Navin Balan

A typical question people used to ask when I was a kid or any kid at that time was what do you want to become when you grow up? The choices invariably revolved around the father’s profession, becoming a teacher, or any other infringing variable such as the uncle being in the Army, someone being a doctor in the family, and so forth. In a highly multidisciplinary and knowledge-centred world we live in, career choices are not easy. Competition for talent spans worldwide in globalized economies that define the world order today, making the granular search for a good career even more difficult. When Navin Balan, a former entrepreneur and C-suite exec, and Priya Mohan, a former investment banker, kickstarted a casual conversation on career choices, they arrived at a different perspective that gave rise to a startup idea—a structured career guidance for students called Vidyartha. Reflecting on how Vidyartha was born, Priya says, “I wish I could point out to one event, possibly to make the genesis more dramatic, but that is not the truth. Vidyartha was assimilated brick by brick after a detailed study of the need, what was currently offered and where we can better it. Yes, the critical fuel to the idea was of our own stories – Navin, my co-founder and me – when we wondered how structured career guidance in school would have helped us and if it would have made us choose a path, possibly different from where we stood.”

Developing a career guidance product

Priya Mohan

Not happy with the status quo – career guidance through a bunch of tests – Navin and Priya wanted to provide perspectives and give knowledge-based guidance that builds into a career choice for students typically in Class 9 through 12. A base architecture was built initially based on rationalization of their thoughts. This architecture was pilot tested with a target audience “from our friend’s networks and their kin, just to throw brick bats and question us at every point as adolescents would generally do,” in Priya’s words. Realizing the limitations of a counseling-based career guidance that is individual driven, Vidyartha was built as a product right from the beginning with inputs from educationists, psychologists, and psychometricians. Instead of working on the product themselves, Priya says they “built a strong team and our head of psychology has over 15 years in career guidance and is trained under a famed Harvard Professor.”  The promoters acted as vestibules to ensure innovativeness and product delivery, adds Priya.

Career guidance is not a one-step, one-test process in Vidyartha. The students are put through interest assessment, personality assessment, aptitude assessment, and academic mapping. Based on this, a 360 degree profile of the student is generated. After the results of these assessments are generated, a one-on-one counselling is arranged with an expert counsellor to help the student chart out an action plan. Then, Priya adds, “Based on the results of the assessments, the Vidyartha program opens up eBooks on relevant careers for the student! Each eBook is based on a career and it features professionals in that career.” For instance, the eBook for law features lawyers from different walks explaining the challenges and opportunities on taking law as a career.

Assessments, psychological testing, and interpretations are done by a team of psychologists. Priya focuses on content and research, while Navin looks after technology and analytics. Strategy is a responsibility of both Priya and Navin.

What makes Vidyartha different?

Priya feels the present career guidance focuses only on assessments and is treated as a “definitive solution” whereas Vidyartha adds two more to it: perspectives and collaboration. She adds: “The Vidyartha’s career guidance program is iterative and our profiling ensures we gather as much information and patterns about the students – interests, personality, aptitude – through our proprietary assessments and in addition, collect and map academic performance, self ratings on the content we serve based on interests, their personal notes during the activities and finally data from their interaction with the counsellor. When a student decides to change or add a new interest area, there is a logical flow and they do so only in an informed manner. The interest is our basis and from there the long term and short term milestones are mapped.”

Customers and product delivery

One of the parents from the feedback group of adolescents became the first customer and the customer base was built to 200 individual customers through referrals. Then the first school was acquired within the first year, which helped them develop a good track record. Now there are 1,000 students on Vidyartha from all parts of India. Building the customer base to a million students brings its own problems. According to Priya, is “scaling up without quality deterioration is a challenge. We are working on it and we have both schools and individual customers referring and we have begun our marketing activities. Time will tell how our strategies are working.”

Vidyartha serves both individual students and schools. The base offering being the same, the schools are served through an in-school program whereas individual students are given activity-based career guidance. As regards the school program, Priya says, “For an in-school program, in addition to the said online activities, we organize 4 to 5 group sessions (tailormade again for each class) along with a final one-on-one counselling, which includes the parents also – where we compile the results and data of the students across the year and put together an action plan.” All the assessments are powered by technology and backend analytics built into Vidyartha.

Abhay Mathur, principal of Chirec Public School, Hyderabad, finds the career guidance methodology of Vidyartha immensely useful. He says, “the four modules in each year start with traits being collected about students in an indirect manner through the completion of a survey. This is then plotted to potential careers and further refined to subjects needed to be successful. The students then compare their career choices with the trait collector results and see if there is a sync.” Then parents are involved in the counseling process as well. Mathur is surprised to see the choice of many students switch away from set answers to previously untouched areas. He concludes, “Whether the children follow the advice or not, the fact remains that these modules get a conversation started on the dinner table at home to help students with their families make an informed choice.”

Funding and team

Vidyartha was bootstrapped from Navin and Priya’s personal funds and recently they raised an undisclosed sum from an angel investor. The team consists of core professionals in technology, psychology, and psychometry.

Pain points of students and advice to parents

There are three categories of students, according to Priya. Those who are clear what they want to do, those who know some of their capabilities, and those who are clueless. Regardless of which category the student belongs to, according to Priya, some of core issues include peer and parental pressure, the battle between interests and their capabilities and lack of awareness about opportunities, adding, “In many instances, in our experience, career choices are localized and changes even by geography!” In these cases, Priya emphasizes, “A more thorough approach to guidance is needed.”

Quoting her chief counsellor, Priya asks parents to keep an open mind. Some parents make a career choice for their children without knowing the child’s interest or natural inclination.  The counsellor stresses that “it is important [for parents] to use that knowledge to engage with them [the children] and empower them to make their own decisions.” Priya concludes saying, “after all, everything your child does from school through college are but milestones towards a fruitful career and not just a job!”

This book is a comprehensive guide to financial planning and venture fundraising for tech entrepreneurs. “It takes much more than a great idea to make your tech start-up a success. In addition to creativity and new ideas, being a successful tech entrepreneur requires strategic decision-making in terms of business planning, financial planning, negotiations, and corporate governance,” says author David Shelters.

His book serves as a thought-provoking guide that helps tech entrepreneurs avoid the planning and execution risks inherent in startups in general and the treacherous realm of venture capital in particular. The author draws on his insights and experiences to provide answers as well as further questions to entrepreneurs in their journey from incubation to exit.

The chapters are well structured and present a realistic picture to startup founders of what can be expected from prospective investors, how to craft a business plan from a strategic financial perspective, steps for successfully raising funds, and ingredients for negotiation. Sample financial plans, funding proposals, tables and checklists are included.

David Shelters has over fifteen years of entrepreneurial experience as a founder, cofounder, or financial advisor to numerous tech start-ups in both the US and Asia. Currently based in Bangkok, he provides financial advisement services through his company, Karon Business Consulting. He is also an active participant in the Thailand tech entrepreneurial scene, presenting at numerous BarCamps and other tech conferences. Shelters  mentors several local software start-ups and is the in-house financial mentor at Hubba, a co-working space in Bangkok. He has a BA in history and political science from the State University of New York at Albany and an MS in international affairs from Florida State University.

The book is positioned as a mentor’s guide, helping startups think in strategic terms. The companion features the author’s blog and other resources such as a sample business plan, term sheet, due diligence checklist, and code of business conduct. I have summarised some of the book’s startup activities and checklists in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Strategic and financial planning for startups

Chapter 1 fleshes out the different types of funding options available, their control effects, equity dilution, alignment with shareholders, events on liquidation, and effects of exits.

Chapter 2 offers valuable insights into understanding investors. “Their primary objective is to make money. There are many types of investors, each with different expectations and capabilities,” Shelters advises. “Do not succumb to the mad scientist syndrome,” he urges techie founders; as much effort should be devoted to marketing as R&D of the product.

Startups should not just turn to investors for money, but also for alignment with shareholder interests, sharing of risk, and progressive attitudes towards control. The ideal investor is a strategic investor, for whom the venture offers a way to enter a new market more easily, leverage existing operations and investments, and gain competitive advantage.

The author warns startups to stay away from ‘vulture capitalists,’ who are looking for desperate startup founders and will structure agreements in such a way that the majority of the risk is assumed by the startup and most of the gains and control will go to the investor. There also some investors who have ulterior and even sinister motives, and may not always act in the best interests of the startup.

Chapter 3, on business plans, provides valuable advice on segmenting primary and second markets, direct and indirect competitors, positioning of disruptive products with respect to price and channel, and articulation of key milestones and timelines.

It is important for startups to make a full list of all possible risks; investors do not like nasty surprises. Worst case, best case and expected case scenarios should be spelled out.

Chapter 4 stresses the importance of fiscal discipline in addition to technical skills. A good analogy is made to fuelling issues during a road trip. Should you stop at every gas station? Should you stop only when you are almost out of gas? What kind of fuel and lubricants should you use? What about food supplies?

It would have been useful if the author cited more explicit case studies from the field, and also showed how to revise financial plans in the face of strategy pivots or after occasional failures along the startup journey. Still, startups will find this book to be an informative and sobering assessment of the hard work in the entrepreneurial journey.

“Your business plan should reflect the progression in your planning. If you devise and execute an effective financial plan, the consequent improvement in business planning, the periodic securing of funds on the most favourable terms at the optimal minimum amounts and timing will serve to maximise RoI upon exit,” the author concludes.

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YourStory recently caught up with Rohit Prasad, an academic entrepreneur at heart and a professor at Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. He is also the author of the book Startup Sutra. Startup Sutra comprises of true stories of two sets of people who survived the turbulent times, turned around the tide of the nature, bravely stirring through a combination of unflinching attitude, discernment and kismet.

“Indian ecosystem is suppurating faster than ever. We are witnessing startups in eCommerce, consultancy and tech product. It is like the baby boomers era of 1950. However, entrepreneurship is not as glamorous as it looks. My book takes a reality check at this,” says Rohit. Rohit feels that entrepreneurship is not just about building or selling products, it is about realizing dreams and self fulfillment. When the idea of writing a book on entrepreneurship entered Rohit’s mind, he consciously decided to stay away from a celebrity entrepreneur. He would rather celebrate the story of the entrepreneur next door. The real essence of entrepreneurship, Rohit says, lies in the travail to nurture a product where the only cynosure is your faith.

Advice to entrepreneurs

Along with the domain knowledge, entrepreneurs also need to be strong in networking. Personal relationship within and outside the profession is very important for the success of the venture and in a never ending quest for self development. For those who startup with close friends as co-founders, he says, they should be very sure that all the co-founders chase the same rabbit. Be it key decisions to expand, establish a franchisee or launch a new product, if the founders are not on the same page, then the times ahead could be full of troubles.

Failure, he says, is untouchable in India and that dissuades many potential entrepreneurs. But the perception is changing. Failure, after the well-publicized stories of Indian business tycoons, is considered just a part of journey.

What ails the ecosystem in India?

