a huge

marketing technology businessgrowing every year. To survive inthis new paradigm, enterprisesmust make a strong commitment todigital marketing through renewedinvestment in technology and inno-vation, deep partnerships, and anintegrated approach to customer-centric data. Marketing must takeownership of the technology in itsdomain. Ultimately, the ideal on-line marketing solution must fullyaddress the three R’s: reach, reten-tion, and revenue. It must make theconnections between back-endtechnologies and many touch pointsavailable to customers, includingmobile devices, PCs, and interac-tive TVs.

More and more, digital technol-ogy is having a profound effect oncompanies: it is enabling better tar-geting and audience connections,richer brand expressions and per-sonalized customer experiences,and deeper marketing intelligence.To keep up with changes in con-sumer behavior and advances intechnology, today’s companiesneed to be more innovative, adap-tive and responsive. They need toknow how to leverage digital expe-riences, data and technology tomake their marketing programs andplatforms more powerful. Inte-grated Marketing Management isintegration of all marketing tools,approaches, and resources within acompany which maximizes impacton consumer mind and which re-sults into maximum profit at mini-mum costs.

The digital revolution is capableof delivering true “segment of one”personalization. To make good on

that promise, however, companiesneed a unified data backbone, onecapable of delivering the highlyrelevant data that generates valu-able customer insights. In turn, thisinformation enables marketers totailor content to individual cus-tomers. However, because manycompanies operate on a hodge-podge of best-of-breed systems,most lack an integrated technicalinfrastructure. Today, marketingand IT can no longer implement so-lutions that address only the needsof their respective functions. Mov-ing forward boldly requires leadersto develop a unified, companywidevision of the end state required tomake marketing a reality.

The technology componentsevolve after the basic digital strat-egy is set and the company has de-fined its interaction strategy acrossthe entire customer life cycle, fromreaching new prospects throughstrengthening relationships withsatisfied customers.

Technology is a key enabler ofpresent day marketing. In addition,in digital this can hardly beoveremphasized! The challengehowever is to understand that tech-nology is just a means to an end i.e.marketing. Unfortunately presentday marketers think that technol-ogy is the ultimate way for betterbusiness. Newer technology orchanges to existing technology doNOT necessarily mean marketingbreak-through. Smart marketersand brands realize that technologyis used as an enabler to create suc-cessful marketing programs.

For example: Mobile Phones,which have become a ubiquitoustechnology [remember the HutchPug Ad!] provide a marketer anawesome opportunity to create geolocation based marketing cam-paigns.

Another example QR Codes thathave existed for over a decade now

are now being used successfully tolink Offline to Digital campaigns.

Technology will also largely de-termine what data is available tomeasure ROI and which tools usedin those measurements. Technologychoices will evolve over time asnew opportunities appear and as thebrands customize its business planto meet marketing requirements.

Companies whose digital strat-egy includes consistent, coordi-nated cross-channel marketingmust ensure that any on-demandsystems can be properly integratedwith the larger marketing process.Technology is often viewed as acost item, so the formal businesscase for new technology invest-ments is often based on reductionsin staff time or system operatingcosts. However, these calculationsoften ignore the hidden costs of thedisruption caused by changing sys-tems. The real benefits of new tech-nology are usually related toimprovements in other marketingareas, such as high performance,better availability, niched segmen-tation or more productive advertis-ing purchases.

With recent innovations andflexibility like On-Demand tech-nology and pay per use models,using latest and cutting edge tech-nology is hardly a cost challenge oran apex decision. The current daychallenges rest solely on makingthe right choice with regard tobreed of technologies and gettingthem to deliver a memorable Digi-tal experience.

Irrespective of the size or in-dustry, marketers across companiestoday need to function in a nexus ofmarketing, consumer behavior andtechnology. In addition, choosingthe right technology component topower Digital marketing is emerg-ing as a mission critical choice forthe success of the marketing pro-gram.



Today, Small and Medium En-terprises or SMEs in theemerging countries are in the

midst of innovation and transforma-tion. The market dynamics are rap-idly changing and becoming highlycomplex, requiring companies toconstantly innovate. If innovation isone side of the coin, the other sideis to bring in cost competitiveness.

