Customer Service in the Digital Age

Customer Service is defined as "the assistance provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services.". In the digital age we live in Customer Service goes much beyond how we greet and serve our customers. It also includes how and where we serve them.

1. Go to your customer

No longer do customers have to come to you to buy a product or a service, technology enables us to go to the customer and provide them with the product or service they require. At the very least, its important to have a good technology platform both on the web and mobile where customers can get their service or product at the click of a button. 

2. Provide services in a predictable standardized manner 

From the colors used on the website/app to the navigation to each service, its important to be standardized and at the same time the company needs to be very predictable in how the service is delivered. This is where automation plays a big part, reducing human intervention in the processes to deliver a service increases the predictability of the service. This in turn improves customer service. 

2. Understanding and predicting your customer 

It is possible with technology to understand and predict your customer through Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. The more they interact with your technology platform, the more you understand about their needs. The more you align with your customers needs, this way you can serve them better by giving your customers what they need. 

3. Serving them on the platform they already are on

Expecting customers to download an app or visit a website may not be soon the preferred way of reaching them. They will expect to get their service through their Alexa or Siri interfaces. They would want to talk and be able to get the answers they are looking for, book the service or order for something. It is important to make it easier for customers to reach you through the apps of their choice in order to provide them superior customer service. 

Not adapting to the digital age to serve customers better might result in the following. Hope it never comes true for any organization.

Advertising as primary revenue stream in startups

Over the last few months I have seen a lot of business ideas that base their revenue generation through advertising. In my experience this is a very dangerous strategy for a startup. Let me narrate my experience about implementing this strategy on a website that Inforica had developed called mindqjobs.com.

We launched this website in the last week of december 2012 with much fanfare with the assumption that we will get the traffic to monetize through advertising. The assumption was made on the fact that the website was to be used by the students of a software training institute Mindq Systems which number in the 1000s every month. We started off by putting Adsense and the pennies started to flow in almost immediately. Thats right, all we got were pennies which added up to a few dollars every day, an amount barely enough to pay for hosting the site on a shared server. One of the reasons is because the traffic was from India and not the west, so you end up making very little in terms of CTRs and CPCs. About a month later one fine day we get a mail from Adsense saying that our adsense account is banned for illegal traffic and that was the end of adsense on the website. 

We then went on to try out other ad networks such as Komoona ads. We get absolutely nothing from this ad network, just a few cents every day which we continue to get as of now. We got an account on infolinks - this made the whole page very ugly by linking up text to extra information and it was not the kind of user experience that we desired on the website. Another ad network that we tried out is Chitika - the issue with this is that it is targeted towards search pages and not content pages so they have very few ad types. The new one that I am trying out now is Tyroo - this is an ad network where you promote products and you earn commissions. 

Based on my experience this is my feedback for all those considering an advertising as their main source of revenue

1. Ensure that you have 10's of thousands of page views per day with a majority of the traffic from the west. 
2. Adsense is by far the easiest ad network to implement with the least amount of work. They have a wide array of ads suitable for every kind of page and the kind of revenue you earn from it is much more than any other ad network we have come across.
3. Have one person full time only evaluating and trying out ad networks and changes to your web pages so that you manage the fine line between a good user experience and good chances of a click through.
4. There is very little control that one has over the ad network and if all your revenue is dependent on a third party you have very high risk inherently built into your revenue model that can drive you into the ground very easily.
5. Since traffic takes time to build up so ad revenue takes time to build up and also there is no guarantee that the ad revenue is directly proportional to the growth of the traffic although a pattern develops over time.

My personal opinion is that ad revenue cannot be your primary source of income of your product unless you are a google, facebook or linkedin and none of us are that when we startup. Ad revenue should only be a supplementary source of income. Build something that a customer is going to love using and is willing to pay you for it. That should be your primary source of income. 

Startup events in Hyderabad

Was reading this small write up in the times paper about the NASSCOM initiative to create 10000 startups and over the last one month I have been part of 3 startup events in Hyderabad focused
primarily towards students and encouraging them to take the entrepreneurial plunge rather than take up a campus recruitment offer.