The ecosystem had taken off well in certain pockets of India like Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and NCR Corridor. But what really ails the ecosystem in India, according to Rohit is the dearth of the angel groups and funding — that are in plenty in countries like the USA. The existing angel groups are also not very big in size. And with an increasing number of startups coming up, the funding gap continues to grow. Because of the expediting costs and office rents, startups are coming up from Tier II towns like Madurai, Coimbatore and Thiruvananthapuram.

The world truly awaits technology startups like Microsoft, Google and Facebook to come from India. There are very few product based startups in India that build products that can be truly called world class and one of the reason for this can be attributed to the mediocre quality of education imparted in India. Poor linkage of education with industry and lack of innovation are another factors aiding the conundrum.

“The 21st century belongs to India in terms of market, ideas and youth. We have to hit the right deck to be the next Silicon Valley,” concludes Rohit.

If you are up to speed on the term ‘flat world,’ this is the next term you need to understand: ‘tilted world,’ the shift of economic power — jobs, wealth, and market opportunities – from Northern countries to Southern countries (south of the 31^st parallel). The West and Japan are “a physical and psychological ocean” away from countries such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

According to research estimates, by 2015, the number of Asian middle class consumers will equal the number in Europe and North America; by 2030, India will account for about 23 per cent of global middle-class consumption, followed by China (18 per cent), US (7 per cent), and Germany and France (2 per cent each).

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected, complex and financially unstable, and driven by the forces of digitisation. In the last major economic shift, power tilted away from China, India and Japan towards Europe over centuries; this new shift is happening in mere decades, explains Ram Charan in his latest book. (See also my reviews of the books Reverse Innovation, China Fast Forward and India Inside).

Ram Charan is a world-renowned business advisor, author and speaker. His previous bestselling books include Execution, The Game Changer, Talent Masters, Leadership Pipeline, Know-How and Boards at Work. He has worked as a coach and consultant for GE, Bank of America, DuPont, Novartis, EMC, 3M, Verizon, Coca-Cola, 3M, Merck, Hindalco, Tyco, Aditya Birla Group, and Tata Group. He has an engineering degree from India and an MBA and doctorate from Harvard Business School.

Charan has been hailed by industry leaders as a gifted visionary, pragmatist, catalyst and even a ‘secret weapon.’ His latest book on global strategy is a good mix of case studies, literature review, personal anecdotes, business insights and actionable checklists.

Businesses in Southern countries have ready access to the capital and expertise they need to grow, and many of them are not yet known to companies in the North, thus creating disruption as well as opportunity. Momentum and spirit are on the side of the South: they are creating their own rules, with a blend of state capitalism, protectionism and even communism.

“Another characteristic of the new world economy will be invention of a type and scale never before seen,” says Charan. Innovation was dominated by MNCs and Western universities in the last century, but now innovators are emerging in Silicon Valley startups as well as entrepreneurs around the world. “Their ability to do so singly and collectively comes largely from the increasing real-time openness and democratisation of knowledge and availability of start-up funds in a digitised world,” Charan says.

Mobile phones and the Internet enable entrepreneurs to share information they could never before access. “Much of this innovation is at the local level for the local market, and some will find its way from one country to another. Online contests and crowdfunding help small-scale entrepreneurs get the money they need to develop their ideas,” says Charan.

Digitisation helps create new global industries from scratch in just a few years. Google, Vonage, Skype and Apple have disrupted the telecom industry; Amazon is challenging retailers such as Best Buy and Walmart. The Internet of Things and Big Data can also improve supply chains and operating margins.

“The most dramatic change of all may be the power of digital technology to create structural changes in the composition of national economies,” predicts Charan, with the rise of mobile penetration as compared to landlines in Africa and India.

In addition to the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China), Charan also advises keeping an eye on the CIVETS nations (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, South Africa). China has not only created successful private companies like Haier and Huawei but state-owned enterprises in strategic industries, with a much longer-term focus than Wall Street companies. Companies and talent from Southern countries are expanding across their regions as well, such as Marico (from India to the Middle East) and Airtel (from India to Africa); mining companies from Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa are luring away Indian engineering graduates.

Charan provides detailed profiles of successful Southern large-scale entrepreneurs: GMR Group, Hindalco, Airtel, Ambev and Haier. They have aggressively expanded even into domains where they have no prior familiarity, recruited the best local and Western talent, focused on tight margins as well as long term strategy, innovated on business models, and built strong brands.

In addition to ‘tilted world,’ other important terms explained by Charan include  “outside-in” and “future-back” thinking – looking at your business through the lens of another leader sitting elsewhere, and looking back from time horizons 20 years into the future.

Charan also profiles Northern companies who have successfully made the global tilt: Dow Chemicals (moving from commodity to specialty chemicals), Allied Signal (moving from auto parts to aerospace), Thomson (moving from print newspapers to digital business information), P&G (moving one headquarters to Singapore), GE (forming an avionics joint venture in China; selling its plastics division to Saudi Arabia), Borealis (forming a joint venture in Abu Dhabi), and 3M (centres of excellence in emerging economies).

The decades ahead will witness increasing competition for resources and jobs, trade imbalances, and talent shortages; business leaders and entrepreneurs should factor these in now in their long term plans. “Information is readily available. Time for reflection is what’s in short supply,” Charan observes. Business leaders should be on the alert for pivotal events and be able to see bends in the road ahead.

To do so, leaders need to ‘use buckets rather than spoons’ and ‘take a flight instead of driving a car’ – in other words, expand their thinking and strategic horizon. This also calls for ‘multicontextual thinking’ — blending multiple local perspectives via structural and social changes in organisational information flow and decision making power.

Soft skills matter a lot in dealing with businesses and customers in different countries; social networks of ‘global integrator’ leaders need to be culturally diverse and experientially deep. Formal and informal discussions with business leaders from various cultures are needed so that people connect with issues and with each other socially as well as intellectually. “In many cases, you may have to be less efficient to be more effective,” Charan accurately describes.

The concluding chapter provides a checklist of how business leaders should create tangible vision, develop strong talent pools, direct budgets towards growth, adjust compensation, let knowledge flow, and make the right decisions.

“The pace and timing of the global tilt may be uncertain, but the direction is clear,” concludes Charan. Use imagination to see opportunities before they fully form, and the courage to act in the face of uncertainly, he advises.

It would be apt to end the review with some of the good quotes in the book.

“Control your destiny or someone else will.” – Jack Welch

“Attitude is a little thing that can make a big difference.” – Winston Churchill

“If you’re caught between speed and perfection, always choose speed and perfection will follow.” – Sunil Mittal

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” – Wayne Gretzky

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2013 Harper Collins India

9 chapters, 306 pages

This book is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on innovation, with examples drawn from the US, Europe and especially India (see my list of book reviews  of titles such as The Innovator’s DNA, India Inside and China Fast Forward). Most of the case studies are about large organisations, but there are good examples of innovative startups as well. Examples are drawn not just from the usual list of product MNCs but services firms and government agencies as well (including Tihar Jail!). The book has a companion Web site with links to useful articles and blogs for each chapter.

Vinay Dabholkar is the president of Catalign Innovation Consulting and helps organisations foster a culture of innovation. He has worked with several organisations in India over half a decade to develop the idea pipeline and the innovation leadership pipeline. He has worked with technology companies such as Motorola and Sasken, and is an active blogger.

Rishikesha T. Krishnan is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, where he teaches innovation management and strategy. His earlier book, From Jugaad to Innovation, identified the challenges faced by India in enhancing industrial innovation, and how these can be overcome. He has worked with NASSCOM and CII on innovation initiatives. His blog tracks contemporary trends in innovation.

“Jugaad is old hat. It has done little for India in terms of innovation,” according to the authors.

Interestingly, there is another school of research which strongly advocates blending some principles of jugaad and frugal innovation along with structured innovation (eg. see my review of the book ‘Jugaad Innovation’ and my interview with one of the authors Navi Radjou). Perhaps I should put together a ‘grand unified theory of innovation’ with four phases: Basic Jugaad, Advanced Jugaad, Basic Structured Innovation and Advanced Blended Innovation? But that is getting ahead of the story a bit…      :-)

“In today’s globalised market place it is increasingly difficult to survive with just quick fixes or creative improvisation,” Dabholkar and Krishnan advise. The authors build on a range of existing theories of innovation, international case studies, and local research and blend them into an eight-step flow of innovation capability.

The material in the book is thoroughly referenced and well structured. Each chapter begins with an inspirational quote and ends with takeaways, things to measure, things to do, and experiments to conduct. The concluding chapter ties all the material together succinctly.

Innovation has three elements, the authors explain: an idea, implementation and impact. They typically focus on a product/service/process, customer experience (eg. new store layouts) and business model (eg. IPL, Aravind Eye Hospital). A product may be new to a company but not to the market. Not every invention results in an innovation taken to market; and not every innovation is associated with an invention.

Innovation is driven by curiosity and creativity; it is an iterative process involving risk taking along with risk assessment and mitigation. Typical impediments to innovation include attitudes of ‘not invented here’ syndrome, preservation of status quo, and prediction disability.

I have summarised some of the steps and components in Table 1, but each chapter makes for a good read with insights and debates.

Table 1: Three Phases and Eight Steps to Systematic Innovation

Startups will particularly find Chapter 6 useful, which addresses business model iteration (also see the book review of Lean Startup by Eric Ries). It shows how, for example, Anupam Mittal tweaked the model of online matrimonials site Shaadi.com to offer physical centres across India for offering services to parents of partners and not just the couples (eg. wedding planning).

RedBus founder Phani Sama first thought of selling software to bus operators – but then decided to offer ticket sales. Micromax began by providing software services for Nokia and Airtel, and then sold phones targeting market gaps such as dual-SIM phones and long-life batteries. TCS now targets SMEs through its iON cloud service. Software product companies embrace services once their product matures, and vice versa.

The concluding chapter offers ideas on how innovation leaders may create ‘innovation management dashboards’ to track innovation flows and successes, and nurture innovation cultures in the long run. Innovation can be headed by the CTO, CMO, CIO, or heads of functions such as HR or strategy.

In sum, this book definitely belongs in the hands of organisational leaders and entrepreneurs interested in the long term implications of innovation programmes, and provides useful tables and checklists for implementing their own initiatives. The wealth of case studies, anecdotes and personality profiles makes the material easily accessible to a broad audience.

It would be fitting to end this book review with some of the featured quotes:

“Once your mind stretches to a new level, it never goes back to its original dimension.” – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

“Learn to fail with pride, comfort and pleasure.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“The theory of business has to be tested continuously.” – Peter Drucker

“I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” – Isaac Newton

“A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tsu

“Without computer clubs there would probably be no Apple computers.” – Stephen Wozniak

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Jugaad is old hat. It has done little for India in terms of innovation; India ranks 64^th in the Global Innovation Index. In today’s globalized marketplace, it is increasingly difficult to survive with just quick fixes or creative improvisation. Indian companies have no option but to move beyond jugaad towards a more dependable and systematic process of innovation.

