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Beanbags, wi-fi, and founders hanging out: The Startup Centre is coming to Pune

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Update:: The startup center website points out: Launching on May 2011 in Chennai. Entity Structuring in Progress. If interested, do get in touch. Pune plans tentatively by end of 2011.

The Name Vijay Anand, also known as The Startup Guy, is familiar to most startups in the country as the creator of India’s best known startup showcase event proto.in. Vijay is now working hard on his next initiative: The Startup Centre. For a description of the startup centre, we turn to http://thestartupcentre.ning.com the social network for the startup centre, and we find the following overview:

So What Can you Expect out of the Startup Centre?

The Startup Center is a "(physical) community center for startups", and is an initiative of Vijay Anand (of proto.in fame). Click on the logo for more information about The Startup Center

The Startup Centre, would be a community space for Entrepreneurs, and everyone who has a spark of imagination (artists, designers, hackers), ideas and the talent and ability to execute it. If you are a one man team, or the founding team of a concept or startup, you can drop by the centre to use the facilities at a nominal fee every month – or if you are visiting from out of town – or want to check out the place, take a 24 hour access pass and use the facility. The centre will have facilities such as conference rooms, brainstorming rooms, and will also be a regular host to barcamps, and other technology/entrepreneurship/design workshops that will benefit the community. Dont be surprised if you walk in and do see a jamming session going on – by the musically inclined.The Centre also aims to play host for the other players of the ecosystem such as Accountants, lawyers, PR professionals, Venture Capitalists and Industry Mentors on a regular basis (supported on Patronage by these groups), to strengthen the support system around entrepreneurs and startups.

What the Startup Centre is Not

The Startup Centre is not a co-working space for startups to come and run their entire operations out of. This is probably only going to make sense till the stage where you are no more than just the founding team, you can afford to work in a room with nothing more than bean bags, wifi and whiteboards and to crank out the initial prototype.

Obviously, since Vijay is based in Chennai, the first edition of The Startup Centre will come up in Chennai, and the deadline for that is September. However, the most interesting thing we learned was that the second startup centre, slated for the end of 2010 is Pune. This obviously piqued the interest of PuneTech and we contacted Vijay to find out more about The Startup Centre.

Here is a short interview with Vijay about the thought process behind The Startup Centre:

Can you explain the idea behind The Startup Centre?

The notion of the startup centre came from three things:

  1. People need a space where they can bounce their ideas off a group of people – like a barcamp setting – get feedback and iterate on it. There is no such space like that today, and we thought we should have one.
  2. Everytime people from very different fields come together, some brilliant things happen. And for a startup environment – it would be sad not to tap into the diversity of population that places like Chennai and Pune have – to bring together hackers, designers, entrepreneurs, artists etc under one roof.
  3. There is a need for a physical space where people can “hang out’, learn about starting up – cause most of us in someway or the other found such a space – for me literally it was the Entrepreneurship centre in Canada where I dropped by whenever i had questions, used the resources etc. Here’s hoping we do such things here in India.

“Startup” can mean many different things – it could be a person with a full-time job who has a startup idea in his head, or a couple of guys working out of their homes, or it could be a small team that has a make-shift office in a flat, or even a 20 to 50 person company with a decent office space. Which of these will The Startup Centre target?

We are not an incubation centre. In the words of Alok Mittal, one of the advisors for The Startup Centre, “Its a fun place where creativity is initiated.” Its also a great place as long as its just the founding time looking to connect with such people, get a bit of confidence and finalize on their idea and maybe build out a prototype. Once you are ready to go beyond just the founding team and take on team members, you are probably better off in a incubation centre or on a space of your own – you should focus on your product and company and not get distracted. We mean startup quite literally, where idea becomes something tangible.

How would you define “success” for The Startup Centre? What kind of impact are you hoping to achieve, and how do you plan to measure it?

30 odd starting up teams working out of the space, being the host for events like Open Coffee Club, DevCamps, Barcamps, etc, and getting enough diversity of people – apart from just IT – that’d be the success of the centre in the first phase of its life. I have a feeling that a space like this will democratize entrepreneurship, new ideas, movements to people outside the tech sector and to those outside incubation centres. The momentum of the volunteering that goes into making this space successful, all of that will contribute to how much people gain out of association.

You’ve picked Pune and Chennai as the first two cities where The Startup Centre starts? Can you shed some light on the thinking process behind that decision?

I think Pune is the hottest space for startups in the country today. And it would be great if i talk less about it and keep it a secret cause what makes Bangalore a bit on the high maintenance side for startups is because of the hype around it.