Startup Weekend University

Startup Weekend University is similar to a regular startup weekend event except that the combination of students to experienced professionals is 70% students and 30% professionals. We had about 75 participants and the event was held at the beautiful BITS Pilani, Hyderabad campus over 3 days with many students staying on the campus. The students were primarily from BITS, IIT, IIIT and Vignan University, Guntur with a few students from other colleges in the city. 

The event was a highly successful event in showcasing that students can build products over the weekend that have a business side to them. There were 13 startups formed over the weekend and all of them had a working prototype to show the judges on sunday evening. There were ideas ranging from playing puzzles to win free food orders to home automation systems where hardware was fabricated at the venue. 

The event kicked off on friday evening with pitch fire (1 min to tell everyone what your idea is), voting for the top ideas and team formation. By 11 PM on friday night we had 13 teams ready to start building their startups. Saturday was filled with mentoring sessions with successful founders, investors, CEOs of companies and product building using the resources that startup weekend provides. Sunday saw final demos being presented in front of a panel of judges that run incubators and accelerators.

Idea Carnival

TiE along with Hyderabad Angels and the Uber Accelerator conducted an event called Idea Carnival at IIIT,  Hyderabad. This was a 2 day event with students from IIIT, IIT, BITS and ISB that attempted to put together a business model and a wireframe/throw away prototype over 2 days to be presented to a panel of judges that consisted of almost 10 angels. It was amazing to see the confidence of the students in putting forth their ideas and business models to a large audience in Avasa Hotel.

Ideato

Ideato was an event conducted in IIT Hyderabad by the students of IIT Hyderabad for the students of IIT Hyderabad. They got about 35-40 students to spend a weekend to ideate and validate their ideas. The ideas were very exciting from creating videos out of images to local search and coupons. 

Other articles I have written about startup weekend

• SWHYD - 2 : 54 hours of blended productivity
• Startup Weekend - Hyderabad
• Why attend Startup Weekend Hyderabad?
• Startup Weekend : From Participant to Organizer
• 15 Reasons why attend Startup Weekend
• Global Startup Battle - 2012
• Thoughts from Startup Weekend Delhi

Staying the course

Life can be challenging for an entrepreneur. The inherent risks of running the venture are high and thus each
day presents their own challenges. The risks are there as the number of people that can do a job is limited, the money available on hand is limited, the number of customers you have is limited and vendors do not give you attention as you are small. Any one of these can change every day and you will notice that you have ups and downs in quick succession - just like you are going on a roller coaster. This can play with the mind of the entrepreneur in a very significant way.

The important thing is to keep evaluating your position with respect to your employees, customers, suppliers and money flow as often as possible and take actions accordingly. There are days when it would seem impossible to manage all of this and you feel like throwing in the towel wondering if it is all worth it. It is at this time you have to go back to your vision and believe completely in your vision and then stay the course to reach that vision. That is where it is very important to have a vision as an entrepreneur.

Forming a vision is like dreaming and can cover

• What kind of an organization you want to create - its values, beliefs?
• What kind of work do you want to do in case of services? 
• What kind of a product do you want to build in terms of a product?
• Understand who are your best customers, suppliers and employees - figure out how you are going to work with them in the future to grow your business and organization?

Your vision should create assets (Read Post on Assets and Branding) - assets can be in the form of a very good customer list, a fantastic set of employees, suppliers who answer your call on the first ring :) and products or services that more and more customers want. If you have this vision and you feel you are moving towards it then it is a lot more easier to stay the course and reap the rewards in time.

10 Reasons to join mindqjobs.com

Inforica in collaboration with Mindq Systems launced http://www.mindqjobs.com. Mindqjobs.com is a website that is going to cater to the needs of the student community. Here are 10 reasons why every graduating student that is preparing for a job or for higher studies has to join Mindqjobs.com.

