Archive for June, 2012
TechSparks 2012 Chennai Round Table
Here are the points from TechSparks 2012 Chennai Round table
Cost of entry for product companies is very high inIndia, but thanks to technology, the trend is changing
Dropbox is an interesting idea; they have not invested in a single hardware. A classic case of using cloud technology
“kayyil” is a mobile phones based social learning initiative by Classle knowledge
First time / generation entrepreneurs scale up at a much faster rate
It is also many a times important not to get distracted by too much technology
Product workshop by Aditya Kulkarni was interesting. This was the first time in Chennai that such a workshop was arranged.
It’s stunning to know that companies who have made it big were started with very little capital, VT Bharadwaj of Sequoia Capital
In India it’s really hard to make people shell out money for product / services
Time to success with proven model is quick
The time to incubate is higher in India
Maintain differentiation, a key for startups
Getting feedback from your customers and improving consistently is for scaling especially for different markets – VT Bharadwaj
One of the interesting aspects about India is that there are so many areas that are growing
Evidence of customers loving the product/ service is also important while selecting the venture
For more details on TechSparks 2012 and to register for the coming events, check here
TechSparks 2012 Chennai Round Table
After an overwhelming response in Mumbai and Dehi, TechSparks™ 2012 comes to Chennai. This year`s theme - “The Smartest Way to Scale Your Startup”, focused on enabling all the factors required for the rapid growth of technology ventures will be taken forward at the Chennai Regional RoundTable of TechSparks 2012.
Date: 29/June/2012
Venue: IC&SR Auditorium, IIT Madras
Agenda
TechSparks Regional RoundTables “The Smartest Way to Scale Your Startup”
2:00 PM to 2:30 PM – Registration over Refreshments
2:30 PM to 2:40 PM – Introduction by Shradha Sharma, Founder, YourStory.in
2:40 PM to 3:10 PM – Lessons from a Venture Capitalist - VT Bharadwaj, Managing Director with Sequoia Capital
3:10 PM to 3:55 PM – Startup Product WorkShop
3:55 PM to 4:55 PM – Interactive Panel Discussion – “The Smartest Way to Scale”
- Narendra Bhandari, Director AsiaPacific, Software & Services Group, Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd.
- Vaidya Nathan, Founder & CEO, Classle Knowledge Pvt. Ltd.
- Venkat Rangan, Co-Founder & CEO, INXS Technologies Ltd.
- Kingsley Wood, Business Development Director, Amazon Web Services (APAC)
4.55 PM to 5.25 PM – Open House with Questions from Entrepreneurs
5.25 PM to 5:45 PM – Startup Showcase
5:45 PM onwards – Networking and Closing Remarks
Pitch CMO Summit
Last week I attended the Pitch CMO summit organsied by exchange 4 Media. There were quite a few speakers but only few were entertaining. One of the biggest problems I see in these conferences is the powerpoint presentations, some presentations will neither have any power nor will have any points to make.
Having said that lets move into some interesting points I picked up during the CMO Summit.
Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder of http://BharatMatrimony.com shared the interesting story of its humble beginning. The service was started from a Two page website. Some of the services they introduced backfired them like “Upload your dream boy/girl,” service. Someone uploaded the picture of a Monkey and they had to cancel the service. Another service that didn’t pick up was the Video profiling. Reason? People were shy in front of camera.
Len Curran of Renault India spoke in detail about Renault’s plans in India. According to him Customer in India is demanding and because of this the market is very competitive. Renault has ambitious plans for India, planning to launch 5 new cars by end of 2012. In order to succeed in India, you need to have a clear vision for long, medium & short term
And did you know that Renault started selling cars in India in the year 1921?
But the session of the day was clearly by Kiruba Shankar CEO, Business Blogging. Kiruba, a good friend of mine, spoke on the topic
‘Thought Leadership Branding: How to smartly use blogs and social networks to sculpt your brand image?’. So here are his tips
-Pick a niche and own the space
-Write consistently; be a producer not a consumer. Inorder to demonstrate this, Kiruba asked the audience to take his picture and upload online. With the smart phones, its so easy to be a producer of content nowadays.
-Blogging still rules in times of Facebook
-The more people copy your stuff the better it is, encourage copying, that’s how your ideas spread
-Always be opinionated, that’s what attracts people
-Author a book
-Youtube is the second biggest search site, make good use of Videos
Padma Shri Professor Shoji Shiba’s talk at CII
Interesting talk by Padma Shri Professor Shoji Shiba at CII. Here are the excerpts
Three problem with Indian Managers:
MFA= Me First Attitude,
TTT- Talk Talk Talk and
PTB- Pass The Buck
Only strategy and practice changes across nations, tools are similar everywhere.