I think a space where startups can thrive need students – quality students, people from diverse backgrounds, low cost of living, close proximity to a bigger metro. I think Chennai and Pune fit the bill quite well. The reason behind these two cities is also cause its not bangalore – where you necessarily dont need a centre to bring together people – there is lots of things happening as it is.

Presumably, you’re looking for an appropriate space in Pune for The Startup Centre. Can you give us an idea about what kind of a space you’re looking for? How big? Have you short-listed any specific areas of the city for this?

We are really figuring this bit out. Chennai will give a lot of insights onto this – so in a way Pune will have a much better centre than Chennai for sure – because the learnings from here will go into that. For Chennai, we are looking for roughly around 2000 – 3000 sq feet of space, preferably a hall type setting, close enough to coffee places and access and not in an IT Park. There is something about IT parks that seems to sober everyone up – the centre should ideally do the reverse of that. For Chennai we are thinking close enough to the IT corridor – in Pune, would very much like the support of the folks there to help out.

Will The Startup Centre focus on any particular sector or type of startups (e.g. IT startups), or will it welcome all types?

We are initially focusing on Internet, Mobile and Software. Cause it seems we have the capacity to guide and its known territory. We have been getting quite a bit of enquiries from artists in Chennai who want to figure out new ways of distributing music and trying out models around it, so I think local flavors will very quickly add into it.

How can the Pune startup community help with this initiative?

Very much so. I have already been getting a lot of support from Santosh and Anjali of Lipikaar / Dubzer on this regard. I plan to visit Pune sometime. We would like for the local community to in a way run it and which city other than Pune in India today has that strong a startup community to run it? We launch the centre in Chennai in Sept, give till Nov, to start work in Pune. If all goes well, hopefully we’ll see the new year with one in Pune as well.

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How to choose an Engineering college & branch after 12th

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This article, which has advice for students who plan to do a degree in Engineering, has been posted here on PuneTech, partially in response to some of the comments we’re getting for this PuneTech article, and also partially because I’m sure most PuneTech readers get asked this question by relatives and friends, and I’m hoping that at least some of the advice here will be helpful

If you’ve just finished your 12th standard, and are interested in getting an Engineering degree, which college, and which branch of Engineering to choose can seem like the most difficult, and at the same time, the most important decision of your life. People have been asking me this question for almost 20 years now, and based on my varied experience, here is the advice that I give to prospective engineers.

I can distill my advice down to this sentence:

Get into the best college (in a good city) that you can – whatever the branch.

I’ll explain in a little more detail.

Branch is not all that important

That’s right. Most students and parents seem to be very focused on getting in to the “best” branch (Computer Science, Electronics & Telecommunications, Mechanical, Chemical, Civil, etc.) Everybody wants to get into the “top” branch. Everybody wants to know which branch has the best “scope” in the future.

This is misguided. There are a number of reasons why the branch doesn’t matter all that much:

  • If you study in a good college, all branches have “scope”. There are successful businesses and well-paying jobs in all disciplines, including civil engineering, and chemical engineering. And the vast majority of computer science graduates in the country do not have decent jobs (because there are so many of them!) If you study in a bad college, a good branch is not going to help you. Also, so called “good” branches with lots of “scope” tend to be over-crowded, because everyone is entering that field. And finally, nobody really knows which branch will have the most “scope” 10 years from now. (When I did my Engineering, my friends took Computer Science in VJTI because they couldn’t get into more sought after branches like E&TC and Mechanical!)
  • Changing of field is very common amongst engineers. Just looking at my batchmates, I know metallurgical engineers who are in advertising agencies, mechanical engineers who are into banking and finance, chemical engineers working on Bollywood movies, and computer scientists in the insurance industry doing non-computer stuff. What branch you get your degree in is forgotten within 5 years of graduating.
  • What branch the student is interested in, is irrelevant. This is a big one. 12th standard students tell me, “I am more interested in Computers. I don’t like Mechanical.” Frankly, in 12th standard, you have no clue what any particular field involves. If for a field, hundreds of colleges in the country are giving engineering degrees in that field, then almost by definition, that field has interesting and cool work going on all over the world. If you find that field boring, then, the most likely explanation is that you’ve been taught that subject by a bad teacher. My guess would be this: any subject that you find very interesting was probably taught to you by a good teacher, and for every boring subject, there’s probably a bad teacher of that subject sometime in your past. A good professor in any branch can make the branch come alive for you.

I am not asking you to ignore the branch entirely. All I’m saying is that give it a little less importance than you are currently giving it.

