Quarterlife crisis

This may seem somewhat off-topic to some of you, but I get lots of emails from users who are confused about their career, unhappy with their jobs and unsure of what’s next in their professional life.

This post on a so-called ‘quarter-life crisis’ sums it up so well. Although written in the context of the western society / lifestyle — lots of bits an pieces could apply to the indian context as well.

It was too good not to share with all of you.

The art – science – voodoo of community building

Building (read- coding and designing) a website or a social network is the easy part.  How you build a loyal, active community of users is the hard bit.

Here’s an interesting post that provides an awesome example – definitely worth a read.

India not the ideal place for online, mobile entrepreneurs

In an insightful post, Deap Ubhi, co-founder and CEO of Burrp, says that India is not yet ready for online or mobile entrepreneurship.

this is where india diverges a bit from many other countries that are currently cultivating some great startup ideas. why is india different? my theory is simply this: the delta (or difference) between what many consider to be india’s market size and its addressable market size is vast.

the mobile market in india is closing in on just below half a billion. that’s almost twice the entire population of the united states. how many of those mobile subscribers are on prepaid plans? how many of them are below the poverty line? how many of them are unemployed? qualitatively, how many of them are just struggling to get a 4th grade education, can’t afford medicine for their illnesses, and frankly, don’t give a shit about anything except making sure their mobile allows them to talk to their circle

The post definitely gives us some food for thought. Deap has had the experience of running Burrp for about 3+ years now and it’d be foolish to dismiss his opinion as lame.

I had touched upon a similar topic way back in 2007 — even though India’s potential seems huge (1 Billion), actual figures are pretty dismal.

IT still remains preferred career choice for Indian engineering graduates

With 43% of votes, Information Technology still remains the preferred career choice for Indian engineering graduates of the class of 2010, as per a survey by Nielsen.

IT is followed by automobile, telecom, energy – oil & gas, infrastructure/real-estate and power sectors.

Some additional interesting tidbits from the survey:

• Ratan Tata is the most popular role model for the 2010 graduating class
• Students perceive nanotechnology (12%), IT services (11%), Power (9%), oil & gas (8%), telecom (6%) as the top 5 ‘industries of the future’
• IIT students consider energy/oil & gas, nanotechnology and finance as the top ‘industries of the future’
• half of the 2010 graduating class intend to move out of their first job in the first 3 years
• 51% cite higher studies as reason for leaving their first job
• 69% of the 51% intending to leave their first job for higher studies intend to do an MBA
• Students are willing to continue with their employer if they employer pays well (39%), they have a good job satisfaction (34%), if they have a good work environment (32%)

You might wonder why this survey even deserves a post.

In my opinion, this survey is important because it gives a very good background on what factors graduates weigh in while looking for a job, while leaving a job etc. Not to mention that entrepreneurship doesnt even figure as a career option anywhere in the survey. The fresh graduating class is where we actually need to sow the seeds for entrepreneurship – that is the best time when they can afford to take risks as entrepreneurs. When such a high percentage of students sees an IT + MBA as the holy grail, there needs to be a means to show the benefits that they might get from being a hands on entrepreneur instead of attending a b-school. Last, but not the least, this data will also be helpful to startups to attract and retain talent.

via release

Startup Idea for Entrepreneurs

Continuing on my earlier post on startup ideas, here’s another one, although not necessarily technology related.

Start a company that provides handyman, plumbing, general repair etc services to people.

Before you dismiss the it as crazy, hear me out.

In my experience, getting a miscellaneous home repair job done in India is a nightmare. You need to first go hunting for a handyman or repairman or electrician or plumber. Haggle about the price and then decide upon an appointment time and wait for the guy to show up. And for reasons unknown, these guys are almost always late and never able to keep the scheduled time. If you have taken a day off from work or are working from home, it translates to lost work, time and money for you. You need to repeatedly check in with the guy when he’s gonna show up. Its almost as if you are at the mercy of these guys. And that just sucks.

So here’s what you can do:

Start a one place shop that will provide all kinds of repair services – electrical, plubming, general repair etc.

Your goal and USP should be to buffer the customer from bad service.  Period.

Encourage and instill value of timeliness and customer satisfaction in your employees.  By offering a superior customer experience and all-in-one shop, you could also get away with charging a little premium over others. People will happily pay a little more than have to deal with the whims and fancies of local repairman.

And its a win-win for the handymen, electricians, repairmen as well – they get to work as a salaried employee (stable pay) rather than an uncertain income.

Thoughts, feedback welcome.

Has your company chosen its vector of innovation?

