So, the folks here at the Proto.in team realized something a few months back. Entrepreneurship is a rising phenomenon today here in India. And not only that, Startups themselves are almost at the verge of being considered mainstream – I mean just look at the sheer number of dedicated television programs, events, activities, magazines, all being launched targetting that audience. All is well and good, but.. but but.. when you think of an “entrepreneur”, who comes to mind?

Are we, all theory and very less practical, all over again? Not really. There are enough entrepreneurs, just not celebrated enough. So we thought we’d take the initiative to put some faces on the spotlight.

This edition of Proto.in, we had four such posters made, and in the future, we want to create an entire wall full of startup entrepreneurs with all their glory – attitude and all.

So if you are an entrepreneur, you qualify. Here’s how.

1. Take a high resolution picture of yourself, along with your team – facing the camera.
- If possible, be casual. We are a startup for God’s sake. So lose the suits, and be cool, casual, and look into the camera. Don’t pretend you are Ambani’s long lost brother in suits and talking on cellphones and such (if I am this specific, trust me, we’ve seen enough of such pictures! ) Poor Nandini only knows too much of this.

2. Send me an email with your name, your quote, the name of your company, along with the website url of your company.

3. Even if you are not a proto.in company, its okay, you qualify as long as you are an entrepreneur and are running a company not more than five years old, and it is indian.

4. If You want some samples to look at, here goes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/protoin/sets/72157606385181319/

Lets take startups mainstream. What say ye?

If there is one that needs no introduction in this Shining India story that we are enjoying, its Mr. Karnik. After spending 20 years in ISRO and building NASSCOM which put a structure, quality and bent the policies for growth, for the services Industry, his legacy is one that is embedded into history.

There are striking similarities to the path that was tread then and the path that we are treading now. Both new ones, and both with a lot of need for structure, and revolutionary changes. The essential bit starts with building the community, and together coming up with the affirmative action for growth. If that sounds too complicated, try this : We need to come together and get our act right!

Mr. Kiran Karnik will be delivering the keynote speech this time at Proto.in on the 18th of July in the Seminar hall of IIT Delhi. Be there, and hear him speak – it might very well be the first words spoken of the revolution of the second wave that this nation is experiencing, and from what we’ve seen, this one is going to be a much bigger one!

I don’t know about you, but having a peek into what’s ahead in this edition of Proto.in, I am super excited. Look forward to seeing you there.

Imagine a situation where a technologist is trying to showcase the iPhone. He goes through every step of the features of the phone, the gestures, the various user interface nuances of the device and the audience barely reacts. A little frustrated, the technologist tilts the phone to the side, and the picture aligns itself sideways, and the audience goes wild – almost giving him a standing ovation. We’ve seen this demo before, and we know what all an iPhone can do.

Case in point: Technology alone doesn’t fascinate. How it is packaged, and how it resonates with the audience and customer means a lot more. India lacks in that space, most times.

There are cases where an Indian company genuinely builds a fabulous product, but the case of marketing and positioning the product in the global market seems to be – or atleast is perceived to be – tough that the company starts a subsidiary in the
US and positions the company as a US-based one. That is a big mistake. Positioning yourself in the US is a short-term advantage and you are competing with the players there and in the global market. Acquiring the market here in India, and playing the world market are completely two different things.

In order to position a product in the US and to play the global market, you need to have huge resources in order to market your product. That brings us to our second point, the point that, no product is ever successful or will be able to stand the test of time, unless its first of all successful at home.

Ten years ago, I wrote an article which was published and which is still floating around in the web, where I mentioned that there are a lot of Indian companies which have great products. What has happened to them? Where have they disappeared to? Some of the examples at that time were of Wipro, who had a project planning package called Easyplan(?) which was quite a fantastic product from the perspective of ease of use, well designed, and fully functional. It had a few holes here and there but at that time Wipro decided that it would be easier to try to market it through the US. The decision led to the creation of EasyPlan Corporation in the US which marketed it as an American Product – just about the sametime when Microsoft Announced MS Project. The rest isn’t hard to guess and is history. Now, if you think about it, Microsoft Products didn’t come to India for several years. In the meantime, there was a nascent market over here that needed a project planning application and Wipro wasn’t catering to its own market. Long story short, the product died. By the time that they realized that it could be done, it was too late.

