Design can mean either two dimensional or three dimensional or both forms of design, made by any industrial process or means, whether manual, mechanical or chemical, separate or combined. Design is judged for the finished article’s appeal to the eye and is judged solely by the eye.

Designs Act, 2000 and the Designs Rules, 2001 contain provisions to help protection of design under the Indian laws.

For Free Search

1) Search Portal, India:

http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/designapplicationstatus/designstatus.aspx

2) Search Portal, Singapore:

http://designsearch.ipos.gov.sg/eDSearch/Search.jsp

3) Search Portal, Australia:

http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/adds2/adds.adds_simple_search.paint_simple_search

Professional Help

A Patent Agent or a Patent Attorney is licensed to represent a client before the State (Design Registry and Offices of that state).

Secure Your Rights

A design registration is for an “article”. The design should relate to features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation applied or applicable to an article. Thus, designs of industrial plans, layouts and installations cannot be registered under the Act.

The design should be applied or applicable to any article by any industrial process. Normally, designs of artistic nature like painting, sculptures and the like which are not produced in bulk by any industrial process are excluded from registration under the Act.

How to determine infringement?

Always be on the lookout for similarities in the market. Gather evidence of dates of inception, use, continuous use, market size, market similarity, class similarity, goods and services.

Conduct an online Search – Google it. Create news alerts.

Refer to the patent document that you own. Refer to similarities in design. Find differentiations. Seek expert opinion.

Symbols: Design Registration No.

Read how to protect your trademark,  patent & copyright. Also read our other article on IP here.

About the author

Chirag Tanna is a registered patent agent and Director at INK IDEE. INK IDEE is a leading Intellectual Property Rights’ (IPR) boutique firm that manages all forms of IPR related queries, focusing specially on trademark and patents across various industries and sectors. INK IDEE also has a ‘start-up’ arm that diligently helps start-ups and entrepreneurs with IPR related advice and services, across the globe.

You can reach Chirag Tanna for any IPR related questions on the website www.inkidee.com, or at chirag@inkidee.com.

LinkedIn Profile: Chirag Tanna

YS: How was your book received? What were some of the unusual responses and reactions you got?

Angela: It went down really well, especially in India. I was sent a lot of lovely messages from readers, but the strangest reaction at the beginning was that a couple of journalists seemed surprised to be reading a non-fiction science book by a woman. It took a thick skin to shrug off some of the sexism!

YS: You interviewed Indian startups like TringMe in your book. What are your findings and impressions of India’s startup scene?

Angela: I was impressed by the scene in Bangalore. It felt a lot like Silicon Valley, if smaller. The greatest opportunity for start-ups in India seems to be the growing middle-class market. It’s incredibly lucrative and there is a real chance for people to get in at an early stage and build something big. TringMe was promising, and I’m sure there are many other exciting start-ups today.

YS: How would you compare and contrast the innovation ecosystems of the US and UK?

Angela: London has its own tech village, known as Silicon Roundabout, which has many exciting young companies. And Cambridge has a long-established cluster of electronics and biotech firms. But there is nothing quite like Google that has been born in Britain. There seems to be a slight nervousness here amongst entrepreneurs — people seem less willing to take risks, especially when compared to the US.

YS: Who are some of the entrepreneurs you admire today?

Angela: There are a lot of young people to admire. The founders of Facebook and Twitter are modern legends, of course. But what I would love to see is someone shaking up the media industry, making good-quality journalism profitable. At the moment, in that arena, the best example so far seems to be VICE magazine.

YS: What kinds of connections are emerging between scientists and entrepreneurs in the UK and India?

Angela: UK universities are opening campuses across India, which is fantastic for students, because there is such high demand for university places. And there are far more research collaborations between Indian and UK scientists than there used to be.

YS: How would you compare the science movement in China to India?

Angela: I really don’t know enough about science on the ground in China to give you a qualified opinion on that. But when you look at the statistics alone, then China seems to be surging ahead in terms of research publications and PhDs. It’s certainly an exciting time for science in China. India’s growth is slower, but strong.

YS: Would you say that geekiness is an Indian strength or an overall Asian trait?

Angela: Geekiness is a universal thing, but you do seem to see it more in Asia, and in India in particular. It’s a stereotype, I suppose, but one with truth to it.

YS: What role does the media play in covering geek culture?

Angela: There are thousands of websites and magazines now devoted to geek culture – not just science, but also comics, gaming and technology. We geeks are pretty well represented!

YS: What is your current field of research?

Angela: I’ve spent the last year at MIT in Boston looking a science in East Asia (particularly in Japan), and also the way that science and engineering have shaped and built our environment.

YS: What is your next book going to be about?

Angela: That is something I’m not even sure about yet!

YS: What is your parting message to the scientists and entrepreneurs in our audience?

Angela: Stay geeky!

Follow YourStory.in’s research director Madanmohan Rao

A patent is a set of exclusive legal rights granted by a state (national government) to the inventor or his assignee for a limited period of time until that invention can be made publicly known. A patent is a monopoly of sorts which allows a patent owner to carve his own niche in the marketplace by defining their ‘new’ territory. Specifically, the grant of a patent allows a patent owner to prevent others from making / using /selling the patented product / process within the jurisdiction in which the patent has been granted.

Some companies patent technologies with a business strategy of selling licenses of their inventions. People who do not purchase the license are then pursued as infringers and the company can sue them. This forms a part of an offensive strategy.

Some companies patent technologies with a strategy of merely creating a legal fence for around their technologies, in order to increase the culture of innovative research and development, and to capture market share based on innovative technologies. This also forms part of a defensive strategy.

Innovation may be a part of a company’s products, services, as well as business processes. All of these can be patented.

It is important that you do not disclose your idea to a business partner or a potential alliance without securing confidentiality clauses. If there is reason to believe that the idea is new and inventive, file for a provisional patent application. It is an effective form of securing global protection for a period of 12 months. Sign NDAs and confidentiality agreements before disclosing anything. In India, Patent Act, 1970 and the Patent Rules, 2003 are the two statutes the cover patent protection.

Here are some free tools to use for patents.

For Free Search

Patents are territorial. A patent applied for in India is only valid in India. A patent applied for in USA is only valid in USA. Hence, an inventor needs to apply in all markets where they plan to use the invention. This strategy (time-wise and cost-wise) needs to be defined. Always, read the claims and corresponding drawings to understand the real gist of the patent.

1) Search Portal, India:

http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/patentsearch/search/index.aspx

2) Search Portal, Global:

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/

3) Search Portal, WIPO:

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/

4) Search Portal, USA:

http://patft.uspto.gov/

5) Search Portal, Singapore:

http://www.epatents.gov.sg/PE/

6) Search Portal, Australia:

http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/auspat/index.htm

Professional Help

A patent agent or a patent attorney is licensed to represent a client before the State (Patent Office and Offices of that state). For each invention to be granted a secure patent, a patent draft needs to be submitted to the Patent Office. This patent draft is a techno-legal description of the invention and is written in a language, colloquially referred to as ‘patentese’.

A patent agent or a patent attorney also helps with strategies of filing and prosecution. Always see to it that you seek help of only registered patent agents. Ask for it. Check if the person you are talking to is a registered Patent Agent, here:

http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/Agentregister/agentlisttest.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1.

A patent agent is duty-bound by his / her license to respect confidentiality, and risks losing his / her license to practice if he / she were to misrepresent a client. A ‘consultant’ is not bound by any such legal obligations.

Secure Your Rights

In today’s world of cut-throat competition, innovation and innovative products and services form the defining cornerstone for a company’s sustainability. To increase market size and to capture the consumer’s attention by offering something new, something advanced, useful and fruitful.

These parameters form the key criteria for patents. A patent is granted on the following three counts:

- Novelty

- Inventive Step

- Industrial Applicability

Each country includes a list of non-patentable subject matter. What falls in the list for India is here.

How to determine infringement?

Always be on the lookout for similarities in the market. Gather evidence of dates of inception, use, continuous use, market size, market similarity, class similarity, goods and services. Conduct an online Search – Google it. Create news alerts.

Refer to the patent document that you own. Refer to its claims. Then step-wise, draw similarities between the claims and a competing product / service in order to ‘determine infringement’. If all the features or steps of claim 1 exist in the competing product / service, infringement is said to occur.

Symbols

Patent applied for (along with patent application number): when patent is applied for

Patented (along with patent registration number): when patent is granted.

Read how to protect your trademark. Also read our other article on IP here.

About the author

Chirag Tanna is a registered patent agent and Director at INK IDEE. INK IDEE is a leading Intellectual Property Rights’ (IPR) boutique firm that manages all forms of IPR related queries, focusing specially on trademark and patents across various industries and sectors. INK IDEE also has a ‘start-up’ arm that diligently helps start-ups and entrepreneurs with IPR related advice and services, across the globe.

You can reach Chirag Tanna for any IPR related questions on the website www.inkidee.com, or at chirag@inkidee.com.

LinkedIn Profile: Chirag Tanna

Cite.co is a open corporate community & knowledge-base that was founded by Sidhartha Roy and has been running for more than 6 years now. They just crossed serving 100 Million unique visitors and here they share some of the lessons they’ve learnt along the way…

Business folks don’t have time to help others without a clear gain – in networking or in sales. Nothing wrong with it. But that’s just the way business works. And there is a story I would like to share about how I gained some insight about how this happens.

A few months ago, I got acquainted with a senior Government official. I asked him what he thought of the new public service officers. His reply was insightful, he said, “It may seem that I, like most of my generation, think less of the younger one but the fact is that things are going to get much worse.” His logic was simple, “The age limit for the public service exam is now 40 – so most of the new officers would be very worldly wise and with very little ideology or zeal to do good. In the old days, young blood would come in with a want to do something for the country – but now we will get people who mostly, only understand profits!”

The same applies to business professionals. When they are young, they feel they need and want to build an open culture where the good prevails. In a few years, the very same people start questioning their own ideologies – “Why should I help people who act like this just for profits? I’ll just work for my own profit! FU people!” A transformation we’ve seen with many of our members. I remember many long conversations with members who would tell me that I was a fool to be giving such support for free – that I should start charging for this service. We are still where we started – that we need more of the positive perceptions in our society to make a difference – because that is what will see them (even the “Naysayers”) through. So even if the difference is a small one – we beg people to be more open and share – just share, even if anonymously.

When we started Cite.co some 6 years ago, a forum in a space which is averse to being open about problems, we were naive. In retrospect, it seems like a serendipity of sorts that we landed up in this space. But even in the rigid business space there are millions who still believe in being collaborative. We’ve done fairly well, specially in the HR space, and amassed almost 3 Million subscribers (we don’t require a login to read or download any more). Turns out the HR space is more human than we thought they were.

Anyone who has ever tried to build a “professional” community will tell you that it’s really difficult to get business professionals to speak up about their business problems, their experiences or the knowledge gathered while solving those professional issues. Companies spend millions of dollars to get their employees to share knowledge and they find little success.

It was difficult way back in 2000 when JobsAhead started a professional youth community – called “Zipahead” – mixing career, fashoin and relationships – and its the same now with many of the professional knowledge sharing sites like our Cite.co and others like Skillshare, Brijj, Bravenewtalent, Peerpower, apnacircle(acquired by Viadeo) and countless others. When it comes to a business social space the only things that survive with abundance are vehicles of promotions – listings and profiles. Or specific services, that cater to a particular need – like Glassdoor.com, which caters to people looking for salary and company information. Like Slideshare which helps with displaying and storing presentations. Other than such use cases, its particularly difficult to get people engaged in the professional space. And specially communities where its about building an emotional bond with the people – it becomes their camp fire where they gather.

