siliconindia

In My Opinion: Upinder Zutshi, Infinite Computer Solutions VC Talk: Venetia Kontogouris, Trident Capital Leadership Special

PUBLISHED SINCE 1997

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA DECEMBER - 2010 SILICONINDIA.COM

Uday Challu, CEO

Contents December2010

iYogi
12 Cover Story

the first
Consumer Services
brand from
India
By Vimali Swamy

Uday Challu, CEO

06 [In My Opinion] 24 [Business] 34 What They Don’t Teach at

WinningthroughDifferentiation:
A CEO’s Perspective
By Upinder Zutshi,
Infinite Computer Solutions
08 [Infocus]
10 [CEO Spotlight]
Thinking of Hosting into
Cloud? Think Twice
Believe in Your ‘Idea’
18 [VC Talk]
Entrepreneurial Leadership
By Venetia Kontogouris,
Trident Capital
20 [Business]
The Man with a Mission for
Masses
By Jaya Smitha Menon
Preparing for the Rise of In-
dian Product Powerhouses
By Juby Thomas
26 [Management]
Focused leadership is the Key
to Create Killer Products for
Global Markets
By Ram Narayanan, Yahoo! India
28 Manage your most Talented
Employees & they will man-
age the Rest
By Pragyan Acharya
29 [Business]
Why is Innovation Still A
Challenge in India?
By Anonya Roy
30 Change is the Only Constant
By Pradeep Kar, Microland
the B-Schools about
Leadership!
C. Mahalingam, Symphony Services
36 Leadership Requires
Continuous Reinvention of
Yourself and Your Company
By Walden C. Rhines,
Mentor Graphics
38 Controls & Empowerment
By Sandeep Dhar, Tesco HSC
40 [Management]
Strategy in the New World
By Satya Prabhakar,
Sulekha.com
42 [Entrepreneur 101]
Leaders as Strong Recruiters
By Gunjan Sinha

32 [Management] 44 [CIO Profile]

22 [Management] IT leadership- from Projects The Game Changer
How do CEOs Think? to Value Creation By Jaya Smitha Menon
ByDr.AnandDeshpande, By Ramesh Loganathan,
PersistentSystems Progress Software 46 [SI 20 Profile]

siliconindia
|3| December 2010
 siliconindia DECEMBER - 2010

M
Editorial
Publisher
Harvi Sachar
Editor-in-Chief
Pradeep Shankar Is India on the Perils of Microfinance?
Managing Editor
ahathma Gandhi once said "India's soul lies in the vil-
Christo Jacob
lages of India." It seems that the new generation entre-
Deputy Editor preneurs have realized it for they are looking at rural
Jaya Smitha Menon India as a big opportunity to flourish the country as well
as their business through microfinance. Unlike the initial years of Mi-
Editorial Staff crofinance industry (MFI), this space has undergone a transformation
Eureka Bharali from charity to profit-based in the past few years as the players are fac-
Hari Anil ing increased competition in the rat race to reap profits. But does this
Vimali Swamy transformation help rural India to achieve the goodwill?
Indian microfinance institutions have grown at a spectacular rate
Sr.Visualizer Raghu Koppal between 2004 and 2009, with an average size portfolio increasing 107
Subscription Manager P Magendran percent on a year on year basis, while number of clients increasing 91
percent. As per the statistics, the Indian MFI would cross 11 crore bor-
rowers and $30 billion in loan portfolio by 2014 and will require a
Mailing Address huge capital inflow both in debt and equity. The growth is expected to
come from underserved states that are witnessing a flurry of activity,
SiliconIndia Inc and also from a range of new financial and non-financial products that
44790 S. Grimmer Blvd are being introduced in the sector. The full potential of microfinance
Suite 202, has not been fully explored in geographies such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar
Fremont, CA 94538 and north-eastern states of India. The microfinance penetration in India
is merely 3.6 percent, and 60 percent of the portfolio is concentrated
in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
T:510.440.8249, F:510.440.8276
While the reason holds good for flourishing rural India, the lead-
ing players at the forefront, can learn from mistakes. Replicating the
current model will not work, as Crisil (a credit ratings organization)
estimated that collections in Andhra have plummeted below 20 per-
cent from nearly 99 percent to the ordinance, with MFIs finding it dif-
siliconindia ficult to make contact with borrower groups.
December 2010, volume 13-12 (ISSN 1091-9503)
Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc. Money is lure and it is easy to pool more customers at the bottom
of the pyramid, since access to money is very difficult there. So effec-
tively managing and utilizing will be a cumbersome job. For microfi-
nance players, they would have to really work on a model that is
transparent for the players so that it can be successful in repayment
process, which will adversely help in their growth. Moreover putting
To subscribe to siliconindia an effective council for these players to control on the interest rates
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subscription@siliconindia.com Lets not repeat another subprime mortgage in India!
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the publisher thereof.
Christo Jacob
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World and PC Expo.
 By Upinder Zutshi
The author is MD of Infinite Computer Solutions
enue. The client can then shift its re-
sources and energies from these ma-
ture products and focus on their core
initiatives.
be addressed. of an outcome based pricing model,
In a majority of cases, a substan- it is essential that there should be col-
tial investment is required by the laboration and sharing of information
service provider to generate growth between the two parties. The service

“
The way it works is that the serv- in these products. It is imperative to provider needs to understand the
ice provider obtains the license of factor in the people cost, infrastruc- buyer’s landscape perfectly and en-

in my
the product, injects additional R&D
funds to enhance it and eventually
opinion breathes new life into a mature
product. This collaboration allows a
client to continue to grow its strate-
gic initiatives, without sacrificing
mature lines. Interestingly, in this
system, the vendor does not make
money from its immediate customer,
ture cost and other operating costs.
Pricing on the basis of real costs en-
sures profits don’t needlessly have
to be trimmed. As these products
have a proven revenue record, an
outsourcing model helps to better
manage their costs.
The products need to resonate
with the needs of the customers and
sure that measures taken align with
the strategic business outcome. This
relationship works on several
grounds, with the buyer’s determina-
tion to succeed, the supplier’s com-
mitment to the buyer’s success, two
way effective communication and an
in-depth understanding of the subject
matter.

Winning through Differentiation:

but recovers it from the end cus- have a significant differentiating ele- These creative and strategic part-
tomer from the market. ment. The pricing should also be seg- nership models create greater incen-

T
A successful long term relation- mented for altered markets to tives for the service providers to
A CEOs Perspective ship with the client is a key factor leverage a better competitive change their thinking and increase

“
here, as it enables a service advantage. their risk taking appetite for newer

Over the course of the next

he transition of a startup to a small cap organization and provider to understand a
its eventual progression into the midcap space is marked client’s portfolio in totality

five years, outcome based

by its vigilance and ability to identify and tap profitable and identify products with
businesses. significant installed base.

pricing is predicted to en-

The client in turn also
needs to build a deep

compass 40-50 percent of the con-

level of trust in the ven-
dor’s capability of de-

tracts, as against only 5 percent

The key is to not reinvent the wheel but make a differentiated
livery and continued
space for oneself. This would require a series of strategic decisions
partnerships.

currently
and a conscious effort to steer away from the trodden path. Oppor-
However, a solid
tunities not only need to be identified but also captured and exe-
value proposition re-
cuted in a novel and innovative way. Despite the challenges, the
quires significant due
solutions should enable one to be distinguished from the pack and
diligence before a Once executed, this is a win-win avenues of revenue. The vendor’s
create building blocks for success.
vendor actually com- situation in effective relationship competitive advantage is his com-

The key is to not reinvent the

mits to taking over management. It results in reduced plete understanding of the client’s
the entire life cycle costs, ability to focus on core prod- ecosystem. Strong governance and

wheel but make a

of supporting and ucts, new market opportunities being relationship management between the
enhancing the prod- accessed, better productivity, manual parties is essential. Over the course of

differentiated space for oneself

uct. Factors like the processes being automated and im- the next five years, outcome based
level of investment proved time to market. It also gives pricing is predicted to encompass 40-
required, expected the client access to IT skills which are 50 percent of the contracts, as against
growth over the next not affordable in-house or not avail- only 5 percent currently. The plan-
A risk / reward sharing model is one such differentiated pricing
few years, addressing able and thus reduces their capital ex- ning and budgeting must factor in the
model that encompasses all the essential elements of volume, usage,
the buyers concerns penditure. The end customer is happy fluctuating nature of revenue of some
business processes, customer satisfaction, cost savings and revenue
on change of owner- due to the continuity of the product, of these products.
share, thereby creating a win-win situation for all the parties in-
ship, realignment of the client is pleased due to its re- Significant value has been added
volved i.e. the client, the service provider or vendor as well as the
clients R&D expendi- sources getting freed and the vendor to businesses with outsourcing over
end customer.
ture, feasibility to shift is thrilled because of the share in the the past few years, and with outcome
This model enables a vendor to take over those products of a
work offshore and the revenue it gets as well as ownership based pricing, outsourcing has come
client which have a limited shelf life, but continue to be essential
future roadmap of of the IP. a full circle to its initial vision of en-
to many customers due to their proven record of generating rev-
the product need to For the successful establishment hancing value. si