Focus On Home

Let’s look at the situation today. We are a billion plus people here in India. I am not saying that its a huge market – because we all know that the real market that we are all addressing by means of technology are much much smaller – maybe 2 – 5% of the entire population. 2-5% of a billion people,is actually a lot of people. a lot of people. Its a huge market. If you can manage to even scratch a percentage of that market, you would build up a much larger user base than you would by marketing your product in the US or in Europe. Not only that, by marketing it here you actually start getting feedback from actual users of your product. You can interact with them, and there is also this sweeping sensation of national pride that it is an Indian product. It gets much harder for a company to pay much for an American product, when there is an Indian product that does the same thing. Ten years ago the situation was very different. For one, you most certainly wouldn’t get fired for buying a foreign product. But today every decision maker thinks twice, you have a better product, which is competitively priced, you can interact with the developers and you can help that product grow.

There really is a huge market here that is waiting for products that it can absorb. The sad fact is that, just as it were 10 years ago, companies – even those that are building products – are only targeting the US and Europe. I personally think that thats a big mistake. All those products that are successful in the US and in Europe are because they succeeded in their own native markets – their own home markets. They have had the advantage of interacting with their local audiences and users. You are denying that same advantage here in India when you start fixing your eyes elsewhere.

You might say that being an indian company and selling might be a tough proposition, but thats not the case anymore. Decision makers go by the functionality of the product, not on the basis of where its made. The ability to put out a product and say that we have a million users, or a web service that attracts a far greater user base, from an Indian perspective its quite abysmal. Imagine growing your userbase here in India, grow monstrously, and then heading to any western country claiming that you already have a million users. Imagine that!

Build Strong differentiation

I also think that building a fabulous product requires a strong product differentiation. You have to differentate an IM from an Email. If you send me an email and an IM, they are most probably going to reach me at the sametime thanks to the devices and connectivity that we enjoy. So saying that you have a better communication tool without any base, or building a me too product will perhaps get you an audience with the gullible crowd, but not more than that – Even that gullible crowd at some point is going to figure out that these folks are competing with the giants.

Today its easy and safe to say that Gmail is the standard when it comes to emails. Its going to be very tough to yank them out of that position. Does that mean you shouldn’t get into email based products? Not at all. There are even a few companies that are presenting here [proto.in] that are working on that space – there are quite a few companies who are working on that space overall, and some with a very good fighting chance. You will see that there is scope for innovation.

There is a scope to be seen so different that you will rise above the rest. It is important to understand and build that strong differentiation, rather than looking at services like Gmail and Yahoo mail, and building similar mail services hoping to catch that same audience and market segment. That’s not going to happen. Lets be clear about that.

As much as we are so far talking about the technological differentiation a company needs to have to be seen as a leader, it becomes a little bit difficult to scale this from a slightly macro perspective to see India as a technology leader. From a macro perspective, India as a nation being a technology leader – as compared to a company level – does not mean as a country having the best product. It actually starts meaning the various components that make the product. For example, there are folks who’d claim that they are very good at HTML, some very good at java, very good at database optimization and all this. The value of a product is not in its components but how you tie those components together. This is how it works from a corporate level. Now scale this up to an entire country…

India, as a Leader. Collaborate.

If a country has to be seen as a technology leader, it would mean that its not in the sum, or the various companies like Infosys or Wipro who do well, and hence decide whether India is seen as a technology leader, but its more than that. It is essentially how various companies interact, how they leverage the resources of each other, rather than each company reinvent the wheel. If you have a strength in a particular area, and someone else in another – rather than sitting in corners and reinventing the wheel, collaborate. The minute you start doing that, you become bigger than the sum of your parts. If you start doing this in a national level, thats when people start to sit up and take notice of a leader.

Just look at the case of a Project leader. A project leader is usually not the guy who is the best in a particular domain, but is the guy who can leverage the strengths of the various people in the team who have these the strengths of the domain, to tackle the problem. The same thing applies if we as a national want to elevate our status to that of a technology leader.

If we want to become a technology leader, our focus should not only be on SEZs, Income taxes, tax benefits, and encourage more software companies to come up, but it should incentivize collaboration. Its only when companies come together to tackle a problem and to create a breakthrough, that India will be seen as a technology leader.

Today the world sees India not as a leader but as a technology disruptor – not just technology, but also in the corporate perception. The notion of low cost arbitrage, jargons like economies of scale etc are what are driving those notions. They should try come hiring in Bangalore and see if Indians are really cheaper, but, sadly thats the image that we have out there. In the midst of that image, all the other things that we are are just buried.

Stand up. Stand out.