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Madras (Chennai)
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Guwahati
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Kanpur
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Kharagpur
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Bombay
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Roorkee
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Bhubaneshwar
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Gandhinagar
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Hyderabad
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Indore
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Jodhpur
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Patna
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Rupnagar
Location of the 15 IITs in India. Source wikipedia.

College does matter

The original IITs, and BITs Pilani, are clearly better than other engineering colleges. Most NITs are better than most state engineering colleges (except the top state colleges). Top state colleges (e.g. COEP, VJTI, PICT) are clearly better than the second-tier engineering colleges. And so on. (Unfortunately, I don’t really know how good or bad the new IITs are. You’ll need to make that judgement on your own.)

It’s fashionable to say the college doesn’t matter. And it is very common to trot out examples of students from terrible colleges who have succeeded in life. But that’s flawed logic. Students who succeed inspite of being in a bad college, are probably succeeding in spite of the college, not because of the college. And probably would have done even better if they had been in a better college.

Better colleges have better systems of education, better professors, and better “resume value” (which, whether you like it or not, is a factor for a long, long time.) Also, in better colleges, you have better classmates. This matters in the short term (because better classmates means more influence of friends who are interested in the right things), and the long term (better “network”).

So, here’s my (controversial) advice: if you are getting a not-so-good branch in a very good college, vs. a good branch in a not-so-good college, you should definitely choose the not-so-good branch in the very good college. I would definitely pick Metallurgical Engineering in IIT-Bombay, over Computer Science in MIT. If the colleges are sort-of-comparable, then go for the “better” branch (for whatever definition of “better”). For example, if you have Mechanical Engineering in COEP, and Computer Science in VIT, then go for VIT – because althought COEP is better than VIT, it is not all that much better.

Note: I am not saying that you’re screwed if you get into a bad college. There are enough examples to prove that good, motivated students can shine from anywhere. All I’m saying is that if you have a choice, then choose better college over better branch. If you get into a bad college, then work hard, ignore your professors, and try to get guides/mentors/projects from industry (right away, not just in the last year).

City also matters

To a large extent, success in life is not simply about academic knowledge. It is also about a whole bunch of other factors – what we call “exposure”. This involves all kinds of things – like interactions with industry, various (non-academic) activities that you indulge in in a city, seeing the various interesting and different things that people are doing in the city, opportunities of getting involved in various initiatives, and generally “smartness” (as in “The Bombay exposure has really made him smart.”)

So, doing a degree in Pune or Bombay, is, in my opinion, clearly better than doing it in a college in Amravati.

Also, please get out of your parents’ house. Stay in a hostel, or a rented flat with a bunch of your classmates, or something. That will propel you into the real world, give you some maturity, and the ability to deal with all kinds of issues that you need to deal with, when you are no longer staying under a protective cover provided by your parents. This is an important part of your education at this stage.

Engineering vs other fields of study

Frankly, I am not qualified to give advice on whether you should do Engineering or something else. If you find that you’re interested in some “alternate” career (e.g. photography, movies, music, art, design, whatever), here are some thoughts that you might find helpful:

  • Try to find out which are the top institutes in the country where you can get a degree or certificate or whatever it is that helps with learn the field that you’re interested in. Then find out what it takes to get admission to that institute and how much it costs. And then make a detailed plan as to how you could actually do it. This will significantly improve the chances that you’ll be allowed to do it, and also that you’ll succeed in your chosen career. I would love to see more and more students in India follow this path.
  • If you can’t get into one of the top institutes, maybe you should listen to your parents? It’s difficult to justify a risky career move on the basis of a mediocre education in that field.
  • I find that most students who claim to be interested in such alternate careers are too lazy to actually do the work needed to create the plan mentioned in the first bullet-point. If you’re one of those lazy bums, then you don’t really deserve to follow your so-called chosen career. Give up, and do whatever stupid engineering degree that your parents want you to do. Alternative career paths are for people who are really passionate and are willing to put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
  • If you are not really sure of what alternate career you want to pursue, but just have a vague notion that you want to do something other than Engineering, then you’re probably not ready for an alternative career yet. No point in going for a off-the-beaten-path, risky path unless you’re really passionate about something and clear about what you want. You’ll be better off with a conventional degree, until you figure out your passion.
  • Medical vs. Engineering: Again, I’m not really qualified to give advice about whether you should go for engineering or Medicine. However, note: there are many students who avoid the medical side because they hate 10th or 12th std. biology. In this case, remember that doing a medical degree is not at all like 12th std. biology. So, this alone is not a good enough reason for rejecting medicine. Try to talk to, and find out more, from some real doctors what it is like to study medicine. You should consider medicine as a career, especially if you like people more than you like machines or software programs. If you’re not good at maths or logic, engineering is not for you.