siliconindia
|6|
December 2010 Upinder Zutshi siliconindia
|7|
December 2010
in
“I
Indian Silicon Valley in 5 years: Vivek Wadhwa
ndia will have its own Sili-
con Valley in five years,”
said Vivek Wadhwa an Ad-
junct-Professor at Duke University.
According to Wadhwa from the 250
firms he met this year, 25 to 30 per-
cent are bringing out world-class
products. As of now there is no
Google coming out of India, but that
will happen in the next five years, he
added. The spurt in products is a
spillover from services.
People with deep domain experi-
ence from services business are set-
ting up products firms in India and so
are the U.S. returnees. The country’s
growth is not limited to IT; pharma-
ceutical R&D space and aviation are
fields of strength to India. The coun-
try is also playing in the next gener-
V
Jay Gandhi, California’
s First U.S. Indian Judge
ijay ‘Jay’ C. Gandhi became
the first Indian American fed-
eral judge in the Central Dis-
trict of California, the largest federal
district court in the U.S. by population,
when he took oath of office in a cere-
monial courtroom in the U.S. federal
courthouse. Gandhi is the second In-
dian American federal judge in U.S.
history and the first in California.
Gandhi will have jurisdiction over
a district covering seven counties in-
cluding Los Angeles and Orange, with
an estimated 19 million residents.
Gandhi was selected to the post on
merit and will be serving an eight-year
term at the end of which he will be
subject to reappointment to his post.
Gandhi previously worked 12 years as
an attorney at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky
& Walker LLP where he was a partner
and Vice-Chairman of the firm’s Or-
siliconindia
|8|
December 2010
ation consumer appliances market.
Indian government has made very
little effort to encourage
R&D business, but
multinationals such as
Cisco, EMC, IBM and
Microsoft are doing
high-end work in the
country. India is suc-
ceeding despite poor in-
frastructure, security
concerns and crippling
educational system. The
secret recipe of India’s
success is high work-
force development pro-
grams followed by major IT services
companies. They have sophisticated
recruitment system that involves a
series of psychometric tests. They
ange County office. A graduate of the
University of Southern California Law
School, Gandhi had also clerked for
U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt
in the Southern District of Texas, be-
fore joining Paul Hastings.
The oath of office was adminis-
tered in front of nearly 200 people by
Judge Audrey B. Collins, the chief
judge of the district. Shortly after
taking his oath, Gandhi was officially
enrobed by his mother, Uma Gandhi.
then invest in training employees
throughout the different phases of
their career,
says Wadhwa.
He believes that
the next big
thing in Indian
tech will come
from smaller
product and not
larger services
firms. His re-
search also
shows that 85
percent of In-
Vivek Wadhwa
dian students in
the U.S. wish to return to India as
they feel that companies in India
offer them better prospects.
Jay Gandhi
Several speakers shared thoughts on
Gandhi’s integrity and character mo-
ments after the ceremony. George
King, a federal judge in the Central
District, spoke of Gandhi’s public
service record and commitment to
the community and Former Paul
Hastings partner and current judge
Peter Stone offered his views on
Gandhi’s work at the firm as well as
the cases they had worked on to-
gether.
A
E-Payment Systems Can Save $22 Billion
n electronic platform for gov-
ernment payments to and from
individual households could
save an estimated Rs 100,000 crores for
India, says a McKinsey report.
Saving this much money an year
could mean a reduction in the country’s
fiscal deficit by more than 20 percent,
or it can boost its welfare spending by
over 25 percent, or fund the entire cost
of the Food Security Act.
E-payment will ensure that around
80-100 million poor households in
India will have unparallel access to se-
cure and convenient benefits directly
from the Government without the in-
terference of intermediaries. According
to the report titled ‘Inclusive growth
and financial security’, the present cost
for the implementation of national e-
I
Indian Medical Industry to
be $14 Billion by 2020
ndian medical industry may touch
$14 billion by 2020 on account of
higher private investments in the
sector and strong economic growth.
According to the study by Federation
of Indian Chambers of Commerce &
Industry (FICCI) and Pricewater-
houseCoopers (PwC), the market
stood at $2.7 billion (Rs 12,350 crores)
in 2008.
“Strong economic growth, in-
creased burden of diseases, higher
public spending and private invest-
ments in healthcare and increased pen-
etration of health insurance are the key
drivers for the growth in the sector,”
the study said. The report reveals that
payment infrastructure stands at Rs
70,000 crores and so the system could
theoretically pay for itself in just one
year.
“A national e-payment system is a
critical step in achieving India’s long
standing and fundamental goals of in-
clusive growth and financial security
for its poor. The benefits to all stake-
holders of a modern, reliable and well
functioning payment platform are nu-
merous and substantial,” the report
there is a huge scope for innovation in
the industry, as there is a big demand
for it in the local market.
The study said that the epicenter of
the innovation in this field is shifting
towards emerging economies like
India and China, since the advanced
economies like U.S., UK, Germany,
France and Japan do not have the need
for frugal innovation. “Also, the
emerging economies will have a
higher spending on R&D in the future,
which will provide the trigger for in-
novation, therefore witnessing more
funding from venture capital, private
equity,” states the study.
The report said, besides the suc-
in
said. According to the report, a
greater penetration of an e-pay-
ment set-up is likely to encour-
age greater participation from the
rural poor citizens and bring the
central government closer to its
goal of reducing poverty and
hunger through its welfare, food
and housing subsidy schemes.
The McKinsey & Company report
suggests that electronic payment sys-
tems improve the effectiveness of gov-
ernment services to the poor, provide
improved efficiency in other govern-
ment functions such as tax collection,
maintain law and order and create new
business opportunities by enabling the
delivery of new products and services.
cess in medical technology innovation
would depend on factors like a sup-
portive investment community, creat-
ing capacity for quality research and
demand and supply of health services.
The study also suggested that for
the growth of the sector, it is important
that the government increase public
spending in healthcare to three percent
of the country’s GDP from the current
one percent and evolve medical tech-
nology clusters with common facilities
for calibration and testing facilities to
benefit small entrepreneurs. si
CEO
spotlight
Thinking of Hosting into Cloud?
C
Think Twice
loud hosting is at its
peak now-a-days and
everyone is either set-
ting up a private or pub-
lic cloud or is in
discussions to get into one. More
and more companies/service
providers are storing their docu-
ments and content into cloud. In fact,
Gartner predicts that by 2012, 80
percent of Fortune 1000 enterprises
will pay for some cloud-computing
service.
Users upload their documents
into these clouds to easily share, col-
laborate and mange content. Service
providers are choosing public cloud
storage providers like Amazon EC2,
Rackspace and Microsoft Azure for
daily data storage needs. The advan-
tage of course quick setup and go to
market with no need to worry about
data backups, downtimes and best of
all no scalability issues. You pay
only by amount of storage and band-
width used.
While the advantages are enor-
mous for this low-cost and less up-
front capital investment approach of
storing content, but it is just one-
sided story. The costs for storing and
serving content can very quickly pile
up if enough care and consideration
is not taken while choosing the cloud
hosting vendor. For example, the
cost for uploading a 1GB document
siliconindia
|10| December 2010
into EC2 or Azure is about 35 cents
and then accessing this document 4-
5 times over the life span of docu-
ment can cost up to $2, and this is all
for just a single 1GB file. Think of
the costs involved when you are up-
loading/downloading hundreds and
thousands of documents from within
your application.
Service providers do not think
about this initially as the advantages
of these public storage clouds, like
consistent backups, reduced capex,
full archrivals and no need to setup
redundant servers or disaster recov-
ery centers, overweigh their deci-
sions at the initial time. But soon
after, as business starts growing, the
bandwidth charges turn the low cost
storage clouds option into a night
mare.
So what would be the solution
then? What if, we could make use of
the advantages these storage clouds
offer and at the same time control
our bandwidth costs. The answer lies
in the new revolutionary concept
called Elastic Content Viewing or
in simple terms content streaming.
Content Streaming is not new
and we have been using it for a while
now. When you go to a site like You
Tube the video is streamed to your
browser and you start viewing it in-
stantaneously without the need to
download complete file locally first.
Prateek Kathpal Founder of
Adeptol, a document viewing
technology provider
Elastic Content Viewing is this same
concept now being applied to other
file formats like Office documents,
PDF, AutoCAD files. Elastic View-
ing allows you to view documents
from where they are, without the
need to download it completely,
much like audio video files and of-
fers progressing content download-
ing as user views the content,
thereby reducing your bandwidth
costs drastically.
With the enormous growth of
cloud hosting & sharing, challenge
lies in becoming a low cost opera-
tion and new trends like Elastic
Viewing are helping in keeping a tab
on the costs. si
‘Idea’
B
Believe in Your
oth Life Sciences and Sup-
ply Chain Management
are increasingly witness-
ing an enormous change in
the global markets.
Driven by increased globalization, macro
economic factors, regulatory mandates,
and huge strides in technology and the
emergence of new business models, both
of these domains are rife with opportu-
nities.
Now when the economies are gradu-
ally recovering, Life Sciences are wit-
nessing a lot of emerging trends such as
increased emphasis on regulatory com-
pliance and standards, adoption of elec-
tronic data interchange standards and
supporting technologies to help facilitate
quicker approvals, heightened quality
standards, emphasis on focus on research
of new technologies for the medium- to
long-term, realignment of budgets to-
wards data integration and mining efforts
with an eye towards maximizing revenue
opportunities, consolidation of vendors
with a focus towards best of breed ven-
dors for specialized outsourcing, and in-
creased outsourcing of tasks which were
earlier performed in-house like - project
management, vendor management, qual-
ity assurance. Similarly, Supply Chain
industry(SCM) is witnessing a transfor-
mation. Now, the focus of SCM has
shifted from improving internal func-
tional processes to coordinating various
activities across a dynamic network of
trading partners leveraging effective
technologies and best practices.
In the coming years, we believe it is
‘SaaS’ which is gradually bringing in the
transformation and is surely going to be
new mantra of success. The current mar-
ket scenario reveals that the SaaS market
globally is poised for continued strong
growth, with the availability of a plethora
of SaaS applications and related services.
Given the pent-up demand for SaaS ap-
plications amongst enterprises, the mo-
mentum generated by vendor activity,
participation by telecom companies as
partners, and the hype around cloud
computing, SaaS will proliferate quickly
in the coming years.
The last decade has seen huge in-
vestments into IT but with limited suc-
cess for many customers. With varied
degrees of process maturity, talent avail-
ability and the lack of the right IT sys-
tems customers have grappled with
getting the required results. SaaS and
business transformation solutions are
getting the attention because of the prom-
ise of result oriented solutions approach.
The IT vendors are building domain ca-
pability to not only provide business
process improvements, implementation
and integration but also in running the
operations and providing customers with
results.
The world today is rapidly changing
and evolving and the pace at which this is
happening is only going to increase.
Business models are constantly being
challenged and the advent of new tech-
nologies is rendering legacy concepts ir-
relevant at an alarming pace. Many large
corporations are gradually finding it dif-
ficult to maintain their leadership posi-
tions. It has been observed that in 1960 it
took 35 years to replace 35 percent of the
CEO
spotlight
Ram Yeleswarapu is President &
CEO, TAKE Solutions
Fortune 500, and in 1999 it took 3 -4
years to do so! Understanding the rapid
economic development today is very
critical for an entrepreneur. According to
me, two challenges are envisioning the
future and raising capital.
Envisioning the future - identifying
the right business opportunity by fore-
casting the future is the key to the begin-
ning. This is not so easy when everyone
else is dwelling in the past or present and
there is skepticism for the future.
Raising Capital – Investors cannot be
convinced if the idea is not strong. Here
lies the importance of convincing them
with an idea which will show them the
future potential
I believe it is the idea combined with
vigor that matters today more than any-
thing else for an entrepreneur. If you have
your ‘idea’ and you firmly believe that it
can bring about a change, it is definitely
going to click, come what may. si
siliconindia
|11|
December 2010

Consumer Services
brand from
B
rands are not created every-
day. And the attributes that
have created successful
global brands like Fedex,
Starbucks and Nike are driven by reli-
ability and consistency, while creating
an emotional engagement with the
consumer.
For Jai, a tech support executive, a
day at work means handling multiple
sessions from customers in the U.S.,
Canada, United Kingdom and Aus-
tralia that are challenged by the in-
creasing complexity of technology in
their home. He is true to his name and
background -- he is Jai Sharma from
India who is happy and proud to help
customers around the world. This is
the case with each of the 4500 tech
support executives working with
iYogi, across its eight delivery centers
in India, providing tech support di-
rectly to customers. It is the first di-
rect-to-consumer services brand from
India, providing remote tech support
services to home and small business
customers.
Indian outsourcing gathered steam
when large teams of Indian call center
staffers with made-up names and per-
Uday Challu, CEO
iYogi
the first
India
sonalities would answer your cus-
tomer service call for big charge on
your credit card. It took the world by
storm and saved millions of dollars for
many western companies. But no
more. Now a new company, iYogi, is
taking the global tech support market
by storm with a different business
model that embraces its Indian roots
and brand, while leveraging superior
tech sophistication, expertise and its
proprietary platform to remove user
frustration. The end result is great tech
support at a great price. “We were
clear from day one on our goal to build
the first global consumer services
brand from India,” says Uday Challu,
Co-founder and CEO, iYogi. “Using
the powerful combination of remote
Internet access and our global delivery
platform, iMantra has enabled us to
make a real difference as our own
brand, not as a disguised third-party
service under a big-brand umbrella.”
Today when a customer in the US calls
seeking technical support he/she
knows that she is talking to someone
from iYogi about 14,000 kilometers
away in India.
According to the U.S. Census Bu-
COVER STORY
By Vimali Swamy
reau data, 117 million Americans who
are above the age of 45 present a ready
market for direct-to-consumer tech
support. iYogi, a tech support startup,
spotted this need early and cashed in
on it. Founded by techie Uday Challu
and marketing professional Vishal
Dhar in 2007, iYogi is the first direct-
to-consumer services brand from India
and recognized as the fastest growing
remote tech support provider in the
world. iYogi deploys a 4,500-person
operation on its global service deliv-
ery platform answering tens of thou-
sands of complaints every day from
technology users, mostly in the U.S.
The company has managed more than
two million tech support sessions
since inception and today it handles
around 20,000 support inquires ever
day. iYogi has more than 325,000 cus-
tomers in the U.S., UK, Canada and
Australia, who have subscribed to an-
nual contracts for round-the-clock
service for their PC’s and multiple de-
vices that are serviced across eight de-
livery centers in India including
Gurgaon, Pune, Hyderabad, Ben-
galuru, Chennai, Chandigarh, and
Kolkata
siliconindia
|13|
December 2010
 COVER STORY
The Genesis
The company was founded when
Challu and Dhar met on a flight and
quickly found they could work to-
gether on entrepreneurial ventures.
Challu had earlier run a third-party
desktop support business in the 1980s
but shut it down because it proved to
be ahead of its time. But now, he
sensed the emerging opportunity in re-
viving that business in a modern form.
Borrowing from the outsourcing
model of charging dollars per hour of
work, the two created iYogi as an In-
dian brand that sells tech support serv-
ices online to users of computers and
other gadgets in the developed world.
They also used the cost advantage to
compete with several US firms such as
Geek Squad. Providing a subscription-
based service, a first-time caller is of-
fered a one-year package costing from
$10 per month per computer to a flat
rate of $399.99 per year for multiple
computers in a home or small busi-
ness. The service available anytime,
allowing unlimited on-demand access
to tech experts that are extensively
trained to manage almost every situa-
tion. iYogi’s platform-as-a-service of-
fering is delivered through iMantra,
which integrates complex layers of
technology, processes, services, and a
unique proprietary knowledgebase for
a seamless experience for customers.
The Differentiation
So how is a four-year old startup dis-
rupting the outsourcing space that has
been dominated by the likes 24/7, Pro-
geon, Genpact or companies like Ac-
centure who have had their support
centers set up in India. For one, you
won’t find a technician adopting a
false persona while handling customer
calls. Secondly, it has invested in
building a scalable delivery platform
that provides a consistent experience
in a new service category – third-party
vendor independent tech support.
iYogi offers comprehensive support
siliconindia
|14| December 2010
for a wide range of technologies, in-
cluding hardware, Windows operating
systems, software, peripherals and
multi-functional devices.
For iYogi, the business partner is
the individual customer who calls and
not a US headquartered MNC. “Un-
like an outsourced customer support
centre for computer vendors, techni-
cians at iYogi take support calls be-
cause subscribers have opted for our
comprehensive one-stop solution,”
says Challu.
iYogi’s service offering provides
subscription-based tech support plans
for digital homes and small busi-
nesses. Its global delivery platform,
iMantra, combines a suite of desktop
applications called Support Dock with
on-demand tech support delivered
The basic distinc-
tion between
iYogi and its com-
petitors is one will
not find a techni-
cian adopting a
false persona
while handling
customer calls.
through proprietary technology infra-
structure and its patent-pending
processes which provide both scale
and a consistent experience for cus-
tomers. Highly optimized processes
combine iYogi’s unique triage model
with tools that proactively manage
technology for its customers and re-
duce time for delivery.
“Support Dock is a suite of desk-
top applications that provide on-de-
mand tech support and single click
access to manage, optimize and secure
computers and networks and proac-
tively manages the health of the ma-
chine,” explains Vishal Dhar,
Co-founder and President Marketing,
iYogi.
Through its proprietary platform,
the company addresses the large and
ever-growing market of digitally de-
pendent consumers and businesses
across a comprehensive range of tech-
nologies. It currently manages thou-
sands of customer interactions every
day and assists consumers with solv-
ing, managing and integrating tech-
nologies. iYogi also helps customers
migrate to new technologies and cloud
applications, and empowers them with
usability assistance. A seamless inte-
gration of voice and data, combined
with iYogi’s knowledge base and per-
sonalization engine, forms the infra-
structure layer of its platform. Built on
industry standard platforms, iYogi’s
infrastructure has demonstrated scala-
bility through its years of rapid
growth.
“Consumers today are expected to
play the role of a system integrator.
With growing dependence on technol-
ogy and the increasing number of PCs
and devices that need to speak with
one another, consumers are trying to
build networks for the new digital
home. Along with these challenges,
the consumer is also faced with a bro-
ken ecosystem for support that is frag
mented by silos that make it difficult
to get a single-point solution for all
your technology support needs. We
started the company with a vision to
offer a one-stop engagement to con-
sumers that is comprehensive with an
incredible experience,” says Challu.
The Big Opportunity
Within three years of its inception,
iYogi seems to be on a rapid upward
swing, as evidenced by a customer
base that is growing at 300 percent
year-on-year. Most of iYogi’s growth
stems from consumer business in the
U.S., the UK, Australia and Canada.
Currently targeting multiple geogra-
phies, the company sees a massive op-
portunity. There are currently more
than 1.2 billion PCs in use worldwide
and there is an increasing dependency
on technologies we use everyday.
“Additionally, the ecosystem for sup-
port is changing as traditional
providers are no longer the preferred
option,” says Challu. So, the same
model is delivering growth country
after country. “Our focus is on deliv-
ering a personalized service for the in-
dividual, and the approach is
geography-agnostic,” he says.
For a company of its size, iYogi is
quite aggressive in marketing. Its ini-
tial growth was focused on direct mar-
keting on the Internet. The company
has built a scalable model for acquir-
ing customers online. It currently de-
ploys one of the largest online
marketing team in India, and over the
Vishal Dhar
The market for
support services is
worth $26 billion
in the U.S. alone,
says NPD group-
projections
past three years developed a deep un-
derstanding of consumer behavior.
iYogi’s online marketing team man-
ages large database of keywords, land-
ing pages, toll-free-numbers, and
builds content assets that assist in self-
help and aid the decision making
process for buying it’s subscription
plan.
“We track about 300,000 key-
words on online search engines and
this database continues to expand
based on consumer adoption of tech-
nology and user behavior”. The com-
pany has about 2,000 toll-free
numbers and has decided against out-
sourcing its online marketing or opt-
ing for automatic online marketing
tools. “The less you think you know,
the better. Platforms get reinvented in
COVER STORY
this medium and one needs to contin-
uously push the boundaries and inno-
vate,” he says, adding the company
can’t risk losing direct touch with the
customers.
Apart from this, iYogi partners
with companies that are at the front-
lines of addressing technology adop-
tion and related problems. With
multiple engagements these channel
partnership range from large OEM’s to
ISV’s and retailers. iYogi services are
complimentary to its partners that are
enhancing lives through products that
have integrated in our day-to-day
lives. By offering on-demand assis-
tance for setup, diagnostic, repair and
usability, iYogi and its partners deliver
on a common cause - to empower the
consumer through technology, with a
common tenant of delivering a quality
experience. “Our current ramp-up
plan, based on existing marketing
channels, is to increase our base of
customers by 15 percent every
month,” says Uday.
What next? Apart from expanding
its presence in 12 new geographies, in-
cluding Europe and Middle East in the
next eighteen months, India is where
the company’s eye is. “We are now
working on our go-to-market strategy
for the India Sub-continent region. We
will also be looking at partnering with
ISPs and OEM’s to reach the end con-
sumers,” says Challu.
India today is recognized as the
best destination for enterprise out-
sourcing for technical support, as well
as other processes. Large OEM’s and
software vendors have built scalable
processes for managing their technical
support requirements. These processes
are built with the imperative to deliver
on customer expectations of vendor
based tech support; while managing
the costs, with eroding margins as
technology becomes commoditized.
Leveraging technology innovation and
a low-cost, highly skilled workforce in
India, iYogi is able to deliver on the
siliconindia
|15|
December 2010
 COVER STORY