The chances of building a space where business professionals are sharing on a public platform is just a ridiculous idea but its also one of the fantasies many companies share. Retain the knowledge created, inside the company. So what’s the secret sauce that makes Cite.Co tick?

Truth of the matter is- there is no secret sauce. It’s a bit of an analogy to Kungfu panda’s dragon scroll- the secret is always the faith the people are able to muster in the platform. All one can do is attempt to inspire that with one’s product and conduct. In our case it’s also a culture that has been set in motion. It’s always cultures that gain momentum which keep communities running. Linkedin successfully introduced the culture of business networking online. That… just spreads from one person to another and today, even non-believers have learnt how to network.

A few lessons from our struggles:

1. Communities are not glamorous and take a lot of time and patience to build.

2. You have to be emotionally balanced, ethical and be willing to spend hours resolving community issues until the culture is set and old members know how to react to trolls.

3. Members show tremendous attachment – a niche community can reach millions in the space in a very short period.

4. The influence of the platform in the social space is intense but you have to promote the right causes.

5. Communities survive on word of mouth so stories are important.

About Cite.co:

Cite.co is a bootstrapped venture and is chugging along with ad revenue. Their small team of 3 consists of  community manager Nabomita Mazumdar who takes care of all community matters, Apurva Arora Roy – Sidhartha’s wife who takes care of members & legal support and the founder Sidhartha Roy who handles most of the technology issues.

-          “Offline is the dominant retail form – for nearly two-thirds of consumers, brick-and-mortar retail outlets are the most important places to shop.” – From a study of 40,000 people in Germany. (ref)
-          Two-thirds of Australians reporting that they prefer “brick and mortar” retail stores. (ref)
-          “About half of would-be customers would not order apparel online because they wanted to feel the merchandise.” (ref)
-          “90 percent of sales still happen in physical stores, so there is a huge, compelling reason to think about the physical store as a driver of sales.” – Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research. (ref)

Therefore, on one hand, if we are observing many brick-and-mortar stores opening e-commerce sites; on the other hand, we are witnessing a change of mindset of the eCommerce enterprises. For example, Andy Dunn, from apparel company Bonobos, started out in 2007 by saying that “stores were a bad economic decision.” However, come 2012 and Bonobos has already opened its sixth store in Manhattan.

Rumors of the possibility that Google will be opening physical stores are also flying around. eBay and Etsy are also testing temporary stores. Piperlime, the Gap Inc. unit that was online only for six years, opened a SoHo store in 2012.  So, if online stores are hitting the roads and building physical stores, does it imply that we will have the same old brick-and-mortar buildings with the same old buying experiences that we’ve always known?

No. That is where some of the most interesting and fascinating innovations are taking place!

Hointer has no over-solicitous sales assistants, no confusing piles of clothes and no endless lines at the tills. Instead, only one of each style of jeans is displayed on the shop floor. Shoppers use a smartphone app to scan items they wish to try on, and choose a size and color.

The app sends a message over the Internet to a robotic system in the stock room. This locates a pair in the correct size and uses tensioned cables to drop it into a basket in one of the shop’s six large dressing rooms. The whole process took less than the time needed to walk to the fitting room, i.e., around 30 seconds. If the jeans fit, the customer can simply put them in a bag, swipe their credit card through a reader and walk out of the door without ever interacting with a single other person.

The Hointer Store

The IdentityMine store concept connects store associates and consumers both inside and outside of brick-and-mortar stores. Designed in partnership with Microsoft, an app on shoppers’ phones allows them to create a shopping list visible to store associates. Before a store visit, customers can browse the inventory while being supported by staff with targeted deals, product suggestions, and the ability to send questions to store associates. Customers check in when they arrive at a physical store, alerting staff members and syncing their user profiles, shopping lists, and purchase history. Staff can then reach out to shoppers via intra-app messages in order to offer help and expertise. Connected signage and digital kiosks let shoppers “throw” content and wish lists from their app on to larger screens in order to enjoy enhanced browsing and customer service.

Identity Mine Concept

With brands altering their sizes according to random standards, shopping sometimes becomes a guessing game. MyBestFit eases this confusion by offering a free full-body scan at shopping malls to determine what size and style fits customers best among the various ready-to-wear brands. In about 10 seconds, a customer can step into the Size Matching Station and be scanned for body measurements!

MyBestFit

Kraft has teamed up with Intel to create a recipe recommendation kiosk that scans your face and then delivers you meal suggestions. The Meal Planning Solution combines the functionality of a self-service kiosk with an interactive retail experience. It can be used to obtain recipes, shopping suggestions, promotional coupons and product samples. Shoppers can tell the machine what sort of meal they are looking to create — a posh dinner or a quick weekday meal. If they swipe their supermarket loyalty cards, they can also get meal recommendations based on their past shopping history.[x]

Meal Planning Solution

Robot Restaurant, in the Heilongjiang province of China, has a staff of 20 robots that cook, serve and entertain the restaurant’s guests! The restaurant opened in June 2012 and has since become a novelty spot in the province’s capital. The robot staff operates through tracks on the floor, which lead from the kitchen and down the aisles between tables. The menu includes dumplings and noodles and is prepared by the robots. After a customer orders, a robot sings near the table while their food is being cooked.

Robot Serving Food

Based on these in-store trends, technology innovations and people preferences that we have been observing, we bring two future scenarios that will stimulate you to think on what the future will be like.

Future Scenario 1:

Peter walks into the mall but does not at any of the old-fashioned stores. He directly goes to the Experience Zone. He goes inside one of the Arenas inside the Experience Zone and gets ready with the set-up. He is given a set of Google glasses and an Electronic Arm Sleeve. He starts the Arena module – a hiking trip to the Alps. He is given a default set of “virtual” accessories. He slips hard and realizes that the hiking shoes are too heavy for his body. So, he goes for a change to lightweight hiking shoes. He does not like his hiking glasses – too nerdy, so he gets another pair in funky colors! Finally, he also chooses a different styling for his jacket. He comes out of the Arena. While he savors a cup of coffee that has been brewed according to his social media preferences, his choice of clothes and accessories are all packed and ready to be taken. He tweets a payment , picks up his bags and heads off for his trip to the Alps – the actual fun is yet to begin!

Future Scenario 2:

Liu wants to make her boyfriend’s birthday very special! She wants to gift him a customized shirt and an exotic cake. However she wants to make her own cake and does not want to buy it from a bakery. She goes to the nearby supermarket. As soon as she enters, the Wel-bot meets her and asks her, “Welcome Liu! Did you like your biking shoes? What would you like to buy today?” Liu tells him that the shoes were perfect for the long ride. She also tells him her requirements. He tells her to sit in the viewing gallery. Wel-bot comes in with a selection of shirt materials and shows her the styling and look on the 3D projection of Liu’s boyfriend. Liu likes the color-changing linen stitched in Martian styled collar. By the time the stitching order goes forward for processing the Wel-bot shows Liu various options for baking an exotic cake. Liu settles for Amrula Almond cake – all the ingredients are forwarded for checkout and the recipe gets forwarded to Liu’s microwave. Liu makes her payment and collects the shopping bags – ingredients for the cake and an awesome shirt (gift-wrapped in her favorite red).

If you have one of your own exciting scenarios, feel free to comment.

If you would like to know more about trends and innovations in Retail and also read on more future scenarios then download our full report on Future of Retail from here.

About ICE

The Institute of Customer Experience is a not for profit initiative by Human Factors International Inc. started in 2012 with a vision to create a knowledge platform for designers, technopreneurs and innovators. ICE has as its mission as:

• The creation of best practices for delivering design solutions that will be used world wide
• The sharing and exchange of information regarding the delivery of customer experience meant for a global customer base
• Forecasts about the state of customer experience in the future

Contact: ice@humanfactors.com

In an article we posted earlier in the day, our guest author pointed out how difficult entrepreneurs find to fit into normal process and system driven companies. The restlessness and urge to do something new all the time is something only a startup can fulfill. Big corporates with their long-winded hierarchy and structures cannot match the adrenaline rush that a startup can give. So when Prashanto Das, co-founder, PING Network says, “We find it exciting to be with businesses that startup. The excitement to dream, start, scale, plan something and then move on to do the next best thing,” we cannot but agree with him. Prashanto and his co-founder Govindraj Ethiraj left their well-paying, cushy jobs at UTV to launch India’s first startup television network that is building content across knowledge, utility and talent genres. Starting up is not new to Prashanto or Govindraj. Govindraj is a financial journalist who was previously the editor-in-chief of TV channel Bloomberg UTV and prior to that he had worked with CNBC TV18.

Both Govindraj and Prashanto are well versed with the media business and between them have worked with three of the biggest news broadcast houses in the country today – CNBC TV18, UTV and Times Now. Prashanto joined Times Now when it had three people and quit when there were 1700, he later joined UTV News when there were five employees and quit when it had 400.

While satellite TV has grown phenomenally in India, what PING has set out to do is cater to the small but growing population of viewers who consume content either on their mobile devices, computers or even the smart TVs at home. PING today has more than 200 high quality videos shot in HD and in accordance to the best broadcast practices being broadcast on YouTube. The site crossed half a million viewers earlier this month.  YouTube is PING’s broadcast partner, through which all the content produced by PING is transmitted. Google/YouTube also handles the marketing and sales part of PING’s business and therefore leaves PING to concentrate on the content creation part.

Govindraj Ethiraj & Prashanto Das

“There is huge potential in this area, the only difference is the approach in doing it. We will produce videos of the same quality as used on TV, high-definition and all the content will be broadcast ready,” explains Govindraj. He admits they are not 100% sure of the outcome, but is bullish about the medium and its potential. “We are a generation ahead of legacy TV networks. We are doing the same things we did back with TV channels, we are producing content in the best possible way,” says Govindraj. PING’s belief in the medium, stems from Mary Meeker’s internet trends report of the last quarter of 2012. According to that report, Prashanto says mobile internet overtook desktop internet the first time in the world.

The fact that many traditional TV networks are under financial stress is well-known, so while there is a lot of supply on TV, not every network is able to monetize effectively. Similarly, there is a shift in viewership patterns, explains Govindraj: “Technology helps viewers to consume lot of content simultaneously. Netflix, YouTube are all in that space. These channels give you content when you want to watch, how you want to watch and why you want to watch.” On the consumer side, people young and old are increasingly consuming content from the digital pipeline and which has also contributed to YouTube rise as the seventh most watched channel in India.

PING currently produces cookery videos as well as music videos which are showcased on India Food Network(IFN) and India Music Network (IMN) respectively – two channels owned by PING. So while most traditional TV channels will showcase a Sanjeev Kapoor or Tarla Dalal on their channel, PING understand internet viewers want to see normal people who cook. “So it can be someone like you aunt, who is a real good cook, articulate and has probably won local competitions. We would prefer to shoot her,” explains Govindraj. Today their cookery videos attract viewership from not just India, but even UK, Canada and UAE. Similarly on the music side, PING has tied up with OKListen!, a pro-musician, digital platform which sells legal music. Through the partnership, IMN wants to showcase new generation of musicians and artistes on platform.