Reduction in costs can be donein many ways. However, the idealway to do the same without com-promising on the innovation as wellthe resources is to make peoplehighly productive. One way to makethe company more productive is tobring in automation culture. Lever-age the technology to drive produc-tivity and innovation.

The key for any SME is to keeptheir employees highly engaged andwell connected within the company.In this endeavor, following shouldbe the sequence of thoughts: How toautomate the entire HR processesand in the process build a robust col-laboration platform, How to analyzethe underlying data to make overallorganization improvements and howthe organization can afford it. Be-fore going into further details onhow these will help with the objec-tive of creating a robust platformand yet keeping it integrated andflexible, let us understand what theymean.Process Automation: Process

Automation is the practice of im-proving the efficiency and effective-ness of any organization byautomating and optimizing the orga-

nization's processes. It is a key tech-nology component of IT initiativesto produce a more responsive cul-ture.Data Analytics: Data Analytics

is, in essence, a set of enabling tech-nologies that collects and presentsthe disparate data into views that areintelligent and fact based. It allowsfor more quality decisions to bemade in real time. It brings new in-sights and perspectives to questionsand answers inherent in your data.Cloud Computing: Cloud com-

puting is internet based computing,

whereby shared resources, software,and information are provided tocomputers and other devices on de-mand, like the electricity grid.

Having understood the above, akey challenge for any company is toidentify the appropriate project andtechnology approach that will drivethe most benefits. To start with, ifthe current HR processes are not au-tomated and is not helping you toengage your employees, then it’stime to look at automation. Thereare manifold benefits of adoptingautomation such as

• Automation – Eliminate paper ormanual process. HR process, if welldefined and implemented can bescalable and would improve collab-oration when new employees arehired thereby reducing time to be-come productive. Automation alsoeliminates errors thereby reducingcosts.• Decision Making – Once the

processes are automated, system al-lows seamless collection of impor-tant data, which then can beanalyzed to make decisions.

To benefit from automation anddata collection, companies mustbring together these two businessenablers. Most organizations useAutomation and Data Analyticstechnologies to serve separate pur-poses that seldom overlap. For themost part, Data Analytics doesn’tfocus on process, and Automationdoesn’t provide metrics or an aggre-gate view of the process. This situa-tion reflects the predominant view

that these are different technologiesthat each stands alone, deliveringvalue to the organization each in itsown way. Data Analytics sharpensAutomation and the convergenceimproves decision making.

Along with studying the metricscollected by the automated process,the need to study the employee’sbehavioral pattern is also increas-ing. Going forward this could leadto interesting information to en-hance employee experience result-ing in higher employee retentionlevels.

How to achieve this? Given thatSMEs may not have an exhaustiveIT strategy or IT budgets. Leverag-ing cloud based solutions is the an-swer.

After linking the Automationand Data Analytics, if the CIO canalso decide to take advantage of thenext wave of IT transformation inthe form of Cloud Computing, thenthis could be a perfect storm. While

virtualization has helped abstractthe computing resources from thehardware thereby increasing thethrough put of datacenters, SOAhelped organizations access inde-pendent building blocks over the in-ternet for performing specificfunctions. This is independent ofplatforms and programming lan-guages. If a company doesn’t liketheir existing business analyticstool, they should be able to link upto another tool on the cloud for bet-ter results rather than spend a lot oftime and money for integration andimplementation. Such is the powerof Cloud computing

Cloud computing has also en-abled an entirely new deliverymodel for software. Earlier compa-nies had to invest a lot in hardware,software and implementation. Thismade the decision making very hi-erarchical when having to adoptnew technologies. Cloud computinghas changed all of this.