A global delivery
platform, iMantra,
combines a suite of
pare with the best in Silicon Valley and
it’s a tremendous ratification to see
them deliver on metrics quarter after
quarter”, says Doug Higgins, Partner,
SAP Ventures. “I am confident that
“They have a clear picture of what
they want to do; the CEO thinks big
and wants to create a global tech sup-
port brand from India. One of the key
inflexion points for iYogi is reaching
siliconindia
this company is on its way to create more verticals. That will determine
desktop applica- India’s next success story,” he adds. where it lands three years from now.”
tions with on-de- In May 2009, when iYogi acquired Vendor Independent third-party
the U.S. based PC Clean Machine, a technical support is a new service cat-
From high profile columnists to Innovations in busi-

PC concierge company, the founder of egory, with Best Buy’s Geek Squad
ness siliconindia gives you relevant information that
mand tech support
the company Larry Gordon joined emerging as the largest player with an
truly matters to you.
to provide both iYogi. He said, “iYogi and PC Clean estimated revenue that is more than
scale and a consis- shared a common approach of utiliz- $1.2 billion. iYogi estimates the mar-
ing highly skilled talent with leading ket for tech support services exceeds It also presents bold, forthright and objective views of
tent experience for edge tools, thereby delivering services $30 billion today with remote techni- the trends in the Indian industry.
to a global audience that has new lev- cal support as its fastest growing chan-
customers. els of expectations. It made strategic nel for support.
sense to come together and align with According to projections by the
most compelling technology services this common goal." With more than 20 NPD group, a consumer and retail
offering. iYogi is expanding its serv- years of experience, Larry has played market research firm, the market for
We bring you information, ideas and insights to help you
ice offerings by commoditizing tech- a variety of strategic roles in market- support services ranging from instal-
pe.
navigate through today's changing business landscape.
nology services across multiple ing, sales and building global alliances lation, break-fix and repair, usability
technologies, price-points, languages at Capgemini, Kanbay and Cognizant. assistance and security services is
and formats. As the President of Global Channel worth $26 billion in the U.S. alone. As
It plans to increase its staff size and Sales for iYogi, Larry is focused on new technologies and gadgets arrive,
With its presence in the tech industry for over a
handle new software platforms for developing a partner network that is iYogi’s target customers will only need
decade, siliconindia is the most powerful medium to
mobile computing. iYogi hires the best addressing the customer pain-point. more support. But Challu and Dhar are
reach out to the CIOs, CXOs, CEOs, VCs etc. This is why
tech experts that undergo an extensive Now, former Rediff.com CFO Joy confident that as the opportunities con- readers rely on siliconindia. And make sure your
learning and development program to Basu has also joined iYogi. Comment- tinue to rise, they will be ready to take brand catches their eyes, there is no better way to
deliver a great experience. The com- ing on why he joined, Joy said, “I got the bull by its horns.
pany boasts of a 95 percent customer hooked on the ambitious plans iYogi As consumer electronics and com-
secure your future than siliconindia.
satisfaction rate and a personalized has for ramping its business, leverag- puter systems become more pervasive
service for its consumers. The scale- ing on its strong growth and multi-ge- in our lives and increasingly complex
up will be a challenge because the de- ography expansion.” to use, many consumers are faced with
mand is rising so rapidly
By subscribing now,that join the With the blazing trail that iYogi is
its own challenges while installing, operating,
hiring can’t match that pace. So only leaving, it is no wonder that the com- maintaining, and repairing products
you'll
of its technicians are employed by pany has been quickly and success- within these categories. The market
elite group half
of readers who receive unbeatable, The only magazine that covers
top-qualityitventure
directly. The othernews
capital half work
every day. fully able to raise about $27 million in
at out- for information technology support business, technology, career, and entrepreneurship
ip
sourcing partners such as IBM Daksh, three rounds of funding by venture services targeting the consumer and at
Infinite, e4e, Ventura and Genpact but capital firms such as Canaan Partners, home is highly fragmented, and, the
for Indian professionals in the U.S.
are deployed on iMantra platform. SAP Ventures, SVB Financial Group traditional providers of support serv-
This helps the company reach top tal- and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. It is also ices, OEMs, VARs, System Integra-
ent in multiple geographies and inte- getting feelers from software and tors, and Retailers have all been forced $50 for 12 issues
grating them on its platform to deliver hardware manufacturers for tech sup- to cut down on their support capability
a seamless service. port through the classical outsourcing or have completely gone away, as the Please send us your cheque to
iYogi has built a management team model. So what makes the investors result of diminishing margins brought
that has demonstrated cross border ex- bet on iYogi’s unconventional ap- about by the commoditization of the
siliconindia Inc, 44790,S Grimmer Blvd, # 202 Fremont, CA - 94538
perience in managing large-scale proach to outsourcing? “The ability to PC and other related devices. As such,
processes, addressing big opportuni- disrupt the market, most of which has consumers have been forced to look
You may call us at 510-440-8249
ties. “We invested in iYogi based on a local base,” says Alok Mittal, Man- for alternatives to traditional providers
the management team that I can com- aging Director, Canaan Partners. of support services. si Write to us at: subscription@siliconindia.com
m
siliconindia
|16| December 2010
Log on to: http://www.siliconindia.com/magazine/subscribe.php
cribe

VC Talk: By Venetia Kontogouris
Author is Senior Managing Director of Trident Capital
Entrepreneurial
Leadership
A
s a venture capital in-
vestor, one of the first
things that I look for in
a potential investment
is the entrepreneurial
qualities of the founders. Do they
have the intelligence, the drive, the
vision, the skills and the persever-
ance to take an idea or concept and
develop it to the point where it will
be accepted and even demanded by
the market? There are many charac-
ter traits common to successful en-
trepreneurs that allow them to see
possibilities that others can’t, that
make them work harder and longer
than most, and that allow them to
juggle many different tasks at the
same time. Many people believe that
entrepreneurs are born with the in-
nate abilities required to be success-
ful and that it is something that
cannot be learned in school. While I
believe it is possible to learn the spe-
cialized skills and get the required
knowledge to invent new products
and processes, it is difficult to start a
new venture without the unique abil-
ities of the born entrepreneur. For in-
siliconindia
|18| December 2010
stance, many universities develop
very important and interesting new
technologies that lie dormant until
they are “rediscovered” by someone
either within the university, or more
likely from the outside who sees the
commercial opportunity in the con-
cept, and more importantly is willing
and able to take the idea, dedicate
100 percent of their time and effort,
and convert it into a viable product.
Once a concept has been in-
vented and developed, and personal,
seed or angel funding has been se-
cured and a skeleton crew hired to
prove the commercial viability of the
venture, one can get a good idea of
whether the concept will be success-
ful. By this point the product is usu-
ally developed enough to get
valuable feedback from potential
customers regarding their willing-
ness to purchase the product. This is
usually the stage at which a large in-
stitutional investor, or venture capi-
tal firm, will get involved with a
potential Series A funding. The in-
stitutional investor will now typi-
cally require that the young company
“
Venetia Kontogouris
start behaving more like an estab-
Several lished corporation with all of the re-
quirements expected of similar
academi- companies including such things as
more detailed financial statements
cians have identified and controls, a formal hiring policy
and programs, an organization chart,
three traits that well defined allocation of time and
duties, sales pipeline and budgets,
exemplify and more.
Unfortunately it is usually very
successful difficult for the typical entrepreneur
to make the required transition at this
entrepreneurial stage in leading the company for-
ward. The personality traits that
leadership: made him or her a good entrepreneur
are usually not the same ones found
proactiveness, in a person who has the right leader-
ship skills to take the company to the
innovativeness and next step. Some academicians have
examined the concept of “entrepre-
prudent risk neurial leadership” as a crucial com-
ponent of successful companies and
taking. have studied ways of teaching it in a
“
university environment. What are the
behavioral characteristics that allow
someone to motivate and instill their
vision in a group of followers? The
challenge for a successful company
is to find a leader who can instill the
drive to succeed and excel among his
or her employees, combined with
good corporate governance, while at
the same time nurturing the entrepre-
neurial drive and
The personality traits that makes
one a good entrepreneur are
usually not the same ones found
in a person who has the right leadership
skills to take the company to the next step.
spirit of innovation that made the
company a success in the first place.
One of the few people who have
made the transition successfully is
Steve Jobs at Apple, who has been
able to become an inspirational
leader not just to his employees, but
also to the many consumers who
have made Apple such a global suc-
cess. Apple’s board of directors un-
fortunately did not appreciate Job’s
leadership skills when they replaced
him with a corporate manager, only
to ask him to return when it became
clear a few years later that the com-
pany desperately needed his particu-
lar brand of “entrepreneurial
leadership”.
Several academicians have in fact
identified three traits that exemplify
successful entrepreneurial leadership:
proactiveness - not waiting for cir-
cumstances to define what you are
able to do but rather anticipating
changing currents in the market before
they happen; innovativeness - the
ability to recognize changing needs
and develop new ideas and solve new
and old problems in new ways; and
prudent risk taking - the ability to take
calculated risks in developing a new
idea or going after a new market.
There are many established companies
that have tried to systematize or insti-
tutionalize one or all of these charac-
teristics and the most successful have
been able to embrace all three, usually
because the CEO is himself an entre-
preneurial leader. However, balance
among the three is very important as
there are many examples where com-
panies have failed through an overem-
phasis on one of these characteristics
– AIG and Enron come to mind for
having tried to be too innovative and
taking too many risks.
The successful CEO is someone
who not only embodies all three of
these characteristics, but also some-
one who can adapt to a changing en-
vironment and temper the autocratic
and sometimes dictatorial behavior
required of a leader. At the same
time, a CEO needs to instill loyalty
and drive among the employees who
are more responsive to, and now even
demand consensus building and
group empowerment rather than sim-
ply being told what to do. It is fortu-
itous that many of the recent
technology innovations, such as
Facebook, Twitter, the iPad, Sale-
force’s chatter, and cloud computing
to name only a few, make it easier for
companies to foster innovation and
risk taking within the organization
while at the same time instilling the
discipline and accountability that is
essential for long term success. si
siliconindia
|19|
December 2010
Masses
Business: By Jaya Smitha Menon
sign. He put together a team of about is a fertile ground for innovation.
10 students and one simple design

The Man with a Mission for

idea that came out was to help poor
people who don’t have space to store
water. Since they don’t have tap
water, they have all kinds of drums,
‘dabbas’, cans and other things to
store water. So, they (Whitney’s
team members) said how about if we
design an inexpensive plastic bag
that can be used to store water and
hung from the wall. You can save all
the floor space that people can use to
sleep, cook and all that.
Innovation in India vs U.S.
Innovation in India and U.S. is to-
tally different. A lot of innovation in
U.S. happened in the area of defense,
even transistors and internets where
created to fulfill the defense require-
ments. We are not talking about such
innovations. Even a Silicon Valley
kind of innovation is not what we
should envisage in India. In U.S., the
best brains are busy solving prob-
lems of the rich. We don’t have such