Says the foreword of this how-to guide for innovation leaders- 8 Steps to Innovation- a book from Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan and Dr. Vinay Dabholkar. Rishikesha is a professor at the Indian Institute if Management, Bangalore where he teaches innovation management and strategy while Vinay is the president of Catalign Innovation Consulting and helps organizations foster a culture of innovation.

The duo has studied innovation for more than a decade and come up with a framework that can help companies employ systematic innovation.

How do they define innovation?

Innovation happens when an idea is implemented to create an impact. “It has three key elements: Idea, implementation and impact,” says Professor Rishi. In a for-profit organization, the impact is typically measured as either cost saving or as an increase in revenues.

8 Steps to Innovation is published by Collins Business and the authors also run a blog which is constantly updated. The framework is aimed at companies of all sizes who want to practice innovation and it gives actionable points instead of jargons.

Some of the chapters especially hold value for startups and the book draws examples from some of the success stories like redBus.

Here are 2 ideas from the book that apply really well to startups:

1) Building a challenge book
This section includes making a list of problems that are worth solving. Once identified, you need to feel the pain, sense the wave and see the waste. These three steps tell you how to move ahead from the challenge book.

2) Improve Idea Velocity
A startup is full of ideas coming in from all corners and execution becomes a challenge. As a business model too, a startup is very fixated on what it starts out from, it undergoes continuous changes. The book details out processes for how a company can experiment with low cost and high speed.

On the whole, the book is laid out in the following fashion:

1) Building an idea pipeline

Step 1: Lay the Foundation
Step 2: Create a Challenge Book
Step 3: Build Participation

2) Improve Idea Velocity

Step 4: Experiment with low cost at High Speed
Step 5: Go fast from prototyping to incubation
Step 6: Iterate on the Business Model

3) Increase the batting average

Step 7: Build an Innovation Sandbox
Step 8: Create a margin of safety

The 8 step framework has a powerful conclusion and has positive words from the likes of Kris Gopalakrishnan (Executive Co-chairman, Infosys), Sukumar Rajagopal (Senior VP, CIO & Head of Innovation, Cognizant Technology Solutions) and more. The framework is a good guideline for any organization and especially for a startup looking at fostering systematic innovation within the company.

The book is available on Flipkart here.

9 chapters; 288 pages

2012: Hodder/Hachette (Amazon)

This highly readable book is a combination of science journalism and travelogue, addressing one of the most interesting questions of the 21^st century: how will one of the world’s oldest civilizations balance its deep traditions with modern science, and emerge with game-changing innovations? “India was one of the most powerful scientific nations of all,” says the author, and it may even be “the birthplace of the geek.”

India is a nation of “geeks, swots, nerds, dweebs, boffins and dorks,” the book begins. Almost one in five of all medical and dental staff in the UK is of Indian origin, and one in six employed scientists with science or engineering doctorates in the US is Asian. By the turn of the millennium, there were even claims that a third of all engineers in Silicon Valley were of Indian origin, with Indians running 750 of its tech companies, according to the author.

Angela Saini is a science journalist who has written for the BBC, the Economist, New Scientist, Science, and Wired, and has been an invited speaker at Columbia University, Google, and Newswomen’s Club of New York. She was named European Young Science Writer of the Year in 2009, and her Web site provides links to her blogs. Her father was an engineer from India and she grew up in the UK, thus giving her unique perspectives blending east and west.

In the 21^st century, people have started asking whether Asian countries like India will become powerful economic giants once more, reclaiming the scientific and technological legacy they lost.

The book raises a number of interesting questions in this regard. How is it that a poverty-ridden country like India could send rockets to the moon and build a powerhouse IT industry? Where does astronomy end and astrology begin in the Indian tradition? How do Indian scientists blend science in professional life and tradition in personal life? What effect did colonial rule have on Indian attitudes towards science, heritage and power?

The book is based on a series of interviews conducted by Saini with a range of engineers, entrepreneurs and young scientists in India, and goes beyond the facts and figures which are the usual case in comparative statistical studies. But the second part of the book’s title is very misleading, there is nothing about global takeovers here (a good example of how publishers should *not* position a book).

I have summarized some of the issues raised in the book in a thematic manner in Table 1, but the chapters are more lively of course in describing the profiled institutes and the insightful conversations and debates about science and innovation.

Table 1: Geek Power: Opportunities and Challenges

Science and engineering were thankfully high priorities of post-independence India, and the seeds were sown for space and technology education institutes. But the initial change was slow and poverty continued to be widespread, leading to massive brain drain – only in the past couple of decades has this trend reversed, and India is now “kitted out for battle in the coming technological age.”

“The rate at which India has managed to amass space expertise has come as somewhat of a surprise to the rest of the world. But the biggest shock of all has been how it has managed to do everything so cheaply,” says Saini; some estimate that India’s space budget is only three percent of NASA’s budget.

Competitively, India fares poorly in the Olympics, and seems better suited for thinking games like chess or hand-eye sports like archery. In fact, the science Olympiad programs seem to get more Indian media coverage than the Olympics! But unfortunately many Indian teenagers seem to give up their entire childhoods to exam revision, rote learning and tutoring; more emphasis is needed to encourage out of the box thinking and creativity.

More infrastructure is also needed for higher educational institutes; the Indian government’s spend on all the IITs is equivalent to just 8% of the annual budget of MIT in the US! The curriculum needs more of a blend of humanities perspectives, but many students seem more interested in passing exams and getting high-paying jobs, thus leading to ‘technological dystopia.’

By 2015, Indian IT companies will be making at least $12 billion per year. Indian IT companies have raised the aspirations of youth – but do not spend as much on R&D as their global counterparts, and are still focusing on ‘frugal innovations.’ But perhaps this will lay the foundation for future cadres of inventors, says Saini, drawing parallels to 1970s Japan.

However, some students and employees take on hobbies and entrepreneurship seriously, and ‘Generation Why’ is experiencing and leading the liberalisation of thought. “This is the generation that promises to change Indian technology companies from the backroom maintenance outfits that they are now into innovative powerhouses,” observes Saini. IIT Bombay’s annual TechFest is a good example of how the young generation rallies around technology, and the International Robot World Cup was recently held in Bangalore as well.

Thanks to India’s vast scale, even a small percentage of techies who become innovators and entrepreneurs can transform India’s fate — as cities like Bangalore are showing, with a large pool of engineers and designers and a good ecosystem for entrepreneurs with lots of meetups.

Indian IT contributions in the US are well documented (eg. Hotmail, USB), and in local offices of MNCs (eg. IBM’ Spoken Web). The author highlights TringMe as an example of a startup which has a successful Web-to-voice product.

On the health front, traditional ayurvedic knowledge has withstood the tests of time and science and is not just absorbed in local life but also used by drug MNCs (eg. neem, turmeric). But in other areas there is a “bizarre mix of science, religion and pseudo-science” – such as claiming that all modern scientific achievements were also present in Vedic science. Perhaps this is “aggressive defensiveness about India” due to colonization and globalization? Organizations like the Indian Rationalist Association are trying to promote critical thinking and debunk bizarre practices, superstitions and views passed off as science.

One chapter profiles Lavasa, a futuristic resort city in the Western Ghats near Pune. “This may be India’s first city designed for Generation Y. It’s a geek’s paradise. And not only will the geeks live here, the geeks will rule,” says Saini.

Interestingly, a country as bureaucratic and corrupt as India has also become one of the world’s largest showcases of e-government technology and services (eg. Common Services Centres, rural kiosks, land records digitisation, courtroom workflow, biometric IDs). “It’s happening here faster than in many other more developed nations,” observes Saini. “Can the old babu raj really be abolished by the geeks or will it divide India down the middle?” asks Saini, wondering about a new digital divide.

On the pharmaceutical front, India’s support of Open Source Drug Discovery is probably inspired by the Asian cultural view of holistic medicine – as compared to the “scientific fortresses” of drug MNCs. The collaborative kind of medical research requires both IT as well as lab experts. “Luckily, India has plenty of both,” observes Saini.

India’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Ecology made headlines by becoming the first in the world to sequence the zebrafish genome, and also sequenced the first full genome of an Indian individual. “I love their make-do-and-mend nerdiness,” admits Saini, after an interview with the gene team.

In sum, this book will appeal to entrepreneurial Indians, NRIs and all those interested in the role of science and engineering in society. The critiques in the book come across as well balanced: credits are given to worthy accomplishments, while obvious as well as deep contradictions are also addressed. Myths, hypocrisies, contradictions, challenges, opportunities, tragedy, humour and farce – all find a place in this witty book.

Comparisons with the rise of the ‘scientific temper’ in the US, UK and Japan would have helped contextualize the material in a more global manner, and an aggregated timeline of the innovations profiled in the book would be a great addition. Some reviewers have also pointed out missed interview opportunities: TIFR (Tata Institute for Fundamental Research), NCBS (National Centre for Biological Sciences) and Dr. Abdul Kalam.

The book ends with a description of the annual Indian Science Congress. “As far as scientific conferences go, it has to be the wackiest. It’s more like a Star Trek convention or the International ComicCon,” observes Saini. Presentations of various quality on a whole spectrum of topics rub shoulders: rocket science, IT, energy, spirituality, sexuality. The audience ranges from ministers and scientists to hippies and gurus.

“The fact that even the wackiest ideas are tolerated in India has given scientists and engineers here a unique freedom to explore the edges of what’s believed to be possible,” concludes Saini.

[Follow YourStory's research director Madanmohan Rao]

Adit is a petroleum engineer from UPES, Dehradun and was earlier working for a travel solutions company, as the lead interaction designer. Adit co-founded FS in December 2012 with his wife, Sakshi who was earlier working for TCS.

FS shares the space with institutes like KhanAcademy and other open source forums. But Adit says the USP of his business is that their users can interact with each other through messages. Their forums are driven by ratings called knowledge index that shows how insightful the discussion or article is. The ratings are based on two parameters: number of users who posted their opinions and number of times the opinion has been marked as insightful. “We have applied Naive Bayesian classifier (which according to Wikipedia is, a simple probabilistic classifier based on applying Bayes’ theorem with strong (naive) independence assumptions) for deciding the rating of the discussion. Also students on our site have access to virtual labs where they can carry out different experiments in physics,” explains Adit.

Adit & Sakshi Gupta

FS has 850 registered members todate and is currently on the lookout for tie-up with schools and colleges which do not have access to physical labs. Adit also plans to launch mobile apps on Android and iOS platform. To generate content on FS, there are two students from IIT who have joined them as interns who contribute to the knowledge community. Owing to the educational background of their family, Adit also has professors from elite colleges in Indore contributing to the content. Some of the well known names who have partnered them are Prof. Prabhudayal Sharma from HolkarScienceCollege, Prof. Dhiraj Ahire and Prof. Palan – both from BarwahaScienceCollege .  A lot of the content also gets generated from the user community. Adit plans to hire graduates from IIT as full time employees for maintaining the quality of the content.