Convergence of Process Automation,Data Analytics and Cloud

TECHNOLOGY By Sreekanth LapalaThe author is CEO, TenXLabs


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In India, if 18 or 21 year old stu-dents or graduates tell their par-ents, relatives, teachers or

anyone around them that they havea great business idea and would liketo start work on it, they would belaughed at and their idea will bedismissed as a joke. They will havemore chance at convincing theirelders that earth revolve around themoon than that they can build a suc-cessful company. Mark Zuckerberg

was barely 20 when he started Face-book. If people around him had dis-missed his idea as a youngster’sstupidity, we would still be sendingemails and sms to our friends. For-get about Facebook, Paul Allen was22 and Bill Gates, 20, when theystarted Microsoft. Think of all thegood things we would have missedif they were stopped. Why are westill producing only employees andnot employers?

There are several reasons forthis. Our society seems to dawdlewith the idea that business is passedon in genes and only a businessman’s offspring possess the abilityto start and run a successful busi-ness, our educational structure ismore interested in theory than thepractical approach, our middle classand upper middle class mostly staysaway from businesses, our societythinks that youngsters does not have

FEATURE By Hari Anil

Enough with Employees,we need more Employers


enough real life experience to takethe right choice, and above all wehave failed to accept failure. Thetruth is that, the society itself is re-stricting the number of innovatorsand genius business men it couldhave produced. “It is the ecosys-tems, that is filled with mentors, in-vestors and visionaries, that makeentrepreneurship a viable possibil-ity in the U.S. We still do not haveit, but recently, a change in this sce-nario is starting to be visible. I amhoping the new generation willhave a better chance at taking on theentrepreneurial path early on,” saysM. Srinivas Rao, Founder & CEO,Aujas.

It is said that a child is born ag-nostic. Our society instills all of itstraits and characters into them, andalong with these traits is the ideathat business is not for us. Parentsand elders seems to have pledged tomake their child an engineer or adoctor and show zero interest inwhat their child really cares aboutor wants to be. A recent Hindimovie ‘3 Idiots’ brilliantly por-trayed this aspect of the Indian so-ciety. We seem to have come to theconclusion that the purpose of lifeis to take less risk and choose a ca-reer that offers an assured job and alot of money. Interest and aptitudeseems to have taken a back seat inthe society. And in such a societythere is no room for a Zuckerberg orGates or Jobs.

An education structure, which iscrafted according to the attitude ofour society, cares little about any-thing other than theory. The struc-ture enables the students to get goodgrades and marks. “We need to startchanging from schools itself. Ourschools do not entertain creativity,they are only teaching students togain better grade than the next stu-dent. The quality of the teachersand the education provided in theschools has to go up,” says K. K

.Guin, Professor, Vinod GuptaSchool of Management, IITKharagpur. But most of the studentswho graduate from Indian universi-ties have little or no real worldpractical knowledge. Companiesare put in a difficult position wherethey hire these grads as they willhave to give them extensive trainingto make them efficient. Now a day,the companies also seem to havecome into terms with this reality.We are literally manufacturing en-gineers when what we could use

more are scientists. Like in the U.S.or the UK, we need to weave in en-trepreneurship to the very fabric ofour society, so that the future gen-eration will have the mentality totry something new and create a dif-ference in this world. This can onlybe done through a total restructur-ing of education. “All the IITs andIIMs are not enough, what we needare 100s of world class schools withgreat faculty, we need to catch themyoung” says Ravishankar, Co-Founder & CEO, Nevales. Our edu-cation needs to have more real

world projects and assignment thatwould help students gain a practicalperspective of businesses. Weshould move ahead from providingservices and should concentratemore on research. Then we will seemore and more employers poppingup in the country.

Parents in the country has to re-alize that you are training yourchild to be a part of someone else’sworks force, when he or she couldbecome that someone who employ-ees the workforce. This idea of notthinking beyond working for some-one else might have its root in ourlong history of being ruled by for-eign powers, but that time haspassed and we need to move ahead.“Before British our society was ma-jorly based on agriculture and a fewbusinesses. British introduced us tothe paid administrative jobs. Thenlater on, post independence, cametechnological advancements yet,stuck on to our salary based jobs,”explains Ravisankar. A good major-ity of the people who made big inthis world started down that pathearly on. Your motto should be, ‘letthem be all they can be’.