He is hailed as the Telecom Czar of India who revolutionized the Industry which is today standing tall as one You just can't produce leaders by just
producing mathematicians, scientists,
of the key drivers of Indian economy. He is known as the Game Changer who is believed to possess the abil-
ity to transform and redirect the field he steps his foot into. Meet Sam Pitroda, the articulate leader, who
conceptualized and triggered the thought of growth at the bottom of the pyramid in India. a engineers and doctors. India needs
leaders at many, many levels.
An entrepreneur who has over 50 patents to his credits, Pitroda has sketched a unique path of glory and
gratification for himself. While the best brains of the world were busy solving problems of the rich, he es-
poused a mission for the masses of a developing country like India. Today Pitroda is embarking on his next
big mission as Prime Minister’s Advisor and Chairman of National Innovation Council. Thoughts on Innovation in India problems. We should focus on inno-
In an exclusive interview to siliconindia, Pitroda talks about the need for identifying leaders at all levels, Sam Pitroda Today the nature of innovation has vations which could help in solving
India’s growth trajectory and his ideas on innovation. changed. Innovation is multi-disci- problems of the poor which is not a
plinary. Its about collaboration. It is very romantic proposition, since it
maticians and scientists and engi- growing at a faster pace than ever does not involve monetary benefits
Defining leadership ration, communication, co-opera- Google for information. The modus neers and doctors. India needs lead- before. India is a country in a hurry. or media publicity.
To me leadership is about creating a tion; mainly because the internet operandi should change. Teachers ers at many, many levels. We need With a 1.1 billion population, grow-
vision, a vision that you want to im- and the accessibility of information today spend 90 percent of their time leaders all over. We need leaders in ing at 9 percent, 550 million below Roadmap for encouraging innova-
plement. Leadership is also about and the power of communication in preparing and delivering content. education, science, industry, NGOs, the age of 25, expanding from all tion in India
articulating these vision into small has changed the dynamics of social So, take the teacher out of government; leaders at district level, sides and demanding low cost solu- At the national innovation council,
pieces, communicate it to large structure, productivity and business preparing and delivering content. state level, and leaders for youth. tions our first task is to focus on innova-
number of people and then break it model. Content can be delivered on cell- This will happen only if we redesign When I entered the telecom in- tion as a platform for everybody.
up into pieces of work. At the end our educational ecosystem. dustry in the 1980’s, we just had 2.2
The power of communication and information
Then we want to focus on innova-
you have to excite, encourage, moti- million telecom connections for a tion which can bring in inclusive
vate, create a dream and finally
accessibility has made it necessary for the
Innovation at the bottom of the 750 million population. But today
make it happen. There are all kinds growth which ultimately gets trans-
pyramid we are adding 7-8 million cell lated into affordability, accessibility,
educational system to be revamped
of leaders; political, social, business Innovation at the bottom of the pyra- phones every month. The cost struc-
and so on. They are all products of scalability and many other related
mid is something which the world, ture is such that when the world is
their era, their experiences, their even now, is not seriously concen- concepts. Then we want to create an
looking at $11 ARPU (Average Rev-
own ecosystem, and the challenges A need to re-haul the education phones, internet kiosks and other trating on. Until now, design has ecosystem for innovation. We are
enue Per User), India is surviving
they try to solve. Bigger the prob- system modes anytime, anywhere and in any been only for the rich; the best brains and flourishing at $5 ARPU. Today also creating a billion dollar fund
lem, bigger the opportunity for lead- The power of communication and in- form. Then you create a whole new are solving problems of the rich. I our need is scalable, speedy and low for encouraging inclusive growth
ers. More than anything, I believe formation accessibility has made it concept of learning that kids net- work with the Institute of Design (at cost solutions. based innovations. Also we have
leadership is about building the self. necessary for the educational system work themselves in groups; they the Illinois Institute of Technology) A lot of innovation is happening identified 20 universities to seed in-
Leadership in the 21 st century is to be revamped. When you think don’t go to classes, but follow a and I asked the director (Patrick at the bottom level. But many are not novations. Similarly, 20 clusters
going to be very different from that about education, what comes to your schedule. The teacher then becomes Whitney) why don’t you go and de- scalable. Our aim now is to harness across the country around different
of the 20th century. Leadership of the mind is always a blackboard, chalk, a mentor and not just a deliver of sign better slums? innovation and make it more scala- verticals to seed innovation. In all
20 th century focused on command classroom, teacher, textbook, exam content. He decided to visit Dharavi slum ble. India has huge potential to foster this, our main aim is to make this
and control, whereas leadership of and all that. But the times are chang- Moreover, you just can’t produce in Mumbai and was completely innovation, its main strength being initiative reachable, accessible and
the 21st century is all about collabo- ing. My 6 year old niece goes to the leaders by just producing mathe- shocked at the opportunity for de- diversity. Diversity, according to me affordable to the masses. si