PING is one of the first partners that YouTube is working with in India. Last year YouTube had made public its intent of becoming a broadcaster and while they have made investments in the US, in India they have still not done any investments. Today PING gets a share of 55% of the revenues that YouTube makes through the content they produce. Going forward PING will also be talking to advertisers and get proper advertisements on their IFN & IMN channels. But for advertisers to put their money, it is important to have good high quality content. “While user generated content is great, advertisers don’t support it. They will only put money if they see sustained engaging content, which is high quality,” explains Prashanto. Just like traditional TV channels, the possibility to create branded content on PING also exists. They already did one of their first pieces of branded content for the movie ‘Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana’, where PING partnered with UTV, producers of the film, to make chicken recipes on the IFN channel. PING was also the TV partner for the recently concluded NASSCOM India Leadership Forum, where interviews from the forum was broadcast on PING’s YouTube channel.

Going forward, PING has plans to launch Ping.tv which will showcase all the content they produce. Videos of auto and technology are another two areas that PING has plans to start soon. While they did not share their revenue targets, in terms of videos produced, PING wants to put out atleast 1,000 videos this year and take that up to 5,000 next year. Started in Oct 2012, PING today has 18 employees who are all based in Mumbai, and they also work with their partners in Delhi and Chennai.

Another advantage of being an internet based digital network is that the tension of content distribution is eliminated. In traditional TV, the pain of content production is sometimes not as difficult as distributing it. So while distribution may not be a headache, PING faces similar challenges that other startups face. Scaling up with limited finances is a constraint. Getting the right talent to shoot videos with and create them in high quality is another constraint. PING showed us their newly designed studio in Mumbai, which had all the makings of a studio any top news channel today would own. Top equipments and technology are also investments the startup is making. They recently raised angel investments from founders of Travelguru and Angara.com.

preethi@yourstory.in

Just a few cubicles away, in a cozy cabin, Vijay’s boss Suren was glaring into his computer. The calendar was completely jam packed with meetings most of which he knew were stale mates. “We’ll look into this internally and get back to you within a week,” was the most likely conclusion. He wanted a break and a new perspective.

There are many who find themselves in these positions; while some manage to break the shackles, many just sleep over it and walk the road better known. For all those who find themselves in a similar position, one of the key reasons why they can’t escape the rut is because they cannot see that there ways to go past the locked door. And just in case they find a way out, after starting up, the world seems limited. They don’t know the right channels to tap.

And hence, one needs to startup a couple of years before one actually starts up.

This post by no means tries to dissuade corporate employees from what they do or incline them towards starting up but for only those who’ve made up their mind and are looking for options.

As a fresher, what do you do?

If you’re one of those whiz kids writing ingenious pieces of codes to do some really cool stuff, you’re not likely to be reading this post. You may directly jump in (you still might need help later on). But if you’re looking around, the best way to go about it is to setup a base and build a network first. This is one of the biggest advantages of a good b-school, it gives you a strong network. But you can do this without a b-school as well. Some points:

• Attend startup events or other networking event in and around your city. Know more people. One in a month is also good.
• Have an online presence. Be it whatever sector you want to enter, a strong online presence will always help you. Twitter, Quora, Github and the likes are very powerful tools. You might find your co-founders here.
• You can take up a part time job with some startup- be it any designation. A startup always needs a helping hand and this experience might be one of the best you’ve ever had.
• Try working fulltime with a startup preferably for a year or two before you take the plunge on your own, there are many things that you’d never know if you’re doing it the first time.

These are some of the areas you might want to keep in mind as a newbie in the professional life.

And what if you’re a veteran pro about to startup?

There are techies and managers who’ve been in corporate lives for long years but now want a change. They have a few things like a network already going for them, although limited to a sector, they’re most likely to startup in the same field and these touch points come in handy. But, apart from networking and going to events, there are some ways in which they can also setup a foundation:

• Acclimatize yourself with the system. The two environments are completely different and walking in the new person’s shoes might not be something you can handle. It is best to have discussions who have transitioned from your situation and learn from their experiences.
• Attending meet-ups and participating on online forums is obviously a plus.
• Start contributing. Whichever field you may have been in, there will always be publications/blogs/physical forums to whom you can contribute; may it be in the form of talks or articles. This will ensure people know you when you take the plunge.
• Lose your ego. Large corporations often inflate the egos of professionals with chauffeur driven cars, excellent cafeteria food and the perks. The startup world is different; be ready to sit on floors, eat Maggi for meals and never have time on your hands.

By starting up on these fronts before you startup, you get to test the waters and see what is it about entrepreneurship that really appeals to you. And were you to take the plunge, you’ll jump in better prepared. That will make a huge difference to your chances of success.

So, start up before you startup!

MoveInSync, a Bangalore based company has created a SaaS based ERP solution that can help companies organize and efficiently manage their employee transportation system. Called Employee Transportation Solution(ETS), the tool is useful to not just create pick-up and drop routes effectively. But it also eliminates the need to maintain paper logs that requires the driver and the employee using the service to input data manually.

MoveInSync was established four years back and launched ETS in August 2011. The company has since then signed on five Fortune 500 companies as their clients. Deepesh Agarwal, co-founder & CEO, MoveInSync says they are very encouraged by the response they have received to the ETS. “Clients can save upto 20% in the costs they incur to transport employees. Companies can reduce the number of cars they employ and use the present fleet more optimally.”

MoveInSync has developed an Android based system which is deployed in each car using a mobile phone. These mobile phones are placed in docks either in the front of the car or during night times, if the traveler is a woman, then at the back of the car. This mobile phone deployed by the company is used by the car driver to track his duty-route for the day, log in when he starts work, reach the employee’s house with the help of Google Maps and log off when he finishes work for the day. Due to automation involved, the possibility of a driver fudging the travel log-sheets is eliminated. Salary calculations for the driver at the month-end are also automated because data is collected real-time.

From the employee’s side, they are required to key in a password as soon as they enter the car and signoff on the Android device before they get down at their destination. Incase of car-drops at night, if there is a single woman employee travelling in the car, then after entering the passcode once she enters the car, the employee can dock the mobile phone at the back of the car and it can be used to create alerts incase of an emergency. In the back dock, the device automatically turns into an alarm and if the woman employee senses any danger, all she has to do is press a button on the device for 5 seconds and all parties that have been pre-programmed to be alerted during an emergency will get a distress call from the woman employee.

At the backend, MoveInSync collects employee data like name, gender, mobile number, address and office login time for all employees. This data is then sliced and diced to figure out patterns of employee logins. This is also used to map transportation routes which are then generated into a log sheet that is shared with the driver through the Android device placed in the car. The entire infrastructure management is done by MoveInSync at the backend and the company incharge using the solution gets a frontend dashboard where he can track vehicle movements, keep a tab on employee movement and such.

One of IT giants in Bangalore has been using ETS since the last four months and according to the facility head they are already saving Rs 25,000 per month post installation of the solution. The said company currently transports 1,250 of its employees using MoveInSync and they are also happy with the support provided by the team. At this point the company is only using ETS to schedule trips, but very soon, they plan to install the Android device in their cars which can further improve their driver management and automate the log sheet activity to a great extent. The company forecasts a saving between 10-15% in their transportation costs by using MoveInSync.

The MoveInSync Team

The ETS suite costs Rs 2,50,000 per month and according to Deepesh can give the company savings upto 20% in their transport costs. MoveInSync is targeting Rs 10-crore in revenues this year and looking to cater to 20 clients by the end of the year. According to Deepesh, the employee transportation market in India is worth Rs 5,000 crore annually and today only 5% of it is technology enabled, while the rest is still done manually. After Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Gurgoan, MoveInSync will now foray into Pune market. Apart from employee transportation, MoveInSync also has a courier delivery system which can be used to transport cargo and goods within India. The company is also looking for funding to expand and scale.

As the noise around Union Budget 2013 increases, everyone is getting their wishlist out. The finance minister of India will be the most sought after person for the next few days. Most thought leaders and industry bigwigs want the budget to rein in inflation, provide for tax regimes and put the economy back on a growth trajectory.  The small but growing army of entrepreneurs in our country may still not have strong lobbies to influence the North Block, but they surely have concerns and hopes that they want the Union Budget to address this year. We spoke to a group of entrepreneurs from two of the most vibrant startup cities in India – Bangalore and Mumbai and here is their list of demands from the Union Budget.

T P Pratap, co-founder, QwikCilver.com, Bangalore

T P Pratap, QwikCilver

On IP protection: There should be incentives given to first -gen startup companies focused on unique product IP developments as compared to trading or reselling focused startup entities. Startups with new IP Product concepts don’t always have large toplines and profits for the first 5 years. Waiver of corporate taxes is hence not relevant to this sector. Waivers of service taxes on rents paid, lower charges on expenses for electricity, power would help reduce costs of operations and sustain the business longer.

On attracting talent into the sector: Zero income tax upto Rs 10 lakh salary and lower subsequent IT slabs for employees of startups would help startups attract talent with lower cash burns and payouts.

On FDI in eCommerce: FDI in segments that are focused on eCommerce will enable the use and permit single brand as well as multibrand sales.

On incentivizing startups: Indian tech product startups that have potential in global markets should be given additional Incentives. Just as Indian IT services sector has been encouraged over the last two decades. There are various bottlenecks in opening branches in other cities, this should be simplified to encourage tech product startups.

Vineet Devaiah, founder & CEO, Teliportme.com, Bangalore

I wish something can be done about the immigration laws in our country. It is not easy to hire people from the US to work for us. There are many restrictions if you want to hire a foreign national.

V Narayan Raman, CEO, Tyto Software, Bangalore

The taxes that we pay as entrepreneurs don’t make any sense. There are too many taxes with no clarity on what is compulsory and what is not. A lot of startups just end up paying double taxes to avoid any backlash. The finance minister must work on making things clearer for startups.

Gaurav Mendiratta, CEO, Socio Square, Mumbai

Gaurav Mendiratta, Socio Square

On service tax: The current service tax stands at 12.36 % is now passed on to the client, if this is reduced the client would rather spend more on the services we provide. As experts have suggested this might never happen, but having different slabs for different kind of services or slab based service taxes( i.e lower percentage tax on higher spends) based on spends could work well for everyone.

On making debt-raising easier for startups: Debt-raising is always against a collateral, which makes life difficult for an entrepreneur. Today there are investors who would invest mere Rs 5 lakhs and take 5-7.5% equity in a startup. The entrepreneurs may not have a choice as they need this money to bridge the gap between their current state and a larger VC/angel investment.  If debt raising was made easier for legitimate start-ups they would not have to sell their own stake so cheap!

Hitesh Mehta, co-founder, Singchana.com, Mumbai

Hitesh Mehta, Singchana.com

On support from banks: Encourage banks to give debt funding at low interest rates /easy-flexible payments balanced with some retro-active compensation etc. Setup minimum limit of collateral free debt for startups bringing innovation and with a potential to reach unexplored markets like rural India as well as international markets. Banks should recognize intangible IP(with or without proof of concept) as a collateral for giving funds to startups.

On policy changes: Government should bring initiatives and frame appropriate policies on the lines of MDA-Singapore to foster entrepreneurship. Encouraging standardisation in Media & Entertainment laws across all mediums will help boost startups like us operating in the space.