Based out of Pune, the FS team comprises of three people, excluding freelancers and advisors. FS is a boot strapped venture and is in look out for angel funding. Adit plans to generate revenue by charging on access to indepth and research articles, highly knowledgeable experiments in virtual labs and mobile apps. With students from 16 universities of USA registered, FS banks on word-of-mouth marketing apart from social media and Hacker Street. Adit wants to bring Indian students and communities to FS. Speaking on his vision, Adit says: “FS is here to disrupt the educational model. We want to scale it to a global level as a source of quality content. We want students to create experiments on their own by giving access to API’s and content. We aim to nurture the concept of self published books at FS.”

2012 Pearson International

224 pages

This book is a useful ‘creativity assistant’ to keep your creative juices flowing, and a good kick in the butt to get you out of your productivity doldrums!

The slender book makes for an easy read, and is full of inspiring photographs, stimulating ideas, inspirational quotes, useful examples and innovative exercises. Each chapter is short, just a page or two in length, with actionable tips and checklists.

The book has an online companion with more tools and tips to keep the creative flow going. Most of the cited examples are from the US and UK, and it would be great for other writers to jump in and expand the discussion with global perspectives too.

Jurgen Wolff is a writer and coach in creativity and writing, who divides his time between London and southern California. His other books include Marketing for Entrepreneurs, Focus, Your Writing Coach, and Do Something Different.

The material is divided into four sections: Dreaming, Originating, Applying and Adapting. I have summarized some of the principles in Table 1, but each section is worth a detailed read of course.

“The journey to creative success is at least as rewarding as arriving,” begins Wolff. He is a strong advocate of the ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ school of creativity which is in favour of prototyping and adaptation rather than overplanning. “You can fail only if you stop,” he advises; “success is what you say it is.”

Table 1: Creativity Principles

The author describes four key principles of brainstorming: quantity counts (create lots and lots of initial ideas), don’t be judgemental in weeding out ideas, write down every idea, build on others’ ideas. Wolff brings up a useful quote from Linus Pauling in this regard: “I have lots and lots and lots of ideas, and then I throw away the bad ones.”

One whole section of the book is devoted to profiles of companies who embody some of the creativity principles described above: such as i-PostMortem (with virtual i-Tombs as online memorial services after you pass away), Sal Khan (Khan Academy), artists who successfully raised funds from Kickstarter, Jacquie Lawson (e-cards), Simon Tofield (use of YouTube to promote his cat animations), Marco Giannini (healthy dog food), Michael Sands (nutritious non-junk snackfoods), Will Ramsay (Affordable Art Fair), Paul Stanyer (HolidayTaxis.com for hassle-free taxi experiences for tourists), Joanna Wivell (InsidersMadrid.com online tourism service for Spain), Tax and Relax (bed&breakfast offering free tax filing), Moby’s album Play (licensed to TV shows), Todd Basche (travel locks based on words and not numbers), and Tammy Tibbets (ShesTheFirst.org site for fundraising information on women’s causes).

Cited books include Difference (Scott Sage), Guerilla Marketing (Jay Levinson), and The Creative Habit (Twyla Tharp); the Creativity World Forum is also mentioned as an interesting event for creative types. More such events, references and online resources would have been helpful for readers (eg. the book Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko comes to mind).

In sum, this useful and engaging book shows readers how to unleash endless streams of ideas on any topic and how they may be turned into success.

[Follow YourStory's research director Madanmohan Rao]

10 chapters; 304 pages

2013 Jossey-Bass

‘Fail fast, learn fast’ is the mantra of the times for startups. This insightful book by Laurence Weinzimmer and Jim McConoughey addresses how companies can succeed by knowing failure, and offers a useful classification of the different kinds of organisational and leadership failures.

While many companies share their failure experiences internally, few share it externally — and that is a useful contribution of this book: a compendium of failures in business, and how we can all learn from these failures.

The case studies, learnings and recommendations are based on a 7-year study of what almost 1,000 managers across 21 industries really think about lessons from failures. Interviewed managers are from startups, SMEs, conglomerates, MNCs and even government agencies.

Laurence G. Weinzimmer is a business advisor to numerous Fortune 100 companies, professor at Bradley University, and author of three books (including ‘Fast Growth’). His work has been translated into over fifteen languages. Jim McConoughey is an active fund manager for venture and early stage capital investments and a business advisor. He is CEO of the Heartland Partnership, and has been interviewed in a range of news media and business publications.

The book also has an online companion which offers three scales of self-assessment as free PDFs: Passive Aggressive Scale, Self Absorbed Leader Scale and Fine-Grained Scale.

Societies, cultures and organisations tend to value perfections and hide failure. “Companies pay their employees to succeed, not to fail. However, the more we talk about the valuable lessons that come from mistakes and honour discussions about failure, the less likely it will be such a taboo subject,” according to the authors.

The books has been hailed as “an instant business classic destined for the tablets and shelves of innovation economy leaders” by Larry Weber, CEO, W2 Group. Most of the case studies in the book are from the US, thus opening the door to other researchers to identify failures and learnings from other countries as well.

Learning from one’s own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others is a necessary part of the journey of effective leadership, and this book offers a useful guide to learning these powerful lessons. Even highly successful and profitable companies have made mistakes, and promising startups have floundered by being unable to recognise and recover from failures.

Much of the business literature heralds ‘best practices’ and ‘success stories,’ but ‘worst practices’ and ‘failure fables’ are few and far between. Leadership is not just about doing things right or doing the right things, but also about avoiding the ‘wrong’ things and being forewarned about blind spots, environmental change and managerial dysfunction.

There is a positive relationship between cultures where mistakes are accepted and both individual and firm-level performance; learning organisations use lessons from mistakes as a platform for growth, according to the authors.

The authors have come up with three categories of mistakes: (1) unbalanced orchestration at the company level: strategic errors that result in the misuse of company resources; (2) drama management at the team level: actions by a leader that encourage passive-aggressive behaviour and bullying, and (3) personality issues at the individual level: extreme personality traits, such as self-absorption, disengagement, and hoarding power. I have summarised the sub-categories of each of these three categories in Table 1, along with instances of these failures and recommendations for overcoming them.

Table 1: Organisational Failure Types and Examples

Leaders should analyse such typical error patterns in organisations and industries, identify warning signs, and devise strategies to navigate around these failures. “What we found was great leaders only make ‘original’ mistakes — that is, they don’t repeat the same mistake twice,” according to the authors.

“Real failure doesn’t come from making mistakes; it comes from avoiding errors at all possible costs, from fear to take risks, and from the inability to grow. Being mistake free does not lead to success. Making mistakes — or failing — are part of taking healthy risk. They provide us with new ways of thinking and give us new insights into how we can improve as leaders,” the authors explain.

But there are only a limited number of mistakes that leaders can make, after which career options and opportunities dramatically reduce. At a time when the cost of failure is increasing and business pressures are mounting, it is important that companies and managers develop techniques and intelligence to learn from the failures of others as well.

Failure should not be seen as losing, but as a catalyst to future success provided the right conditions, attitudes and organisational cooperation are in place.

In sum, leaders who learn from mistakes are more proactive in deflecting potential problems, have a higher level of confidence when taking actions and making decisions, more accurately understand their environments, think more strategically, and are more creative, the authors conclude.

It would be good to end this review with some of the insightful quotes in the book:

“Mistakes are a precious and costly resource.” – Saj-nicole Joni, author, The Right Fight

“Never before has learning from failure been more important—to innovation, to learning, to strategy under uncertainty, and to the development of the next generation of leaders.” – Rita Gunther McGrath, coauthor, Discovery-Driven Growth

“Leaders become great only when they have overcome adversity.” – Jeff DeGraff, author, Innovation You

“Organisations that support ‘smart’ failure are more innovative, adaptable, resilient, and profitable. Acceleration is the new normal.” – Eric McNulty, co-author, You’re It! Lessons from Crisis Meta-Leadership

“Having a failure does not make someone a failure.” – Jim Estill, partner, Canrock Ventures

“Great leaders create their own luck.” – Jeff Hoffman, Priceline.com

“We can’t think outside the box unless we have a precise idea what the box is.” – Kirk Cheyfitz, author, Thinking Inside the Box

“Rowing harder doesn’t help the boat if it is headed in the wrong direction.” – Kenichi Ohmae, author, Mind of the Strategist

“The purpose of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader

[Follow YourStory's research director Madanmohan Rao on Twitter]

The Commonfloor Team

When co-founders of CommonFloor — Vikas Malpani, Sumit Jain and Lalit Mangal decided to startup, it was not on the basis of any market research or with the belief what they are doing will be “the next big thing”. They wanted to address a very common issue. A sewage problem where the co-founders, Sumit and Lalit were staying got the residents of the apartment together and that was when they discovered, a friend of theirs also lived in the same apartment. This pleasant surprise led them to realise the fact that we are sometimes not in touch even with people living in such a close proximity to us. This idea led the IIT-Roorkee duo to startup CommonFloor in December 2007.

The Present

Holi Celebrations at Commonfloor

Today they’re a team of 280+ young and experienced individuals aiming to disrupt the online real-estate space. Resting in the heart of Bangalore- Indiranagar (Domlur), the CommonFloor team is “building stuff for the year 2025”. Their product and tech team is 50 strong, and they’re looking for more talented people to join them aboard. The startup has also received a recent Series-B funding from Accel India and Tiger Global.

A day at CommonFloor

“A typical day at the CommonFloor office is different for different teams. But, midst the team meetings and briefings, there is an underlying theme of a mission oriented attitude. We position ourselves as a challenger brand, giving tough time to the inefficient biggies in online real estate. We set organizational goals which are big enough to scare, and great enough to motivate.”, says Lalit. Although they’re still working on the core policies that define the culture at CommonFloor, work-from-home is allowed, with accountability, of course. Working on holidays and weekends is not mandatory, but the passionate are not stopped from stretching themselves a couple of weekends. All achievements of the team are celebrated and the young and energetic team maintain a vibrant atmosphere in the office — even the walls of the office are colourful.

Who is CommonFloor looking for?

Spreading the Christmas cheer

CommonFloor is looking for permanent employees, and not interns, as the gestation period of the various projects the company takes up is considerably long and takes much longer than the time taken for a normal internship. Freshers are welcome to learn and grow at an “inspirational rate”. Infact some of the freshers who worked with the startup in the last 24 months have become full owners of critical components at CommonFloor. Lalit says that prospective experienced-individuals who could join CommonFloor can see the actual business impact of their contributions, something which many large organizations fail to cater to.

The HR (Happiness Regime) at CommonFloor

The company’s HR policy is in line with the company’s high goals. Every aspect of an individual is linked to her personal and business performance. Although the policies are continually evolved, they have laid out KRAs and KPIs for everyone in the team. This has played a major role in making each individual target oriented and have improved the performance of the employees.