Conclusion

If you disagree with me, please leave a comment below, with supporting arguments, and we can discuss.

If you know a 12th std student who could benefit from this article (or the discussion in the comments), please mail them this link.

Some of this advice is also applicable to engineering graduates who are planning on going abroad for a Masters degree. I’m planning on writing a detailed article specifically covering that case – issues to consider when applying for a Masters in the US. I’ll write that article one of these days – so make sure you’re subscribed to PuneTech, so you don’t miss it.

Updates

(After this post was published, readers posted a number of interesting, insightful and detailed comments. You should really read all the comments on this post, but I’ve summarized some of the important points here for the lazy folks.)

  • A number of people disagree with me about whether branch matters or not. See the comments of Neeran, Dhananjay, Vikram Karve, and Rajan Chandi for more details; and also my responses to those comments. I would summarize it as: if you’re on of those well-informed students who really know what branch they find interesting, then for you, branch does matter a lot.
  • There appears to be a lot of support for the “get out of your parents house; stay in a hostel/flat” directive. Parents and students, both, please heed this advice.
  • Amit has posted a list of non-IIT, Indian colleges that he considers “good”, based on his experience of hiring people from various colleges, and seeing how they performed. (Note however, the purpose of this article is not really to produce a ranking of colleges – that is too controversial and subjective. Form your own impressions of the quality of various colleges (from whatever sources you can), and then use the advice in this article to decide how to choose between those colleges.)
  • Ajay Garg points out that if you really need all kinds of details about engineering admissions (like lists of colleges, branches, cut-off marks, etc.) then go2engineering.com is a great site

Update 2: If you’ve cleared the IIT-JEE and are wondering which IIT to join, and which branch to choose, and whether to go for an IIT or NIT, this article by Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi of IIT-Kanpur might help. He updates it every year.

Update 3: All commentors who’re asking me about whether to choose college A or college B – Sorry, I have not really bothered to keep track of rankings and quality of colleges. So, the judgement about whether a college is significantly better than another college needs to be done by you using other sources of information. Most importantly, all those asking me which has better scope/prospects ECE, or CS, or IT, or whatever else, you missed the whole point of the article, didn’t you? The branch does not matter. If you can’t decide, just pick whichever branch has a higher cutoff. Some experienced commentors have suggested that interests are important, and students who have a strong interest in a particular branch, should choose that branch. Well, if you did have a strong interest in one branch, then you wouldn’t be here asking a question about which branch to take. If which branch to take is not very clear to you, then you don’t have an interest in any branch, and just take the branch with the highest cutoff in the best college that you can get into.

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Looking for a job? Try PuneStartupJobs…

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Looking for a job? Try PuneStartupJobs

There’s a new jobs listing forum in town, and it contains postings of jobs that you will not find anywhere else. Check out the PuneStartupJobs mailing list (which is an initiative of the Pune Open Coffee Club).

Pune OpenCoffee Club - POCC Logo
POCC is an informal group of the Pune Startup ecosystem. It contains more than 2500+ people who either have their own startups, or want to start one, or provide some service (or funding) to startups. Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the POCC. Thanks to threenovember.com for the POCC logo.

The Pune Open Coffee Club is an informal group for all those interested in the Pune startup ecosystem, and many of the startups on that group realized that the conventional avenues for job postings were either too ineffective, or too expensive for the smaller startups. To counter this problem, the PuneStartupJobs mailing list was started. In keeping with the philosophy behind the POCC, the PuneStartupJobs mailing list is also free – any POCC member can post job postings, and anybody can subscribe to receive updates.

Features of PuneStartupJobs:

  • Free. No fees for posting. No fees for subscribing
  • Anybody can subscribe
  • Focused: Only Pune Startups can post. (Some other postings (e.g. Mumbai) get through once in a while, but it’s largely local.)
  • Moderated: All posts are moderated, so no spam.
  • A weekly digest of PuneStartupJobs postings is auto-posted to the main PuneStartups mailing list. This ensures wider (but delayed) circulation to a larger group. (Thanks to Pune startup Thinking Space Technologies for implementing this functionality.)