Now it turns out Goswami’s rival and former colleague Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief of IBN18 Network, may not be all that different either. And that can be said reading an interview of none less than Sagarika Ghose, CNN-IBN deputy editor, but also Sardesai’s wife. Speaking to Mint Lounge, Ghose gave a rather revealing example to explain why she thinks Sardesai shouldn’t be making as many decisions as he does at the channel: “He is obsessed with what’s on the ticker, the top bands. This way the people who are doing the work are not empowered because they keep trying to second-guess him. In fact, my team is obsessed with Rajdeep. I delegate much more and believe if you empower people, things run on their own and you get fresher ideas.” Sardesai, who was also part of the interview, didn’t bother to refute her.

There is no doubt that Goswami and Sardesai are star television personalities in India. But they are also star entrepreneurs. Both quit highly successful roles at NDTV to help start and run rival English news channels that have consistently garnered high viewership ratings and changed – for better or worse – the way India consumes news. In fact, the Caravan profile credits Goswami for single-handedly transforming the prospects of Times Now after the channel’s disastrous first year.

But is it possible that it is precisely their shared cognitive trait – a visible lack of trust in the capabilities of others – that has helped Goswami and Sardesai engineer their entrepreneurial success?

In the absence of any evidence, such a question would certainly have been presumptuous. But a paper published in the latest issue of the European Management Journal by professors Christian Lechner and Sveinn Vidar Gudmundsson of the Toulouse Business School points to a strong link between cognitive biases of a founder and the performance of his/her firm. As the paper admits, it isn’t the first to do so, but what sets it apart is that it traces back biases that have long been established as causes of firm failure to firm survival. Of particular importance to entrepreneurship research is that the paper not only assesses the individual impact of the biases in question, but also the impact of their interplay and influence over each other on firm performance. Its findings are based on a survey of 335 firms (153 bankrupt and 182 non-bankrupt) that operated in a 10-year period in Iceland, a country that saw rapid economic growth until 2008 when it was ravaged by the financial crisis.

Of the three biases the authors put to test – overconfidence, optimism bias, and distrust – the startling find is on distrust. Generally speaking, distrust is a bias entrepreneurs are widely advised to eschew in favour of more agreeable behaviour, such as being open to ideas or sharing responsibilities and tasks with confidence. But professors Lechner and Gudmundsson find that the demands of an entrepreneurial firm can be more nuanced than that – and distrust in measured degrees can, in fact, positively influence firm survival. That is because, they reason, entrepreneurial firms are always under a threat of failure and distrust is an effective “failure avoidance” strategy, especially in cases of high-risk, non-routine activities such as starting a business.

However, the authors are careful to differentiate between entrepreneurs of low trust and entrepreneurs of high distrust. While the former are characterized by a sense of low hope, hesitance and passivity, the latter are keen yet sceptical and vigilant risk-takers. They are more likely to factor negative events, put in place well-planned “control mechanisms” and stay alert to potential moves of competitors, customers and suppliers. On the other hand overly optimistic entrepreneurs are prone to discount negative signals and overrate the likelihood of positive outcomes even in situations of no direct control. While the authors concede that all entrepreneurs are essentially optimists, they believe that it is the differences in their cognitive approaches that ultimately determine what crucial signals entrepreneurs are able to decode before making important decisions.

The study also found that distrust impacted specific areas of organization, which in turn positively influenced firm survival. For example, distrusting entrepreneurs were more likely to possess strong financial orientation since proper financial and accounting practices were one of the control mechanisms they put in place to reduce risk, and consequently, a strong financial orientation was found to have a direct positive influence on firm survival. (Interestingly, the study found that overly optimistic entrepreneurs had weak financial orientation, which negatively influenced firm survival.) Similarly, distrusting entrepreneurs were inclined to delegate less as delegation involves an essential loss of control, and delegating less meant a tougher and clearer prioritization of resource-use, which is critical for any firm during its under-resourced, initial years. The results established that the propensity to delegate, in fact, negatively influenced the survival of a firm.

But like any bias, distrust doesn’t always act in isolation and that’s when its positive influence could easily taper to transmute into negative influence. Of the other two biases tested, its most harmful combination was with overconfidence. This is because while distrust causes entrepreneurs to be sceptical of ideas or solutions that are not theirs, overconfidence induces them into thinking they do not need any external assistance regardless of the difficulty of task at hand. The resulting combination of both these biases in an entrepreneur could lead to a significant miscalibration of knowledge and abilities, severely risking firm survival.

So what practical inferences can actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem hope to glean from these findings? The authors believe there are at least two. First, entrepreneurs are able to see that their cognitive dispositions do impact both the make-up and the performance of their organization. This awareness can help them build the right “regulatory” measures to limit decision biases, including recruiting staff or creating a network of advisors with the right “counter-balancing” dispositions. For example, overly optimistic entrepreneurs could make room for generally sceptical team members or highly-distrustful entrepreneurs could recruit individuals who are great at building and working in open and collaborative spaces.  Second, banks, angel investors and venture capitalists already plumb the psyche of entrepreneurs during risk assessments. But could they also use the knowledge they have mined to build relevant support services for their entrepreneurs?

Clearly, nobody is suggesting that the biases that exist in entrepreneurs need to be offset or neutralized. That would be futile – the world sees the entrepreneurial activity it does precisely because of those biases. What deserves bearing in mind, though, is that their roles and functions are neither as simple nor as uniform as they may usually seem.

About the author:

Kaushik Satish has worked with the National Entrepreneurship Network, a non-profit organization supporting entrepreneurship development, leading their Communications efforts, and with Aol, an online media company, as an Editor. He is based out of Delhi and can be reached out at kaushik.satish10@gmail.com

Editor’s Note: With a fresh wave of entrepreneurship coming in, India is seeing many young entrepreneurs starting up. As a first time entrepreneur, there are some problems which are very hard to understand if you’re not experiencing them first hand. And it becomes very important to find support for an entrepreneur which usually comes from other founders and basically the startup ecosystem. Here, Prerna Mukharya takes us through her journey and tells us about her ‘empty days’…

I run a research startup ‘Outline India’ and I’ve been waiting for someone to write on how I feel on most days. My lows are mostly not the fancy lows as described in newspaper articles and startup blogs, but O’so very basic.

I haven’t slept well in 3 nights now. I’m waiting for my client to pay up the last tranche of payment, they are two weeks late. By extension, I need to pay my employees who are now wondering if they will receive their payment. I could dig into my humble personal savings, and pay up, but I’m counting sheep and hoping for the payment to show up.

 Not being able to go out for fancy dinners, and lunches and not being able to afford Zara are stereotypes albeit true ones.

 But my problems are much mundane than that, I find myself making projections for how long my savings are good enough to sustain me while having enough to pay my interns or to take my potential client out for a cup of coffee. I do not own an office space and try and get out of the house to work, (yes, that’s a must to keep motivation levels up), well whoever said coffee was cheap!

I never buy a large, it’s always a regular Americano. The coffee shop folk now know me since I frequent them, and we exchange casual pleasantries every time. I seat myself on a corner sunny table for two, plop my bag on one and work away for a few hours everyday form there. In the beginning, they would come ask me after a two hour period with their polite, ’Madam, anything else for you?’ and Id politely nod and turn them down. In due course, I think they figured I was a struggling writer of some sort.

They let me be now.

Again, the idea of a lot of work is always welcome in a startup. And when I say work, it can mean a lot of things. It can mean preparing for meetings to get work. Mind you, every project needs x hours of work before a preliminary discussion. If you are startup, you make that x+ 5 and if you are a struggling startup, you try to make that (x+5)x3 for projects of each kind to hedge your bets. I never knew I would actually care about the probability lessons I learnt in school!

But these days don’t bother me, even though I know that on a good day I stand a 50% chance of getting a project. What does bother me are the ‘empty days’.

If you’ve been a student who stayed at home for a few months to prepare for some exam, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. The empty days, when you have little else to do, when you spend most of your times reaching out to potential clients, without an ounce of an expectation of hearing back. You wake up, you do your thing, and its evening, you’ve doodled and dabbled in work for a few hours but you have nothing tangible to show for it. When you meet your friends on the weekend and they re exchanging stories on how ‘Oh this was a tough week, my boss is in town’, ‘Oh I’ve been sleeping 5 hours every night for a week now’,  ‘ Oh I wont be able to make it for dinner at 8 pm, you guys start without me’. And I’m thinking, I made time for all those things; I’m clearly not a busy person.

What’s worse, are those days when your team members bail on you without prior intimation or your interns ask you what to do next and you re not sure. I have an intrinsic belief that you need to keep your team motivated, but you cant make people stay unless they want to. You can’t start working with a startup for money; you work for it because you believe in the idea. For instance, I believe that data is the foundation of research and that India needs data. It does not have to be an altruistic motive; it just has to be a simple, believable chain of thought.

There are days when I go to bed absolutely exhausted, and then other days when I’m emotionally exhausted and still others when I’m so exhausted thinking of what’s coming next that I cant sleep. I’m too frazzled to be able to read a book, so my mind races while my body stays put.

What I do when I have my share of don’t-know-what-to-do-next days? Well, I look for inspiration. I look for other startups to collaborate with, or I pick up my phone and call up friends who run startups. I head to the gym. I watch a movie I’ve seen twice before so I know what to expect. I send an email to a friend I’ve not been in touch with for a few months. I cook. I go do that meeting I’ve been putting off months for I know it has little chance of bearing fruit. I go take a cheap weekend trip to a place I don’t care much about. And since I know I wont remember any of this in my state of mopiness, I maintain a list of things-to-do-on-my-not-so-favorite-day.

And well, its unfair to expect your family or close friends to understand what you’re going through. No one does. And that’s ok. We all knew what we were getting into.

So on the empty days I suggest you put on your favorite jacket and head out to a coffee shop for a few hours. Do your things and then pick a few things off your own things-to-do-on-my-not-so-favorite-day list.

You’ll be not so busy only for so long.

About the author:

Prerna Mukharya, Founder, Outline India

image credit: combatblog

Priya Nadkarni and Jeevan Kumar, both are investment professional working with Unitus Capital, a boutique investment bank focused on raising capital for companies that impact the low-income population. Post the launch of Social Story, we were looking for some insights from experts in the social space and Unitus Capital obliged. Here we look at some of the teething problems and provide excerpts from the article which in its entirety is available here…

India’s drive towards becoming the world’s largest economy will continue to improve the lives of low-income population. Between 2005 and 2010, globalization has lifted half a billion people out of poverty across the world. As purchasing power improves, large demand-supply gaps are being exposed in fundamental areas such as healthcare, financial services, education, affordable housing, water and agriculture. Successful businesses in these segments need to move away from the traditional cookie cutter models because the challenges associated with operating in these markets are different. For instance, insurance – it is a necessary protection against income shocks for consumers, and yet insurance penetration in India is one of the lowest in the world. Regulators and Governments have taken the easy way out by enforcing the provision of these services on to private insurers. For many private insurers, this is just part of their social obligations and few really make money off products sold to the rural population.  Hence, a large opportunity looms for building investing in businesses that work in this space.

Providing the fuel to oil the economy – Financial services

Credit

Credit allows people to leverage their limited and stable income to make asset purchases such as a house, help tide over periods of irregular income or commit large expenditure such as organizing a wedding. Unfortunately, household debt in India is 10% of GDP, 8-9X lower than US, UK or Canada and 3x lower than China. The impact of this is especially felt among the poor who lack access to credit at a reasonable cost, mainly because they lack good collateral and a stable income.

Long term savings and insurance

Savings avenues for the low income are limited and mainly include self-help group federations, co-operatives and chit funds.  Access to retirement savings for the low income is another area that is little explored even as India has moved from a defined benefit system to a defined contribution system with the introduction of the National Pension System in 2004.