As bleak as that sounds, the onus comes back on us who are the innovators to rise up above all this and to stand out from the crowd. Most of you might know of my association with the Free and Open Source Movement. There is always this notion that India is the largest consumer of Open source software, but its not a producer of open source software. My argument is that its not true. There are a lot of Indians who are contributing to the open source space – you just don’t know it. Foss.in, was essentially started to showcase these Indian contributors so that the world can see them. Just like this event for example, which highlights
companies In India who are innovative, startups which are working on fascinating concepts, and by bringing those people on the spotlight, a voice is born and thats when the world starts taking notice.

When we first started off Proto.in, we were gathered together in a hall in IIT Madras and nobody had a clue as to what was going on, by the second edition there was a fair bit of anticipation, and here were are at the third edition and the crowd in this one room is much larger here than the total crowd that we had in the first edition of proto.in. Its nice to see a crowd here that understands the mindset of a startup, and represents a serious audience of folks who want to build companies. Its crucial to ensure that things like these get highlighted. One of the things that is sad is when I go to events like IT.com, which is now IT.in in bangalore, or one of the exhibitions which happen in Pragati Maidan in Delhi, and the sad aspect is how you go from stall to stall seeing american companies, or subsidiaries of American companies showing their wares. Where is the Indian part of it? Why are Indian companies so scared of standing up and showcasing their products proudly?

India is much different from how we were in the 20th century. We are not the stereotypical market that was painted to be doing menial labour. It’s much different today. The world in many ways expects something to come out of India. Why aren’t we showing it?

If you want to be known as a technology leader, as an individual, a company or as a nation, you need to stand up, and let the world notice. Coming back to the question, Can India be a technology leader? Probably so, if the marketers, the businessmen, the technologists, and companies start collaborating, and are seen. You cannot be a leader unless you are seen.

Invest Early. In Yourself. In Others.

There is also an issue which is not directly related to the software industry, but will become part of that in the next five to ten years – the students. One of the reasons quoted for the low numbers in startups is the blame that is thrown on the education system, the environment etc. Its not that! The education system is only part of the overall picture, the other part comes from students themselves. Students need to understand that it takes more than just mugging up of textbooks. The ability to do something which everyone else in your class can also do does not matter for much. To be seen as someone who is different means being different – which means going out and trying to do things, exploiting opportunities, leveraging chances that others are oblivious to. You also don’t want to wait till you graduate, find a job where you are probably going to get micromanaged to actually do something out of the ordinary and to find your passion. When you are working in a full-time position for a company, probably working long hours as well, is not the time when you can do anything at all. The time when you get to do something, is when you are still studying. Don’t use the course load, the projects or the exams as an excuse – everyone has to do that. Standing out, also means managing your time, and doing something extraordinarily.

Let me give you a few good examples. Does the name Google mean anything to you? Guess where it was formed. Does the word Microsoft mean anything to you? Guess where it was formed. Does the word Yahoo mean anything to you? Guess! where it was formed. All during college days. Most technology companies were formed within the education system. Most of the great technology startups in Europe and the US came out of colleges while they were still studying, had a great idea, had an environment to make that idea grow, sat and worked and had the resources available around them, and when they came out they already knew what they were going to do. Actually, most of them already were funded before they even came out of college.

It’s really the difference between wanting to do something, rather than hoping something will happen.

Now its true that the Indian education system doesn’t exactly nurture this. But you as the software industry or the technology industry aren’t better either. How many people here hire freshers in their company? How many of you ask those freshers that they would have to spend 50% of their time coming up with great ideas of their own? How many of you hand a java textbook in that poor chap’s hands, give him a day and expect 600 lines of code everyday from the third day? That’s pretty much how the indian software industry right now is. Not so very different from the way the education system is, and is blamed to be. That attitude is not going to nurture technology leadership out of people coming out of colleges, nor for your company.

Take a Chance with the Dreamers.

Give them time, give them space, give them resources, give them the pride to be a part of your company and when they come up with a great idea, let them come up to you and be proud of the fact that they are part of a great team, explain their idea, be grateful for the resources and depth you’ve given them to grow their idea and they’ll show the commitment to be part of your company and make it grow. And Guess who benefits from this. All of you.

Don’t force the poor guy to work long hours, or come up with ideas on their own and don’t be surprised that if and when he finally does come up with a great idea, quits the company and goes and starts a company on his own. It usually turns out that they have no resources, no people backing them, no team, no network, no market understanding an they are dependent upon getting funds from VCs with absolutely no guarantee that their idea will work. Don’t let it come to that.

When you take in young people, they come in with their dreams and visions. Give them room, resources, the backing of a great team, the support they need, your domain expertise and exploit those opportunities together turning each idea into value. Try it, ask each of your employees to spend 50% of their time for the first two years on something they love, and something unique. Make their dreams come true, and be there to help make it come true.