siliconindia
|20|
December 2010 siliconindia
|21|
December 2010
Management: By Dr. Anand Deshpande
CEOs
How do
Think?
I
travel regularly to meet our customers. Normally, we work
with the VP Engineering and the CTO of product Compa-
nies. I meet them regularly and most of the time our
meetings are technical discussions or discussions about
specific projects we may be working on.
As the market was slow, most of our customers were not in a
position to discuss specific projects. Most projects were on hold,
and our customers were under pressure from their CEOs and
Boards to reduce costs. This meant that they were pushing us for
rate discounts.
As our customers were pushing us
for rate discounts, we used the oppor-
tunity to get our contact points to get
us meetings with their CEO in ex-
change. Systematically, since January
2009, Hari and I have met more than a
150 CEOs and heads of business.
During these meetings we were able to
observe how CEOs think. This was
the best thing that happened to me. I
quickly realized that the CEOs have a
very different approach to their busi-
ness as compared to the VP Engineer-
ing and the CTO.
Our customers are of all sizes from
billion dollar companies to start-ups.
The CEO and heads of businesses we
met corresponded well to our cus-
tomer mix. By and large, CEO be-
havior is independent of the size of the
company we met.
Let me share with you the high-
lights of what we observed from our
meetings. There are many corollaries
from these basic observations which I
will subsequently share with you.
1. CEOs like to focus on a few im-
portant items.
CEOs are very concerned about their
own bandwidth and want to focus on a
few important items and leave the rest
to someone else to handle. For items
that are top-priority, the CEO is deeply
involved and wants to track the initia-
tive in detail and at a fine level of
granularity. For all other items, the
CEO would much rather have some-
one else take complete responsibility
of the task and wants to know only
about exceptions.
We observed that management
bandwidth of the senior management
in the organization is a very big con-
cern for the CEOs. They are keen to
conserve management bandwidth and
want to ensure that adequate manage-
ment bandwidth is being devoted to
important tasks and is not being spent
on the not so important activities.
2. CEOs want to focus on growth of
the company
Universally, we observed that growth
is the most important item for all
CEO. They are far more focused on
Growth is the most important item for any CEO;
the focus is more on top-line of the company than
costs cutting and efficiency improvements.
the top-line of the Company and not as
focused on costs cutting and efficiency
improvements. We realized that out-
sourcing and offshore development
when positioned as a cost efficiency
exercise is not exciting for the CEO.
Those are items for the CFO or the VP
Engineering. We observed that we
could get the CEOs attention when we
had proposals that could boost rev-
enues and growth for their customers
rather than provide just cost efficiency
benefits. We also observed that most
CEOs are market focused rather than
being focused on internal efficiency.
CEOs want to spend more time in the
market to understand market trends as
that would help them develop sharper
insights for future planning.
I quickly realized that to get the
CEO’s attention, it is important to
offer the CEO some suggestions on
growth of his company rather than just
cost benefits.
3. CEOs are interested in solving the
‘entire’ problem for their customer.
We observed that when CEOs sell,
they are selling a relationship rather
than a transaction. They want to in-
teract with their contemporaries –
CEOs and other C-level executives of
the customer and are keen to under-
stand the challenges faced by the cus-
tomer. They want to provide a
complete solution to their customers.
In many cases, and especially when
they do not have a complete solution
for their customer, they are open to
working with other partners to solve
their customer’s problem. They real-
ize that if their customer views them
as a true partner, a partner who can
“solve” their problem, business will
eventually happen.
In contrast, most sales executives
are focused on completing a transac-
tion. They are completely focused on
“the sale.” In the process they are very
keen to sell their own products some-
times at the expense of being con-
cerned about solving the customer’s
problem. Sales incentives play a role
on how sales executives approach the
sale.
It was very clear from our meet-
ings that to get sustained interest from
the CEO, we must focus on finding
ways to solve their problems. Instead
of focusing on pre-prepared service
offerings, it helps to be creative in
thinking of ways to address the cus-
tomer’s problem. In several cases we
realized that we did not have service
offerings that solve customer’s prob-
lem. In such situations, stepping back
and referring someone else who may
be better suited to help the customer
solve their problem was much appre-
ciated by the CEO. Even though we
may miss out on the transaction, I am
sure it will help us get business from
them in the long-term.
I have been reflecting on these ob-
servations and have realized a few
corollaries on how to engage with
CEOs. si
About Author
Dr. Anand Deshpande,
Founder, Chairman &
Managing Director,
Persistent Systems
siliconindia
|23|
December 2010
 Rise
Business: By Juby Thomas
Since 1999, innovative leaders and
entrepreneurs in India have dreamt of
creating a software product powerhouse,
moving away from the labor-for-hire
services model to create own products
that are winners on the global stage. Fi-
nally such a dream came true in 2008,
when India headquartered Zoho, a
provider of on-line business, productivity
& collaboration applications, was short-
Preparing listed as one of the top 10 enterprise
products of 2008. Zoho had only 10 peo-
for the
ple in America and yet they managed to
T
achieve big enterprise accounts in head
to head competition with Microsoft and
Google without taking a dime of exter-
of Indian Product Powerhouses nal money - having bootstrapped it from
the start. Thus was the stepping stone and
within 2 years of time India managed to
bring a drastic change in its entrepre-
neurial scenario.
he entrepreneurial scenario continues to grow rapidly. In
1996, the global software market was worth $95 billion. Ac- Talking about the crux at which in-
cording to International Data Corporation (IDC), in 2000 it novation in Indian ecosystem stands
was estimated to be worth around $180 billion. This growth today, Sanjay Nayak, CEO& Managing
in itself has had a number of important implications both for Director of Tejas Networks says, “The
time has come to unleash the creative
the industry and more generally in terms of economic development. This
rapid growth, however, has also created problems for the industry. The in- potential of our scientists and innova-
dustry remains chronically short of skilled manpower. In Europe alone, tors at grassroot level. Only then we can
it is estimated that the industry is short of about 500,000 skilled workers. make India truly self-reliant and a leader
Japan and the U.S. are also severely short of computer service person- in sustainable technologies. India has
nel. This shortage continues to provide good opportunities for countries huge opportunities ahead and electron-
like India to take-up this slack and provide skilled people to fill the gap. ics itself has got $400 billion by 2020.
Even if it goes upto 2022 that doesn’t
India has huge opportunities ahead
matter, what matters is the growth from
$45 billion to $400 billion.”
and electronics itself has got During his visit to India, Bill Gates
$400 billion by 2020
once said that India needs to move away
from low-cost labor toward high-end re-
search and development work. He saw
that the future for the Indian IT sector lies
Even the R&D sector is becoming much more globalized and U.S. in expanding its capability to handle
R&D in particular is being “externalized” – more and more of it taking high-end R&D work. And now we can
place outside the wall of big companies within their own R&D labs. All see his vision come true.
these have provided a platform for countries like India to grow innova- Today, technology is transforming
tively and increased the demand for leading innovation driven organiza- innovation at its core, allowing compa-
tions in the country. Companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro and others who nies to test new ideas at speeds and prices
made use of the opportunity have come a long way. There are also sev- that were unimaginable even a decade
eral organizations that are mushrooming in every corner of the country. ago. The price of failure has come much
Even though the entrepreneurs in the country have got several ideas ma- lower now and in return that has become
jority of the ideas remain just as ideas due to the difficulties in their exe- an advantage for the companies who are
cution. willing to try new things.
There is a huge shift in the global
market as well. Innovation will shift to
global locations where it is more effi-
cient. The emerging markets like India &
China are driving the growth today. In-
novation needed to address emerging
market needs, like bringing products that
are affordable, should also be able to
meet high-quality solutions. Multina-
tional companies also require new “scale
at speed” approaches to penetrate the de-
veloping world’s increasingly prosperous
consumer markets. The rapidly growing
ranks of middle-class consumers span
across a dozen emerging nations, not just
the fast-growing countries which include
almost two billion people, spending a
total of $6.9 trillion annually. Next
decade this will increase onto $20 tril-
lion. This will be about twice the current
consumption in the U.S.
Innovation needed to address emerging
market needs like bringing products that
are affordable should also be able to
meet high-quality solutions.
This offers an opportunity for early
winners to gain lasting advantages. To
become winners they have to be distinc-
tive, companies need to figure out how
to grow, sharpen their brand image, and
at the same time improve their return on
investments. “We should develop a com-
mon feeling that if someone else in the
world can do why can’t we do? There
may be cases where 99 percent will
speak about why we should not do. But
we should search for the 1 percent of
possibility and explore it,” adds Nayak.
This might be most challenging but there
are also certain advantages to take up
these challenges. As per him, there are
three ‘Ms’ that are critical in this context.
Market: Among the major
economies in the Asia-Pacific region,
India’s private domestic consumption as
share of GDP, at 57 percent in 2008, was
the highest, according to an analysis by
the McKinsey Global Institute. A higher
private consumption-to-GDP ratio shows
that domestic consumption of goods and
services is a major contributor towards
real GDP. In India, domestic consump-
tion is one of the key reasons why the
economy was able to register the current
level of growth, a good enough attraction
for both domestic and overseas investors.
Manpower: India has the best talent
pool in the world, got highly talented
workforce both in technical as well as
managerial fields. As compared to the
developed and some of the developing
countries India has high proportion of
people in the working age-group and ef-
fective usage of the talent pool will be
another key to success.
Money: India is in dire need of a new
wave of entrepreneurship that will
breathe fresh life into our businesses, and
breed immense wealth for its start-ups
and their investors. Globally, even
though home-grown family-owned con-
glomerates and few companies have kept
the Indian flag flying high so far, positive
macro-economic environment and ven-
ture capital funding can take the country
much more ahead.
It is the challenging responsibility
of Leaders to find ways to leverage
the unique “India Advantage”
through hiring the right team, tack-
ling the adversity, customer orienta-
tion and commitment. In fact there
are much more things that we can do.
We need to spot the opportunities,
pool in our existing resources, both
private and public, to create an envi-
ronment where risk-taking breeds and
flourishes. This would set the right
foundation for the next wave of en-
trepreneurship in India. si
siliconindia
|25|
December 2010
Management: By Ram Narayanan
Author is VP-Product Management, Search & Marketplaces and
Emerging Markets, Yahoo! India
A
Focused leadership is the Key to Create
Killer Products for Global Markets
s I look out of my car
and see a sleek and com-
pact Tata Nano driving
through buzzing roads of
Bangalore, it is one of
the prime examples of innovation led
through exemplary leadership with an
objective – start local with global ap-
proach. This product has triggered a
race among global car-makers to de-
velop cheaper and efficient cars. This
innovation would not have been possi-
ble but for a visionary leader, who can
guide the teams to align the company’s
goals with the customer needs.
Exemplary leadership within teams,
projects, product groups is gaining im-
portance among companies with global
aspirations. Start-ups have to look at
leadership models of companies, which
have developed successful global prod-
ucts. The importance of strong leader-
ship is growing in India across sectors,
including IT, Healthcare, FMCG and
others, which are witnessing strong en-
trepreneurial activities.
With internet reach expanding rap-
idly, the focus of product companies in
the IT sector has shifted to ‘start local
and build globally-scalable products’ to
widen the customer base. If an Indian
company or the Indian arm of an MNC
has to take advantage of this paradigm
shift, strong leadership is essential.
Organizations in India have to de-
velop the ability to analyze new mar-
kets, build globally-acceptable products
and then market them effectively. The
leadership required to guide these or-
ganizations has to ensure that a rock-star
team is put together. We are already see-
siliconindia
|26|
December 2010
ing examples of this phenomenon.
Product Manager – the leader of the
product team
While there are very important roles in
a product organization across the func-
tions of Engineering, Quality Assur-
ance, User Design and more, I would
like to focus on the role of a product
manager in the leadership team and
his/her role in the development of a suc-
cessful product.
A great product manager starts with
the customer, figuring out who they are,
understanding their environment; what
they find valuable; what problems they
have and so on. The product manager
pulls together the rest of the team
around these insights and defines needs
of the customer. The product manager
always manages by influence and not
by direct authority, thereby making the
leadership capabilities stand out.
A few key characteristics of successful
Product Managers:
 Customer is at the center of the uni-
verse
 Keen sense of the market window of
opportunity
 Prioritizing – important and urgent
vs. important and not-urgent
 Very good at honest measurements
of the success of their products
 Biggest evangelist and cheerleader
of the team
A product manager faces several lead-
ership challenges, some of which are
critical to the success of a product. The
greatest challenge is to pull together all
the team members and make them focus
on the problem, which they are trying to
solve. The product manager should
have a sense of the talent available in the
team across all functions and help bring
the right talent into the team.
In the Indian context, this role is rel-
atively nascent given that technology
product companies are just starting to
emerge. Some companies with focus on
this role have introduced successful
products. But there is a tremendous in-
terest among people considering prod-
uct management as a career option.
Product Development & Manage-
ment
Once the right product development
team headed by an efficient leader is in
place, the next task is to identify the
product for the relevant
Ram Narayanan
market.
Many start-ups go wrong in their
approach to build globally scalable
products. An insight has to be gained
into the customer through market re-
ports, customer & market visits, by en-
gaging others who service the same
market, and conducting primary re-
search among the customers. These in-
sights help derive unstated needs, which
may be driven by local conditions, cul-
tural context or socio-economic criteria,
which are the key to a successful prod-
uct.
Let’s take the example of 3G-en-
abled video service. Bangalore has one
of the highest two-wheeler populations;
and many well-paid professionals com-
mute on bikes, but are unable to
use the services during
their commute
time. Perhaps
such appli-
cations
will be
suit-
able
for Mumbai where people commute
long distances in public transportation
where they need entertainment and have
the downtime to use the services.
Understanding Customers’ Require-
ments
When developing a product, we lay em-
phasis on understanding the customer
and the requirements from all perspec-
tives though our offices are spread
across the globe.
Recently, we developed a property
for Indonesia, which is culturally di-
verse and forward. During our research,
we found out that people searched the
internet for entertainment and celebrity-
related content. Such users even visited
US sites, which unfortunately, did not
have content on Indonesian celebrities.
It gave us an insight into the mind
of the customer. We launched the In-
donesian property only after thoroughly
understanding the customers’ require-
ments. We continue to research the re-
quirements of customers to maintain our
competitive edge. While we were ex-
ploring the Indonesian opportunity, we
found the needs were the same in other
markets, including India. This resulted
in the product being rapidly deployed in
other countries where we were able to
hit a market window of opportunity.
Our cricket property is extremely
popular in India. A pre-launch survey
revealed that cricket fans wanted a reli-
able score-card. Once we launched the
score-card and users became familiar
with it, they wanted to read news about
matches played around the world; a dis-
cussion forum, games and so on. Now,
we have over 5 million visitors to
Yahoo! Cricket every month. Constant
feedback from customer and innovation
based on it helps create a successful
global product.
Multi-pronged strategy
A product manager should have a multi-
pronged approach to develop a top
class product. The foremost mantra
should be to build global but imple-
ment local, that is, be able to use the
same platform to develop global prod-
ucts. A product, which has global va-
lidity, enables any company to explore
international opportunities. Organiza-
tions have to learn from experiences to
expand their footprint and focus on
their core competencies.
The next wave of internet growth
in India will be driven by the local lan-
guage speakers. Internet usage among
the English-speaking population has
almost reached the saturation point.
So, ideally, the next set of products
should be targeted at the local lan-
guage speakers and many companies
are developing interesting solutions.
The challenges of a product manager
are not only growing externally, but
internally in terms of identifying and
capturing niche markets with the best
product.
Sharing leadership practices of suc-
cessful product managers
Successful companies have to share
best leadership practices of their prod-
uct managers in view of the changing
business environment; and in the
process extend benefit to start-ups.
To that end, Yahoo recently spon-
sored a first of its kind Product Camp
(called P-Camp), which was very well
attended by practicing and aspiring
product managers. One of our product
managers is creating an industry plat-
form to exchange the views and ideas
relating to leadership. He is laying the
foundation of the Indian Product Man-
agers Association (IPMA), and
launching new chapters in different
cities of the country.
To sum it up, an organization has to
nurture strong leadership skills to de-
velop world-class products. While it
takes a team to conceive and deliver such
products, the Product Manager has to
keep the team focused on the customer
thereby putting the organization in a po-
sition to succeed in the market. si
siliconindia
|27| December 2010
 Management: By Pragyan Acharya
W
hat comes to your
mind when you
hear the term
‘Leader’? Proba-
bly, you would
reply at the spur of the moment that, he
or she is someone who can make peo-
ple work and combine their efforts and
talent to achieve certain goals of an or-
ganization. It might be the whole idea
but that is certainly not everything to
define a leader. Today, we live in a
world where talent is everything to sus-
tain an organization.
To manage every talent is a differ-
ent task altogether. In such a case, the
approach towards every talent is a
challenge for every leader and manag-
ing the most talented is the biggest
challenge because if they are managed
properly, the entire organization or a
large chunk of it gets managed. Vikram
Shah, President and Director, NetApp
India believes, “Nearly, 30 percent of
the people in an organization are the
most talented ones. Once these 30 per-
cent are managed properly, the rest of
siliconindia
|28| December 2010
the organization will get managed by
them.” Deriving the maximum value
for the organization from the highly
talented people is the most important
key to a leader and to keep their moti-
vation level elevated all the time one
needs to massage their ego, adds Shah.
Based on his experience, Shah
identifies some of the traits of highly
talented people and suggests solutions
to deal with them. It is not only the or-
ganization which expects from them
but even their expectations from their
own caliber and from the organization
is much higher. Their performance
may have a high impact on the organi-
zational growth but there is high main-
tenance required for such talent as they
are usually seen to be more impatient
and need attention from the authorities
of their organization. There is hardly
any need to motivate them as they are
a highly motivated group of people and
at times their motivation level discom-
forts the management.
As the highly talented people think
differently, they put their ideas into ac-
tion and do not want to follow
processes and organizational hierarchy.
Though they have the capacity to deal
with complexities, they are complex
themselves but if a leader can under-
stand them as they express themselves
easily when they slip into frustration.
“Since the most talented employees are
often tagged as ‘high maintenance’
people, many might perceive that they
look for more income. If you ask me,
salary is immaterial to them. All they
need is appreciation and recognition in
their organization,” says Shah.
The greatest challenge for any
leader in managing the most talented
employees is to identify the needs of
the organization and align them with
the target of the employees, so that the
needs of the talented people and the or-
ganization are balanced.
“Talented people are the ones who
own the outcome,” says Vijay Anand,
Vice President, India Development
Center, Intuit. For a leader, it is very
important to understand the mass ef-
fectively, so that the talented people are
not overlooked by the organization. si
Business: By Anonya Roy
Why is
W
Innovation
Still A Challenge in India?
hen Watts Humprey
defined innovation
as “The process of
turning ideas into
manufacturable and
marketable form,” he subtly maintained
the worthiness of ideation only when it
can be actuated in real world scenes. At
a broader level, the goal of innovation
is to do something better, invent some-
thing new. The end ultimately is not for
the sake of producing new things but
enabling an efficient and effective way
of solving problems and addressing so-
ciety’s needs.
There should be an increasing
hand-shake between the industry and
academia through intern programs
and facilitating more publications of
research papers
No technology development is a re-
sult of fling of seconds, rather it’s an in-
cessant effort of years that develops
into a good product. Millions of invest-
ment on a glitzy product will have no
impact on the hi-tech advancement. It
is the qualitative investment that mat-
ters than quantitative capital invest-
ment. For better quality we need better
talent-pool. A look into the industry will
witness a growing tendency of major
MNCs flocking the Indian market to
get their R&Ds in shape, all thanks to
the low-cost talent-pool. The report re-
leased by NASSCOM and Zinnov
Consulting states that the major frag-
ments of the MNCs’ Indian subsidiaries
that are engaged in R&D and engineer-
ing operations make up $4.8 billion in
export earnings. But is that enough?
Cost-effective talent pool will not be
the ultimate USP for India in the long
term. The need of the hour is quality
talent-pool, and a good number of
PhDs from the country, the number of
which is immensely low in the country.
40 years back, almost two-thirds of
the graduates from the premier engi-
neering institutes in India were seen
rushing to U.S. for their further
education and almost half of
them pro-
ceeded to do a
PhD. The case
is no more same
in India today. The
interest in higher edu-
cation itself has reduced
to one-third, as everyone
has a job in hand even before
they are out of the grad-
schools. Our success is
coming in the way of our
innovation. In the quest of
small time gratification
we are missing out on the
larger picture. The U.S.
produces about 1,500 PhDs in com-
puter science annually and China about
3,000. By stark comparison, India’s an-
nual computer science PhD production
languishes at roughly 100, the number
is slightly higher as that for Israel, a na-
tion with roughly five percent of India’s
population size.
The biggest challenge for the coun-
try is the lack of industry investment.
Research gains more prominence dur-
ing the academic level, however, insti-
tutes do not have enough capital to
materialize the ideas. There is a huge
need of better flow of corporate money
into the academia and help the young
grads build-up on their idea and also
renew their interest on further research.
Talk about industry investment and less
than 20 Indian firms stand among the
top 1500 R&D investors in the world,
with of course Tata Group – the ‘Nano
innovators’ standing at the top among
all the Indian firms. The sad part is not
even a single firm features among the
Top 50 in the list. There should
be an increasing hand-
shake between the in-
dustry and academia
through intern pro-
grams and facilitat-
ing more publications of
research papers and aptly
recognizing the best ones
to encourage the innova-
tive minds of the country.
Being a forerunner in
technology and development is a
must for India, as Harold R. McAlin-
don said the world leaders in in-
novation and creativity will
also be world leaders in
everything else. So