1. Browse the job board for up to date job information that is curated and posted. 
2. Create a professional looking profile by using the Resume Builder. Once your profile is ready share it as a standalone URL to everyone and then track who has viewed the profile.
3. Use the online material to prepare in various topics such as Quantitative, Logical, Programming languages and so on.
4. Take tests in different topics and see how prepared you are in terms of speed of answering questions and also accuracy. 
5. Connect with others through the discussion board and discuss common topics.
6. Find solutions to common programming problems in different programming languages. Many technical interviews involve answering programming logic problems and this can help you build up that logical capability.
7. Evaluate your typing speed on the website and improve on it which shows proficiency with computers.
8. Get access to professionals to review your profile and ensure that it is written in a professional manner. 
9. Access to downloads such as sample resumes and programming problems for you to try out. 
10. Take sample tests of competitive exams. The IBPS bank exam and more exams are coming soon.

Small victories > Big encouragement

As an entrepreneur one always goes through ups and downs and there are times you second guess yourself and wonder if you are really doing the right thing. There are little things that happen that boost your confidence and give you big time encouragement to forge ahead.

These are small triumphs that give you this new energy to forge ahead. What I find important is to be able to break down things so that one can achieve these small victories that provide validation for what one is doing that gives you the motivation to keep going.

A task not broken down keeps going on for a long time and looks so intimidating that it becomes very hard to keep one motivated right through the entire task.

Product Definition

Many of us are mostly developers for most of our careers and then move into project delivery roles. But very rarely do we have the opportunity to come up with a product idea, build it, market it, sell it and make money. But as an entrepreneur that is what one needs to do and if you can't define products and services and make money consistently it becomes impossible to sustain.  How do we come up with a product or service that a customer is willing to use and pay for it?

The key I feel is to have a very clearly defined product or service in "bite sized" portions that are easily consumable by the end customer and provide a satisfaction to the customer that he does not think twice to pay for it and is willing to talk to his friends and family about it. This product or service should be given to the customer in bite sized portions so that he can easily understand and value.

It is kind of like a restaurant - I have found that restaurants that have a very simple menu, the few things that they have on their menu they make it amazingly well and I do not mind paying them for it as they satisfy my yearning for that kind of food. Also I would recommend the place to my family and friends and also keep going back for more.

Thoughts from Startup Weekend Delhi

I went back to Delhi after almost 6 years for Startup Weekend Mobile Delhi and it was really a wonderful experience.

Delhi as a city has changed quite a bit for the better - for starters I am super impressed with the metro, it is very convenient, nominally priced and well connected. It was very easy to go around the city on the metro. The broad roads and the flyovers around the city was a very welcome change from Bangalore and Hyderabad where there are so many traffic bottle necks.

The event by itself was very exciting in Delhi. There is a stark contrast between the same event in Hyderabad and Bangalore and some of those differences are

1. We had only one round of pitches for ideas in Delhi and got close to 70 ideas. In Hyderabad and Bangalore we got through at least 3 rounds of pitches to get the same number of ideas. The participants in all the 3 cities was just about the same.
2. The number of actual demoable products presented on the 3rd day was a lot more with almost every team having a product to demo. In Hyderabad and Bangalore you get a lot of  presentations without actual product demos.
3. There was a lot of use of white boards and charts in SW Delhi as against a lot of coding in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

My experience has been that the participants in Delhi were more business minded on how to actually take a product to market where as in Hyderabad and Bangalore the focus was more on hacking together something with the business coming secondary. 

Startup Saturday - Hyderabad

The saturday before last, I was invited to give a small informal talk at Startup Saturday (SS). SS is organized by the Headstart Network Foundation - a non-profit organization focused on creation of a startup ecosystem in India. The following video gives a clear idea about what Startup Saturday is all about.

This meeting was held at LaMakaan and there was a very interesting mix of attendees. There were a few students but a lot of attendees were from either those interested in starting up or those having just started up. There were also a couple of reporters of startup related websites. There were some members from angel investor organizations or incubation centers like the IIIT Incubation Center.

The theme of the session was registration, compliance & finance for early stage startups. Every month there is a theme and experts are invited to talk about that theme. It started off with each of the attendees giving a short introduction and then there were a couple of sessions given by a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary about the theme. The format is quite informal and interactive and there are a lot of questions from the participants.