So, if you’re someone likely to be interested in getting a job with a startup in Pune, or if you might know someone who might be interested, or simply, if you’re interested in finding out what kinds of people Pune’s startups are looking to hire, you should subscribe…

TechMarathi Event: Trends in Java; How to type in Marathi – 19 June

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What: TechMarathi kickoff lecture, featuring technology trends with Harshad Oak, and introduction to typing in Marathi using Baraha, Quillpad, Google Transliterator, and Lipikaar
When: Saturday, 19 June, 4pm-7pm
Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Map.
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. Register here

TechMarathi is a special interest group of PuneTech and focuses on bringing the latest tech information to students and professionals in Marathi. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles about TechMarathi
TechMarathi is a special interest group of PuneTech and focuses on bringing the latest tech information to students and professionals in Marathi. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles about TechMarathi

Trends In Software Development For The Java Platform.

Harshad Oak is the founder of Rightrix Solutions & editor of http://IndicThreads.com and the author of 3 books and several articles on Java technology. For his contributions to technology and the community, he has been recognized as an Oracle ACE Director and a Sun Java Champion.

Harshad will talk in Marathi about what the next 5 years have in store for the Java Platform

How to type (email, blog, doc etc.) in Marathi?

Mandar Vaze has 15+ years of experience in IT industry. He is currently working as Senior Module Lead at Avaya India. Mandar will talk about how to type in Marathi using Baraha, or Quillpad, or Google Transliterate

Using Lipikaar to type in Marathi

Lipikaar is a Pune-based startup that takes a very different approach to typing in Marathi. It uses a “sms-style” typing rules, and they claim this is much easier for people who are not very comfortable with English, compared to the other styles of marathi typing.

Neha Gupta and Praman Shetye of the Lipikaar team will talk about the how and why of Lipikaar.

About TechMarathi

http://TechMarathi.com is a forum that aims to bring all information about software technology in Marathi to technology professionals who are still more comfortable with Marathi than English. The website contains articles that are translations into Marathi from sources all over the world, and also original Marathi content. TechMarathi also holds technology events where the primary language is Marathi.

TechMarathi was started by Nikhil Kadadi and Pallavi Kelkar and is a Special Interest Group of PuneTech.

Interview with Anup Sable: KPIT Cummins/Bharat Forge develop hybrid car technology in Pune

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Ever since Toyota introduced the Prius in the 1990s, hybrid vehicles have become an exciting new development area in the Auto Industry. With ever increasing fuel prices and environment concerns, hybrid technology will increasingly play an important role in the automobile of the 21st century.

Hybrid vehicles use a combination of power from an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. The electric motor is powered by a battery, which is typically charged during braking and decceleration. The battery can also be directly charged from an external electric source (these vehicles are known as ‘plug-in hybrids’). Hybrid vehicles typically deliver significant double digit savings in fuel economy and emissions.

Last week Pune based KPIT Cummins and Bharat Forge announced a joint venture for the design and development of a plug-in hybrid solution. PuneTech interviewed KPIT Cummins SVP, Anup Sable, to get more details about this ….

You announced a joint venture with Bharat Forge last week in the exciting new area of hybrid vehicles. Can you explain the new solution that you are planning to develop?

The hybrid solution developed by KPIT Cummins is a plug-in parallel hybrid solution that consists of the following key components:

  • Electric motor
  • Electronic motor controller
  • Battery pack
  • Mechanical assembly & coupling
  • Proprietary software for control algorithms of the motor & batteries
  • Intelligent battery management system that enhances battery performance and battery life

Overview:

  • Plug-in: The batteries used in the solution can be charged from a standard external electricity source such as a domestic power outlet.
  • Parallel hybrid: The motor and engine work simultaneously at all times. The vehicle will, at no point, work like an EV (electric vehicle) only and hence will continue to operate as a conventional fuel vehicle if the batteries are fully discharged. The solution is battery-agnostic, in other words, it can be adopted to work with various types of batteries such as lead acid batteries or Lithium Ion batteries. The tests were performed using a lead acid battery based solution. The solution works without any interaction or interference with the existing Engine Management System (EMS) of the vehicle. The system is thereby also adaptable to vehicles without EMS and without electronic engines. It requires low maintenance and has a reliable three phase AC induction motor.

11 global patents have been filed in areas such as integrated system, motor design, motor mounting, and control system and battery management.

Is this a full-fledged hybrid vehicle you are building, or a sub-system that will be sold to Auto OEMs?

Our solution can be retrofitted in every car – new and used. Small, mid-size and large. This will not be a complete vehicle that we build.

Can you talk about the advantages of plug-in hybrids over other conventional hybrids?