‘It ain't about how hard you hit,it's about how you can get hit andkeep moving forward. How muchyou can take and keep moving for-ward,’ a famous quote fromSylvester Stallone’s 2006 movieRocky Balboa, captures the essenceof winning completely. It is alwaysabout accepting failure, recoveringfrom it and moving forward. Win-ston Churchill once said, ‘Success isnot final, failure is not fatal: it is thecourage to continue that counts’.Recently in NASSCOM ProductConclave, Vinod Khosla said that ‘Idon’t mind failing, but when I suc-ceed it better be worth succeeding’.It is attitude like this that needed tobe instilled in the youngsters and nota fear of failure. We also need tolearn to accept failure.

LEADERSHIP By Siddharth Goel

For any entrepreneur, establishedor amateur, the most importantaspect of venturing, in my opin-

ion is to find supportive entities in theecosystem that can help him reach hisgoal quickly and holistically.

About a decade back in 2002, Istarted my first venture Cellent Tech-nologies that offers messaging solu-tions. As we grew, we realized the nextlogical step was to move up the valuechain where we could offer personal-ized experiences to the end user. Pen-etration was and is on the rise inInternet, Telecom, e-commerce, basi-cally every consumer-centric business.

We tried in-house development ofan intelligent system that could solvethe simple problem of content discov-ery for users consuming music overtheir phones. Back then and in most ofthe cases even today, all customers aretreated in a similar fashion – every-body gets to hear/see the same menuof contents irrespective of their taste.Respecting individual tastes of thecustomer largely goes ignored. Thesystem that we developed was rudi-mentary and because the technologywas not our core expertise, we startedlooking out for the experts who had orcould develop this kind of system.That was when I came to learn aboutSINE (Society for Innovation and En-trepreneurship), an initiative by IITBombay that facilitates, nurtures andmentors development of IP by fac-ulty/students at IIT.

Prof Rajendra Sonar, a faculty atIIT Bombay (also currently Director atiKen), was working on developing aframework that could enable a busi-ness to get insights into its customerbase to the granularity level of N=1.Combining hybrid AI (Artificial Intel-ligence) techniques and BI 2.0, thisproject envisaged to revolutionize the

way analytics was being perceived andused. A total departure from the tradi-tional way, which is a top-down ap-proach and focuses onsegmentation/categorization, his ap-proach would understand one cus-tomer at a time and move up to buildassociations or clusters. The goal wassimple - if as a business, I know whateach of my customers does/likes, it isreally easy for me to “treat” her in away that makes best sense to her.

This was the expertise I was look-ing for. After few rounds of delibera-tions, we joined hands, the project gottransformed into a company in 2008and we named the framework Mooga.Because of Prof Sonar’s bankingbackground, the product was initiallyfocussed on using Personalized Ana-lytics for BFSI-transaction monitor-ing, customer risk management, frauddetection and so on. As we proceeded,we enhanced Mooga to be able to offerthe best experience (through most rel-evant recommendation, accurate cam-paign management, pre-emptive

measures by means of predictive ana-lytics, churn management and so on)to multiple business verticals such astelecom, internet, e-commerce and en-tertainment. With offices in Mumbaiand Buenos Aires, Argentina, todaywe have a team of 30. Strategic part-nerships with companies havingglobal presence have been of immenseleverage.

I feel the ecosystem in India fortechnology start-ups is getting betterevery day. On one hand, institutions(such as IITs) and individuals arecoming up with novel ideas produc-ing more IP, and on the other, the up-take of these concepts/products isincreasing from a financial supportpoint of view. The market is seeing ashift in the maturity level of cus-tomers. E-consumption is followingan exponential curve. With more andmore thought leaders from industryand academia joining hands and tak-ing their products to the global plane,I am sure “Made in India” has a longway to go.

When Business meets AcademiaThe author is CEO, iKen Solutions

“Mark Zuckerbergwas barely 20 whenhe started Facebook.If people around himhad dismissed hisidea as a youngster’sstupidity, we wouldstill be sendingemails and sms toour friends”



Maxx Mobiles has launched a newmobile called MAXX Zippy(MT105). The phone has a 2.4 inchtouch screen with a digital camera andan LED Flash. It supports dual simcards. The phone has audio and videoplayers which support all major for-

mats of audio and MP4, 3GPP andAVI formats for video. It comes witha 4GB memory, expandable up to8GB. The mobile offers a talktime ofup to 4.5 hrs and a standby time of 350hours. Connectivity options includeBluetooth and USB mass transfer.