After this some startups were invited to talk about their ventures and their experiences in starting up. The startups who spoke were

• Inforica - Founder- Sudeep D'Souza
• Luminart- Founder- Prabhu
• Acuvate- Founder, Amitesh Anand
• HuSys.net- CoFounder, Kalyan

Again the discussion was lively and interesting with a lot of real world examples and experiences.

After this it was all about networking and exchanging business cards to continue networking beyond the event. I was asked how the startup environment now is different from how it was 6 years ago and the answer is that it is events like this that make it so much easier to startup now with information so easily available so readily.

I would advise anyone who is planning to startup or has just started up to attend this event. I hope more companies that provide services also attend so that startups are aware that there are experts out there to hep them quickly startup.

Motivation at the workplace

IT companies have a reputation of paying very well but they still suffer from very high attrition. Why is that so? I was watching some videos on youtube and came across the one below that validates my thoughts. Motivating employees is not just about paying them well...

About Piracy

The recent pirate attacks on a lot of ships off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden has been in the news. This made me wonder if the pirate attacks are something new or is it something that keeps going on but has just made the headlines because of the volume of attacks. I found this website - ICC Commercial Crime Services that has a Live Privacy Map that lists out all the pirate attacks that have been reported in the recent past. Each map point represents a reported pirate attack and you can click on the map point and read a whole report about the pirate attacks.

In the same website the page Piracy prone areas and Warnings gives details of the areas that are to be avoided and it is interesting to note that all the areas happen to be around South East Asia, Indian subcontinent and the African coast. I am not sure if this is because of the sea routes that are taken or the number of developing/underdeveloped countries in these regions.

Understanding the Economic Crisis

Some of the questions that have been haunting me ever since the economic crisis started are

• What is this so called economic crisis and how it is caused?
• What is the meaning of all the terminology that they are using such as inflation, credit crunch, etc?
• How will the economic crisis effect us?
• How is money created?
• Are the governments around the world doing the right things?
• Is there a relation between the oil prices and the current economic crisis?
• Can the problem be solved and if it can be solved for how long will it go on?

I have been looking around for these answers and came across The Crash Course by Chris Martenson. It is divided into the following chapters and it goes on for a total of a little more than 3 hours.

• Chapter 1: Three Beliefs (Time: 1:46)
• Chapter 2: The Three "E"s (Time: 1:38)
• Chapter 3: Exponential Growth (Time: 6:20)
• Chapter 4: Compounding is the Problem (Time: 3:06)
• Chapter 5: Growth vs. Prosperity (Time: 3:40)
• Chapter 6: What is Money? (Time: 5:55)
• Chapter 7: Money Creation (Time: 4:19)
• Chapter 8: The Fed - Money Creation (Time: 7:13)
• Chapter 9: A Brief History of US Money (Time: 7:14)
• Chapter 10: Inflation (Time: 11:48)
• Chapter 11: How Much Is A Trillion? (Time: 3:28)
• Chapter 12: Debt (Time: 12:32)
• Chapter 13: A National Failure To Save (Time: 12:06)
• Chapter 14: Assets & Demographics (Time: 13:41)
• Chapter 15: Bubbles (Time: 14:10)
• Chapter 16: Fuzzy Numbers (Time: 15:52)
• Chapter 17: PART A: Peak Oil (Time: 17:52)
• Chapter 17: PART B: Energy Budgeting (Time: 12:15)
• Chapter 17: PART C: Energy And The Economy (Time: 7:05)
• Chapter 18: Environmental Data (Time: 16:22)
• Chapter 19: Future Shock (Time: 8:02)
• Chapter 20: What Should I Do? (Time: 19:48)

It is totally worth going through because he talks in very basic terminology and he explains things right from the basics assuming you know nothing. A lot of it is scary and unimaginable but it makes logical sense. Take the time to go through all the presentations right from the begining as it is in a very logical order and you will not be able to understand the later presentations without going through the ones in the begining.

Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Wrap up

Prof K Ramachandran of ISB gave a wrap up on all that we discussed during the full day session.