Benefits:

  • Doesn’t interfere with Manufacturersâ in-vehicle systems
  • It is battery chemistry agnostic
  • Is compact yet delivers high peak power
  • Fuel efficiency improvement of over 40% as observed during tests at ARAI. The solution however provides 60% to 80% improvement during city driving conditions & above 50% during highway driving.
  • Solution is capable of reducing GHG emissions by over 30%.
  • Since the consumption of fuel will go down on account of the hybrid solution, the government would be able to save through the reduction in subsidy and foreign exchange outflow.
  • Retro-fitment of this solution can be expeditiously done in 4 to 6 hours.
  • Solution does not require additional infrastructure investments from the government.

What markets do you see for this technology?

After-market, vehicle owners & OEMs

What unique capabilities does KPIT and Bharat Forge bring to the table?

The technology for this intelligent plug-in, parallel, full-hybrid solution has been designed and engineered by KPIT Cummins, while the solution for automobiles would be manufactured through a joint venture (JV) between Bharat Forge Limited and KPIT Cummins Infosystems Limited. As part of the joint venture, KPIT Cummins will license the technology to the JV while Bharat Forge would bring in its manufacturing, assembly & integration expertise to the JV. The solution will be marketed to OEMs and fleet & individual vehicle owners through a network of certified and authorized dealerships

A general question – how do you see the future of embedded electronics space evolving in the next few years?

The embedded electronics space will see growth in its application in the Indian Vehicles at a rate faster than what happened in Europe, US and Japan. The key difference between application of electronics in the vehicle in Western world and in India would be that in western world it evolved with the advances in technology(and regulations) but in India it will be driver by market demand at the appropriate price.

About Anup Sable – SVP, Automotive and Allied Embedded and Tools, KPIT-Cummins

Click on the photo to see Anups Linked-in profile
Click on the photo to see Anup's Linked-in profile

Anup heads the Automotive line of business which is a leading product engineering partner to the automotive industry.

He is responsible for managing relationships with customers and helping them to globalize & standardize efficiently. He has been instrumental in creating a robust delivery ecosystem which supports clients in bringing complex technology products and systems faster to markets.

Passionate about technology in cars, Anup began his career as a research engineer at the Automotive Research Association in India (ARAI). He joined KPIT Cummins as a software engineer in 1994. With over 15 years of experience in the field of automotive electronics, Anup has played a key role in setting up the Automotive Electronics practice at KPIT Cummins.

Anup has done his engineering from Government College of Engineering, Pune.

ShopSocial.ly – A Pune-based startup that marries Facebook to shopping

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ShopSocial.ly is a Pune-based startup that launched a couple of weeks back and immediately got coverage from both TechCrunch and GigaOm – which is a major achievement for any startup.

To give PuneTech readers some insights into what it takes to build and launch a startup like this out of Pune, we talked to a bunch of people associated with ShopSocial.ly.

ShopSocial.ly is a Pune-based social shopping startup. We talk to a number of Pune-based companies that worked on the product.
ShopSocial.ly is a Pune-based social shopping startup. We talk to a number of Pune-based companies that worked on the product.

First, here is a short interview with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocial.ly:

Congratulations on the launch of ShopSocial.ly and the coverage from . Can you give a brief overview of ShopSocial.ly from your point of view?

We all trust our friends advice much more than what the advertisers tell us. Yet, currently most of our shopping is influenced by the ads. ShopSocially is built on the vision that the influence needs to shift from ads to our circle of trust – i.e. friends.

ShopSocially allows you tap into the collective wisdom of friends to get trusted recommendations. Friends can not only ask questions, they can also share their purchases to get comments and feedback.

The idea of social shopping is not new. In fact, many people in the Pune startup ecosystem will be familiar with the success of Kaboodle which launched in 2005. So how is ShopSocial.ly different?

First a disclosure – Kaboodle CEO happens to be a very good friend and fellow IIT Kanpur Alumnus.

While the original premise behind Kaboodle was similar to ShopSocially, they have really focused more on shopping search rather than creating a network for friends. Recall that at the time Kaboodle started, social networking had not taken roots.

On the ShopSocial.ly about page, I notice that you appear to have used a lot of small Pune companies/freelancers in building your product. I recognize Shashank Deshpande (of Clarice Technologies) who usually does usability, Prakash Thombre (of widemediaguy) who does graphic design, Rohan Dighe (of SocialWebFactory) who does social-media/facebook apps, Mangesh Yadav (of Joomlian) who builds websites, and I’m sure there are others that I do not recognize. As someone interested in the Pune “startup ecosystem”, I’m thrilled at this level of collaboration amongst Pune’s small companies. Would you comment upon how you approached this aspect of building your product, and whether you see this as a continuing/sustainable approach in the future?