now it is time that the
industry sits up and
takes notice and work
toward achieving the
goal of innovation
coming from India. si
siliconindia
|29|
December 2010
Business: By Pradeep Kar
Author is Founder, Chairman & MD, Microland
Change
Constant
is the Only
A
My experience in building Microland, again and again
fter my MBA I started
my career with Wipro In-
fotech selling computers
for a princely salary of Rs
2350 per month. I was al-
ways a creative person and saw an inter-
esting advertisement to join a start team
to set up a computer retail chain called
Computer Point in 1985. From there I
was fortunate to be part of the team that’s
set up Sonata Software for the same
owners of Computer Point. I was in my
late 20’s and did not want to get con-
strained in a job besides I always felt that
I had potential to do more as well as earn
more. And I had always believed in the
saying, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing
gained’. So in 1989 I started Microland,
as a network Integration Company.
Microland pioneered networking in
India in the early ‘90s and had introduced
several global technology brands like
Compaq, Cisco, SynOptics, and
Netscape amongst several others into
India.
A lot has changed since we started
our business in 1989. For one, custom
duty on hardware then was 255 percent,
and today it is in the 10 percent range.
Today the opportunity is huge; there is an
existing ecosystem of venture capital/pri-
vate equity, mentorship, talent and con-
sultants/advisors available. But back then
when we started, the market itself was
siliconindia
|30| December 2010
limited, and venture capital had yet not
emerged. We were very fortunate to have
got equity infusion from the State Bank
of India Capital Markets which helped us
build the business. two years later, ICICI
Ventures (then called TDICI) bought out
SBI Capital Markets and became in-
vestors of Microland. In 1996 Microland
had planned to make a public offering
then the MS Shoes scam broke out and
we decided to do a private placement
with some leading institutions at the
same valuation. Hence, stayed as a pri-
vate company, which we still are.
We grew our business very rapidly
and crossed the Rs 150+ crore mark in
revenues under eight years. We were a
fairly successful company in the net-
working hardware business and had re-
ceived several awards and had national
recognition for our success. We build
networks for banks (as many as 18 of
them at a point of time), stock exchanges,
leading hotels and several corporations.
In the later part of the ‘90s, the in-
dustry was going through a structural
shift. Hardware warranties became three
years from one year. International tech-
nology companies opened offices in
India and started the policy of multi dis-
tribution. The internet economy started
opening up.
It was the early days of the internet
economy. Clearly the net was dis-inter-
mediating the middle man. The middle
man had an arbitrage of information that
was inaccessible to the customers, and
when this would change, the buyer
would have more control over the buy-
ing process.
Looking ahead, I clearly saw that this
business would become a commodity
business. Simultaneously, we saw the
huge potential of the internet economy.
Because of our partnership with
Netscape in late 1995, we had the early
experiences of the immense opportunity
of the internet economy.
Based on these we took a very bold
decision to get out of the hardware busi-
ness and change the company’s course to
exploit the opportunities in internet econ-
omy. It was not an easy decision. We had
to convince our employees, our in-
vestors, our customers and any change,
however small they were, would disrupt
the company. Those were things that
most entrepreneurs feared and would
normally stay away from. But I was not
afraid to set a new course for our com-
pany as I had a strong intuitive feel that
this was the right decision to take. Sev-
eral well-known companies were also in
the same business as we were, but they
never saw the imminent market shift and
did not change, as a result they do not
exist today.
Our new vision was being an incu-
bator of internet businesses. In No-
vember 1997, we launched our first
internet company called
Planetasia.com. This was followed in
rapid succession by the launch of a
technology portal called ITSpace.com,
followed by the mainstream broad
based portal called Indya.com, and
then an Internet Media company called
Media2india.net followed by a net-
working technology products company
called Net Brahma Technologies.
Each of these businesses were suc-
cessful in their respective areas. We
raised over $75 million of venture
money in this period to invest in these
Pradeep Kar
businesses. In the second half of 2001
market started to shift again. We fore-
saw this coming and moved very rap-
idly and quickly sold four of our
companies. Indya.com was bought by
Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation,
Planetasia.com was sold to a US con-
sulting company and the new company
is called Collabera, Net Brahma was
sold to a Silicon Valley based company
called MetroOptics and Media2India
was merged with a company invested
by Euro RSCG, an European adver-
tisement company; which is now a
leading online advertisement company
called Ignitee where we still own eq-
uity in.
Then we looked around to see what
has changed in between 1998 and
2002. Till 1998, the Indian story was
largely around hardware. The software
story emerged with the arrival of the
Y2K opportunity, Indian companies
had very successful public offerings on
US stock markets, the internet econ-
omy arrived with every third founder
being of Indian origin and most impor-
tantly the telecom infrastructure got
built leading to the arrival of the Indian
BPO companies.
It was clearly only a matter of time
when offshoring infrastructure man-
agement would be the future, and so
we once again took a bold decision to
rebuild Microland (aka Microland
V3.0) as a provider of Infrastructure
Management Services. We are a spe-
cialist provider employing close to
2600 professionals of Infrastructure
Management Services with offices all
over the world, growing rapidly in an
area, which, I believe, is the best space
to be in the IT outsourcing market
today.
I believe staying a privately held
company helped us a lot in terms of
making the transition from hardware to
internet economy and then to IMS
space, as it is easier to convince five in-
vestors than 50,000 shareholders. We
never changed just for the sake of
changing but because of the realization
that due to the shift in the market if we
continue down this path we will be an
irrelevant marginal company.
There are few things I have learnt
in my entrepreneurial journey which
could be useful for aspiring entrepre-
neurs. First, not trying is a bigger risk
than trying and failing. Second, rais-
ing capital is the responsibility of the
entrepreneur and not the finance man-
ager; this is something a lot of entre-
preneurs don’t focus on. Thirdly and
most importantly, hiring exceptional
talent is the entrepreneur’s most im-
portant job and entrepreneurs should
spend lot of time doing that. And also
while you are building a business al-
ways think of the larger picture and
end game, think of the brand image
of your company early enough or else
your company will start being associ-
ated with something different than
what you would have liked it to be.
Lastly have fun in your journey and
don’t take yourself too seriously. si
siliconindia
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December 2010
Management: By Ramesh Loganathan
The author is MD & VP-Products, Progress Software
T
IT leadership- from Projects to
Value Creation
he Indian IT industry is
over 2 million strong
now! Comprised of some
of the best minds in the
country (unfortunately, in
that process also starving other science
and art disciplines of good talent).
That over the past two decades has
helped create an industry that the
world has now taking serious note of.
Amidst all this, if one were to look
back and see what we have actually
residually created, it is just organiza-
tional and people capability to deliver
siliconindia
|32| December 2010
on large scale IT projects. Just that!
Nothing much else in terms of other
value like IP, products and innovation!
This is kind of a serious lost opportu-
nity for such a large high-talent pool!
And the only value that the industry
leverages today is the revenue poten-
tial that the cost-arbitrage brings. With
strengthening rupee and the rising cost
structure, this is rapidly declining
though! Industry has to recognize this
and make some fundamental shifts, to-
wards more of IP and value creation.
This puts serious demands on the
IT leadership. Given the projects and
IT management focus, the leaders
were more “execution” centric. The IP
and value creation imperative calls for
a completely different mindset — one
that is more innovation and solution
centric. Leaders that are much more
entrepreneurial and out of the box
thinkers. Both in terms of starting new
startups and products as well as intra-
preneurs within organizations that take
on a more innovation driven approach
to delivering the business objectives of
their organizations. Be it in looking for
Ramesh Loganathan
innovative approaches to the end cus-
tomers solution requirements- as op-
posed to the earlier fixation of
maximizing billing time-, or to look
for common IP or frameworks t hat
can be built and used across projects
or even across clients, to even look-
ing at carving out IP from projects
to a more generic product platform
to even persuading their manage-
ments to actually invest in new
product opportunities.
To enable this IP creation, senior
management in the IT industry need to
look at this afresh. There cannot be an
incremental shift from present models.
It has to come with serious impetus
from senior executives of the com-
pany, with funding and transforma-
tional empowerment of the middle
managers to explore IP and other value
creation possibilities, with the board
and the executives pumping back prof-
its into new product or IP creation and
with the engineers in these companies
rallying behind these initiatives.
The change in mindset has to start
from colleges. Recently, at the NASS-
COM product conclave, when a jour-
nalist asked me if the oft stated
product-wave has actually started, I
told her that one clear sign I would
look for will be when a significant
portion of graduating engineers look
at either starting up by themselves or
join a startup. Then this shift is real
and based on momentum and per-
ceived value in the opportunities. Lot
of efforts are afoot all across. From
Nasscom completely moving the
focus at the Products Conclave from
MNC majors to new completely on
startups (this year’s edition had about
500 startups in attendance), to grass-
roots level startup eco-system move-
ments like HeadStart and Proto, to
other industry organizations like
ITsAP (in Hyderabad) having a seri-
ous initiative to showcase and award
good products the March 2010 edition
had over 60 startups present). Few
leading colleges in the country are
now joining the IITs and IIITs in set-
ting up incubation centers. One of the
most exciting products to be built in
Hyderabad, Notion Ink’s Adam that is
touted to compete with apple iPad, is
built out of an academic incubation
center in Hyderabad. Central govern-
ment has lot of initiatives like TEPP
that promote incubation centers and
product innovation. Even state gov-
ernments like AP are taking a very
forward looking approach to innova-
tion and startups with incentives in the
just released next version of the state
IT policy.
While all this is good, it is still just
a very modest beginning. We need the
students, engineers and the leaders to
completely buy into the need for the
industry to majorly shift towards in-
novation and products. Need a com-
pletely change in the mindsets and
attitudes. From just getting a high
paying job at an MNC or a stint in US
to now also look for the exciting chal-
lenges that IP and products pose.
Work towards the adrenalin rush com-
ing from taking the product to the first
customers and onto the world market.
From the fulfillment derived from cre-
ating a product or technology brand,
to ultimately maybe some exciting
IPOs and serious money made! This
will happen. Initial shoots already
sprouting. I was very impressed to be
asked to join a pre-placement style
talk at IIIT-H this week to talk about
the opportunities and excitement in
working for startups. I was surprised
to find that about 15 engineering col-
leges in Hyderabad have incubation
centers actively promoting student
startups. And the participation at the
startup events like startup-Saturdays
is steadily increasing. I expect this to
gather more momentum in the imme-
diate future.
While we work on the student
angle, as an industry we also need to
encourage engineers in the industry
also to think differently. Think value.
Think beyond the T&M billing in a
services project. Take it a step further
to also encourage intra-preneurship.
Industry organizations like Nasscom
& ITsAP are actively helping in build-
ing an ecosystem to support product
startups and IP creation. This must be
extended to also get the leadership in
IT bellwethers to recognize the need
for this shift and actively encourage
employees towards intra-preneurship.
Companies like Google, Yahoo and
Progress Software have formal pro-
grams that allow exploring new ideas
thru to a prototype. These prototypes
if successful are often funded to be
full-fledged products. The same
should be extended even within serv-
ices companies. This change has to
come from the top.
A combination of catching them
young- excite students about start-ups,
getting mindset change in the engi-
neers in the industry and, rally support
from the IT senior leadership to allow
intra-preneurship will go a long way
in enabling this mindset shift. If few
hundred thousand engineers in the Sil-
icon Valley, and probably much less
in Israel, can create world class prod-
ucts, imagine what an industry of few
million in India can do! Look out for
this in the coming years si
siliconindia
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December 2010
Management: By C. Mahalingam
The author is Executive Vice President & Chief People Officer, Symphony Services
nies have recognized this and trans-
formed themselves into becoming
leaderful organizations! Conventional
belief that the tasks of leadership is to
establish a vision, enroll people of an
organization in it, and hold them ac-
countable through measurements and
rewards seems no longer valid. Such a
belief that reinforces the notion of
leaders as an elite group, singularly ca-
pable of determining what is good and
what is not does not seem to fit the be-
lief of the human capital era which
seeks to reinforce that everyone has
peak performance potential and is ca-
pable of realizing the same under ap-
propriate and nurturing circumstances.
Leaders or Managers: Yet another
absurdity of understanding revolves
around raging debates as to whether
organizations need leaders or man-
agers. In discussing so, one tends to
What They Don’t Teach
put leaders on a high pedestal and look
down upon managers. John Gar-
dener, one of most revered and refer-
at the B-Schools
enced gurus on the subject of
Leadership!
leadership has the following to say:
“many writers on leadership distin-
J
about
guish between leaders and managers.
In the process, leaders generally end
up looking like a cross between
Napoleon and the piped-piper, and
managers like unimaginative clods! I
am beginning to believe this is not
true.”
im Collins, co-author of “Good to Great” and a few more best-
selling books said:”at this moment, leadership has replaced Leadership fundamentals: If we
God in filling our gap in understanding!” Nothing can be agree with the foregoing perspective
closer to the truth than this statement. Despite decades of re- about leaders and leadership, then the
search into this exciting subject of leadership, there still re- focus must shift to certain leadership
main more questions than answers. B-Schools syllabi on the subject of fundamentals. A suggested list of these
fundamentals is briefly presented
leadership have not changed for a few decades now. It is the same old
stuff – nature or nurture, situational or dominant, democratic or auto- below:
 Those aspiring to be leaders must
cratic and so on and so forth. Not that all this is outright irrelevant,
just that most of these models and frameworks seek to put the leaders continuously increase their self-
awareness. This includes reflect-
and leadership on a high pedestal.
In the knowledge era in which we live, leadership requires to be ing and asking a few important
questions such as advised by Lead-
deglamourized. Leadership therefore becomes a quality that is in every
ership Guru, Warren Bennis of
knowledge worker. Such a belief and behaviors that follow ensure that
Marshall School of Business: (a)
organizations potentially have leadership in abundance. Great compa-
Do I really want to lead? And am I
siliconindia
|34|
December 2010
willing to make the sacrifices lead-
ers must make? Prof Bennis is of
the view that “there is really no
difference between being an ef-
fective leader and becoming a
fully integrated person.”
 Self awareness is key, but personal
Conventional belief that the tasks of leadership is to
establish a vision, enroll people of an organization in
it, and hold them accountable through measurements
and rewards seems no longer valid
conviction is a must for value-
based leading. Emory University
recently revamped their leadership
program based on a set of seven
core values: courage, integrity, ac-
countability, rigour, diversity, team
and community.
 Creativity including an ability to
think on the feet is yet another
critical fundamental for successful
leadership. Leadership challenges
are very unique and diverse.
Therefore the ability to search for
an answer to the question: here I
am and what do I do now be-
comes very important.
 Drawing on the internal capacity
to inspire oneself and others is
critical to success as leaders. When
you look at leaders who have made
a difference, they have all tapped
into this energy, for without inspir-
ing oneself, one can hardly inspire
one’s colleagues! The precise chal-
lenge in organizations today is that
we are asking managers to engage
their teams without ensuring that
these managers themselves are en-
gaged.
 Enough and more has been written
about the ability to listen, but as
with most leadership fundamen-
tals, it has remained more dis-
cussed than done. I still remember
what our professor taught us 25
years ago: “waiting to talk is not
listening.” And precisely that is
what most of us do when someone
is saying something to seek our at-
tention and understanding!
 Ability to reflect on experience on
an ongoing basis is yet another at-
tribute of those successful in lead-
ing others. Hectic schedules and
jumping from one activity to an-
other represents the maddening
pace of the world of work in which
most us spin our lives!
Leadership is the Hardest Soft skill:
Leadership void in organizations is be-
coming more and more evident today,
increase in leadership development
programs notwithstanding. Canned
programs, packaged in jazzy power
points, delivered by trained trainers
have at best turned out to be an enter-
tainment. Character has to be at the
centre of leadership building. Without
this focus coming through, any
amount of skill building will only de-
liver a leadership bench that falls short
of what organizations need today. We
are living in what may be increasingly
characterized as times of raplexity- a
coinage that represents rapid com-
plexity. This calls for leadership cal-
iber of different intensity and intent.
We can glean lessons from Boston
Philharmonic Orchestra’s conductor,
Ben Zander whose master class on
leadership focuses on certain refresh-
ingly new ideas: Stepping into the
world of possibility, leading from any
chair, giving everyone an A, being a
contribution and stop taking our-
selves too seriously (Rule No 6!) and
some more. There lies our answer to
understanding the ever-expanding
enigma of leadership and embracing
the most promising fundamentals dis-
cussed above. si
siliconindia
|35|
December 2010
Management: By Walden C. Rhines
Author is Chairman and CEO, Mentor Graphics
L
Leadership Requires Continuous Reinvention of
Yourself and Your Company
eadership means being the
best at what you do, but
it’s much more than that.
In my view, leadership in-
volves looking ahead at
an inevitably changing business land-
scape, assessing what will be required
to enable your company to continue as
a leader in that changed environment,
and then making the hard decisions to
get you to that stage. It is a tougher
task than continuing to be the best at
what you do. It is also a riskier task,
because it entails reinventing yourself
and the company, moving beyond
what you do supremely well and tak-
ing on new challenges that are not
your core competency.
Those new challenges, which de-
mand the development of new core
competencies, may involve dealing
with new technologies, new marketing
or distribution models, new cultures.
Moving in this direction can feel like
going against all collective wisdom.
You can end up with everyone (share-
holders, advisors, sometimes even di-
rectors and employees) recommending
that you and the company should con-
tinue doing what you already do well.
Sometimes you give yourself the same
advice.
This isn’t surprising. After all, ex-
ecutives have be-
come successful managers and leaders
because they have developed certain
skills. They are understandably com-
fortable with success achieved, and
would prefer to continue doing what
they already do well. The same applies
to every employee in the company. In-
spiring the company to go in a new di-
rection is much more difficult than
inspiring everyone to do better what
they already do.
But reinvention is essential if you
want to survive, not to mention con-
tinue as a leader, beyond today and
even tomorrow. The more successful
you are in one generation, the less
likely you will be a leader in the next
one, because the bigger the danger that
you will keep doing what has already
worked brilliantly for you. This is the
‘Innovator’s Dilemma’, articulated
eloquently by Harvard professor Clay-
ton Christiansen. On the other hand,
if the company succeeds in reinvent-
ing itself, the rewards are enormous.
You can see how this has played
out in the semiconductor industry,
where I was a senior executive prior to
my current role as CEO of Mentor.
With a 35 percent
annual decrease in
the average cost
per transistor,
new applica-
tions are con-
s t a n t l y
emerging.
Compa-
nies that
take the
lead in each new
technology soon become leaders in
the total semiconductor market as the
new technologies provide an ever
larger share of the market growth.
This is why leadership in the semi-
conductor industry has been so dy-
namic. Every decade, the composition
of the top ten semiconductor compa-
nies changes because new technolo-
gies emerge, usually driven by new
companies. More than half of the
semiconductor companies who have
been at some period listed in the top
ten have dropped out along the way
(only Texas Instruments has remained
in the top ten throughout semiconduc-
tor history).
Keeping a spot in the top ten has
demanded continual reinvention be-
cause the technology periodically un-
dergoes radical changes. For example,
in the 1950s the top ten semiconduc-
tor companies were leaders in the de-
sign and production of germanium and
silicon transistors. In the 1960s lead-
ership required expertise in bipolar in-
tegrated circuits. In the ‘70s
metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS)
memory was the key technology. The
‘80s were all about microprocessors,
the ‘90s were dominated by the system
on a chip (SoC). The 2000s became
the fabless decade. And going for-
ward?
If you look at what leading com-
panies are doing today, you’ll see they
are reinventing themselves with
an eye to the future. Take Intel, for
example. While the company’s
core strengths are based
upon a totally dif-
ferent set of compe-
tencies, Intel is now
working to become a leader in areas like wireless communi-
cations and embedded processor design and marketing.
Texas Instruments has reinvented itself several times as its
businesses commoditized and had to be rejuvenated. This has oc-
curred by successful transition from transistors to integrated circuits (ICs);
from commodity ICs to digital signal processor-based SoCs; and more recently to ana-
log as the wireless baseband market commoditized.
Apple is another example of successful reinvention. The company first made its
name in computers. With its introduction of the iPod and then the iPhone, Apple ex-
panded beyond its core competency into new areas. Significant increases in gross mar-
gin have followed – the reward for reinvention.
Mobile phone giant Nokia started out in the nineteenth century making paper and
wood products, then added rubber products and cables. Eventually it expanded into elec-
tronics and by the 1980s was playing a pioneering role in the evolution of mobile com-
munications. IBM used to be known for big mainframe computing systems. From there
they led the way in personal computers, and now the company has a large services com-
ponent.
The pattern can be seen in all kinds of industries. You cannot rest on your laurels,
no matter how impressive they are, if you want to have continued success and prof-
itability. Companies that are leaders for the long haul know this.
At Mentor Graphics we continually question ourselves. We ask whether what we are
doing is similar to what our competitors are doing. If it is, we consider whether we need
to do it at all. And we deliberately target areas where our competitors are not playing.
We moved into embedded software in the mid-1990s because we realized that it was
becoming an increasingly challenging problem for our customers, yet no one in EDA
was addressing it. We are still the only EDA company to do so.
We are also the first and only EDA company to add thermal analysis products to our
portfolio which use computational fluid dynamics to better address systems design is-
sues and help customers solve challenges all along the supply chain, from chips to boards
to systems and beyond. For instance, our products have impacted the design of entire
buildings such as data centers.
In another example of reinventing ourselves, we applied EDA to the
transportation market when no one else was doing so. We saw an oppor-
tunity to do for the automotive market what design automation had done
for semiconductors and computer and communication systems.
If I may switch from business to history here, I would like to remind
you of a story concerning Alexander the Great. When he had conquered an
empire stretching from the Balkans to the Nile to the Himalayas, he
is reported to have wept because he had no more worlds to con-
quer. If the story is true, then with all due respect for a