• Eliminate customer dissatisfaction, always.
  
• Dynamic business plan.
• Strategy is easy, execution is tough.
  
• Have detached passion.
  
• VC money: Be ready to have a bumpy ride.
  
• Documentation is huge.
• Constantly build resources.
  
• Resources are behind opportunities.
  
• Stretch them.
  
• Most critical resource is time.
  
• ROTI - return on time invested. Usually a lot more effective than ROI which most people use.
  
• Innovativeness is needed everywhere.
  
• Working capital is life blood. Working capital should be low.
  
• Compress cycle time.
  
• People and system key to growth.
  
• Share vision, build passion.
  
• Develop and maintain networks.
• Listen to others pick up signals.
  

Related posts

• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Amit Kishore Prasad, SatNav Technologies
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Samir Kumar, Inventus
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sandeep Singhal, Nexus India
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Shantanu Surpure, Sand Hill Counsel
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - DD Ganguly, DimDim
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Prof K Ramachandran, ISB
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sateesh Andra, DFJ
• Notes from Tie-ISBConnect - Sashi Reddi, Applabs
• TiE-ISB Connect conference

Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Amit Kishore Prasad, SatNav Technologies

Amit Kishore Prasad is the founder CEO and MD of SatNav Technologies based in Hyderabad. Amit spoke about Execution - Building a team.

• Ensure you have bosses that the employees look up to and trust.
• People need to repose confidence and faith in the entrepreneur.
• Choose employees that have the willingness to learn and are willing to play multiple roles.
• Employees who have qualifications/experience and also bring an attitude with it will create a problem. 
• In an organization it is good to have written communication. It should be clearly outlined what is the carrot and stick when doing tasks.
• When someone comes with a problem ask them for a solution.
• Give feedback immediately but not publicly.
• Weekly action plans work well
• Retaining people
  - Involve them in the decision making process and keep them in the loop.
  - Defend your team in front of others
  
• When going for VC funding be ready to answer tough questions regarding your team such as are they qualified enough, can the deliver, etc.
• Do not hesitate to fire non-performers.

Related posts

• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Samir Kumar, Inventus
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sandeep Singhal, Nexus India
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Shantanu Surpure, Sand Hill Counsel
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - DD Ganguly, DimDim
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Prof K Ramachandran, ISB
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sateesh Andra, DFJ
• Notes from Tie-ISBConnect - Sashi Reddi, Applabs
• TiE-ISB Connect conference

Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sandeep Singhal, Nexus India

Sandeep was Co-Founder and CEO of Medusind Solutions, one of the leading healthcare outsourcing companies in India. Sandeep is also the co-founder and Managing Director of eVentures, a leading Venture Capital firm focused on early stage investments in India since 1999. Sandeep has held senior roles at McKinsey and Company, Digital Equipment and EDA Systems. Click here to read more about Sandeep.

Sandeep spoke about developing differentiation

• Important to make your product/Service unique
  - This allows you to price better.
  - It is easier to sell.
  - It allows you to figure out where to focus.
  - Helps in prioritizing your resources.
• Sources of differentiation
  - Technology or patents
  - Processes
  - Business model
  - Marketing
• How to differentiate?
  - Build the right team.
  - Surround yourself with people brighter than you that will question you.
  - Develop a deep understanding of the target market.
  - Choose the sources of differentiation.
  - Execute flawlessly.

• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Samir Kumar, Inventus 
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Shantanu Surpure, Sand Hill Counsel
  
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - DD Ganguly, DimDim
  
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Prof K Ramachandran, ISB
  
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sateesh Andra, DFJ
  
• Notes from Tie-ISBConnect - Sashi Reddi, Applabs
  
• TiE-ISB Connect conference

Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Samir Kumar, Inventus

Samir has been an early stage venture investor in India for the past six years.   Prior to co-founding Inventus, Samir built and led the India venture team for Acer Technology Ventures - a $260 million cross-border venture fund investing in early-stage technology and services companies across India, the U.S. and the Asia Pacific. Samir was an early member of two startups in India, and was part of the early team at Wipro. He helped Wipro grow revenues from ~$4M in 1989 to over $200 million in 1998. Click here to read more about Samir.