Price: ` 2,599

TECH PRODUCTSCompiled by Vishwas Nair

Lexmark has launched its All-In-One inkjet printers speciallydesigned to help SMBs keep their costs down. The four newdevices: Prospect Pro209, Prevail Pro708, Impact S308 andInterpret S409. The printers come with Lexmark’s patentedVizix print technology which includes separate ink cartridges,fast print speeds and high quality results. The AIO-devicesprint up to 33 pages per minute. All four printers are capable

of wire-less “n”technology for long range reach and a reliable signal for fasterfile transfers. Other features include wireless connectivity,auto-feed option, 2-Sided prints, Ethernet connectivity, andcolor LCD display. The printers can also scan business cardsthrough which the contacts can be managed.

LEXMARK

ZIPPY (MT105)MAXX

Samsung has launched yet another Smart-phone, “Galaxy Note”. Operating on theAndroid 2.3 Gingerbread, it is powered by a1.4 GHz dual core processor. The phone isdifferent from the previous Galaxy pones forit comes with capacitive stylus called “S

pen”. Its features include a 5.3 inch displayscreen, an 8 megapixel rear and a 2megapixel camera in the front; storagememory of 16GB that is expandable up to32 GB and Bluetooth 3.0, WIFI, GPS, andHSPA+ for connectivity.

Price: ` 5,466 - ` 11,936

Price: ` 34,990

SAMSUNGGALAXY NOTE

Much anticipated phone in the world, Iphone4S is set for their launch in India on 25th ofNovember, 2011. Telecom players Aircel andAirtel are going to release the phone. Thephone comes with a 1GHz dual core proces-sor which can perform seven times fastergraphics. It comes with an 8 megapixel cameraand is capable of recording at 1080p high def-

inition. It also has the feature called the“icloud” which manages all the importanttasks like apps, mails, contacts and calendars.The phone has a app called airplay which letsus play our videos from the phone to any TVwirelessly. Another interesting application isthe airprint which lets us print our documentswirelessly over wifi.

Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, has forayed into the tabletspace with the launch of MediaPad, world’s first 7 inchhoney comb tablet. It runs on Android 3.2 powered by a 1.2GHz Qualcomm chipset. The device has thin frame with awidth of 10.5mm and weighs around 390 grams. It is capa-ble of playing 1080p videos and it comes with an HDMI

out. The tablethas a 5 megapixelcamera which is capable of recording at 720p and also has a1.3 megapixel camera in the front. The device is compatiblewith Flash 10.3. The company also promises a 6 hours con-tinuous battery life.

HUAWEI LAUNCHES MEDIAPAD TABLET

Price: ` 28,358

LAUNCHES ITS NEW PRINTERS IN INDIA

Price: ` 44,500

MIDNIGHT LAUNCH IN INDIAIPHONE 4S

Fujifilm has launched their S2950 in the Indian marketthis month. The EVF (Electronic View Finder) auto-matically switches the display from the LCD to theEVF as we put our eyes on it. The feature of Dualimage stabilization works to eliminate the blurred im-ages at maximum zoom range. This camera comes witha feature called SR AUTO which detects faces, blinks

and smiles. It has a 14 megapixel resolution with a Fu-jinon 18 times and wide 28mm lens. The camera is ca-pable of recording High Definition both for still andvideo captures. It has a 7.62cm LCD screen with a 2,30,000 dot resolution.

Price: ` 10, 999

FUJIFILMS2950

APPLE


According to Nasscom’s Strate-gic Review 2010 on the IT-BPO sector in India, the Indian

IT sector will aggregate revenues of$88.1 billion in FY2011, with the ITsoftware and services sector (exclud-ing hardware) accounting for $76.1billion of revenues. The domesticmarket is at an inflection point withthe rise of India Inc. and growing

adoption of IT to achieve greater ef-ficiencies. The Government is fu-elling IT adoption through theUIDAI and National eGovernanceProgrammes (NeGP), which createlarge scale IT infrastructure and pro-mote corporate participation.

