Dearth of Product Companies in India - repeat call!?

One of my articles published on the NSRCEL Blog

We were lucky as well as unlucky to have missed the industrial revolution during its birth pangs - we got the stuff once it was already in a shape in the west. If it was the first car that was made or the first record player that played music, the entirety of products came up in some form in the west. This had a dual effect of having some form of product on the one hand (acceleration of technology use in the society) and forgetting to develop newer products in the country. We always had a thought that the product gets developed in the west and then it is migrated in an appropriate form to countries like India. (In fact, if a Indian product really comes up, it is not looked at with the same respect as the one born outside the country!) And now with folks like Friedmann singing about the services industry, the media and the public in general are in a euphoria of being the services capital of the globe, forgetting and unfortunately, ignoring the importance of product development in India. The number of original products developed in India has been very less, in comparison to the other aspects of industry. Well, we need to look at the long term effects of this assumed 'high'!

Whether it be post-independence economic policies, or a rush to get richer quicker by providing services (rather than wait for the full development cycle of a product), there are numerous reasons to look at. But the time has come when indegenous products from India have to be honored, with services being looked as the cream on the milk.

How do you think most developed countries have been able to remain competitive? According to NSF (National Science Foundation, USA), “High-technology industries are driving economic growth around the world”.

Although a lot has started happening in encouraging products as the main motive for development, we have to push the pedal harder. “Even during the recent, slow-growth, ‘post-bubble’ period (2000–03), high-technology industry continued to lead global growth at about four times the rate of all other manufacturing industries.”

Is this article dated by a few years - because it seems, that with people like Mahindra, Tata and Bharat Forge, we do have a product oriented approach!? Well, this article, is not really dated - it is just a reminder for the intense focus that we need to have when we go ahead with products. The definition of product from being a physical entity has been shattered. We need to have the central idea that can materialize into a definite form, and that can by itself sustain the services industry that we are proud of.

To quote a random internet user (login Dharma - no link):

Its hard to build product companies when the markets for these products are elsewhere. Now, with India emerging as a major market for high-tech products/services, its only a matter of time before we have some product-based entrepreneurial success stories coming out of India. I personally know several different entrepreneurs in B’lore working on ambitious product ventures. What is needed now is a combination of (1) govt regulation, (2) infrastructure development, and (3) seed/early-stage support from “mentor” funds/VCs to nurture this budding ecosystem. The service companies have done a great job building up Brand India, and the folks who have made lots of money in the process have an unique opportunity to give back to Indian IT by helping with (3) above.

We do not want to undermine the software services companies - they have contributed brilliantly to the economy - we just should not over-enthusiastic with this and tend to lose a product oriented approach.

Again, quoting Sramana Mitra, in an address to IITians:

In the last decade, IT has sucked all other engineering disciplines dry of their best minds. Even the IIT Civil Engineers and Mechanical Engineers are writing low-level software for Oracle or IBM. If you continue at this rate, none of the other major disciplines will get their rightful share of leadership that is your responsibility to provide.

This may look like a repeat call for a product based economy - but in today's world, it does have its significance.

Any thoughts!?

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'Closer-to-life' Tech

One of my articles published on the NSRCEL Blog

With the buzz about cleantech going around, it seems to be very interesting to find companies investing more and more technologies that are closer to the survival issues of living beings. What started as a revolution in the auto industry with the introduction of diesel and gasoline as the driving fuels for automobiles, has now turned into a simmering source of pollutants that very well threaten the climate around us. It is like all the oil in the oil wells of the globe has been spread out horizontally over the earth through numerous vehicles and has been put on fire.

What exactly does the word clean mean in the term cleantech? Is is clean with respect to the harmful substances spewed by any process or is it the re-cyclability factor of any substance that makes it 'clean'? Apart from the auto industry, there are thousands of other processes which need to employ cleaner technologies and we have seem some improvements due to cleaner methods being used. If you look at the textlie industry, or at the pharma industry, there are numerous holes to be plugged. We are sitting in a room that is fast getting filled up with water and while we are busy plugging the bigger holes, the smaller holes are getting bigger.