Science is always up and down between Thought and experience.
Nine principles in VLFM activities
1. To reach is the word of arrogance, we can only create innovative learning environment.
2. Fishbowl Principle: Always jump into the fishbowl, with the intuition and not logic understand the fish.
one way to jump into fish bowl is to start self initiated research
3. Principle : Unlearning: Origin, current business and past success makes unlearning difficult.
4. small m vs BIG M, where m is manufacturing, change of mind set of manufacturing people.
5. Scientific problem solving: Only strategy and practise changes across nations, tools are similar everywhere
Science is always up and down between Thought and experience
5 step discovery process
1. percieve change 2. Go down abstraction ladder 3. Go up abstraction ladder 4. Elaborate hypothesis and 5. To see future with working hypothesis.
6. Skill development:
Three steps for skill development:
1. Knowledge creates information and commitment
2. Understanding comes from knowledge and apply to the problem
3. Skill comes from understanding and repetition
7. Buddha’s 3 eyes: Leaders should have 3 eyes: Incremental eye (present) Breakthrough eye (future) and control eye (past)
8. From ‘instruct and check’ to ‘Do and demonstrate’
9. Snow bowl effect: View your success
If you don’t have any past success then you can’t continue success
What’s Your Book Per Month?
So what’s your BPM i.e Book Per Month? BPM is nothing but the number of book(s) you read in a month. Some time in 2006 I started this strange but very effective habit of writing down the books that I read and also interesting anecdotes, sentences from the various books. I have named this as Power Pages!
Now I have recorded the names of books that I have read since 2006
Lets come back to BPM now, so here is the detailed names and numbers of the books that I have read in the last 6 years!
And i’ts not at all encouraging!!!! I have so far read 63 books in 6 years. not even a book a month or to be precise .80 book. To put it another way, lets assume that average page of the book is 250. Then I read 218 pages in a month, 7 pages in a day. Things are not so interesting for sure 
So what’s your BPM???
Cerebrate and CerebrateXpress
Cerebrate is an initiative started by a good friend of mine, Kiruba Shankar. His idea was to get best thinkers and achievers from different fields together for four days of brainstorming and bonding. It’s an hybrid between an invite-only event and an unconference. It’s TED meets FooCamp.
The beauty of the event lies in its diversity and excellence. Each of the achievers are from an unique field. Participants from Advertising, Law, Theatre, Space Technology, Media, Business, Education, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Photograhy and Movies will be spending time together, sharing their experiences, challenges and best practices.
Unlike a traditional conference there will be no audience. Everyone participates in active discussions. Participants bring their ideas, enthusiasm, sense of humour and experiences to share with the rest of the team. They share their dreams, successes, failures, challenges.. Cerebrate is all about enriching oneself with inspiring life lessons from each another.
Now Cerebrate happens over a weekend but then what if people don’t have time? Samuel Eddy, another friend of mine came up with another interesting idea, CerebrateXpress! Now CerebrateXpress is a one day event, concept is same where the achievers meet and share their stories.
The first Cerebrate Xpress event took place in 25 April 2012. The theme of this event is Education. Here are excerpts from the first CerebrateXpress
The Venue!
Life By Design by Puja Gupta, a life center that helps people design their best life
The participants!
The stories
1. The one question education never answer is why should we learn something?
2 .If you don’t look at the past, you may not be able to look at the present or even future
3 .You lack the human touch when you get educated too much: Venkatesh Chandrasekaran
4 .Patience is what the education system should provide: Shiva Kumar
5 .A skill that you can’t use in the right place at the right time is of no use: Shiva Kumar
6 .A person who is educated is one who can Learn, Unlearn and Relearn: Shiva Kumar
7 .In India we want children to remain children for the rest of their lives: Aysha Rao of Little Theatre Trust
8 .Now the education is all about getting your job, we are missing the bigger picture -DrLizAlexander
9 .Careers are not linear and are not meant to be: DrLizAlexander
10. My passion was to work with BBC, but two years passed I realised that Its not my ultimate dream- Dr.Liz Alexander
11 .There are two types of people, people who live by dreams and people who live by excuses: Puja Gupta
12 .Dream is to have a school where we teach the kids about wealth management, relationships