Enabling people to prosper and grow – Education

Education remains one of the sectors where potential for impact is huge. The Indian middle class is expected to expand significantly – from 300 million people today to 583 million people in 2025. By 2025, about three-quarters of India’s urban population will be part of the middle class, compared with slightly more than a tenth today. As Indians continue to climb the economic ladder, the composition of their spending will likely change significantly – growing by 11% over the next 20 years to 9% of the household income, creating a demand-supply gap.

Solving a looming problem that hinders productivity and wipes off incomes – Healthcare

India is faced with several serious healthcare issues that threaten to reduce the quality of life. 43% of Indian children below 5 years of age are malnourished compared to 28% in sub-Saharan Africa.  India is home to nearly 1/3^rd of the world blind population when nearly 80% of all blindness is preventable. This is the result of several failures in the healthcare system (a) poor sanitation (b) inadequate and poorly trained healthcare staff (c) lack of access to healthcare facilities. There are less than 800,000 physicians in India – 6.5 physicians for every 10,000 people compared to a global average of 14.2 physicians for every 10,000 people, a situation that is further compounded due to paucity of healthcare facilities – 9 beds for every 10,000 people compared to a global average of 30.

Building affordable homes for the mass market – Affordable housing

As rapid urbanization changes the landscape of our cities, India’s current model for low income housing is becoming grossly inadequate. The chawl is an apartment building with 4-5 stories, comprising 10-20 tiny 400 square feet rooms. The room serves as all-purpose quarters – living room, kitchen, bedroom and study. A typical family of five is joined by in-laws and visiting cousins. “It is a global paradox”, observes Naresh V. Narasimhan, an accomplished architect who consults for Infosys, TCS and the World Bank. “The smaller the unit, the more people live in it. The larger the house, the fewer people it contains.”

Saving the planet – Renewable Energy

Rising costs of fossil fuels and their depletion has increased the interest and investment in renewable energy sources. In many countries renewable energy has received substantial support from the government.

Improving rural incomes – Agriculture

Agriculture contributes 16.6% of the Indian GDP, more than half a billion people are employed in the agricultural and allied sectors. India is among the world’s five largest producers, growing over 80% of agricultural produce items. However, the crop yields in India are 30-60% of the yields in developed and developing countries – among the lowest in the world. Nearly a third of the produce is wasted due to poor supply chain and the unorganized nature of the retail industry in India.

Read the complete article.

Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, an international publishing consultant, writing about copyright (“Copyright Law: More than a Moral Obligation,” Businessworld website) says, “To explore larger issues surrounding copyright, and for publishers in general, management of copyright is a very important part of their business.” During a children’s book launch, Jaya snapped a few pictures and was surprised to find that it was used by the publisher without credits. When Jaya brought it to the attention of the publishers, they immediately corrected their mistake and attributed the pictures to Jaya. It was interesting to look at the publisher’s reply to Jaya’s message: “So sorry. It was a slip up as I had said that you should be acknowledged. But since that is not the usual practice — simply because no one had asked — it was overlooked.” Is Times of India not morally under obligation to attribute the logo it carried of WebSide on the Independence Day? [update: The editor at TOI called WebSide to apologize and have promised a quick solution.]

According the website copyrightlawmatters.in, which is a repository of information on Indian copyright laws, “Copyright, as understood today, is a creation of statute. It subsists in works such as books, and protects them by, among other things, disallowing their unauthorized reproduction, adaptation and translation. The right to do such acts is referred to as copyright, and is described in Section 14 of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957. It vests exclusively in the copyright owner — usually, the author of the work. ” It further adds: “The violation of copyright (referred to as copyright infringement) is a legal wrong in respect of which a civil suit may be instituted to seek the grant of a permanent injunction to restrain further infringement, damages, the rendition of accounts of profit, and the delivery up of both infringing copies of the work and the plates used to make them. If required, administrative orders such as Anton Pillar Orders may also be obtained to assess the extent of infringement.” Copyright infringement is a criminal offence liable to be punished with fine and imprisonment, or both.

“Plagiarism is primarily an ethical issue,” explains copyrightmatters.in website, adding, “Pertinently, Section 57 of the Copyright Act grants authors the “Special Right” to be attributed for their work. Widely referred to as a moral right, this right is perpetual, is independent of copyright, and remains unaffected by transfers of copyright ownership. Thus, the right to attribution recognised by statute could be considered analogous to the right not to be plagiarised.”

When I spoke to Vinutha Mallya, Editor at Mapin Publishing and who has studied copyright law, she said, “Online posts are covered by Copyright Law. Any medium that is public, where text is published, comes under the purview of the law, including the Internet now. Since they have proof (and the veracity in digital era is difficult since people can remove posts etc just like SI did on Twitter), their case can be proven without doubt.” SiliconIndia’s contention that they are a news site and hence enjoy the right to copy paste is without regard for law or moral obligation in the Lighthouse Insights blog issue that was raised by Prashant Naidu just a couple of days back.

Why can’t the people involved take a cue from Fareed Zakaria’s suspension after he accepted lifting passages from elsewhere for his column? We talk about America for everything that we don’t have. But when it comes to moral issues where America acts forthright, we evade under the carpet quoting Indian way of doing things. As the national Tamil poet Subramanya Bharathi said, we need to take good things wherever they come from.

1. Vision: I started my 2006 Asian games campaign as far back as 2002. The vision of a medal in 2006 is what drove me to train from 2002 till 2006. When I started, it was not clear which event I would be participating or the path to get that medal. This vision is very important while startng up a venture.

2. Perseverance & determination: During the 5 years of my campaign, I have lost many more races than won. The campaign had been filled with uncertainty right till the first race of the Asian Games. Challenges varied from getting approval to participate in events, equipment, coaching, funds etc. During the first round of selection trials for the Asian Games, I had been comprehensively beaten to second. To everyone else the final selection for the Games was a foregone conclusion and it definitely was not me. However, I was able to identify my shortcomings –lack of equipment, not the correct weight & inadequate downwind sailing skills. I focussed and worked on each of them in the next 6 months. I borrowed a boat from TNSA for the Asian Games trials, added 7 kilos of muscle mass in 6 months and trained the entire monsoon fine tuning my sailing skills. Winning the Asian Games trial with a race to spare was the result of all that effort coming together.

3. Work ethics & discipline: Adding 7 kilos of muscle mass while at the same time spending 4 hours on the water 5 days a week required discipline & work ethics. As I was sailing from the Naval Sailing Club, I lacked a training partner in the laser. Yet, coming back after a long day on the water in rough seas & heavy winds of the monsoons, I was never more satisfied. I had moved yet one step closer to my goal.

4.Planning: Plan your work and work your plan; one of the first things I learnt about a major event campaign was to divide it into 3 parts: Train to train, Train to race and race to race. The first part was to get your basic skills sets & fitness in place to be able to train efficiently. The second was to develop skills required for racing and the third was ‘to race’ to learn from the experience of racing.
Every campaign had a macro and micro plan. A macro plan for the entire campaign and a weekly/monthly micro plan. The plan kept being modified depending on performance metrics like event performance, goals achieved and outside factors like health, events etc.
As an entrepreneur there are several times you get bogged down with day to day challenges. It is the ability to keep planning my work and working my plan helped me grow my business through these challenges.

5. Flexibility: No matter how much you plan, things never quite go the way you want. In 2004, the enterprise was part of the Asian Games. My team won the Nationals, a medal at the Worlds and we seemed all set to medal at the Asian Games. We then got the news that the Enterprise Class had been dropped from the Games. I was required to quickly regroup and get my campaign started in the laser.
When I started iLogo, I had anticipated being able to create a market in Europe for my offering due to the huge cost advantage of manufacturing in India. However, due to the huge cost of marketing in Europe, this never really took off. The Indian ecommerce market at theat time was too small to focus on. The first year we had to depend on offline sales to support the development of the ecommerce platform. The conviction in the vision is what kept us going.

6. Innovation: Getting better in sailing is all about being innovative while training and racing. Luckily, I was trained by one of the foremost Olympians from India to always think and train out of the box. It was most important to do things the smartest way, so you could achieve the most with the very least.

In iLogo, without a large ad budget, we struggled getting our initial customers. In 2011, we came up with this idea to run a theme based Online T-Shirt design contest using the easy to use design studio of iLogo. This would help users know about our site & how it functions.

I was fortunate that the team of MTV Roadies liked this idea wholeheartedly. The contest for the ‘Official MTV Roadies T-Shirt‘ in 2011 got in more than 11,000 entries with the winning design getting over 15,000 facebook likes. We went on to run similar contests for Oktoberfest, IIT Guwahati, Ezeego1, Sophia College etc.

This year we launched our most ambitious contest yet. ‘The Enerzal Coolest College T-Shirt Contest’ where users will express their passion for their college by designing T-Shirts. The winners will be decided by voting on facebook. We already have over 1400 registered participants & are part of the St Xavier’s College festival Malhar.

7. Don’t be Myopic: Every race is a mix of strategy and tactics. You plan every race with a strategy. This would depend on which side of the course you wish to be, current position amongst the points, tide, weather anticipated etc . However, one minute from the start, it is probably more important to be narrow focused on the tactics of the start. More important at that point, is to make sure you are fast off the start line & tactically strong with respect to nearby boats. This shift from strategic to tactical, broad focused to narrow focus continues right through the race.
As a startup founder, you spend everyday shifting between a tactical view point to a strategic one. You look into day to day activities while at the same time keeping an eye on strategy and vision for your company. One can easily get bogged down with the day to day activites and it is very important to step back to check the strategic path of your company.

8. Equanimity, presence of mind & being in action: Every sportsman loses far more than he wins. It is the sportsman who learns ‘how’ to lose, who learns to win more often. When I started sailing, I got easily upset by losing & failure. Over the years I learnt how to deal with this. My best events have been the ones where I have participated without the fear of failure while at the same time being committed. The Asian Games trials were one such event. I went in confident of performing. Even a few bad races were unable to upset my rhythm and confidence. The ability to learn from failure, keeping calm, & continuing working hard has been one of the greatest gifts of sailing.
iLogo has been equally if not more tumultuous. In 2010, we signed a contract with Reliance where our products were going to be sold in over 100 stores across India. However, a change in their management saw the project being shelved. A lot of effort had been wasted, or so it seemed. This year, a person connected with the project who had moved to Hungama, invited us to be part a select group of ecommerce companies being promoted through their app installed in every intel based laptop. There have been several failures along the way. I have looked at every failure as an expensive lesson learnt. Sports gave me the confidence to achieve anything. After all in the space of 3 years, I had moved from sailing my first nationals to winning a medal at the Asian Championship.

9. Making the most of what you have: Sponsorhip for sailing has always been a challenge. One has always had to make the best of whatever resources on could get ones hands on. I had sailed with 8+ year old equipment my entire sailing career right upto the Asian Games trials. When I sailed the trials in a new boat, I seemed to have found an extra gear and my goal turned into reality. A competitive sailor in India has to don multiple hats of travel agent, coach, repairman, physical trainer, boatman in addition to doing his regular job. We also had to make the most of the limited international exposure, funds, equipment & knowledge. These skills of making the best of the very least have paid huge dividends while starting up.
I grew up wearing had me downs from my brother. We just always made the most of everything at home.
I started iLogo with an initial capital of Rs 1 Lakh. I didn’t have huge savings when I left the navy nor did I feel comfortable borrowing money from my parents. I had no option but to make iLogo work. For iLogo, I learnt photoshop to make the images on the site, wrote the content, did the SEO & designed all the pages. I even learnt web programming to have more control over the development of the site. The biggest lesson was that no job was too small and no challenge too big.