As the Indian IT sector witnessesrapid growth, increased competitionalong with customer demands to cut

costs, is prompting the industry toseek ways of reducing TCO so as tomaximize profit. Besides diversify-ing core offerings through new busi-ness and pricing models, ITcompanies are focusing on trans-forming process delivery by leverag-ing collaboration technologies tostreamline processes and drivegrowth.

IInnddiiaann IITT::Achieving Non-Linear Growth

BUSINESSThe author is Vice President, ITS Sales, Cisco India & SAARC

By Jagdish Mahapatra

With the recession having forcedcompanies to trim costs and improveefficiencies to remain competitive,IT companies that earlier followed alinear growth model to scale up arenow seeking non-linear models,wherein headcount and revenues arenot in tandem. High attrition rates,rising salary levels and shortage ofskilled manpower (employabilitylevels ranging from 4.22 percent forIT product companies to 38. 2 per-cent for BPO) are the HR challengesthe industry continues to grapplewith. Additionally, increased pres-sure from countries like the US tohire more local people is leading toan increased focus on lateral hiring.

Collaboration is inA host of new technologies areavailable to help IT companies meetthe changing business needs. Tech-nologies like unified communica-tions help to collaborate seamlessly,communicate easily, share informa-tion instantly, improve customerservice and increase employee pro-ductivity. Business video/ Telepres-ence help IT companies ensurebetter resource utilization andachieve reduction in capex andopex, by enabling collaborationacross time and geography, to re-duce manpower and travel costs.

Other technology tools like Vir-tualization Experience Infrastruc-ture (Cisco VXI for example),enable organizations to free em-ployees to work remotely and cutdown on both real estate and energycosts. These technologies when in-tegrated with the learning manage-ment platform and contentmanagement systems are creatingnext generation learning environ-ment for IT Services Organizationsto reach out and train their employ-ees(current & potential) at their con-venience and provide most of thebenefits of a large university at afraction of the cost, thereby enhanc-

ing their skill sets and employabil-ity levels.

Using collaboration technologieslike telepresence, unified communi-cations, rich media conferencing,Cisco for example, has successfullybeen able to decouple revenue andheadcount growth from carbonemission growth – and reduced car-bon emissions by 10 percent per em-ployee (emissions of 98telepresence meetings equals one in-ternational flight from North Amer-ica to Europe).

Value added servicesThe Indian IT services sector is ex-pected to grow rapidly —by about3.5 per cent in 2011 and 4.5 per centin 2012. As the correlation betweenheadcount growth and revenue isbeginning to break, growth is in-creasingly being measured by thenumber of value-added services thatthese organizations offer to cus-tomers through platform–based so-lutions, or by investing inintellectual property (IP) rather thanpure application development andmaintenance (ADM) work.

As clients demand high-end so-lutions to drive greater value and ef-ficiencies, they expect IT serviceproviders to come up with newerpricing models rather than tradi-tional time and material contracts.Customers also demand value addedservices along with several otherfeatures to the products they get andlook to derive maximum benefitwith least cost.

Along with cost control and ef-ficiency/productivity, customersare evaluating how investments inIT impact can further businessgoals. Virtualization, consolida-tion, and managed services thatfocus on ROI are driving marketopportunities and alternative serv-ice models like Cloud, on-demandservices and SaaS are helping to re-duce infrastructure costs and pro-

vide scalability on demand.In keeping with changing cus-

tomer demands, Indian IT serviceproviders have developed end-to-end service delivery capabilitiesacross verticals through cross bordercollaboration and partnerships thatenhance service offerings, and resultin greater productivity and effi-ciency. Indian IT service offeringstoday include testing services, infra-structure services, consulting andsystem integration.

Service providers today are fo-cusing on client relationships, min-ing existing clients and restructuringoperations to provide focused verti-cal solutions. IT services is increas-ingly being driven by localizedstrategies designed by serviceproviders. With a change in cus-tomer demand, IT Service organiza-tions have also changed the waythey serve their customers, and aremaking available ‘on demand’ and‘pay as you use’ service modelswhich help customers reduce costsconsiderably.