Samir spoke about Marketing Strategies for a startup.

• Think big and execute in small steps
• It is important to have a good team. Very few VCs will invest in a single individual.
• Product
  Most important thing the entrepreneur needs to focus on.
  It needs to be thought through very carefully and diligently.
  Think from outside in. Look at it from the view of a customer.
  Important to include customers when conceptualizing the product.
  Understand the competition that has similar products.
• Price 
  Many startups are afraid to price the product right.
  Do not price the product too low.
  Price higher but give sweet heart deals initially.
• Placement
  How will the customer buy and pay for the product needs to be thought out?
  Identify your partners and your competitors. Sometimes there is a fine line between them. It may be beneficial at times to partner with a possible competitor in order to penetrate the market.
• Promotion
  It is not always necessary to spend a great deal of money on media. Many popular brands such as orkut, facebook, gmail have done it without big advertising budgets.
• Positioning
  Understand how the product will be positioned in the customers mind.

Related posts

• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Shantanu Surpure, Sand Hill Counsel
  
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - DD Ganguly, DimDim
  
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Prof K Ramachandran, ISB
  
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sateesh Andra, DFJ
  
• Notes from Tie-ISBConnect - Sashi Reddi, Applabs
  
• TiE-ISB Connect conference

Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Shantanu Surpure, Sand Hill Counsel

Shantanu Surpure is Managing Attorney at Sand Hill Counsel, a law firm with offices in Mumbai and Silicon Valley. He focuses on venture capital and private equity transactions. Shantanu holds a BA from Brown University/London School of Economics, an MA Juris from Oxford University and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School and is admitted to practice law in India, California, New York and England and Wales.

Shantanu spoke about Negotiating with VCs.

• Be organized and document everything properly.
• Hire a lawyer when negotiating with a VC because they will have one of their own.
• VC's will do a valuation and will ask for anything between 25% to 40% of the company in the form of preference shares.
• When the VCs have an interest in investing they will give you something called a term sheet which will have all the terms and conditions.
• VCs usually look at a 3-5 year investment horizon.
• In the term sheet there will be anti dilution terms which means that if the valuation of the company falls they might want more stock.
• VC's will want one or more people on the company's board and this has to be negotiated.
• They will want to have rights to veto certain decisions made by the company.
• They will have clauses on any mergers and acquisitions that the company may plan to make in the future and also the hiring and firing of the CEO.
• There will be terms on drag along and tag along which is related to what will happen if either the VC or the entrepreneur quits the organization.
• There can be no shop clauses which means that you cannot talk to other VCs.

Related posts

• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - DD Ganguly, DimDim
  
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Prof K Ramachandran, ISB
  
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sateesh Andra, DFJ
  
• Notes from Tie-ISBConnect - Sashi Reddi, Applabs
  
• TiE-ISB Connect conference
  

Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - DD Ganguly, DimDim

DD Ganguly is co-founder and CEO of Dimdim, Inc. Previously, as Vice President of Product Development at CA (NYSE:CA; $ 3.5B) he built and led an organization of 1000+ members. He joined CA in 2001 upon its acquisition of Boston based AIM, Inc. where he was founder and CEO. Click here to read more about him.

DD Ganguly spoke about his Fund Raising Experience for DimDim which is a free web conferencing service where you can share your desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam with absolutely no download required for attendees.

Funding

• When looking for funding look for people that like you and what you are doing. Angel investors invest in your business because the align with how you think and what you do.
• Try and get journalists and bloggers to write about your product/service. This will help in popularizing and showcasing your product to potential VC's.
• You need to click with the VC for them to invest.

Choosing a name

• The .com webaddress should be available
• There should be a repetition in the name
• Easy to spell from the sound and the sound should be easily derived from the spelling.
• Globally recognized as DimDim was going to be a global brand.
• Easy to pronounce

Related posts 

• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Prof K Ramachandran, ISB
• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sateesh Andra, DFJ
• Notes from Tie-ISBConnect - Sashi Reddi, Applabs
• TiE-ISB Connect conference

Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Prof K Ramachandran, ISB

Professor K Ramachandran is the Associate Dean of Academic Programmes at the Indian School of Business. He has been a professor of entrepreneurship, family business, and strategy at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad since its inception in 2001. He is also the Thomas Schmidheiny Fellow of Family Business and Wealth Management at the ISB.