When you look at startups and cleantech together, it seems to be a major fad that people are going with. With numerous b-plans that bank upon emerging technologies and industries, based on principles of biology, resource efficiency, and second-generation production concepts in basic industries. To begin with, there is an estimation of the human-caused results of industrialization - examples include: ozone hole, acid rain, desertification, and global warming.
In the 2007 report compiled by Dow Jones VentureSource, numbers show a strengthening trend in clean technology investments worldwide. A record sum of over $3 billion was poured into 221 clean clean technology deals globally in 2007, representing a 43% increase compared to $2.1 billion in 2006.
Looking on the innovations side, people are going to the very limits of their imagination - we have a working model of a battery that sustains itself on 'air'! (Have a look here.) The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.
We are moving closer to sustainability - we got to maintain balance - for, like all of us, our planet too is vulnerable beyond an extent! Any thoughts?!

Of foster parenting and technology marketing

One of my  articles published on the NSRCEL Blog

The state of technology marketing in India (and else where) is something that is of prime concern for the introduction of new products and the so-called buzz being created to focus on innovative products in SW. We have mostly been a service based economy as far as IT is concerned and there is a sentiment of venture gurus to focus more on innovation, so as to sustain and lead in this arena. Many folks blame the marketing fellows to have failed in sustaining innovation, even if technical folks are busy creating newer ideas. A number of product companies funded by well-known money mines are being shelved, and the blame goes to the entrepreneurs behind these ideas. Are they really failing? Many of them get swallowed by the biggies such as MS and Google (the founders consider it success for them if they have been bought over by a bigger player!).

        

I believe there is an amazing mismatch between marketing fellows and the techies, and this is the primary reason that they fail. People at the top are unable to comprehend, where buckets-full of money is vanishing in the name of branding a product. For every failure in the market, there are many success stories - sometimes the smaller fish is bought over by a giant or simply shelved into file-13.

I was interacting with the marketing fellow of a techie product - we did not know that he was not a PhD and not a techie fellow, until his boss revealed. The depth of understanding he had about 'how his product is going to help the customer' was superb. Another example, I would suggest a fellow from Mathworks Inc, who was completely from the sales and marketing side - the clarity he had about the usability of the product was the inspiration to even think of an alternative solution to the tool we were using at hand. You have to keep in mind, just two things - make the customer understand the technology involved in a very simple manner, and secondly, you have got to get the right price. Many marketing fellows avoid the most important questions, saying that they'll get back to the tech team. And some others, over-promise the merits of the product without even taking the tech team into confidence.

It is very difficult (particularly for the bigger companies, who are the guys with the money), to shift from a software tool to a newer one. They keep working with the older tool because their client overseas has not yet upgraded to the latest version or the newer tool in discussion.

Pouring money to marketing of technology is never going to work in the long run and we keep lamenting the disappearance of innovative SW. It has to (blame it to Darwin or to anyone) vanish unless sustained in a motherly way (marketing folks always have a mix of fear for tech and over-commitment, making them almost step-parental). In the same lines, we need more and more tech fellow develop the ability to market for themselves or assist the marketing fellow (instead of looking at the marketing fellow as a money-minded jerk who gets paid for 'just babbling'). In many successful companies, the pitching team always comprises of a combination of a tech person and a non-tech person.

We got to evolve. SW ideas evolve faster than they get accepted in the market. Secondly, SW ideas come to shape faster than bigger project's life cycle. Example, an Airbus 380 project had loss in billions of USD just because the SW they used underwent a major version upgrade. For this reason, the bigger projects prefer to freeze the SW till the project is delivered and the support for the project continues with the same tool. Its like, you have ten soaps on the shelf to take bath with, you'd generally choose one for the whole period of the bath (the project). Can you say that another soap which was bought while you were busy bathing has failed, for you!? Every innovation is important - to make it viable  in the business sense needs planned effort.