10. Passion & desire to excel: If you aren’t passionate about sailing, it is unlikely you would be spending your saturdays & sundays burning on the water in the summers of mumbai. But it is the desire to excel which kept us on the water for over 10 hours training, whether it was hot mumbai, windy Australia or cold europe. Training is not always fun. Many a days are spent doing the most boring and tedious drills a million times in trying circumstances. This had to be done to make sure you didn’t mess it up in a race.

iLogo was started with the same passion. The passion to make a mark. The passion to be a part of the ‘Great India Story’. The passion to make a difference. This passion & desire to excel has kept us innovating to be the best Custom T-Shirt website in the world. I can proudly claim that there is no other cusotm t-shirt website in the world which offers the online features, usability & speed we do.

The journey with iLogo continues. Today, I am more than convinced that there is an entrepreneur living in every sportsman.

The vision of VentureStudio is to nucleate an innovation ecosystem that accelerates the growth of scalable team-based technology ventures in Ahmedabad and its environs. In VentureStudio, we believe that without a team based approach, the chances for an innovative venture to sustain itself in a highly competitive environment are limited. VentureStudio aims to kick start an ecosystem by nurturing high performing teams to discover deep societal needs, create technological solutions and launch innovative business ventures to address these needs.

VentureStudio came into existence with this vision, backed by the generous support of some private investors from Mumbai. A gap was observed between Academia and Innovation and VentureStudio aims to address it.

VentureStudio has partnered with Centre for Design Research, Stanford University, IIM-A , NID, IIT-Gn and is backed by distinguished individuals of Gujarat, namely, Sanjay Lalbhai, Chairman and MD, Arvind ltd, Praful Anubhai, Educationist and Corporate Advisor, Dr A H Kalro, a scholar and teacher in Operations, Jayanti Ravi, LSE alumna, Prof. Pradyumna Vyas, Director, National Institute of Design (NID),  Samir Kumar Barua, Director IIM-A, and Sudhir Jain, Founder-Director, IIT-Gandhinagar. Neeraj Sonalkar, a PhD Candidate at the Center for Design Research, Stanford University is the Joint Director working along with Vikram. Larry Leifer and Ade Mabogunje are full-time Coaches from Stanford University.

VentureStudio is seeking applicants to their new product and business creation program. Those chosen for the program will spend six months working within a team to develop new product prototypes and business plans in a hands-on, intensive, technically challenging, training and work program. At the end of six months, the teams will have an opportunity to launch a business for deployment of their new product into the market. A one-two year commitment (preferably full-time) to making such a business succeed will be necessary.

The following process includes skill-set identification, need-analysis and getting hands-on for the product development:

With this process in place, a dynamic vision and solid backing, VentureStudio primarily addresses: prototype ready individuals and startups in pre-incubation phase. Vikram jokingly described the need he is addressing as, “Everyone is ready to sit and advise. No one wants to go out on the field.”

Well, getting on to the field and doing the job is a tough task indeed. YOU can build and scale a brilliant product working with VentureStudio, are you ready to get your hands dirty?

• Build brand awareness – you want a large number of customers to know about you.
• Improve customer service – If you want to change perceptions about your company, or improve your customer service, social media will help. e.g. Dell, FedEx
• Promote and Sell – If you want to promote products by leveraging influencers who are likely to broadcast your message, or, encourage existing advocates then this channel is ideal.

How to start formulating a social media marketing plan?It is important to understand the core of social media before you create a plan. We are amazed at number of businesses that miss out on leveraging user behavior that drives social. Social is not Facebook, nor Twitter marketing or, placing of like buttons and buying tons of likes. It’s about simple human psychology that is now being facilitated at a scale by platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn etc. Let’s dive into it from a commercial perspective -

• You are a customer too – find out what motivates you to buy someone’s product and inculcate that into your own products. Look for soft features like branding, feel good factor etc. If you don’t do it right, you can always learn from FedEx response to customer .

• People like personalization – We all want to see stuff that matters to us, our friends, our job etc. Facebook and LinkedIn cater to that need by providing features like personalized search results, news feed, invite friends etc. Companies like Pinterest curate content to keep it relevant even when they don’t have lot of data on you. Check out here, how GoodReads have personalized their home page-

• People like hanging out with other likeminded people – you may either communicate directly or, be a conversation enabler. Hosting a discussion forum or, enabling users to create their own groups works well. E.g. Do It Yourself Forum, VMWare, Radian6, Quora

• Recognition always works – if you have users who contribute by going above and beyond, recognize them. E.g. SEOMoz Top Users, Top Fans app and other leader boards are powerful tools to motivate customers.

We are pretty sure that Ryan and EGOL are pretty happy about their top position at SEOMoz – Check out Top Fans for Black Station on Facebook – Where to do social media marketing?

• Start with your website-
  • It’s all about personalization – when a user logs in, curate and present content/products that are relevant to him/her. Check out here how LinkedIn has personalized few features like People you may know, related groups, related jobs, friends you can invite etc.

• Encourage users to participate – leave feedback, reviews, latest update, clubs or, comments etc. SEOMoz’s “Do you Like this post?”, “Add a Comment” etc are great ways to encourage users to participate  -

• Reward them –This is one of the most effective ways to attract users and keep them engaged on your page. You can always go for Sweepstakes, Coupons, and Gifts. You can also give badges to your active users in order to motivate them.

• Across relevant social networks – chances are that most of your potential customers are still out there and need to be convinced and converted. So, create a presence along relevantsocial networks, discussion boards etc. Here is a list of networks that you should consider creating a presence at -
  • General social networks -
    • Facebook – Check out few Facebook pages like Wildfire, Redbull, Burberry, Harley Davidson, etc
    • Twitter – Check out few tweets like Mashable, Brain Solis,  SEOMoz ,Wildfire etc
    • Pinterest – You can always “pin” your content, photos, events etc on their boards. Check out here – 15 mouth watering summer recipes from Pinterest , Top ten Pinterest pins etc.
    • LinkedIn- Its one of the most important professionally oriented online social networks. Therefore information you include helps potential clients in reaching to you.
    • Google+ – Check out here the most circled brand pages on Google+ like Android, Mashable, Coldplay, Google etc
    • YouTube – Video: Examples are YouTube, Vimeo, or Ustream, Photos- Flickr, Photobucket or Picasa , Audio- Podcast alley or Blog Talk Radio
• Social Geolocation and meeting services: FourSquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Meet-ups & Tweet-ups etc.
• Social News services- Like Digg, Reddit, & other news sites
• Social bookmarking services – Like StumbleUpon, Delicious etc
• Social Music sites- like MeeMix, Maestro.fm, Last.fm, Worldsings, etc

About the Author:

Rajat Garg (CEO, SocialAppsHQ) – Rajat graduated from DCE followed by MS at Stanford University in 2005. As Product Manager at Amazon, he was responsible for conceptualization and launch of aStore, Amazon data feed and internationalization of various products. He has published couple of research papers as well as received a patent for his work that facilitated Amazon’s entry into corporate incentive market.  Rajat then worked as General Manager for Real Estate Business unit at a Seattle startup DataSphere, where he grew business several folds. Rajat started SocialAppsHQ in Jan 2011 after realizing the huge potential and impact this can make. His interests include biking and flying Cessnas’

As the great Mozart said : It’s not a lofty degree of imagination or intelligence that makes a genius… love… love is the soul of a Genius! So in your speech, lace every word, every thought, every action, with Love! The audience will be spellbound!

This is the quote Gautam received on his flight before delivering the speech and the motivation behind changing the format of his speech, focusing more on love

“A few years after passing out from Carnegie Mellon University, I went back to deliver a speech and amongst the crowd was my father. Some time into the speech, he stood up and walked away!” began Gautam Gandhi, Head of New Business Development Emerging Markets, Google on Saturday at IIM-A’s IMDC auditorium, the venue for the Techsparks 2012 Ahmedabad Roundtable. “My father couldn’t stand me for more than half an hour and I was wondering how the others were bearing me!” he went on and mysteriously, the audience by then was already in clutch and in anticipation of what was to follow. And in clutch they were, because what followed was a flamboyant speech full of anecdotes and learnings from his experiences of starting up multiple times; succeeding sometimes while failing at other times; all of which was eagerly taken in by the young entrepreneurial Ahmedabad crowd.

Starting with the evergreen Fisherman and Businessman story which is worth retelling every time, the talk filled with entrepreneurial spirit had multiple takeaways which are beautifully summarized by these insightful tweets (follow #tsparks for all the action)

• Don’t run after money. Sell a genuine problem; life becomes much more gratifying.
• In order to succeed, you should be given a chance to fail.
• If your dream is not worth laughing at, its probably too small.
• Writing something down is an act of permanence. Write what you want to do. Have a mission statement in life.
• Write a business plan for your life first and then use it to reach your goals.

Questions from the audience ranged widely including everything from motivating oneself to keep going to the right way to scale up successfully. Vishal Mehta, Founder at Infibeam and also having local experience besing based out of Ahmedabad had a flurry of questions to answer. The Panel also had Sachin Kelkar from Intel and Aakash Goel from Sequoia Capital. Talking about a question in particular which raises a debate at every startup event, “What do investors look for?” Gautam had an answer which was witty but at the same time pointed out exactly what an entrepreneurs solution should have:

1) It’d be great if the opportunity hasn’t been tapped. Buzz word: Greenfield Opportunity

2) Should be hard to imitate. Buzz word: Complex entry barriers

3) Customer should be involved for a lifetime. Buzz word: Annuity Revenue

4) Shouldn’t require much investment. Buzz word: Less Capital Intensive

5) The business shouldn’t be restricted. Buzz word: Scalable

Stay tuned here and on twitter for continuous updates. Follow us @yourstorydotin and Gautam Gandhi @gkgandhi.

More about Techsparks here and register for the Hyderabad Roundtable here.

Design is a continuous, data-driven, iterative process at SlideShare. Design involves Ideation, going back and forth doing wireframe mockups for information architecture, interaction design and many other intricacies before rolling out the html/css.

Design Evolves

Design is never constant. “You can never fix up a design because design needs change continuously and your design needs to adapt,” saysArun. There is a vast difference between UI, UX and other aspects and it is very important to understand them. The main aim of a design is to make it user friendly along with being pleasing to the eye. “For instance, getting an upload button to be the right size and colour may seem insignificant but it matters a lot. A lot of thought goes into such stuff and correct execution using testing and metrics is what makes a good design.” he adds.

The SlideShare Team with Arun Post the LinkedIn Acquisition

The India-US differentiator

To close on a pretty interesting chat about design, Arun signed off with his design mantra, “Design is simply creating order out of chaos.”

You can reach out to Arun on Twitter @simplyarun or his website.
Also, if you happen to be in bangalore, there is a 2 day UX Utsav happening, starting tomorrow.

This article is the second in the series of 20 articles by Santosh Sharma.

In my last article, ‘Tipping point for entrepreneurship’, I discussed an idea is not enough for successful entrepreneurship. An idea should meet right resources and action at the opportune time to actually translate into an enterprise that is sustainable, inclusive and intelligent.