This guest post is written by Swaroop C H, co-founder of a startup called IONLAB. He writes regularly on his blog at www.swaroopch.com. His company has announced their upcoming product called “Track Every Coin” which can be best described as “Your personal finance in a keychain.” Check it out at www.trackeverycoin.com.

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I always used to find the concept of “innovation” very fuzzy, especially when the big managers talk about it. The best explanation I’ve read is “Innovation is the by-product of a well-executed product.” But maybe that’s equally fuzzy as well.

A few years ago, when I was working at Adobe, I got to attend the famous internal “Dev Summit” which is a fantastic event that happens every year. At this event, I got to attend a talk on the “vectors of innovation” by Geoffrey Moore. This talk is related to his book “Dealing with Darwin”, so for those who have already read that book, please do chip in with your thoughts on the takeaways from the book in the comments section. For the rest, I have jotted down here my notes from that talk.

First, he exploded the myth that innovation in itself is valuable and that innovation is the same kind in every company.

He explained why innovation is important to a company:

Innovation is valuable only if it helps us achieve competitive advantage. Its greatest value is when it differentiates us from our competitors sufficiently that customers prefer our offers to theirs and will pay a premium to support that preference. It also has value when it helps neutralize their competitive advantages over us and when it helps us improve our own productivity and thus profitability. But we should realize there is a lot of innovation going on today in our company that meets none of these criteria, that is in fact creating waste. Managing innovation successfully requires us to redirect that energy back into economically rewarding outcomes.

The economic argument in favor of innovation focuses on pricing power. Without innovation offerings become more and more like each other. They commoditize. As they do so, customers are able to play one vendor off against the next to get a lower price. Over time the market stabilizes at prices at or below cost, creating returns for investors below the cost of capital, causing investment to flee the marketplace. By contrast, when innovation is applied, offers become more and more differentiated from one another, leading to different ones becoming the preferred choice for different market segments, giving those vendors pricing power within those segments. In this scenario the market stabilizes at prices well above cost, creating returns above the cost of capital, attracting more investment into the marketplace.

The fundamental principle that drives this argument is that when innovation creates differentiation, it creates attractive economic returns.

Read more

CEDT – IISc launches business incubator in partnership with HeadStart Foundation

HeadStart Foundation has partnered with Centre for Electronics Development and Technology (CEDT) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to launch a business incubator. The focus areas of the incubator are:

* Personal Area Networks: Multimedia delivery, home security, healthcare etc.

* Automotive Systems: Guidance systesms, entertainment etc.

* Low cost embedded computing: Communications, Access control, transactional systems

* Environmental monitoring: energy management, safety & security, disaster management systems

* Clean Energy Systems: Energy management / reduction, distributed clean energy generation etc.

The first batch of companies will be admitted in June 2009.

You can access the site here.

Downside of being an entrepreneur

More often than not, you hear all the great, fairy tale endings of how an entrepreneur made millions by selling his startup etc.

However, seldom do folks discuss the emotional and physical toll it takes on the entrepreneur.

Here’s a great blog post by Jason Nazar, founder CEO of DocStoc.com, who describes some of the downsides of being an entrepreneur. Its an amazing read – do give it a dekko.

Indian Women Entrepreneur Network (IWEN) to promote entrepeneurship in Indian women

When it comes to Indian entrepreneurship, the roster of current entrepreneurs as well as wanna-preneurs is dominated by men. Women entrepreneurs find it challenging to get a footing and to be taken seriously by others.

The Indian Women Entrepreneur Network (IWEN) aims to support women by encouraging entrepreneurship, helping them getting access to resources. It was started in Feb 2009, and currently has 50 plus members. The First of the monthly IWEN meets is being held on April 2nd, Thursday, 6pm at the Indiranagar Club, Bangalore.The goal is to connect with all the smart women on the IWEN, learn something new, and have fun ! There are also 2 surprise guest speakers, speaking on divergent topics of interest.

If you are a women entrepreneur or an aspiring to be one, do checkout their LinkedIn group and attend the meetup if possible.

In addition to the above group, TiE has also started an initiative – Stree Shakti in an effort to promote, encourage and help Indian women entrepreneurs.

Economic Times Power of Ideas announces first shortlist

Economic Times Power of Ideas has announced their first shortlist of applicants.

This first shortlist consists of 1000 applicants. Manu has done some quick analysis of the results. A few key highlights:

• Maximum number of applicants from Bangalore (202), with Mumbai (138) and Delhi (115) a close 2nd and 3rd respectively
• In terms of age distribution, 357 applicants are in their 30’s, followed by those in 20’s (315)
• Only 126 applicants 25 years or younger made the cut

You can view the rest of his analysis on his blog.

The one thing that I didnt like about the shortlist is that it publicly exposes the birthdates of applicants — this kind of data is supposed to be kept private.

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