Actual legwork at Commonfloor

The Vision

In Lalit’s words, “In 2 years, we see CommonFloor becoming the most dominant real estate portal and a benchmark for product excellence. To achieve this, we are constantly battling with scaling challenges, multi-city operations, and faster go-to-market innovation.”

CommonFloor is looking for bright, young professionals to join their competitive and fast growing company. Come meet them at Startup Jobs Fair, Bangalore on 27 April, 2013

WIEF 2013 had keynote speeches by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman, Planning Commission of India; Arvind Kejriwal, founder, Aam Aadmi Party; Shashi Reddi, founder & CEO, Applabs and Ron Somers, president, US-India Business Council. Topics ranging from private equity/venture capital, women empowerment, healthcare, finance, entrepreneurship, infrastructure and media & entertainment were discussed by eminent panelists. This confluence of thoughts and ideas from policy makers and businessmen provided unique insights into the current scenario and the way ahead for businesses to grow.

The also featured an event called Startup Pavillion that featured 10 most innovative startups founded by Wharton/Penn students and alumni in India. These startups highlight the contributions of the Wharton/Penn alumni towards the Indian economy.  It also aims to underscore Wharton’s increasing support for entrepreneurship on campus and beyond, through programs such as the Venture Initiation Program, Wharton Business Plan Competition and Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program. The participating startups got a dedicated stall in the Pavilion to showcase their ventures at the event.

The 10 startups that were featured at the event are:

ARE 5 Apparel: ARE 5 Apparel creates apparel for the live concert EDM market. Psychedelic art is translated using specialty inks — taking the concert experience to the next level.

Bandar Foods: Bandar Foods reimagines traditional Indian condiments to be used with everyday American Foods.

Caffeine Analytics: Provides customer analytics to online service providers.

Genossis: Genossis is an early stage medical device company that develops and commercializes orthopedic implants for fracture care for the benefit of patients.

HealthIndya: HealthIndya was established in 2013 as an effort to improve medical communications to the healthcare, medical community and patients.

Hootboard:  Hootboard is an online community bulletin board, which can be used post buy/sell requests, jobs & gigs, apartments and housing availability, events, activity partner requests & more. Each post can be made visible to multiple communities that you choose & are a member of, or you can keep it private to a select community.

LSSPayroll: LSS Payroll offers small and medium enterprises with a fully integrated payroll and statutory compliance solution.

MobileLeads: MobileLeads is an innovative, cost-effective cloud based mobile solution to automate marketing/networking or business development activities.

Prapati: Prapati provides an effective, low-cost solution on the issue of critical power shortages in India.

SocioSquare: SocioSquare is a full service digital marketing agency.

Travspire: An online platform that allows travelers to discover and book very local and offbeat tavel experiences in India.

TrustCircle: TrustCircle is the world’s first social health network for patients/families members impacted by mental health issues and for physicians/organizations dedicated to solve the problem of mental health issues.

VenturePact: VenturePact is a technology focused startup incubator.

ZenKars: ZenKars sells the best priced used cars online.

OfficeYes.com aims to be the Indian equivalent of Staples.com and is well on its way to reach that goal. Co-founded by Arvind Sivadas and Siddharth Nambiar, the website today boasts of over 5,000 clients across B2B, SME and B2C customers. Arvind was a consultant with McKinsey after his education from IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta, while Siddharth worked with Evalueserve, MAN Investments UK and in between also found the time to complete his MBA from Oxford University. These two friends-turned-business partners launched OfficeYes in May 2012 and within the short period of 10 months have grown impressively.

Arvind Sivadas & Siddharth Nambiar

The Business

Over 5,000 clients, 100 employees and revenue projections of Rs 15 crore for this financial year end — are some of the achievements that this startup has managed within their short span of existence. Quiz Siddharth how this was done and he credits his team for being the backbone of OfficeYes.com and taking it to the heights it is at now. “As a startup, you have to get the right people, give them the right framework then sit back and watch the magic. That’s what we’ve got. We got the right team in place, the right processes and that is resulting in the growth,” explains Siddharth. The OfficeYes team is a blend of graduates from IIM to people with over 10 years experience in buying or in eCommerce. And a recent proof of the pudding is the 50% growth that the startup achieved last month on the base of a crore.

Right from paper clips to office chairs, OfficeYes sells everything that an office would need. The site also sells laptops and tablets to cater to a growing number of working professionals who use these at work. According to Siddharth last month, the website sold 300 iPads and recently they announced the lowest price guarantee on all Apple products including iPhone 5, iPad, iPad Mini and MacBook Air. The lowest price guarantee is being offered on 43 Apple SKUs. Unlike other eCommerce site, the average order value on OfficeYes is in the region of Rs 35,000 – 45,000 and because of such large deals, the business economics also changes considerably.

To cater to its growing customer base, OfficeYes is also innovating in the way transactions are done. Apart from the usual payment options, OfficeYes also has a ‘cheque-on-delivery’ option where customers can pay by cheque after receiving the delivery. On their part, OfficeYes makes sure the business is authentic and there will be no problem encashing the cheque. Every customer who orders from the website has an account manager assigned to him/her, who calls to check if the order has reached properly and also talks to these companies to upsell any products they may require for the business.

To manage its stocks efficiently, OfficeYes uses a combination of inventory stocking as well as direct sourcing to fulfill the orders. “We have a core set of 100 SKUs that we stock and these SKUs can be delivered within the same day or next day delivery in metros. On the other hand if you need something unique, then it will reach in 2-3 days,” explains Siddharth. The 100-200 items that a normal business would normally require is stocked by the website. Today they have a good blend of orders coming from big cities as well as smaller towns. Metros contribute to 50% of the orders and the remaining 50% has comes from places like Jorhat in Assam or Tirunelveli in Kerala.

The Next Level

Increasing retail connect – As their present business continues to grow, OfficeYes is looking at new directions to take their business forward. Siddharth wants to ensure that OfficeYes has an omni-channel retail presence, so orders can be placed over the phone, the shop, internet or through the salesman who meets you in person. OfficeYes is tying up with small stationery shops across the country and currently have both franchise and company owned stores. So when a customer walks into a neighbourhood shop, they can either order from the shop or place their order through a tablet located within the shop and OfficeYes will deliver the products to your doorstep.

OfficeYes is also working towards implementing a system, where if you have a business located in some remote corner of India, then you can place an order on OfficeYes.com and the website will partner with a local stationery shop and deliver the order to you within 6-8 hours instead of 3-4 days that an eCommerce company would normally take.

Corporate clients – OfficeYes today works with a number of MNCs including GE, Shell, Dupont, British Airways and TCI to cater to the stationery requirements of the entire organization. Each company has a microsite, where regional offices of the MNC can log into and place orders for stationery. While the order will get delivered to the local office, the invoice will be sent to the person who has the authority to approve such expenses for the company. “Such a microsite will ensure there are no leakages in the order placed and companies can see who is ordering what,” explains Siddharth. Today about 40% of OfficeYes orders are coming through this method and the remaining from SME and retail customers.

Entering Education – Another important area that OfficeYes is vying to enter is the large and lucrative space of school education. Today, they are already the authorized distributors of textbooks for Pearson Education, a US-based learning company. OfficeYes is in talks with other publishing companies to distribute their books to students. “School is a large space and we surely want to improve our presence there. But currently our focus is on the business segment,” says Siddharth. He says they are planning a mass media campaign related to the education space in the next month, when schools will reopen for classes.

Siddharth understands there are global biggies as well as well-entrenched local players as their competition, but he is confident they can make a difference if they have the best quality people with them. “We have to ensure we have the best team in place on marketing, technology, sales — in all the areas. Part of people is also the culture and the organization we build, that people want to be a part of,” says Siddharth wisely.

preethi@yourstory.in

The portal is well-known among women and a lot of traffic coming to the site is from Facebook. Suchi insists that the

Suchi Mukherjee

customers they get on the site are very different from normal eCommerce customers and there have been a lot of times since launch that some customers have purchased items worth more than Rs. 15,000 – Rs. 20,000 on the site. Quiz Suchi about these big spenders and even she is baffled: “am not sure where they are coming from,” she laughs. The average ticket size of spends on Limeroad today is in the region of Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000.  They recently partnered with a shoe brand to do the national launch of a new range of products and Suchi claims that 20% of this newly launched range was sold within just two weeks of debuting on Limeroad.com.

Manish Saxena

While Suchi is happy with the progress the site has made, there are some key areas of focus for Limeroad in the coming days. These include their capital light model, vendor relationships, better curation, more exclusivity and building more traffic. The capital light model means Limeroad doesn’t have any inventory and therefore doesn’t require any capital commitment from a brand. Limeroad is also depending on its online customer community to do the curation of products. “This not only increases customer engagement with the brand, but also is a key aspect of cost control. Besides generating community-led content which most brands pay for, it also generates community-led ‘freshness’ for the brand,” explains Suchi.

Limeroad is also creating a network of vendors who can supply them with local products which will be exclusive to the site. 50% of the brands that Limeroad retails are large flagship brands, and now they want to get the other 50% to be exclusive to the portal. The portal’s focus on social shopping and its integration with Facebook, allows shoppers on Limeroad to share their purchase with friends. This in turn helps build conversation for the product purchased as well as the vendor site. This strategy has helped Limeroad increase its traffic upto 50% month-on-month and get more repeat customers.

On the one hand is the positive growth story and on the other hand are the normal problems that plague a startup. Suchi is scouting for promising, good talent to join her 40-member team and today considers that one of her biggest challenge in moving forward. The first round of funding received by the venture has been utilised to higher the best talent to join Limeroad. The startup is also looking for investors to help them continue their growth story.

preethi@yourstory.in

What is Tripzmate?

Based out of Surat, Pruthvi Bardolia and Rushabh Parikh launched Tripzmate, a travel social network where the users can add their travel plans and find other people with the same travel schedule. They can interact with them online and later meet them in person. It is a one point solution for your boredom during your journey as it helps connect with interesting people who have similar travel plans. Pruthvi shares: “One fine day I was waiting to board my flight at the airport. Since there was no familiar face to accompany me I was pretty bored. People usually don’t talk to each other at the airport and that really bored me on my flights from Mangalore to Mumbai. That is when the idea of connecting people on the airport came.”

User interaction and design

To create a new profile on Tripzmate you will have to login using your Facebook account. The overall process of creating the profile with basic information is quite fast and you will be accessing Tripzmate in no time. A welcome page will guide you through some basic aspects of Tripzmate, however you always have the option of opting out of it.

The UX of the site is nothing fancy stuff but gets the job done. The accessing elements on this networking site are neatly placed, you can add new trips, view the live feed, check users around you etc. The website tracks the location of the user to display others in the radius of 50 kms. The user also has the option of not allowing the site to track your location.

The Tripzmate Team

Rushabh Parikh

The co-founders Rushabh Parikh and Pruthvi Bardolia are engineers by training but at a very early stage in college decided to take the entrepreneurial route. Pruthvi shares “We wanted to become entrepreneurs and our goal was clear which was ‘To do business’. The only thing we didn’t know was how to begin with. But later everything fell in place at the right time.” The families of both partners played a big role as they provided emotional and financial help to startup.