There is certainly no dearth of great talent in India – even for the cutting edge web 2.0 technologies. My previous startup, AirTight Networks is also based in Pune and was one of the first product companies born out of India. Just like AirTight, ShopSocially product development has happened completely in Pune. The team has done a phenomenal job. In fact when people visit the site, one of the first question they ask me is who built the site and where did I find these people. They are quite incredulous that we were able to find such talent in India.

So yes, I very much see this as a continuing /sustainable approach going forward.

What do you see as the primary challenge for ShopSocial.ly to tackle now?

The immediate priority is to really understand and analyze user behavior and make necessary changes. If we can delight our users, they will feel compelled to invite their friends and it will go viral.

Your previous company, Airtight Networks, was an enterprise software company, and this one is a consumer web service. Can you talk about the difference in approach required for these two different kinds of companies? What extra efforts does a Pune-based startup need to take to be able to succeed in these two markets?

Enterprise software and consumer web service are two very very different animals. Enterprise products sell on functionality. Usability is important but it is more of a race to build the most number of features. The product comes with a thick user manual and is used by a few people who get special training to use that product.

Consumer web service on the other hand needs to be very intuitive and simple. It is very tempting to add a lot of features and the hard part is to maintain the discipline of keeping it simple.

I would say that building an enterprise product is a little harder especially if your customers are abroad. Unless developers understand the customer mindset, it is hard for them to build the right product. For consumer facing products, it is a bit easier because you can think like a consumer yourself. However, at the same time, consumer facing products require a lot of iterations on the user interface which can be very frustrating.

What are the most common mistakes you see amongst the young entrepreneurs these days?

I think one of the biggest mistake I see is that often they are more focused on perfecting their VC pitch rather than their idea. Their goal is to somehow convince a VC to put some money into the company. This is exactly the wrong approach. First and foremost you need to convince yourself that it is worth spending the next few years underpaid and overworked chasing this idea. Your energy should be focused on researching and refining the idea until you can honestly sell it to yourself. Once you are fully convinced, even if you don’t get VC funding, you may still find the passion and energy to pursue it anyways.

I always tell them to ask a simple question to themselves – is the idea worth failing at? The odds are stacked up against you. 9 out of 10 companies fail. However, even if you fail, you should be able to look back and say it was still worth it.

As indicated in one of the questions to Jai, we at PuneTech absolutely loved the fact that so many different Pune companies have been used by ShopSocial.ly in building their product. We tried to talk to some of them to get a feel for the interesting aspects of working on ShopSocial.ly.

Rohan Dighe, Pune-based founder of SocialWebFactory, who did the tight integration of ShopSocial.ly with facebook, points out that this exercise had some interesting challenges:

We noticed that people end up with two different networks of friends – one on ShopSocial.ly, which is smaller and more focused, and another on Facebook, which is larger and more diffuse. The conversations + comments that happen around any post are very different in these two settings. To ensure a seamless experience, what we now do is pull the entire Facebook discussion around any ShopSocial.ly post, and display it on ShopSocial.ly along with the native comments.

Another great thing about the Facebook integration is that ShopSocial.ly does not have a user registration or user login mechanims. We fully leverage Facebook for this, and thus we are able to get a full profile of any user (from Facebook) without them having to provide any data, and without them having to remember yet another username and password.

Shashank Deshpande of Clarice Technologies who helped ShopSocial.ly on user interaction design & product branding, points out that one of the most difficult things to do in a product like this is to keep it simple:

Shopping and socializing are two activities that we all have been doing for years, and hence we know a lot about them. Due to this, the first instinct would have been to add lots of features related to shopping and lots of features related to socializing to the product. However, doing that results in a product that non-techy consumers find a little confusing and overwhelming. We had to work really hard to reduce the functionality of the product and bring it down to a very small number of actions that are intuitive, and yet powerful enough that encompass the most important aspects of the product. The “Shout” and “Share” actions that you see on ShopSocial.ly are the result of that process.

Visual designers at Clarice Technologies had a challenging task to create product brand that would appeal to the international audience. Choice of product logo, colors & overall visual treatment was critical to make the product stand out from the plethora of consumer portals.

At the end of all these conversations, doubts still remain about what potential is there in this area, and we decided to get an expert opinion.