brilliant general, I would have to say that he didn’t look
hard enough. There are always new worlds waiting,
new opportunities – if you are willing to reinvent your-
self to take full advantage of them. si
Management: By Sandeep Dhar
Author is CEO, Tesco HSC
A
s a leader, a dilemma
one constantly struggles
with is between Control
and Empowerment.
These clearly are two
schools of thought, often at conflict
with one another. On one hand, there
is a case to be made around building
strong processes with checks at every
stage. Doing so, one is told, results in
greater discipline and process adher-
ence which should be good for the or-
ganization, especially from a
scalability perspective. Those who
disagree, contend that having controls
results in reduced speed of execution
and stifles creativity, both of which are
not good for the organization. Let’s
examine these two schools of thought.
I would like to start by narrating a
small personal anecdote. Many years
siliconindia
|38| December 2010
Controls
&
Empowerment
back, when I was a junior manager at
a leading financial institution, there
was a rule which required a business
head’s approval for any kind of travel
that was required. This control obvi-
ously was put in place to keep travel
costs in check. At that time, I got in-
Before loosening controls in an
organization, first make sure that the teams
consist of inherently self- disciplined and
well-intentioned people
volved in a project that was being run
out of Mumbai, while I was based in
Delhi. It therefore required me to
travel between the two cities. As per
the process, I used to send an approval
email to my business head and I would
go ahead with the travel. On one such
visit to Mumbai, I happened to bump
into the business head in the corridor
and after exchanging greetings he
asked me with a quizzical look on his
face why I had been sending him a
string of ‘silly’ messages. I was taken
aback and asked him which message
he was referring to. He told me that
he was referring to the travel approval
messages. I tried to explain that I was
Sandeep Dhar
just following the process. He hardly
listened to me and said that I was a ‘se-
nior’ officer of the bank and that I
should feel free to travel whenever I
felt it was necessary and that he would
approve my travel post-facto.
Now this was a short but an ex-
tremely impactful interaction for me
for more reasons than one. Firstly, it
made me feel really good since by
calling me a senior officer, he showed
that I was important to the organiza-
tion regardless of my title. It also
taught me an important lesson, which
is that - no organizational policy is cast
in stone and all existing policies can
be questioned and changed if it made
business sense. The most important
question, of course, was what hap-
pened to the travel costs? Guess what,
the travel costs came down! They
came down because in the past I had
‘outsourced’ decision making to the
business head. As long as he approved
the travel, my conscience was clear
and I merrily jumped on to a flight and
The most nimble of
organizations are the
ones where
empowerment and
decision making is
pushed deep down
in to the ranks
landed in Mumbai. In any case, the
business head never had the time to
evaluate my travel requests and would
approve all of them based on trust. So
clearly, the objective behind the ap-
proval process, which was to minimize
travel costs, was not being met.
What happened when I was em-
powered to travel was that I now had
the responsibility to make sure that I
evaluate each potential travel opportu-
nity and exercise due diligence, before
I was convinced that there was an un-
avoidable need to travel. I started
making use of email and telephone
calls to do things which could be done
remotely and more effectively because
it was now my decision and not some-
one else’s.
Therefore, should one jump to the
conclusion that in an organization one
should do away with all approval re-
lated policies? That certainly wouldn’t
be a great idea. In the above example,
what would the outcome have been if
I were a person who did not have the
best interests of the business at heart?
What would have happened if I did not
have the competence to evaluate or
judge when travel was necessary and
when it wasn’t? Obviously the out-
come would have been different. So
before we start loosening controls in
an organization, we first have to make
sure that our teams consist of inher-
ently self- disciplined and well-inten-
tioned people. People who are not
self-disciplined do find ways around
processes and controls as well, but at
least it is more difficult to do so. Even
more important, is that we have to
train people to be able to make the
right decisions. We need to teach em-
ployees how to determine what makes
business sense and what doesn’t. Em-
powering people with decisions which
they are not capable of making will
definitely set them up for failure.
Once you have the confidence that
you have well-intentioned and capable
employees, you can gradually start
loosening controls. This has to be an
evolutionary process, which need not-
take an eternity to complete. This kind
of a transformation can typically be
achieved in a large organization in 12-
18 months. Controls would still be re-
quired but the objective will not be to
govern or police but to enable people.
Through these controls, the empow-
ered employees should have the tools
at their disposal to constantly evaluate
their own decisions. This in turn will
help them to detect errors they are
making and improve the quality of
their own decision making abilities on
an ongoing basis.
The most nimble of organizations
are the ones where empowerment
and decision making is pushed deep
down in to the ranks. The higher the
hierarchy at which this floats, the
slower is the speed with which the
organization moves. Going through
this process is not easy. Natural in-
securities in some senior people at
time come in the way of them em-
powering others in the organization.
At times seniors also tend to under-
estimate the capability of others to
take their own decisions. Some of
these changes do require a bit of a
leap of faith. One should be open to
hand hold and mentor their team
mates as they are being given greater
accountability. Errors and mistakes
are bound to be made in the early
days. However, persistence is sure
to guarantee success and the pain
one will go through in this transfor-
mation is well worth the prize. si
siliconindia
|39|
December 2010
Management: By Satya Prabhakarth
Author is Founder and CEO, Sulekha.com
Strategy
in the New World
A
friend of mine who was a CFO at a Nasdaq-
listed public company made this comment over
a cup of coffee, “Success is strategy!” Brevity, it
seems, is not just the soul of wit but also of wis-
dom.
Strategy is focus and allocation of resources to a
defined set of products/services and systems/processes
to market and deliver them. Billions of words and millions of
articles have been written on effective leadership and strategy.
Ultimately, if a person or a business succeeds,
then the approach adopted by that person or the
business is lionized as the “right” strategy. But
we know a couple of things:
Strategy is as much about
what you choose not to do
as you choose to do.
a. A strategy that works for a
company today may not work
for the same company tomorrow.
b. A strategy that works for one
company today may not work for
another company in the same
space.
Given the furious velocity of
change in technology, consumer
behavior and competitive land-
scape, strategy definition has be-
come simultaneously even more dif-
ficult and critical. For those of us in
the new media space, this is even
more difficult because it is far easier
for companies to change direction
and business model as there are no
huge investments sunk in land, fac-
tories, buildings, machinery and in-
ventory like it is in other industries.
Michael Porter, a guru of strat-
egy, said he went in search of exter-
nal factors that possibly caused a
series of bad decisions in good com-
panies. He studied this for 20 to 25
years and concluded that it’s not so
much driven by external conditions
– but “strategic errors that the com-
pany does to itself.” Often, strate-
gic errors are most clearly visible
looking back after some crucial time
has elapsed.
In some ways, defining strategy
is like developing a movie script.
Robert McKee, the famous Holly-
wood scriptwriter says, “A rule
says, You must do it this way. A prin-
ciple says, This works and has,
through all remembered time. The
difference is crucial. Anxious, inex-
perienced writers obey rules. Rebel-
lious, unschooled writers break
rules. Artists master the form.”
While no one can assert the rules of
strategy-definition, there are certain
abstract principles that could inform
strategy definition. What follows is
a few of them that we have deployed
to avoid some dangerous pitfalls at
Sulekha. While this by no means
guarantees continued future success,
it is merely to serve as instruction
on what had worked for us in the
past.
One principle is: Don’t fight lead-
ers offering the same service as they
do. Strategy is as much about what
you choose not to do as you choose to
do. Right from the start, we at
Sulekha decided we will not waste
our time on providing basic infra-
structure services such as Search and
Email. Because, we figured we would
lose the battle competing head-on
with industry leaders such as Yahoo,
MSN, Rediff, Sify and Indiatimes in
providing a free, commodity service
that requires an enormous infrastruc-
ture, innovation outlay. Looking back,
Conventional wisdom in
entrepreneurial circles
says companies wildly
succeed when they de-
velop new models that
the customer has never
thought of
this was a smart thing to do. By the
same token, we believe it would be-
come increasingly difficult for coun-
try-specific players to compete
head-on and win against global
leviathans like Google, Yahoo and
Facebook.
Another principle is: Don’t bet the
business solely by overcoming en-
trenched consumer or customer re-
sistance. Conventional wisdom in
entrepreneurial circles says compa-
nies wildly succeed when they de-
velop new models that the customer
has never thought of. Examples of
Sony Walkman, Apple iPad, eBay are
trotted out to prove this point. But
there is a difference – and it is a cru-
cial one – between catering to an
unarticulated, latent need of a con-
sumer versus overcoming a known,
existing resistance. Let us take two
examples. There is a resistance on
part of Indian consumers to buy and
pay online for used electronics goods
from strangers because they don’t
trust them to deliver goods as adver-
tised. This is completely at variance
with the consumer behavior we ob-
serve in United States, for example,
where people generally have a higher
level of trust in others. So, a used
good auction site like in US will not
work in India. Another example is
that big brand marketers don’t believe
they can build their brands online;
they do believe TV and Print are suit-
able media for building
brands. In other words,
they see TV and Print as
marketing channels and
they see online as a sales
channel; this explains
why they pay the former
based on viewership
(CPM), they seek to pay
online sites based on re-
sponse (CPC/CPA).
There is a resistance to
viewing the Internet
medium as a brand-
building, marketing
channel. So, any strategy that is cru-
cially dependent on overcoming cus-
tomer resistance will find it hard to
succeed.
A third point about leadership is
related to the plethora of choices that
are available to the senior manage-
ment team at any given time. The In-
ternet environment offers the latitude
and ease for companies to try multi-
ple things at once. Since irrespective
of the industry or the situation, com-
panies are relentlessly pushed by
stakeholders to “grow, grow,
grow…profitably” and because mar-
ket premiums are usually reserved
and accorded to companies that do
that, many try to do multiple things.
This can either be good or bad, based
on circumstance. On the one hand,
companies have set themselves back
by either not evolving over time or by
diluting their focus. There are as
many examples of the former as there
are of the latter.
Overall, defining a sound strategy
and sticking to it requires clear
knowledge of the past and present
coupled with a prescient understand-
ing of how the markets are evolving.
Plus a bit of luck. si
siliconindia
|41| December 2010
Entrepreneur 101: By Gunjan Sinha
The author is the Chairman of SiliconIndia.com and MetricStream. An internet pioneer, he was
the co-founder and President of WhoWhere? Inc., a Internet directory services company acquired
by Lycos in 1998 as well as eGain, an online customer service company. Sinha can be reached
at gunjan@metricstream.com
Strong Recruiters
Leaders as
M
uch is talked about vari-
ous leadership traits, but
the one which is often
overlooked in the man-
agement books, is the role of leader-
ship in attracting strong talent. Strong
CEOs, business leaders and entrepre-
neurs are powerful recruiters. They
spend disproportionate amount of their
time attracting the best of the very best
for their organizations.
There are many schools of
siliconindia
|42|
December 2010
A person who is very smart or intelligent or has
number of advanced degrees need not make a
successful hire.
thoughts on how to hire great employ-
ees for your business or organization.
You want to hire employees that make
you proud, who deliver to the organi-
zations success, ones who take little or
no effort on part of every one in the
team, and are fun to be with. Hiring
great people is the essence of building
a great organizational culture – one
employee at a time.
So, how does one hire right? How
do you go through the interview
process to find employees who you
want to hire and the ones who you
want to reject? Over the years, I have
recommended 5 Step criteria for en-
trepreneurs and leaders to look for
great employees. If you are able to as-
sess these 5 elements during the inter-
view process, you will more likely be
making the right hire for your organi-
zation or startup, thereby giving your
leadership a shine!
Criteria #1: Aptitude
You are looking for basic aptitude in
the candidate. If the person is very
smart, or intelligent or has number of
advanced degrees, all that is good, but
not critical for making a successful
hire. Degrees and abilities to solve
logic puzzles all point to raw aptitude
and intelligence. You need to see some
of that in the prospective hire, but you
want to be careful not to over empha-
size the aptitude in your hiring deci-
sion process. A number of
entrepreneurs and managers get im-
pressed by strong aptitude alone, and
forget to look into other critical ele-
ments of what makes a successful hire.
You need basic aptitude, more than
that is a bonus, but not an automatic
selection criterion.
Criteria #2: Drive
Over the years I have made lots of hir-
ing mistakes, and common amongst
all of them have been that those can-
didates lacked basic self-motivated
drive to excel and win in the market-
place. Drive is an internal motivator,
which inspires you to win in the world,
leaves your mark and legacy. It guides
you during difficult times to persevere.
You need employees who are self
driven. So, your hiring process must
be designed to identify people and
candidates who are strongly self-dri-
ven. Folks who are on a mission to
change their careers, make an impact
in the organization, prove himself or
herself or simply make world a better
place! Let us emphasize drive as a
strong selection criterion over just raw
intelligence or aptitude.
Criteria #3:
Commitment
Another key trait for successful em-
ployees is their commitment to the or-
ganization and commitment to the
mission of the organization. You have
to look for committed people, people
who are committed through their ca-
reers, who have shown resilience and
It is important to look for committed people,
those committed through their careers, have
show resilience and commitment in their
personal and professional lives
commitment in their personal and pro-
fessional lives. Commitment requires
one to pursue things which one truly
and genuinely believes in. So during
the interview process, as a hiring man-
ager, you have to look for candidates
who exhibit such traits. Are they
likely to stay committed during tough
times? Are they more likely to bail out
when going is not good? Do you be-
lieve that they can get committed to
the mission of your organization or
startup? These are very important ele-
ments of your interview and hiring
process. Getting a good read on these
questions will help you hire well for
your organization.
Criteria #4:
Ethics and Integrity
I cannot underscore the significance of
ethics and integrity, during an inter-
view process. You want to hire people
who demonstrate highest level of in-
tegrity and ethics. These are the peo-
ple who say what they do, they do
what they say, and you can count on
them for their unwaivered integrity
and ethics. They are less likely to play
games in the organization, get into of-
fice politics or negatively impact the
culture of your organization. Instead,
through their integrity and ethics,
these individuals will demonstrate
highest level of intellectual honesty.
You want employees who demonstrate
and come across with high ethics and
integrity. If during the hiring process,
if you are uncomfortable on this issue,
regardless of how good the candidate
is, it is safer to pass on them, than have
to deal it with later.
Criteria #5:
Journey of Life-long
learning
I look for employees who are curious,
as if they are still in high school, folks
who, regardless of their age, title and
accomplishments, are curious enough
to live a journey of life-long learning.
I care less about the degrees they hold,
I care more about their curiosity and
the ease with which they can get into
new areas of exploration to find the
truth. Curiosity is a trait, which turns
ordinary contributors into true innova-
tors; folks who will change the way
organizations do little things and big
things. Their curiosity can be under-
stood during the interview process; by
probing both on how curious are they
about little things around them, and
how curious they are about the big
problems or opportunities that they see
around themselves.
As you think about your own lead-
ership strengths or the leadership traits
in your own organization, it is always
good to audit how strong is your hiring
and interviewing instincts, and how it
can be honed as a process over time.
If you hire well, it automatically cre-
ates strong leadership and an environ-
ment which leads to high performance
organizations. si
siliconindia
|43|
December 2010
The Game Changer
CIO Profile: By Jaya Smitha Menon
P
ershing’s recent worksta-
tion NETX360 is hailed as
the iPhone of the financial
technology industry, which
can be accessed via smart-
phone. It has released NetX360 apps
for the iPad as well. By the looks of
the developments, in a year or two,
there may even be a NetX360 App
Store.
siliconindia
|44|
December 2010
spaces. Behind these break through
changes which is impacting the indus-
try is Suresh Kumar, its CIO. Versatil-
ity, sharpness and above all an
intuitive power which comes from a
deep sense of technology and the un-
derstanding of business, with which
this CIO spearheads the technological
ecosystem at Pershing is putting the
pressure on competitors to try and
meet or exceed what Pershing has to
offer.
Disruptive innovations is
ensuring it is an exciting
time for technologies
today as there is
something new, better
and cheaper
A keen observer of the technology
spectrum, Kumar recognized that mo-
bile computing is emerging as a viable
alternative to how people conduct
businesses. He says, “People are be-
coming more mobile and information
and accessibility a click away or at fin-
ger tips is what people are tuning to
these days. So we are taking advantage
of that global platform, and have our
main product available in iPhone,
Suresh Kumar
iPad, Blackberry and Windows mo-
bile”.
Technological innovations under
This edge which Kumar brings in
way at Pershing (a subsidiary of BNY
to stay at the technology curve and to
Mellon, the nation’s oldest continu-
stay ahead of competition has helped
ously operating bank, and one of the
Pershing in many ways. The of Sept.
world’s leading providers of securities
11 hadn’t even happened yet, but
services, which has approximately
Kumar, realized that his business-con-
$831.3 billion in assets held in cus-
tinuity efforts had to be more efficient.
tody) today could propel the firm into
Though he had disaster recovery sys-
a technology leadership role in both
tems in place, what irked him was that
the broker-dealer and RIA custody
it could be as long as 24 hours before
things were back to normal. That was
far too long for his liking, given that
Pershing, provides global correspon-
dent and prime-brokerage services to
more than 750 institutional and retail-
financial organizations, registered-in-
vestment advisors and
managed-account programs. He en-
gaged IBM to help with a major over-
haul of its business continuity/disaster
recovery capabilities. Pershing had es-
tablished two data centers and in-
stalled data mirroring and data
replication. This effort needed a lot of
investment and finally when the Sept
11 attack happened, Kumar’s long
term vision proved right.
Today he is observing the three
major trends evolving in the technol-
ogy space- virtualization, cloud com-
puting and open source technologies.
“I think the changes that are taking
place in these three spaces are rapid
and so we are trying to figure out how
we take advantage of these trends”
says Kumar.
He has articulated his thoughts on
these trends very eloquently.
Virtualization - Traditionally large
companies have their own data centers
and they also installed hardware and
the software and everything that you
need to create your solution is all in
your data center. The good news is that
in terms of performance and in terms
of security, it’s pretty good. But in
terms of the time to market and in
terms of overall cost, it is not that good
and from a technology selection point
of view quite laid back. So, virtualiza-
tion really makes it easy to deploy the
services and it dramatically reduces
the time.
Cloud computing - Cloud com-
puting allows you to be able to get
services on a variable cost basis so,
you need to pay for only what you use
and if you no longer need it, you don’t
need to pay for it anymore. That is
pretty appealing. As well as if you are
starting out a business then you don’t
need to spend a lot of capital to have
what you need, you can just leverage
this and that is a business goal. There
is an alignment between the perform-
ance and expense which is good. So he
thinks the cloud computing concept
and the services that are there is pretty
impressive, but for large companies
their comfort in using cloud comput-
ing for critical resources is a challenge.
With right architecture
one can preserve what
one has and also incorpo-
rate it with something new
that is able to protect your
technology investment to
get a better ROI
Kumar has donned multiple roles
in his career. This IIT, IIM alumni has
been often asked by his peers and
media about venturing into entrepre-
neurship. But Kumar says he has lived
the roles of an entrepreneur as the CIO
of Pershing. Kumar is not only Man-
aging Director, Chief Information Of-
ficer and a member of the Executive
Committee for Pershing, where he is
responsible for application develop-
ment, program management, process
assurance, project management, qual-
ity assurance and technology product
management but is also the Chief Ex-
ecutive Officer of iNautix Technolo-
gies, a technology affiliate of Pershing
that provides offshore development
services, and Chief Executive Officer
of iNautix (USA), a technology affili-
ate of Pershing that provides technol-
ogy products and services to the
financial services industry.
Kumar feels that the role of the
CIO has evolved to be more complex
and hectic. More and more companies
today have decent amount of exposure
to the internet and there is a lot of
changes taking place in the technology
space. Hence CIO’s globally faces
three major challenges:
1st Challenge: One of the top priori-
ties is information security. We need
to make sure not just people know
how to record, and how to scale and
how to have a highly performing sys-
tem, but they also need to make sure
the system is secure. And he believes
the information security is one of the
biggest challenges.
2nd Challenge: The other challenge
he say is technology obsolescence.
The good and bad is that there is a lot
of disruptive innovations that are tak-
ing place and it is an exciting time
for technologies today because there
is something new, better and
cheaper. But the bad news is that it is
not like we can just cant suddenly get
rid of what we have and get some-
thing new to replace what we have.
So he feels the CIOs need to figure
out on how to balance it out so that
you can handle technology obsoles-
cence in an effective manner and at a
reasonable cost.
3rd Challenge: The third challenge is
in a way related to, how do you pro-
tect your technology investments. If
you don’t have the right architecture
which allows you to be able to re-
place components of things at a time
or specific services at a time it be-
comes a challenge. So Kumar thinks
that is another focus that you ought
to have the right architecture, so that
you are able to not be constantly re-
quired to change, but you can pre-
serve what you have and incorporate
with something new so that you are
able to protect your technology in-
vestment to get a better rate of return
on the technology investment.
As we signout of this conversa-
tion, he is ready and all set to venture
into his next mission but more per-
sonal in nature-Biking for 200 miles
for a noble cause. Here also, his ways
of making it a success is similar-set a
goal, focus on your mission, work
hard and work with passion si
siliconindia
|45|
December 2010
 siTech20
U.S INDEX
Index of the top tech public companies in U.S founded
Stock Price
(US$)Closing
52 Week
HIGH
52 Week
LOW
% CHANGE IN PRICE
4 Weeks 52 Weeks
CAPITALIZATION
In $ Millions
and managed by Indians 01.12.2010
RANK COMPANY
1 Cognizant Tech. CTSH 67 69 42 3 45 20320
2 Syntel SYNT 58 53 30 18 53 19900
3 Juniper Networks JNPR 35 36 22 32 35 18230
4 SanDisk Corporation SNDK 49 50 20 32 133 11800
5 Microchip Tech MCHP 34 34 25 -8 31 6450
6 Tibco Software TIBX 20 20 8 5 111 3360
7 Aruba Networks ARUN 23 24 8 0 188 2240
8 Isilon Systems ISLN 34 34 6 21 447 2240
9 Qlogic Corporation QLGC 18 22 14 6 -5 1900
10 Cavium Networks CAVM 38 38 25 19 90 1730
11 Netezza NZAF 19 21 6 6 191 1720
12 iGate IGTE 19 25 9 -7 106 1080
13 Ixia XXIA 15 17 6 -3 120 995
14 NetScout NTCT 23 24 12 -1 76 955
15 Infinera Corporation INFN 8 13 6 -1 -1 834
16 Magma Design LAVA 4 4 2 46 116 725
17 Sycamore Networks SCMR 25 34 2 -17 33 717
18 OSI Systems OSIS 34 39 20 -7 67 641
19 EXL Service holdings EXLS 12 14 11 -1 -20 182
20 Keynote Systems KEYN 12 12 9 3 15 108