Pruthvi Bardolia

Future for Tripzmate

Rushabh and Pruthvi are determined to work on building traction for the site and are looking at advertisement to bring in the revenues. The landing page of the site got a new look recently and the team is trying to gain as much eye balls in their beta phase. As for now the Tripzmate service is limited to airports only but in future it will be extended to railways too (in a week). Tripzmate current user count in the beta version is around 170, Pruthvi adds “Our users seem to like our UI and design, yet feedback with concern over few glitches were submitted. We are working on all aspects of the site and hopefully we will be able to increase our user base in the coming years.”

Website: Tripzmate

10 chapters; 205 pages

Review by Madanmohan Rao

This is another classic “appreneur” book encouraging entrepreneurs to play the mobile app game (see my earlier review of “Appillionaires: Secrets from Developers who Struck it Rich on the App Store” by Chris Stevens).

The book offers useful tips on marketing apps, once you get past the author’s excessive hype about becoming a millionaire by directing app developer teams from your iPhone and spending your time on a beach.

Chad Mureta is the founder of Empire Apps and co-founder of T3 Apps and Best Apps, three mobile application businesses that he created through outsourced development and without a background in technology. His first app was Fingerprint Security Pro, which spurred him to develop another 46 apps (though very few are described in this book).

Readers looking for more technical information, industry trends, or product and project management tips are better advised to look elsewhere. The market is changing fast, cautions Mureta, in fact so fast that this book may itself become obsolete soon.

“What happened with Web sites is exactly what’s happening now with apps and mobile technology with apps and mobile technology,” begins Mureta, drawing comparisons with the dotcom boom of the 1990s. Even with the recent global economic downturn, the app industry continues to grow.

Apple expects to make more money from apps than music by 2014, according to research firm Asymco. Canalys predicts the app market will be worth $37 billion in 2015. Trends to watch include object recognition and context-aware services.

“The app business isn’t about getting rich quickly with one app. It’s about research, creativity, timing, and sound business sense, which includes creating several products instead of only one,” Mureta advises.  I have summarised some of his business advice in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Tips for Mobile App Strategy

Mureta offers a list of questions for app managers to ask programmers while building development teams. How long have you been developing apps? Can you share references from past app projects? How long will it take to get a quote? Is it a flat-fee quote? Can I see examples of the graphic work? What’s your payment schedule? Can you create milestones tied to payments?

“If a picture speaks a thousand words, to me, an app speaks 10 thousand,” explains Mureta, urging app managers to first look at the app portfolio of prospective developers.

Sites like oDesk, Freelancer and Elance are useful for locating developers around the world. Mureta cautions about risks in outsourcing to app development companies: some will themselves be developing their own apps or apps for other clients, and thus may compete with you.

In sum, successful app businesses call for continuous and global market research, regular and systematic app maintenance, deep analytics, leveraging of multiple revenue sources (eg. several mobile ad networks), and professional networking.

It would be fitting to end this review with some of the useful inspirational quotes in the book:

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. (John F. Kennedy)

I’ve failed over and over again in m life. And that is why I succeed. (Michael Jordan)

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. (Marcel Proust)

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth. (Napoleon Hill)

Any man has a chance to sweep any woman off her feet. He just needs the right broom. (Hitch)

Sometimes we think we’re losing the game of life when we’re really winning simply because we’re not keeping score. (Anthony Robbins)

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. (Henry David Thoreau)

[Follow YourStory's research director Madanmohan Rao on Twitter]

SV Square – Design and Branding by Bransense – Startup Village incubatee

“Startup Village is building for the future and we look to kindle the young minds with world class exposure early on. This was the reason for our initial focus on students. The criteria of judging the qualified entries are predominantly on the innovative ideas, previous accomplishments and the passion,” explained George Paul, director – partner network, Startup Village. The SV Square initiative by Startup Village is being done in partnership with Rajeev Motwani Foundation to help startups and students from the state of Kerala to get a firsthand experience of the Silicon Valley. As part of the reward, winners will be taken to Silicon Valley where they stand a chance to interact with accomplished tech entrepreneurs like Larry Page of Google and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg who are part of Rajeev Circle.

To participate in the SV Square initiative, aspirants have to send a three-minute video which can showcase innovative ideas that they have. At the close of the contest all the videos will be seen by the jury, which comprises Kiran Karnik, former president of NASSCOM and Anil Gupta, professor in the Centre for Management in Agriculture, IIM Ahmedabad. The entries will be judged on the uniqueness of the idea. Winners of the SV Square initiative will be flying to Silicon Valley later this year in May. The SV Square initiative was launched by venture capitalist Asha Jadeja Motwani in Kerala earlier this year.

Most pitches seemed intent on solving problems. While some were very ambitious in scope (connecting SMEs to automobile giants), some were novel (surrogate advertising on windmills) and some tried to change the status quo (crowdsourced content for online learning). The Pitch Fest’s winners will walk away with a cool 1M/1M program membership worth $1000 per annum. Three winners were to be finalized from the 10 pitches. The scholarships are sponsored by TiE Chennai charter members.

Chennai on top of technology

“I am impressed with the pitches,” Sramana told the audience from the Valley. Then she listed the biggest trends in the technology space today and Chennai being very part of it. Some companies like Avaaz and OrangeScape are at the forefront of this innovation. Mobile apps like Avaaz, a technology product that helps autistic children communicate, has developed apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and in the process of developing one for Windows 8. Similarly OrangeScape, which has developed KISSFlow, a workflow tool to help enterprises through PaaS and Fresh Desk, which has leveraged SaaS to develop a suite of CRM applications, are leading the way in this technology. Big data is another area of expertise that not many are comfortable with but big corporations are increasingly focused on it to make informed, data-driven decisions. Data mining is no longer in fashion but data analytics is a fast catching up trend. Latent View Analytics from Chennai is serving a global audience through its big data analytics. Niche e-commerce is a fast developing trend and Carrot Lane from Chennai is selling diamonds online in partnership with an American company, Blue Nile, based on contract arbitrage. Through this, diamonds worth $16 million are being sold online.

Failure as a stepping stone to success

TiE Chennai Charter Member Raghu Rajagopal, a serial entrepreneur, investor, and startup mentor, gave choicest lessons on failing. Quoting various entrepreneurs from his interviews, he listed the entrepreneurs’ mistakes and lessons they learned from their experience. Most entrepreneurs find finance troubling and do not know how to channelize funds appropriately early on. While entrepreneurship is a learning curve necessarily, a heads-up advice like Raghu’s helps avoid many mistakes that startup entrepreneurs are prone to. The key mistakes were mostly in areas of thinking and functioning, customers and customer intelligence, matters internal to the organization, and finance. “Staying on your core is important,” stressed Raghu. “Don’t compare yourself to other entrepreneurs. Focus and attention to detail, how to be in play, and knowing success is relative are of immense help. It’s a marathon,” warned Raghu, adding those who are there for a quick buck and quick exit cannot make it. The stories were rich and provided good take-aways for entrepreneurs in a practical sense.

Marketing mantras

Prof. J.K. Iyer, strategy head at Consim, that owns Bharat Matrimony.com, enlivened the audience with his interactive marketing “seminar.” After understanding customer needs, it’s imperative to segment, target and position your product, he emphasized. Segmentation and positioning is important, as, in his words, “your product cannot satisfy everyone’s needs.” Sometimes the product might find another use apart from what it is intended for. Quoting a light-hearted marketing folklore, he said entrepreneurs should be open to understanding this. When a survey was done to find out why washing powder Surf wasn’t selling as quickly as the washing machines in Punjab, it was found that washing machines were employed for making lassi. Describing customer need as very crucial to a successful marketing campaign, he said HDFC has a product that serves only 119 customers out of its customer base of 3 million. Such micromarketing efforts contribute to success, he said. Increasingly understanding customer behaviour and developing products around it is emerging as a latest trend in marketing. This is called psychographic segmentation. Fixing value is arbitrary, he said, quoting an experiment where MBA students were asked to suggest price of two shirts, one branded and another of the same brand but with labels removed. The students tend to put higher value for the branded shirt. That plays a big part in us attaching value to a product, he said. Packaging also enhances value, he added. One important part of marketing is understanding what it entails. To illustrate a myth, he quoted another folklore where it is said a marketing person should be able to sell a comb to a bald-headed customer. “Maybe he can convince a few customers but there will not be repeat business,” he joked, and if the product is not used for what it is intended, repeat sales will not happen, he explained.

The ideology shaping Kyron accelerator is the inspiration from Taleb’s “The Black Swan” – the impact of the highly improbable. Black Swan’s are outliers and bring with them an element of surprise, also create massive impact in the process. Initiated by some of the biggest names in the industry like  Lalit Ahuja, John Cook, Dr.Thomas Duening and Sundi Natarajan. Founding team at Kyron includes Arjuman Amjad and Sharona Dougherty. Here we will take you through what Kyron intends to do over the next few years and what it has to offer:

Headquartered in Bangalore, Kyron intends to invest in over 500 companies through the next five years across India, USA, China, Argentina, Czech Republic and Malaysia.

What works in favour of Kyron?

Clearly, the team behind the accelerator. Lalit Ahuja, who began his career in Indian Navy and then went on to become a successful entrepreneur (from bootstrap to exit, he has lived the cycle himself) and as the CEO of some of the Fortune 500 ventures, has entered this space with an aim of giving back to the Indian entrepreneurial eco-system and bring global finesse to how we do acceleration.

What does Kyron have to offer?

Lalit Ahuja

In return for 10% equity stake in startups, the four-month accelerator will provide the following – $10,000 in cash, $20,000 in business services (including dedicated CXO team which will act as an inhouse resource) and a vast portfolio of enterprise business services in areas such as HR, finance, legal, marketing and IT. In addition, Kyron will provide perks of significant commercial value (such as software licenses, hardware, consulting services) from its partners. More importantly, design, UI, UX will be a key area of support for the startups, and as part of the acceleration startups will be given infrastructure support in the form of real estate (this will be a 24 *7 space with amenities available round the clock)

We saw the facility at Indiranagar and it has all the making of a global infrastructure.

First batch of startups

Admirch Media Labs (Bangalore) - Admirch enables users to share content with people of similar interest and earn through a multi-level affiliate advertizing structure covering various channels such as SMS, Email and Display Ads.

Dronna (Bangalore) - Dronna is an ecosystem based on trust and influence, that helps you make important decisions. These decisions could be related to buying products, finding reliable services, recommendations related to travel or even day-to-day small, useful experiences that could be invaluable when needed.

MyWindow (Nagpur) - A site that can be used by individuals to introduce themselves to the world using the internet. The site allows you to share and sell your creations online without creating an online store.

DigiCollect (Bangalore) – Offers a customizable, mobile data collection application “DIGI COLLECT” that integrates with GIS visualization & decision support system to help organizations transform collected data into decision enabling knowledge.