Now, let’s have a deeper look at the resources that will convert the idea into action. Many of us limit our understanding of resources defining it narrowly. We usually mistake them as hard resources only like manpower, money, technology etc. We tend to miss the soft resources like the strategies, coping mechanisms, leadership qualities etc. and I firmly believe the soft resources are more important than the hard ones. If the soft resources are in place and acting the hard resources will fall in place, but it does not usually work the other way around.

This article is dedicated to coping mechanisms and the role it plays in our entrepreneurial journey. If we define entrepreneurs from the risk-appetite angle, I would define them as “shock absorbers”. Of course entrepreneurs are exposed to tight and tricky situations day in and day out – external shocks like competitive moves, economic swings, industry dynamics and internal shocks like emotional pulls, stress assault, anxiety levels. Those who absorb these shocks better have an edge over the others.

The deeper and stronger is your desire to have a particular outcome, the lower become your coping mechanisms and vice versa. It is because when we crave, we are hooked to our mental boxes and if the situations don’t turn in the desired way there is anxiety and turmoil within. This is because of the mismatch between what we want and what is and this limits or pollutes all our decisions and actions. But most of us have been doing just this – simply craving from our mental boxes.

You saw Sachin Tendulkar falling abnormally from the 99th to the 100th ton. Do you feel a man who has hit 99 centuries lacked skills? Of course not! He lacked the coping mechanism at that point in time, may be for n number of reasons and this lead to the problem. It’s the same with us.

Coping mechanisms are tested when we are in the midst of real tight situations, when there is loss, conflict, insecurity and so on. This is the time when you become fragile. And this pours or reflects in whatever you do. This is one of the reasons most of the enterprises fail to survive the first year itself. And those who survive this onslaught are in a better position to face the rest of the journey. Coping mechanisms separates life and death.

Live every moment, cope up and you will succeed.

An IBM study shows that our coping mechanisms are continuously on the decline. This is leading to early burn outs, quitting and frustrated decisions.

When our coping mechanism fails, it leads to a whirlpool of mistakes, one leading to the other and we drown in it. I have seen some enterprises failing but also others who swam out and are therefore in a better position to manage the ups and downs or twists and turns of the journey.

A good ecosystem or a good mentor may absorb some of the shocks but to really succeed you need to be the shock absorber yourself.
Certainly, the pressures and challenges are not going to go down in life and work. If you have to survive you can think out of the box and “stretch” to meet the challenges but if you have to “lead” you must “dissolve the boxes” holding you back.

When you are mentally boxed you try to control situations when actually you should be a designer, designing your way out. These two are very different in their intelligence. When you try to control the situation, the situation is dominant on you. But when you design your way out, you don’t resist the situation, you accept it first and then design a way out. Now you guide the situation. Simply thinking out of the box is not enough as the mental boxes still remain your reference point. Dissolve it and you will manage the situations better. Now your coping mechanisms tend towards infinity.

I have seen many entrepreneurs, failing in this test and this has become their biggest obstacle in their journey and not the lack of hard resources which many of them label because of their ignorance, limited understanding and the habit to site excuses by putting the blame outside. They can actually handle much more than what they do now. Don’t think out of the box and simply stretch yourself. Like elastic it will break after a certain extent. Dissolve the boxes and don’t abuse yourself anymore. You are much more intelligent than what you think yourself to be. Increase your coping mechanisms naturally, by dissolving your boxes to lead the hot, crowded and dynamic flat world.

We’ll deal how to “dissolve the boxes” in detail in the 9th article.

Are you running a startup which deals with products and services involving some degree of technical and intellectual work? If yes, have you ever thought about the flow of information among employees, third parties, and clients which is secret and essential for your business? You need to re-think and design around agreements and corporate structure to safeguard your intellectual property interests. Here are some tips to make you start thinking!

Employment Agreement

It is an obvious event that you have made your employees sign an employment agreement detailing their salary structure and scope of work. It is a common task to add confidentiality or not to disclose clause into the agreement safeguarding leakages of your trade secrets and essential business information. It is very essential for you to add an intellectual property clause in the agreement stating that any intellectual property (patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, designs) generated by employees within the scope of employment and work will be assigned to the company. Even though you are hiring them for money and automatically all Intellectual Property is assigned to the company in theory, though case laws have not developed so much in India to ascertain this fact with surety.

Scope of Work Document with clients

A scope of work document signing before starting any client’s work is a good practice. It is similarly a good practice to outline an Intellectual Property clause stating what deliverable is intellectual property of client and what belongs to you.

Website Disclaimers

We have seen lot of websites in practice merely stating ‘Copyright © <company name> <year>’ on their page. This is a good practice, but might not be enough. Adding a disclaimer and terms of use safeguarding all contents on your website is crucial, especially when you publish content on your website at high frequencies. E-Commerce, publishing houses, and product companies need to careful with more clauses like copyright content and web crawling and spiders.

Third Party Agreements

Startups mostly run into collaborations with other startups, distributors or research organizations. It is yet again essential to add an Intellectual Property clause in these collaboration agreements before-hand stating who owns what piece of Intellectual Property at the end of the day.

Partnership Deed or Memorandum of Association

Startups usually form a partnership firm or incorporate their firm as a private limited company. To do so, you have to prepare a partnership deed or Memorandum of Association. We usually see an Intellectual Property clause missing from these business foundational documents and it’s a great degree of concern. What if your partner leaves and asks that I created this brand and I want equal rights over company’s trademarks and patents? Having equal rights over Intellectual Property (IP) will make him/her have a veto power on what you do or don’t do with this IP that you built together over the years even after he leaves the firm.

Start thinking over these issues and you might come up with more case-scenarios where you need to protect your IP. Getting all these agreements and safe-guards in place takes hassle for 2 -3 weeks while dealing a lawyer and in-house manager. Though once done, you will never have to bother so much. This exercise makes you confident and relaxed, generates awareness among your employees on IP and confidential materials, and makes your investors happy and gain trust in your business methods.

About InnovAccer

INNOVACCER (Innovation Accelerated) is an innovation management and acceleration company focused and dedicated to provide high quality innovation management services to accelerate every step of an innovation life-cycle. InnovAccer was founded with a vision of people in the fields of Intellectual Property, Business Innovation, and Technology to change and accelerate the creation of innovation ecosystem in India. InnovAccer’s team comes from a varied background of engineers graduated from IITs, intellectual property specialists graduated from Franklin Pierce Law Center, USA, analysts, statisticians, and business innovation experts.

Website: www.innovaccer.com

There’s a great big war going on between the tech majors that’s playing out in courtrooms all around the world. Our story starts out in the office of Steve Jobs who was so pissed off that Google’s Android “stole” the concept of the smartphone. In an expletives-laden rant, Jobs said he was prepared to spend “his last dying breath” and “every last penny” to “destroy android”. There was also a threat of a thermonuclear war thrown in for good measure.

Apple’s first instinct would have been to sue Google directly, but since Google doesn’t actually sell anything, Apple decided to go after the next biggest target – Samsung. The funny part, though, is that Apple and Samsung have a huge business relationship. Apple buys roughly 7 Billion Dollars worth of processors, screens, and other electronics components from Samsung. Apple absolutely needs Samsung to be able to sell those magical iDevice (in fact, Samsung makes the famed retina displays and the A5S processors inside the iPad 3), and Samsung needs Apple because that business accounts for roughly 14% of Samsung revenues. And yet, they’re involved in a massive legal war, trying to get courts to ban each other’s devices.

But that’s not all Apple is after – Apple also sued HTC, which it thought was this mild-mannered Taiwanese manufacturer. HTC, however, turned out to be more than a handful. It immediately hired a blue-chip law firm, and counter-sued Apple. Apple thought it could push around the much smaller HTC, until one week later, VIA, a chipmaker, slapped a massive infringement lawsuit on Apple out of nowhere. Apple couldn’t figure out why VIA was getting involved, until they figured out that HTC’s chairwoman was married to VIA’s CEO. There’s a legal twist that Apple didn’t see coming!

The funniest part, though, are the patents in question. Probably the most (in)famous of them is Apple’s “Slide to Unlock” patent. My Grandfather’s ancestral house, built in the 1800s, has a bolt on the main door that you have to slide to unlock. How can Apple have a patent on that? There’s another patent that claims ownership over a “rectangular device with rounded corners and a display”. And another one on “spell-check that suggests alternatives when you mis-spell”. I think my 3rd standard English teacher is going to be angry that Apple patented that. And Apple’s not the only one with the absurdity: Samsung has actually sighted science fiction movies as prior-art in the counter-lawsuit.

While all this was happening, Microsoft, frustrated with lack of any success in the mobile OS market, decided to do the next-best thing: Sue! And so, it dispatched armies of lawyers to cell phone manufacturers with a message: “Give us money, or we’re going to hit you over the head with bucket-loads of lawsuits”. Many manufacturers, not wanting the legal overhead, agreed to pay Microsoft a licensing fee for every device sold. The rumour is thatMicrosoft makes $5 for every Android device sold. Of course, that puts Microsoft in the embarrassing position of making more money from Android than from Windows mobile.

Google, of course, is not just sitting and watching. In a sucker-punch move, Google paid $12.5 Billion to acquire Motorola and its huge cache of patents. The fun is going to start when the acquisition completes. Motorola was the original innovator in the wireless space, and has a whole bunch of wireless and mobile related patents. In fact, Motorola has a patent on “Microprocessor controlled radio-telephone transceiver”. That”s right: Motorola has a patent on the mobile phone. I can almost see Larry Page sitting in his office going “Muhaahahahaahaa!”

It’s hard to imagine how all this is benefiting consumers. Just between Apple and Samsung, they’ve paid $400 million in legal fees, which they will undoubtedly pass over to the consumer. It’s difficult to make any sense of what’s going on.

The cynic in me has a theory. To play the patent wars, you need lots of $$$. This means that only current, established players can play the game, making it near-impossible for any startup to enter the market and disrupt it. The end-game probably is a cross-licensing agreement between the big players, creating a closed club of tech companies that will have a monopoly in the market. This kind of thing has happened before – in the car industry. All the big, global car manufacturers have cross-licensing agreements in place, making it nearly impossible for any new player to enter the industry. There hasn’t been a successful new car company in decades.

Hopefully it won’t be as bad as that, given the fast-moving and innovation driven nature of the tech industry. Plus, there is already a widespread belief that the current patent system is broken, and needs fixing. The optimist in me believes that this will get fixed before it becomes a problem from everyone, letting everyone get back into the business of innovation.

The platform works like this:

• An intellectual property (IP) research project is posted, which requests references to similar solutions (e.g., similar products, patent documents or academic research).
• Researchers look for relevant documents and links, and post them to the IP research project.
• Researchers rate and comment on each other’s references.
• The researchers who submitted the most high relevancy references and provided the most valuable feedback on others’ prior art are rewarded.

The idea originated when one the cofounders, Mikk Putk, who is a patent attorney and a professional patent researcher was frustrated with the information overload (for example, in 2010 there were over 900 000 new patents granted and over 2 million patent applications submitted) and he was looking for new more effective ways of conducting patent research and improving the quality of search results. The initial idea of the London based startup was born then.

Startups and tech companies can make sure they are not infringing on somebody else’s IP as well as evaluate their own idea’s novelty. It helps universities in picking research topics which add to the existing knowledge out there. And IP firms can use the platform to acquire the raw data for more in-depth patent analysis work for their own clients. YourStory spoke to Taavi Raidma, cofounder and CEO CrowdIPR to understand more about their business idea.