It is high time that VCs and the folks whose money is involved, get deeper into the idea behind an idea, than just playing with spreadsheets. It has become like the discussion between a foster parent with her teenage daughter - the adult is not interested in going into details of what the teenager wants to prove, and the teenager does not want to or is incapable of explaining the real meaning of her intentions. The money-folks keep looking at the halo over the head of the inventor, and the inventor may lack the basics of explaining the money aspects of the innovation. Unfortunately, the idea gets shelved!

Money (funnily, many folks really understand it as muscle power - its true!) plus better marketing/entreprenuers can make more number of SW innovations see the light of the day - and we need not lament dying innovations (due to Darwin stuff about evolution and the survival of the fittest) - if people can do without them, they will.

Incubators such as NSRCEL are a great source of a collection of mentors who bridge this gap to a large extent. You will find people who are interested in both technology and money, (in an equally ignorant way!), so as to look at the better aspects of both. When you look at an idea from a non-rejection perspective, and with all the patience that it deserves, it will evolve faster and healthier. "Generally at the NSRCEL no Idea is rejected." And if you observe, the gap between the marketing and the techies are being filled by appropriate support from NSRCEL. To have the right kind of folks do the job they are best at is the focus. This will help the techies focus on innovation and would make sense when the need of the hour is to focus on innovative products.

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Edutainment: Highs and Lows

One of my  articles published on the NSRCEL Blog

The recent times have seen the most number of new words being coined - and edutainment happens to one of the new guys on the block. This term has been thrown around since a few years in order to promote the entertainment industry in a saner way (or to show that they are still sane!). For parents who are more concerned about this aspect of the game, there has been a huge number of innovations - whether the kid likes it or not, the amount of information bombarded on the kid, as well as that which the kids grasps, is enormous! And it is not at all surprising if the kid knows more about rocket science than you ever knew.

                 

The combination of amusement with education helps kids to remember more, understand faster, and not get tired of the process. Since memorizing is not education, it is important that the kids are able to apply what they learn and edutainment is one such area where the same is done. When you look at games on the computer, the imagination of the kids grows very abstract as well as pan optic. At the same time, the kid starts to live in a wonderland, where the real risks of life are not there.  When you see the kid who is being chased in the beginning of the movie, Die Hard 4.0, the kid is completely shocked with the real bullets being fired, no matter how many games he has won with bigger machine guns!

When a kid is playing a financial game, he is getting the understanding of the way money works, but unless guided in the right way, he considers all money matters as just games. Some kids get very obsessed with winning and most of the kids get ideas about hacking into banks and playing in casinos, just because they are always used to winning the game. When edutainment systems are designed, hardly will you see games that develop characteristics of facing a failure and patience.

On the contrary, if you look at the better side, kids who have been exposed to this during their development always look at challenges in life in a creative way. They are fascinated to know more about things and they are the ones who become great developers of technology. They are the ones who can imagine the next step in the technology front, and they are the ones who can undo the biggest blunders that technology can create. The biggest hackers are the greatest anti-hackers!

“Memorizing” is not education. Unfortunately, it has been the cornerstone of Indian education system, producing droid-like majority.

Looking at other aspects of edutainment, how many of us would like to learn Chemistry in a more fun-and-game manner than just memorize methods of balancing equations! Relevance, incremental learning, and distributed learning can help us be smarter at our subjects.

The only way to avoid mission-drift in the field of edutainment, is just to be careful. There are a number of tools available, and for a kid, being an understanding parent is what is needed most. Emphasis on fun and enjoyment should not be at the expense of educational content. Its a double-wedged knife, and we got to handle it carefully. A line has to be drawn that can show the kids, the difference between a real bullet and an on-screen game bullet, between really losing money and losing it on a game, and between handling emotions in reality than in just few sessions of a game.

Any thoughts!?

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