LinkMySupport (New Delhi) - LinkMySport connects sportsmen, event organisers, sports venues and brands to provide convenience and opportunities to local sports community online.

GetOut (Brazil) - GetOut introduces extreme sports and eco tourism. The startup wants to create a vibrant community of adventure sports enthusiasts to explore new places together. GetOut also offers deals on purchase of equipment, group buying for adventure trips.

BuzzAnyTime (Mumbai) - BuzzAnyTime is an innovative semi automated mobile search engine with human intelligence. They are the first company in India to combine human intelligence to traditional search engines.

Website: Kyron

The EyeNetra technology is a small, low cost diagnostic tool that can be attached to a mobile device and used to screen for nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism. Their product promises to play an important role in the Indian eye care system, which is already being disrupted by online retailers that are greatly reducing the cost of acquiring glasses. EyeNetra is addressing a more fundamental issue that comes earlier in the process, at the point of diagnosis – an area where billions of people around the world lack access to proper testing and screening.

“Numbers vary, but there are at least 300 million people in India who need glasses, and large majorities of the population don’t have them,” explained David Schafran in a recent interview with SocialStory. “The reason for this is the lack of access to eye testing, shortage of trained professionals to conduct the test and the cost of eye-testing equipments like autorefractors which are too expensive.”

This is the space where EyeNetra sees the potential to be a game changer. Their low cost technology bridges the gap that currently exists in making glasses available to the people who need them, and eliminates the need for consultation by trained professionals and the use of expensive screening equipment. The EyeNetra device, coupled with a mobile phone, can offer the same level of care that in the past would have been dependent on a $10,000 machine.

EyeNetra is currently in its pilot phase. They recently received a million dollars seed funding from Khosla Impact and Khosla Ventures to help develop the product through the early stage and prove its feasibility in providing low cost, quality eye care to the masses. To maximize their reach in the Indian market, EyeNetra has partnered with the LV Prasad Eye Institute, and is looking to partner with eye hospitals and glasses retailers among others.

Speaking about the potential of his venture, David says, “We’re setting a new standard for eye testing that will transform how eye testing is done and how eyeglasses are delivered in this world. Its quite exciting.”

Read the full interview with David Schafran here on SocialStory, or visit EyeNetra to learn more.

Today is Maghi Purnima, also known as Maha Maghi, another auspicious day for Hindu devotees to take the holy dip in the Ganga. Purnima is considered significant in terms of spiritual practice and performing religious rituals or holy dip in holy waters is one such. YourStory in partnership with HolidayIQ, a travel information portal looked at some traffic that the travel site got this year during the Mahakumbh. This data and information are based on the reviews generated on HolidayIQ website. Here is a snapshot of the traffic that the site received since the beginning of this religious spectable.

preethi@yourstory.in

14 chapters; 187 pages

2009 McGraw-Hill (Amazon)

Mentoring, coaching, advising and consulting are important parts of the business and entrepreneurship ecosystem. “Manager’s Guide to Mentoring” covers the different types of mentor-mentee relationships, identifies qualities of effective mentors, and makes recommendations for running effective mentoring programmes.

Dr. Curtis J. Crawford is the founder of XCEO, a California-based agency offering professional mentoring, personal leadership development programs, and board leadership development for high-aspiration individuals and organisations. He was previously chairman of the board of ON Semiconductor; CEO of Zilog; CEO of Onix Microsystems; president of the intellectual property division of Lucent Technologies; and marketing VP at IBM. Crawford also served as a special advisor to several startup companies.

The material in the book is straightforward to digest (though at times repetitive), with numerous sidebars and checklists. More specific case studies of actual mentorship in action would have helped, as well as an online companion with additional material.

Mentoring is one of the most useful and important management techniques to drive positive change in organisations, according to Crawford. Mentoring is also much more than supervision or traditional management. “Managers direct, leaders inspire and mentors guide,” he explains.

The author makes important distinctions between coaching and mentoring, which I have summarised in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Differences between Coaches and Mentors

“In today’s globally competitive world, knowledge and its management are key indicators of long-term success,” Crawford observes. Mentoring is an important knowledge transfer strategy in this regard, while also helping high-potential and high-aspiration individuals with new ways of interpreting contexts, revitalisation, energy and excitement.

“Power, in the form of knowledge, is meaningless unless it is earned and shared throughout the organisation,” Crawford advises; hence many companies require experienced employees to take part in mentorship programmes.

“Mentors are not people who only tell you what you want to hear,” Crawford cautions. A good mentor will challenge the mentee on even basic facts, opinions and interpretations. “Effective mentors know that the truth hurts. Great mentors are willing to inflict pain through honest evaluation,” he explains.

Mentors should be regarded as learning partners, confidential sounding boards, non-judgmental counsellors, navigators, networkers, reality checks, champions, facilitators, role models and guides. Key attributes of a good mentor are trust, honesty, integrity, availability, effectiveness, expertise, commitment and passion.

To find the right mentor, mentees need to first of all understand themselves. “It’s important that you allocate substantial time to define your needs, your career objectives and your expectations for yourself,” Crawford advises.

Mentees should also be sincere and committed to the relationship with their mentor, follow the recommended activities, and give constructive feedback.

The author identifies five kinds of mentors, and devotes one chapter to each; I have summarised the arrangements and qualities of such mentor-mentee relationships in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Five Kinds of Mentorship

Formal corporate mentoring is a form of traditional mentorship, the oldest form of mentoring. Interesting trends to watch include the rise of ‘reverse mentoring,’ well exemplified by GE CEO Jack Welch, who in 1999 ordered hundreds of top GE executives to be ‘reverse mentored’ by young employees in how to use the Internet. Gender-based or ethnicity-based mentoring is also on the rise.

In some cases such as peer-mentoring, the arrangements can be in groups rather than just pairs. “Teamwork will make your dream work,” suggests Crawford.

In the long term, a mentee may enter into agreements with a number of mentors at different career and personal stages. Organisations who value people development as a core competency will have a strong focus on mentorship, and combine the full range of mentoring programmes.

Mentorship helps aspiring individuals go from beyond expectation and encouragement to inspiration, which in turn helps them transcend narrow personal interests and invigorate their organisations.

Within organisations, mentoring has helped transmit the organisational culture, enhance career development, and improve the workplace climate. In sum, mentorship should be regarded as an investment and not an expense even during times of economic hardship, the author concludes.

[Follow YourStory's research director Madanmohan Rao]

9 chapters; 260 pages

2012 Riverhead Books (http://www.amazon.com/To-Sell-Is-Human-Surprising/dp/1594487154)

Review by Madanmohan Rao (http://yourstory.in/author/madanmohan)

“A world of entrepreneurs is a world of sales people” — that is the key thrust of this new book by bestselling author Daniel Pink. Every human is an entrepreneur and therefore every human must learn and perfect the art of selling.

Directly or indirectly, more of us are becoming involved in activities generally regarded as sales – or influencing, persuading and convincing others to do things. The book offers a fresh look at the art and science of selling. The author draws on recent research in social science to bring the practice of selling right into the 21^st century of globalisation, economic uncertainty and digital media.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in nine Americans works in formal sales as an occupation, with similar levels reached in Europe and soon to be reached in emerging economies such as Brasil, India and China.

The author defines and expands on a new category of activity called ‘non-sales selling.’ Activities ranging from leadership and innovation to strategy and supervision all call for a great deal of the exercise of influence. The ability to ‘sell’ is crucial for our survival, growth and wellbeing; it is not just about heartless commerce but daily transactional contexts.

Whether we are employees pitching colleagues on a new idea, entrepreneurs enticing funders to invest, or parents and teachers cajoling children to study, we spend our days trying to move others. Like it or not, we are all in sales now, the author explains.

“In astonishing numbers, we now go online to sell ourselves – on Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Match.com profiles,” says Pink; none of these existed barely 10 years ago. (Isn’t it interesting how many of our emails these days cajole us to go to social media sites and do more cajoling?)

Entrepreneurship through startups, SMEs, micro-enterprises and independent entrepreneurs is also mushrooming around the world. The Internet and smartphones are not just improving traditional businesses but creating new digital ones and unlocking value in unprecedented ways.

“Kickstarter surpassed the US National Endowment for the Arts as the largest backer of arts projects in the US,” the author observes, a clear reflection of new online forms of ‘sales’ behaviour.

Search and social networking have reduced the information asymmetry between buyer and seller – but this has re-shaped manipulative sales practices and created new kinds of influence patterns. Job requirements are also becoming increasingly elastic, requiring employees to cross boundaries and functions and communicate outside their specialty.

The book powerfully describes such shifts in the modern reality of ‘sales.’ In earlier years, the word ‘sales’ unfortunately carried negative connotation of ruthlessness, manipulation, greed and unscrupulous character, masked in ‘suits’ and smooth talk. People in sales today should be in harmony with individuals, groups and contexts. They should have more than just tenacity and positive outlooks to overcome the “ocean of rejection” they often face.

The author describes three new principles of attitude (ABC: attunement, buoyancy, clarity – rather than the older sales formula ‘Always Be Closing’) and three principles of action (pitch, improvise, serve), which I have summarised in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Sales Principles and Methods

The book features some profiles of companies using these principles, but many more such case studies would have been useful. For instance, enterprise software firm Atlassian deploys computer scientists in the field, so that they not only tackle customer queries with authority but also identify new problems the customers might not even know they have.

The Future Project, an educational non-profit organisation in the UK, has an executive with the title Chief Movement Officer. Sales in some form happen in all roles and at all times in forward-thinking organisations. “Every day is a sales day,” says Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX.

The role of perspective is key – instead of trying to find how to sell vacuum cleaners, a company may be better off selling a weekly cleaning service, or new kinds of carpets, or stronger window screens to keep out the dust. Problem solving should be replaced by problem finding, via better customer immersion and perspective.

Examples of ‘one-word equity’ in branding include Google (‘search’), MasterCard (‘priceless’), and Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign (‘Forward’). Rhyming can improve pitch recall (I would also add alliteration).

Shorter forms of pitch have been accelerated by Twitter (and I would also add SMS). Investor Stowe Boyd even requires that startups frame their enquiries to him via a ‘twitpitch,’ and the University of Iowa required aspiring business students to summarise the strength of their application in a tweet! Research initiatives at CMU, MIT and Georgia Tech have been analysing the implications of such ‘micro-blog content value.’

The ‘Pixar pitch’ involves summarising your offering as follows: “Once upon a time, < >. Every day, < >. One day, < >. Because of that, < >. Because of that, < >. Until finally, < >.”

The author shows this format in action by summarising the movie Finding Nemo, and showing how this format could be used by an AIDS awareness organisation or an urban project planner. After each kind of pitch, you should be clear about what you want the target audience to know, feel and do.

Some reviewers have dismissed this book as ‘pop science’ and missing out on lots of other published research, but interested readers can certainly dig deeper into the cited references to draw their own conclusions.