How does CrowdIPR make researching about Intellectual Property easy?

By adapting a global-scale crowdsourcing model we are able to give our clients access to broader range of information sources (patent databases, academic databases etc), information in more languages, creative ways of query design and also bring down the cost significantly. It makes innovation processes more effective and quicker, and inventors can easily test the novelty of their inventions with the help of an international crowd of people. Based on specific needs we can offer different levels of detail and confidentiality in the research.

We aim to become world’s largest network of technology and patent experts. So far we have seen many graduate students, academics and patent research professionals joining our community of researchers. The larger the variety of people participating a research project, the more interesting and useful results we are able to provide our clients.

How has the response been so far from India?

We are seeing an increasing interest from India, particularly from patent professionals. Approximately a third of our community of 400+ researchers currently comes from India and we are seeing very high-quality people joining from there. I am in constant communication with Indian researchers to figure out ways of improving the usability of the platform, to learn of the motivation schemes that they would like to see as well as the types of projects they have most interest in. We are also actively looking for partnership opportunities with Indian universities and in talks with professional IP research companies in India who could use our platform to increase their exposure to the Western markets.

Pricing

We are going to introduce a freemium model to IP research. Basic research projects can be posted for free with the option of upgrading to receive more results and get in-depth statistics. Separate pricing will be for confidential projects.  

Business model

We earn money by charging for research projects from which a large part will be paid to the researchers who do the work. We will expand our service offering in the future- for example to trademark research and potentially also act as a marketplace for other IP-related services (patent drafting etc.).

CrowdIPR was one of the finalists at the London Web Summit startup competition and are financially backed by UK-based VC firms Northstar Ventures and IP Group.

I woke up with a bright sun in the sky after a long time and decided to go late for work. Repetitive calls from office pestered me to come early to meet a waiting client. On my way to office, I was curious to know who the client was as I had no meetings fixed in the first half. Finally I met the client, welcomed him, and asked him ‘How may I help you Sir?’ He inquired a commonly awaited question ‘shall I patent my invention or not? Is it patentable at the first place?’ This article walks through few possible answers to this multi-answer question.

As we have discussed in the previous posts, a prior art search is must to check for novelty of the invention. It clears out most of the odds for its patentability. Now that you know your invention is new, is it worth a patent? There are three possible questions you must ask to yourself in such a situation: 1) Do I have excess cash for patent, 2) Is it worth spending excess cash for a patent, and 3) Will public disclosure via patent affect my business?

1)      Do I have excess cash for patent? Well we did answer this question in the previous post with average numbers and time planning.

2)      Is it worth spending cash for a patent? This is the trickiest question of the lot and the answer varies in different situations. For large corporations, they take lots of indicators in consideration like market capturing capability, maturity of technology, alignment with business strategy, and addition to portfolio. Unlike, it’s a game changer for start-ups. There are two benefits to start-ups in getting a patent, one I call as real benefit and other as ancillary benefit. The real benefit in getting a patent is either value of transaction while selling it off to another company or the market share advantage it gives you over the competitors. Ancillary benefit would be advantage in marketing and credibility of the firm with patents pending or granted. And trust me when I say this, many start-ups foresee ancillary benefits weighing more than real benefits over a short term and vice-versa in the long run. I give an analogy to my clients to resolve their issue. 

Your business comprises of:

MANAGEMENT TEAM | EMPLOYEES |   CONTACTS   |   SERVICES |   PRODUCTS |   INNOVATION

Now, start ranking in order of loss your business will bear if the respective category is thrown out of your business. If innovation or Innovative products/services come at the end, it’s probably not worth getting a patent.

You are actually trying to protect your technology from competitors. So, is your technology the only or the best solution to the problem, or competitors can come up with another solution very easily? ‘ONLY / BEST + EASILY’ is the answer to your problem.

3)      Public Disclosure? Many people say that it’s tough to enforce your Intellectual Property as it adds cost in finding infringers, litigation cost, and active track of competitors’ activities. Thus, by disclosing the patent we are disclosing secret of technology in exchange for monopoly. Advantage of keeping it a trade secret is that you don’t disclose the technology in public but lose monopoly until you file for a patent and add a risk that someone else can file for a patent if he discovers the invention independently. Mostly manufacturing and mechanical industry avoid trade secret practice as reverse engineering is easy to get the secret out anyhow. Whereas, chemical and perfume industry is a tough crack for reverse engineering and also tracking infringers is similarly difficult. That is why you see perfume industry filing very less number of patents as well as popular Coca Cola chemical composition is yet a trade secret for 100 years.

Balance real and added value from the patent with costs involved. Prepare a long term plan for your business and envision advantage of technology 3 – 5 years down the line. Lastly, consult a patent specialist for more clear advice.

About InnovAccer

INNOVACCER (Innovation Accelerated) is an innovation management and acceleration company focused and dedicated to provide high quality innovation management services to accelerate every step of an innovation life-cycle. InnovAccer was founded with a vision of people in the fields of Intellectual Property, Business Innovation, and Technology to change and accelerate the creation of innovation ecosystem in India.  InnovAccer’s team comes from a varied background of engineers graduated from IITs, intellectual property specialists graduated from Franklin Pierce Law Center, USA, analysts, statisticians, and business innovation experts.

www.innovaccer.com

Previous articles in this category have focused on importance of Intellectual Property (especially Patents) for Technology Start-Ups, and checklist to remember for patenting process. It is ripe time for Indian start-ups to be aware with the patenting process and financial planning revolving around the process. Before kicking off, you must understand why patent and financial planning is important for your business:

1)      Pitch to Venture Capitalists (VC) – First thing a VC will ask you before investing in a technology business is whether you have a patent protection over the technology. Regardless of your answers, he needs to listen to these two phrases – ‘Yes, we have patent(s) filed in India’, and ‘We have also filed an International Application, and with your funds we will aggressively pursue patent protection in global markets.’ If this is the case, you are not only bringing your expertise and technology idea on the table, but also an Intellectual Property which has a value tag attached to it. Also, Venture Capitalist is somewhat convinced that technology will not be stolen by anyone giving more fierce competition. THIS WILL GIVE YOU LEVERAGE IN EQUITY SHARING BY BRINGING MORE THINGS ON THE TABLE. For example, watch the first pitch of Barmate in Episode 7 of Season 9 of Dragons’ Den or read the episode review here.

2)      Sound Financial Planning – Patent Process involves time and money at several phases. Knowing the range of investments and time phases involved in the patent process will help you understand the financial planning and investment planning better. Also, it will leave a sound impression to the seed funding agency, angel investor, or a venture capitalist.

So, how do you actually get a patent and how much does it cost? Let us divide this in two categories: getting an Indian Patent, and getting global patent protection. Given below are two processes, timeline and funds required. Please keep a note that fees vary on lots of factors including, but not limiting, discounts for individual inventors, excess claim or page fees, and differences in attorney fees etc. Fees include attorney service and processing fees also.

Let us now assume that you want patent protection in four jurisdictions – India, US, Europe, and China. You would need to arrange for funds at various stages in this process and a thorough understanding will help you plan it better. Given below table does a scenario averaged out for start-ups want to have patent protection in these four jurisdictions. Fees include attorney service and processing fees also.

We hope that you take a step forward to protect your technology, conduct robust technology, business, and financial planning, and pitch it the right way to Venture Capitalists or your customers (in case you do not require VC funding support).

About InnovAccer

INNOVACCER (Innovation Accelerated) is an innovation management and acceleration company focused and dedicated to provide high quality innovation management services to accelerate every step of an innovation life-cycle. InnovAccer was founded with a vision of people in the fields of Intellectual Property, Business Innovation, and Technology to change and accelerate the creation of innovation ecosystem in India.  InnovAccer’s team comes from a varied background of engineers graduated from IITs, intellectual property specialists graduated from Franklin Pierce Law Center, USA, analysts, statisticians, and business innovation experts.

Website: www.innovaccer.com

Three requirements for patent – An invention needs to be novel, non-obvious, and useful for government to grant a patent to the inventor. For novelty, the invention must not be published or known anywhere in the world. For non obvious, the invention must not be obvious to the person skilled in the art. In India, we also have two additional alternative criteria for non-obviousness namely technical advancement and economical advantage. This is the trickiest part to ascertain. Lastly, for usefulness, In India we have a criterion of industrial applicability.

Tip: Always conduct a prior art search to search for existing patents before deciding on filing a patent application or even starting a research pursuit in that direction.

Country-Wise patents, no International patent – Patent Rights are jurisdictional in nature, there is no international patent. This implies that if you get a patent in India, the rights of patent are extended only to the states of India. What does this mean? Anyone can make, use, or sell a product covering your patent anywhere else in the world but India without taking your consent or giving you royalty. Though, he or she cannot file a patent in say United States because your published patent has destroyed novelty for his patent application in the United States.

Tip: Always file patent in countries where your manufacturing or sales operations are conducted and also in countries where your possible competitors’ are located.

No sale or disclosure before filing a patent – As previously discussed, the invention must not be published or known to anyone before filing a patent. Accordingly, pre-mature disclosure of invention to a third party will prevent you from getting a patent. Similarly, selling your product covering the patent or even an offer to sell (quotations and product brochures) will prevent you from getting a patent.

Tip: Maintain a policy with your research, engineering, marketing and sales team to not disclose the invention to anyone either by publication, article, blog, or a sales quote. Also, have a sample non-disclosure agreement ready in case disclosing the invention to someone is required for the business.

Filing cross-border patent applications within one year – Once you have filed a patent application say in India, you only have one year to file a patent application in any other country or a group of countries. After one year, you lose the right of priority and thereby right to file a patent. You can choose two routes. First route known as convention country application route is to file patent applications in all desired countries within one year. Problem with this approach is tiresome efforts in filing different applications in different countries in just one year, and to top that, getting financial support for say 4-5 different country patent applications in less time. Second route is known as PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) application route wherein you file a PCT application within one year and get an extra 18-19 month window to file patent applications in other countries. Disadvantage being extra cost involved in PCT application, though it comes with various advantages. To start with, you buy in extra time followed by time to arrange financial help rather than pushing it in one go. Also, by that time, your business is clear enough to judge which all countries to choose for a patent protection. Lastly, if the search report for PCT application is positive for patentability, chances of grant in other countries increase with increased speed of grant process.

Who is the inventor & who is the owner of the patent? – It is very important for start-ups to own their intellectual property. Employment agreements must clearly state that all intellectual property of employees made during work is property of the employer. While filing a patent application, the true inventors of the patent must be named accordingly, though assignee of the patent must be the employer by virtue of an assignment.

In research collaboration projects with third parties, always make sure that you have an Intellectual Property clause clearly defining who owns what Intellectual Property in the research pursuit, rather than fighting it out later in the courts.

These items are pretty easy but MSMEs always forget to act upon them. Save this list!

About InnovAccer

INNOVACCER (Innovation Accelerated) is an innovation management and acceleration company focused and dedicated to provide high quality innovation management services to accelerate every step of an innovation life-cycle. InnovAccer was founded with a vision of people in the fields of Intellectual Property, Business Innovation, and Technology to change and accelerate the creation of innovation ecosystem in India.  InnovAccer’s team comes from a varied background of engineers graduated from IITs, intellectual property specialists graduated from Franklin Pierce Law Center, USA, analysts, statisticians, and business innovation experts.

Website: www.innovaccer.com