In my interaction with students, and the plenty of them that I interact with, I am sheerly amazed at the kind of ideas that i come across. But a few years later, you realize that those students are missing. They go join a major corporation, work from 9-5 totally drained of their creativity and lose out from exploiting an idea and an opportunity that later gets picked up by some other guy or someone from a far country, is built into a product and in most cases is sold to India.

If you are hiring right, be assured that every one of your fresher and employee will have a potential idea that will grow your company big, and add to the vision that you are growing towards. Thats the final point that I wanted to make as far as India promise as a technology leader goes.

This is the transcription of the talk that Atul Chitnis, The Senior VP of Geodesic, and the man behind FOSS.IN gave during the Fastrack Sessions of Proto.in January Edition ‘08. The tone of voice might have to be imagined, given that its taken from a talk and not a written speech.

His focus areas include mobile and hand-held computing, wireless data networks, “appropriate technologies” (matching available technologies to actual requirements, instead of the other way round), Linux and Open Source, computing in entertainment technologies (especially the music industry), and the identification and understanding of future technologies that could impact his clients and technology audiences.

Often we hear talk about the right ecosystem needed for entrepreneurs to thrive and build businesses of the future. However, rarely we ever find any effort made in this regard. In the recent past, only the TiE association has been instrumental in providing a global platform for SMEs to showcase themselves. Thankfully there is a welcome change in the status quo with the Proto.in, a premier entrepreneurial start-up forum coming into picture.

In its second edition in Chennai, Proto.in brought together investors, mentors, entrepreneurs, students and even industry bodies such as Nasscom and TiE. Vijay Anand the key visionary behind Proto.in feels that innovation in India is turning a new leaf now. It is about being different, being controversial and being out of the box, just like the Tata Nano.

Vijay says, “Since we are billion people country, most of the market segments are underserved. We need to monetise the emerging opportunities. When you compare the number of Indian companies and the number of firms listed in the U.S. stock exchanges, we haven’t even started the journey. So it’s time to take the lead and begin the journey. I believe that if 1% one innovative entrepreneurs lead, 99% will follow.”

Is the great dotcom saga back in circulation… Seems like the big bucks are chasing the online dream again. Eyebrows were raised when the Indian social networking startup Desimartini was recently in the news for….

\Read the Entire Article>

I am sure quite a few of you are wondering, how the Proto.in stage really looks like. We decided it was finally time to unveil that to the world, and perhaps give you a glimpse. There was an “audience effort” done during the first edition of Proto.in where someone covered each of the companies’s presentations, all using a Nokia N Series phone. Without further adieu, the videos of the third edition of Proto.in, January 2008 are up.

URL: http://www.youtube.com/user/startupsindia

This channel will also soon see the business and technology tracks which have very much become the essence of Proto.in. Stay tuned, and feel free to embed the videos on your blogs. You are quite freely welcome.

Regards,
Vijay Anand

PS: The Nominations for the July Edition of Proto.in this year close on May 30th. But do nominate at the earliest, so that we can start working together much earlier and perhaps improve on your launch/product unveiling in a much more effective way.

Birds fly. Fishes Swim. Deals Fall through and Startups Fail. This is the natural order of things. The only thing we can do is alleviate the chances of success for a startup by a small degree. We do not, neither can anyone assure anyone of success and failures totally. Heck, the Silicon valley, which is considered to be this rich ecosystem, has its fair share of failures. What are we going to do about that?

“Success is one in a million. There is a very small chance that you could be that one and the obvious choice left is to fail. Are you ready for that?” is what my mentor used to ask me. For the first six and a half months, as I was pursuing him to be my mentor, every single book he gave me was on this amazing idea, great execution which went nowhere and resulted in a failed business. I used to think what was the point he was trying to make there. It was simple. Success in a startup is an anamoly. The natural route is failure. If there is one breed of people who can dare change that, it would be an entrepreneur. Yet there are factors and choices beyond our control which all contribute against it.

I remember talking to some students a few months back and the question kept going back to the concept of failing. How do you mitigate that risk and all that. I thought it was one of the profound and mature audiences that I had dealt with. I don’t even get some of those question at Proto.in, where startups are on a much progressive stage. I am hoping that they already know the answers to that.

Most of the startups that are slowly gaining traction are on an average on their third iteration. Most companies that come to Proto.in themselves are on their second iteration. It’s quite obvious when you talk to them and see how they have evolved their offering based on market interaction. It is that iteration which actually is the strength of a startup. Remember Agile, evolving, and the path towards a “complete” product? It’s all part and parcel of that.