The material is easy to read (and skip in some sections), with a mix of personal anecdotes, interviews, sample cases and cited research publications. The writing is quite witty and humourous and makes for an interesting read. Other recommended books are Robert Cialdini’s ‘Influence,’ Patricia Ryan Madson’s ‘Improv Wisdom,’ Chip and Dan Heath’s ‘Made to Stick’ and ‘Switch.’

In sum, selling is a significant part of our entrepreneurial DNA, and the author does a good job of increasing the reader’s appreciation of the importance of the sales instinct and how to master it. The book is particularly useful for entrepreneurs and startup founders, and for broader organisational audiences as well. And for those who have never read a book specifically on sales, this is a good fresh introduction.

Author Profile:

Daniel Pink (https://twitter.com/DanielPink) is the author of four books, including ‘Drive’ and ‘A Whole New Mind.’ ‘Drive’ focused on motivational behaviour. ‘A Whole New Mind’ addressed creativity in the workplace, education and culture.

Pink’s books have been translated into 33 languages and have sold millions of copies. In 2011, ‘Harvard Business Review and Thinkers 50’ named him one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world. A graduate of Northwestern University and Yale Law School, Pink lives in Washington, DC.

[Follow YourStory's research director Madanmohan Rao on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MadanRao ]

Nitish Rai Gupta

Robin Sharma had made it sure that most of us knew about that monk who sold his Ferrari.  The book is supposed to take you on a deep dive within yourself and look at life from a different perspective. But that’s for another time, today we’re going to enter a rendezvous with a  person who likes to tell everyone the reason why the monk bought the Ferrari. That person is Nitish Rai Gupta, the author of two books- “The 7 Principles of Brand Management” and “Why Monk Bought the Ferrari?”

Nitish is an IIM Calcutta alumni who has experienced more than 20 different countries handling some of the biggest brands including the likes of Coca Cola (India) and Heinz (Africa and Middle East). And as you’d presume by now, he’d rather write about building strong brands rather than entering deep life-questions.

Edited excerpts:

YS: What was your intention behind writing the books?

Nitish: Across my diverse experience, I realized that the key principles for building strong brands and differentiating them in the market, remained consistent – no matter what geography or category one was working on. This was an elevating thought which I shared with a host of friends and colleagues across various companies and through discussions with them, was able to further fine tune them. Finally, I was able to bring these principles to life in the form of 2 books. (both have been published by Tata McGraw Hill)

YS: How are the books being received? When did you launch and how was the publishing experience?

Nitish: The books have been extremely well received by students and working professionals. ‘The 7 Principles of Brand Management’ published towards the end of 2011 was in-fact subscribed by a top B-School as part of one of the ‘must reads’ for their core marketing course. ‘Why Monk Bought the Ferrari’ has been published a few months ago and is gaining traction mostly through word of mouth recommendation. Both the books continue to see a lot of repeat orders from airport stores and online portals – this should give you an idea of the kind of audience they are appealing to.

The publishing process is a very enriching experience. The raw script during the publishing and editing process went through more than 7 rounds of changes – leading to a crisp easy to read format eventually. The experience taught me the importance of brevity and how key ideas should be expressed in a simple yet not simplistic form. The back and forth with the editors can sometimes be painful but in the end, it helps create a significantly better finished product.

YS: Do you think that with progressing times, being a writer is almost like being an entrepreneur?

Nitish: That’s an interesting question. If I think about it, authoring a book has certain similarities with being an entrepreneur. To start with, you need to believe in the idea. It is your passion that will ultimately result in bringing the idea to life. Secondly, as you are working on converting the idea to a tangible script, you need to get feedback on the same from those whose opinion and judgment you trust – this will help improve the final product. Thirdly, you need to be ready for failure – as they say journey is the reward. Lastly, writing a book offers opportunity to learn not just how to express your thoughts but also how to take an idea and convert it into a product that will appeal to its intended consumers – leverage this learning and seek to apply the same in the next book that you write.

YS: How long did it take to write the books? Take us through the journey.

Nitish: The script writing process for both the books took me about 6-8 months. Since I relied heavily on live industry cases in both the books to substantiate the applicability of the points I made, I had to read a lot of available marketing literature – books, magazines and journals. This helped me test the principles and hypothesis in an exhaustive manner. It is from this research that I then shortlisted cases which eventually made it to my books.

Once the script for my first book was completed at my end, I sent it to multiple publishers for review. Luckily the script got accepted by Tata McGraw Hill – that was about one month after completion of the script. After this, started the process of meeting with the editors and consequently, multiple editing iterations of the book. Once we had the final edited version ready, the script was put in the print layout. In parallel, with help from the publishing house marketing team, cover design was completed and in the next couple of months, the first print of the book saw light of the day.

Working with the same publisher for the second book helped a lot and consequently reduced the timelines by almost 3 months.

YS: What are your future plans?

Nitish: While I have a day job leading innovations for an American company, I usually do my writing in the evenings or during the weekends. This keeps my thinking fresh and helps me maintain good levels of enthusiasm and energy in my job as well. Thus I plan to continue to leverage my experience and convert those into distinct published works. At present I am working on another idea in the corporate leadership domain and hope this sees light of the day soon.

Recommended read: Capgemini Techie Turns Novelist; The Journey from Idea to Publishing a Book

7 chapters, 260 pages

2012 Randhom House / Crown Business (Amazon)

“All humans are entrepreneurs” is the key thrust of this practical book, which goes on to provide useful lessons to readers for thriving in their jobs and building careers by applying the lessons of Silicon Valley’s most innovative entrepreneurs.

The book joins a range of others with the message of “learn, pivot, iterate” (see my list of Top 10 Books of 2012 for Entrepreneurs).

Creative disruption is shaking every industry, global competition for jobs is fierce, and life-long or even long-term job security is a thing of the past. The ‘topple rate’ – the rate at which big companies lose their leadership position – has more than doubled over the past 40 years, according to industry observers John Seely Brown and John Hagel.

The key is to manage your career as if it were a startup business: a living, breathing, growing startup of you. “All of us are entrepreneurs of our own lives. We must act as CEO of our careers, take control of our professional future, and become globally competitive,” the authors say.

The book begins with a powerful quote by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus: “All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in caves, we were all self-employed. That’s where human history began. As civilisation came, we suppressed it. We became “labour” because they stamped us “You are labour”. We forgot that we are entrepreneurs.”

Startups and nimble entrepreneurs have lots of lessons for everyone through their habits and attitudes: they invest in themselves, build their professional networks, take intelligent risks, and even make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.

Reid Hoffman is co-founder of LinkedIn and a partner at Greylock. He serves on the boards of Airbnb, Edmodo, Mozilla (Firefox), Shopkick, Swipely, Wrapp and Zynga. He has co-led investments in Coupons.com, Groupon, and Viki. His prior angel investing Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, and Zynga. Reid also serves on the boards of Kiva.org, Endeavor.org, DoSomething.org, and StartupAmericaPartnership.org.

Ben Casnocha is the author of ‘My Startup Life’ and has been an entrepreneur since the age of 12. He is also founder of Comcate, an e-government technology firm. In 2006, BusinessWeek named him one of the best young entrepreneurs in the US.

Not everyone should start companies, but everyone must be the entrepreneur of his or her own life, the authors explain. This calls for a balance between flexibility and persistence, adaptability and tenacity, self-reliance and networked behaviours, right and wrong kinds of patience.

“Silicon Valley’s most innovative entrepreneurs possess unique skills — you can learn them and apply them, no matter your profession,” the authors claim. Entrepreneurship is a lifelong and global idea, and networks help build long-term intelligence resources and collective action. I have summarised some of the key principles of the book in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Career Principles from Startups 

“For entrepreneurs, finished is an F-word. Great companies are always evolving. Finished ought to be an F-word for all of us. We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers. You will need to adapt and evolve forever — that’s permanent beta,” according to Hoffman.

Netflix is a good example of a company in ‘permanent beta’ – it began by mailing rental DVDs, and evolved into a streaming service for TV shows and movies (interestingly, they were ‘laughed out’ of the office of Blockbuster in 1999, which eventually went bankrupt). Gmail launched in 2004 but left official beta only in 2009.

“Permanent beta is essentially a lifelong commitment to continuous personal growth. Adaptability creates stability,” the authors explain.

The authors give numerous other examples of adaptive companies. For example, Flickr actually started off as an online game called Game Neverending, but discovered that the photo sharing feature was the most popular and made that its main focus; it was later bought by Yahoo.

PayPal began as a digital wallet service but moved on to an online payment transfer service. The author Reid Hoffman himself moved away from his original dating site SocialNet.com, to create LinkedIn.

The old adage about “ready, aim, fire” has been supplanted with “aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire.” The authors also warn readers not to get too complacent about their successes and skills thus far, given the competitive nature of the globalised world where new challenges (and opportunities) can arise from a number of emerging economies. The book stresses the importance not of a grandiose life-spanning ambition, but a series of evolving plans and adaptive steps along the way.

The book, of course, is also a soft-sell for LinkedIn. Some of the material can be easily skimmed, and I wish there were more visuals in the book. There is an online companion and a Twitter handle as well.

The most useful chapters are on creating networks and tapping them for regular and strategic activities, and much more material on the dynamics and analytics of online business networking would have helped, including identifying emerging trends and research areas.

The book opens the door to other researchers to uncover success formulas from entrepreneur hubs elsewhere in the world and in sectors other than IT, and also find more anecdotes from less-privileged and non-mainstream professionals and entrepreneurs about how such intelligent networking principles helped them.

“Society flourishes when people think entrepreneurially,” the authors claim. The Internet and social media are increasing the number, intensity and global spread of member connections in social and professional networks.

“Networking has been replaced by intelligent network building,” the authors add. They explain that individual as well as group efforts are needed for success, referred to as I^we (I to the power of we). Much more self-reflection is needed to succeed and adapt in today’s world, as well as inputs from other ‘sounding boards.’

The book builds on other work in the field, such as Tom Peters’ 1997 article, The Brand Called You (Peters also pioneered the concept of ‘You, Inc.’), Tim Harford’s book Adapt, Richard Koch’s Super Connect, Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, Daniel Pink’s Free Agent Nation, and Marci Alboher’s One Person, Multiple Careers.

In sum, this is a useful book on self-determination and self-realisation in professional and entrepreneurial life, leveraging the tools of 21^st century digital media. “You need to stay young and agile; you need to forever be a startup,” the authors conclude. “For life in permanent beta, the trick is to never stop starting. The startup is you.”

Here are some useful quotable quotes cited in the book:

“It’s always Day 1 in the world of the Internet and of Amazon.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com

“Being an entrepreneur isn’t really about starting a business.  It’s a way of looking at the world: seeing opportunity where others see obstacles, taking risks when others take refuge.”  – Michael Bloomberg

“Silicon Valley revolutionises entire industries through the way we work. It is now time to export our playbook to the rest of the world.” – Marc Andreessen, co-founder Netscape

“The startup approach to life is necessary.” – Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square

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