Professor Ramachandran spoke about Entrepreneurial opportunities and Organization Building - A Road Map. He spoke about identifying the type of opportunity, the graph of time against turnover for a startup and elements of a business plan.

Opportunities are identified through a pent up need or customer dissatisfaction in the existing offerings. By mapping the pent up need (Discontentment) on one axis and Criticality (dissatisfaction) on the other different kinds of opportunites can be identified.

Any organization needs to balance Financial Needs, Technology Needs, Marketing Needs and Entrepreneurial Capability. If an entrepreneur can manage the four of these then his organization will be a shining diamond.

By mapping the turnover of the organization over time one can get the graph as shown below

The key to being successful is to reduce the time from the organization is started till it starts to show a profit and many successful organizations reduce this time to be very short. This curve is never smooth and there are bumps as the organization grows especially when work is delegated and decisions are decentralized.

Business plans force dicipline and it is always good to write a business plan oneself and this task should not be delegated. One needs to keep revisiting and updating their business plan. Need to make a 3-5 year business plan. Don't underestimate working capital and it is important to keep working capital low.

Elements of a Business Plan

1. Executive Summary - Clean, Completing and Concise
2. Product or Service Description - Explain how it will continously provide value
3. Management Team - Capability and Company Description. It is important to have a good advisory team. A good board of advisors help in attracting customers and investment.
4. Market and Competition - Clear understanding of customer needs should be showcased. Good to talk about future competition too.
   
   

   Feature	Competitor 1	Competitor 2	...	You
   Feature	**	**	**	**

5. Marketing and Sales
6. Technology and Operations
7. Implementation Schedule
8. Managing Risks
9. Financial Planning
10. Exit and Growth
    

Related posts

• Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sateesh Andra, DFJ
• Notes from Tie-ISBConnect - Sashi Reddi, Applabs
• TiE-ISB Connect conference
  

Notes from TiE-ISBConnect - Sateesh Andra, DFJ

Sateesh Andra is a Venture Partner with DFJ India. Sateesh started his Silicon Valley career in the early nineties and has extensive background in general management, marketing, product strategy, and technology development.

Prior to DFJ, Sateesh was the fo founder and CEO of Euclid Software, a leader in the IT Governance space. He has also served in product marketing and engineering leadership roles at Tsqware (Conexant), LSI Logic, VLSI Technology (Philips), and Wipro. You can read more about Sateesh here.

Sateesh spoke about the Spirit of Entrepreneurship - My Journey. Here are my notes from that session.

1. Have passion in your idea for a period of time.
2. Dream big.
3. Study your idea.
• Understand the stated value proposition vs the implemented value proposition of your idea. 
• Is your idea a pain killer or a vitamin. In times of hardship people stop using vitamins but the do not stop using pain killers
4. Raise money from the right people. Do not just take money from any source that offers it to you.
5. Perform market research
6. Start local and analyse the market before going into other geographic regions
7. It is not a bad idea to bootstrap an idea initially. It helps one get clarity and will be in a better position to negotiate with VCs later.
8. Look at different ways of doing sales such as direct sales, partner sales and tele sales.
9. If a fast growing market place you will need money to grow fast. For example the current online travel market.
10. Look for strategic partners and customers who will fund the business initially.
11. When rolling out the product or service one needs to understand the customer requirement and how the customer is approached.
12. Ensuring that internal capabilities can meet customer requirements when performing rollouts is important.
13. It is good to have beta customers as it helps to be in touch with the customer when developing the product/service.
14. Reason for investing in mginger was the team behind the idea, the market opportunity that exists in that space and the number of customers that they had already. Their cost of acquiring every new customer was very low.
15. VC's look for documentation and precesses before investing in a company.

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