There is this interesting session that happens when you learn how to skate – whether on ice or on inlines. The first thing you learn is how to fall. How to fall gracefully is the next step. If you are afraid of failure, You wouldn’t even move a step ahead. You need to dare, and that’s what entrepreneurship essentially is all about. There is a high level of risk and high level of reward at the end. Not everyone who get a lottery wins, and not everyone who starts up a company also succeeds. I am not sure what is news about it.

As long as you are afraid of falling, you won’t be able to stand up on your feet either. I can assure you that. I’ll leave you with these following words, which we had posted on a high banner for the first edition of Proto.in. Perhaps it needs to be much more visible, perhaps even everyday:

It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or when the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worth cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt

Note: Repost from the Author’s Blog.

While we would eventually want to build a networking platform that we announced during Proto.in January Edition as “Proto.in Online”, we have created a page in Facebook which will serve that purpose while the platform is being built, tested and tried, and as we also narrow down on some of the unique features that we want to put in. Who wants another social networking site anyways, right? That’s the point. The rule always has been, if we are going to ask someone to go even an inch more to do a task, might as well have a strong case as to why and what he/she gets out of it.

Philosophies and thoughts aside, you are all more than welcome to join the Proto.in page at Facebook at the link below. Feel free to interact and start a discussion and pitch your thoughts into one that is up and running. I’d like to keep this as unmoderated as possible, with the premise that everybody agrees to play nice. That said, this is the link to follow:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Protoin/18654630002

Hope to see you there.

Ixigo, one of the travel search engine companies that took the stage in the first edition of Proto.in has closed its round of funding from an Angel group based out of Singapore. It’s been a fabulous journey so far interacting with Aloke frequently as they built their market traction and the fun moments we had when some of their servers had to be expanded because of load and discussing options.

Wishing Ixigo, and the men behind the company, Aloke and Dharmendra a great journey ahead. together.

May I request you to step back two paces and hear this out? I am sure you’ll see some sense in what I am talking about. I promise.

lately, I see more and more of the Proto.in alumni start getting involved in what goes on behind the stage and I am wondering if there is any difference at all between the way open source projects are managed and how we as a community are growing.

Let me quote you something from Eric Raymond’s Book (Source Wikipedia), the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Raymond makes the distinction between two kinds of software development. The first is the conventional closed source development. These kind of development methods are, according to Raymond, like the building of a cathedral; central planning, tight organization and one process from start to finish. The second is the progressive open source development, which is more like a “a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.”

What we are building is a community of startups, entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs and everyone who supports them – venture capitalists, analysts, mentors, entrepreneurial organizations and the media (That would be the product). If this community is the product, then every edition of Proto.in is a release that we make. And with every release we simply have to improve on what we are building, constantly listening to the customers, and those we work with – shoulder to shoulder, which would be you and I, the entrepreneurs ourselves. To me that sounds more of a bazaar, than a cathedral that we are building.

Who are “we”?. I’d be comfortable with the definition of “We the entrepreneurs”. Just like any open source project, while there are a few key doorkeepers, it is essentially open for everyone to contribute. Which is why we started a group for all the volunteers who want to get involved to sign up right away.

It is my and our strong belief that it is “our” community that we are building. It is through this community that we will find the strength, the knowledge, the how-to, the means and the guiding star to building India as a leader in technology and product. It will be this community which will have nurturing startups, and coming up with solutions for each of their problems as their mandate.

If you agree with me, I urge you to join hands with us. May the startups win!

We introduce the finalists for this edition of Proto.in to you. Out of the 84 nominations that came here, these were the final 17 that were shortlisted out of which 14 of them took the stage on the day of the event. The other three (un)fortunately had some very prospective client demos, one with a major retail store (BlinkMedia) and the other with one of the media Giants (Rawdata), hence they couldn’t be available on the day of the event. Since Proto is essentially about leveraging potential and interesting startups that are popping out of this place, we gave them their place in the booklet as well.

These are the List of companies that made it to the final shortlist. The details of the companies can be found in the booklet here.

:: Internet:
atonePlace.com
The Viewspaper
Hover.in
Antya
Instablogs

:: Software ::
Deskaway – Synage Software
SpiceBird – Synovel Software
inSync – Druvaa
Instarad – MedSphere

:: Telecom/Communication ::
Enpaq Business Gateway – Elina
Yambi Platform – Mundial
Mobitop Platform- Mobisy

::Logistics & Management ::
Myntra
Nadhi Systems
Dogears Print Media Pvt. ltd.

::New Frontiers::
BlinkMedia: Intelligent Shopping Cart
Rawdata Media Monitor