INDIA INDEX
Index of the top tech public companies in India
Stock Price
INR Closing
52 Week
HIGH
52 Week
LOW
% CHANGE IN PRICE
4 Weeks 52 Weeks
CAPITALIZATION
In Rs. Crore
30.11.2010
RANK COMPANY

1 Infosys Technologies 3049 3238 2307 3 32 175080

2 Tata Consultancy Services 1077 1108 655 2 62 151663
3 Wipro Ltd 417 500 366 0 -31 99348
4 HCL Technologies 403 456 318 0 24 24481
5 Mphasis 609 780 543 3 -10 13114
6 Mahindra Satyam 62 121 60 -21 -31 10734
7 Tech Mahindra 640 1158 598 -3 -31 9486
8 Patni Comp 466 625 411 -5 3 6679
9 Financial Technologies 833 1723 775 -17 -28 6332
10 GTL Ltd 418 477 343 1 24 4542
11 Rolta India 161 210 152 -3 -5 2938
12 HCL Infosystems 92 169 83 -17 -37 2500
13 CMC Ltd 2200 2635 1051 5 68 2305
14 Mindtree 502 747 490 -2 -16 2278
15 Polaris Software 147 215 131 -9 -13 2060
16 Moser Baer 54 95 50 -15 -26 1177
17 NIIT Ltd 54 79 51 -18 -21 1147
18 Sonata Software 50 70 34 -17 39 585
19 Sasken Communications Technology 174 238 135 -10 9 556
20 Subex Systems 74 102 46 0 9 331

siliconindia
|46| December 2010