Going forward service offeringsthat are high-end deeply embeddedin customer value chains will merge.Services and delivery will becomelocation-agnostic leading to new op-portunities such as design services inmanufacturing, Remote Infrastruc-ture Management (RIM), and more.Solutions for the domestic marketwill be a key focus area. Service of-ferings will shift from piecemeal,technology-centric applications to arange of integrated solutions andhigher-end services, spanning newservice lines (e.g., green IT). The In-dustry, Government and Academiawill jointly take decisive action toharness technology and catalyzegrowth in the domestic market. Byproviding adequate policy support tokeep the momentum strong, theywill help India emerge as a globalhub for professional services in thefuture.



FEATURE By Vandana Subramanian

The first session in a marketingclass is always about the "4Psof marketing", namely prod-

uct, place, price, and promotion.The intangible good or service thatthe company offers "the product" isthe only term which is still alive,which makes the remaining 3Ps ahistory.

This leads us back to the ques-tion: Are the business schoolsdwelling on prehistoric content? Orare they so much in love with thefamed theories that they are unwill-ing to come to the present scenarioand realize that times havechanged, and so have the theories.Companies are now being moreadaptive and flexible - creatingtrends rather that following thosewhich were set by someone longago.

The biggest of the companies-Body Shop, Starbucks, Facebook,and Google-have all succeededwithout spending even a penny oralmost negligible amount on adver-tisements. How they reached thecurrent stature, is because of theirproduct offering. The products of-fered by these companies weretrend setters, which spread like awild fire around the world, thusminting customer based on theword-of-mouth publicity. Googlehas become so often used that peo-ple have forgotten that it is a brandname, they say "Just Google", in-stead of saying "just search on theinternet". The logo "Intel Inside"has made Intel a famous chip man-ufacturer than any of its competi-tors (for that matters the logohelped the company more than anyadvertisement ever could).

For $72, Office 2011 for Macincludes Word, Excel, Powerpoint,Outlook, Communicator, Remote

desktop; whileat the sameprice Office2010 Profes-sional Plus forPC includes allthese featuresplus Access,P u b l i s h e s ,OneNote, In-foPath, Groove,Communicator.The Dell Insp-iron 15 R, whichcosts $750, hasmore hard diskspace (500 GB),longer warranty(3 yearsin-homeservice and 3year accidentaldamage), but customers still preferto go in for the $1099 Apple 13 in.MacBook Pro having 1 year manu-facturer warranty and has a lowerstorage capacity (320 GB). It is allabout the brand. These companieshave refined their products so welland have paid attention to the tini-est details that they are able tocommand a premium price for theirproducts--which means that givenyour product is good, the customerwould be ready to pay whateverprice you demand.

Back then, the place where thecompany was located was of thehighest priority, as being nearer tothe markets meant more coverageand made the products accessible tothe company. Companies used topay premium prices to get the loca-tion closest to the customerdwelling, which not only led tosoaring real estate prices, but alsogave a budding opportunity to thesuppliers of the raw materials. Withthe internet revolution, a huge

number of companies have movedonline, and many e-shops haveemerged, which cater to their cus-tomers from remote destinations.Now a manufacturer sitting inCambodia can sell his products to acustomer in Finland; people nowprefer to buy products on eBay orAmazon, rather than go to the shop-ping mall across the road. The con-venience in terms of time savedwhile travelling and the increasingsecurity over the e-payments haseaten the share of the traditional se-tups. Companies today have dedi-cated logistics (many areoutsourced) to ensure the timelydelivery of their products to thecustomers regardless of the geo-graphical barriers.

Thus, even though the 3Ps ofmarketing are dead, the B-schoolsstill cling on to them; it is time theyaccept the fact and move theirfocus from what was done to whatnew the companies are doing in thefield of marketing.

3Ps of Marketing are dead!!

RNI REG.NO. KARENG/2006/16955Regn. No. KRNA/BGE-1046/08-10

smarttechie dec 11 issue

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