Basically, Social shopping is not a new concept, and there have been a number of startups in this space, including successful ones. For example, was started 5 years ago, and sold to Hearst corporation in 2007. Luckily for us, one of the co-founders of Kaboodle, Chetan Pungaliya, is now based in Pune. Although Chetan is not connected to ShopSocial.ly in any way, we caught up with Chetan to get his views on this market. Specifically, if social shopping is more than 5 years old, is there still scope for new startups to do interesting things in this space? Chetan thinks there is still a lot of potential:

The existing batch of social shopping startups, of which Kaboodle is one of the most successful, happened in the pre-Facebook era. They have their own social network, and users went there specifically. However, if social shopping can happen in the context of a user’s other social activity, for example, while doing other things on facebook, that can significantly improve the reach. New social shopping sites that nail this can do well. Also, as the internet becomes more entrenched and people start buying more categories online (which were not being bought online before – for example, art), new models of social shopping will emerge. I think, this remains an exciting space to watch.

There you have it – a broad multi-person view of ShopSocial.ly. This is an experimental format for PuneTech, so please let us know what you think of the format in comparison to a more conventional overview/interview.

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PuneCleanTech meet: Energy Efficiency, Opportunities & Challenges – 5 June

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What: An overview of the opportunities and challenges in the area of conventional energy efficiencies, by Shishir Athale
When: Saturday, June 5, 11am
Where: Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road. Map: http://bit.ly/VenCen (To reach Venture Center, go past NCL towards Pashan, pass the cricket ground adjacent to NCL and then you’ll find NCL Innovation Park / Venture Center on the right hand side.)
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Free seating on First Come, First Seated basis only
Further Info: Contact Harshad Nanal (harshadnanal@gmail.com), Anil Paranjape (amparanjape@gmail.com)

Energy Efficiency – Opportunities and Challenges

PuneCleanTech is a special interest group (SIG) of PuneTech focusing on clean tech. Click on the logo to go to the PuneCleanTech website for more details
PuneCleanTech is a special interest group (SIG) of PuneTech focusing on clean tech. Click on the logo to go to the PuneCleanTech website for more details

The new gee-whiz technologies such as solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels et cetera take all the limelight these days. But the fact remains that they are still a miniscule part of our energy mix and will remain so for the foreseeable future. A far bigger opportunity, however, exists all around us. There is enormous potential for making the conventional energy generation, distribution, storage and utilization much more efficient than what it is.

What is this opportunity? Where is it? How does one find it? How big is it? What can be done about it? How can it be addressed? Does anyone address it today? How do they do it? What qualifications do they need to do it?

We are fortunate to have Mr. Shishir Athale enlighten us on all these questions on June 5th, 11am at the NCL Venture Center (June 5th is also the Environment Day, a fitting coincidence!). Shishir is one of those very few intrepid entrepreneurs, who have the guts to get into this very tough market, where he has been painstaking building his company called Sudnya Industrial Services. Sudnya is an ESCO (Energy Services Company) which identifies energy efficiency improvement opportunities for clients, often putting their own money on the line, getting paid only if those savings materialize (now you know why this business is not for the faint-hearted!) Besides guts, this business also needs a rare mix of capabilities: engineering, project planning, management, finance, marketing all rolled into one. It will be exhilarating walking Shishir’s journey (while safely holding his hand 🙂 on this tough trail.

Before Sudnya, Shishir spent many years at Thermax and other companies, getting trained on many engineering skills in heat and co-generation fields that ultimately culminated into Sudnya. Before Thermax, he managed plants for CPG companies where he often implemented energy saving projects, sometimes achieving 25% energy savings.

Shishir is well recognized as a trainer for energy managers by none other than FICCI. He was on CII’s sub-committees on Cogeneration and Energy End-use Efficiency and on an MNES Committee for evolving a National Policy on Bio-mass Based Cogeneration. He is a qualified Lead Assessor for ISO 9000 certification and has undergone training in India and abroad. He qualified as a Certified Energy Auditor in the first examination conducted by the BEE in 2004.

Shishir is a graduate in Chemical Technology and now resides in Pune.

As always, seating is limited, no reservations and strictly on a first-come, first-seated basis.

About PuneCleanTech

PuneCleanTech is a special interest group of PuneTech focusing on Clean Technologies. It is an awareness, education, and networking platform to showcase Clean Technologies developed and used in and around Pune, one of the largest Industrial hubs in India. The network brings together technology professionals, entrepreneurs, students, policy makers, investors, and citizens interested in Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Waste management, Water Management, and Environmentally-Friendly Design/Development/Delivery Alternatives to Traditional Products and Services. Those interested in this area are urged to join the PuneCleanTech mailing list, Anil Paranjape (amparanjape@gmail.com) with support from PuneTech and NCL Venture Center.

About NCL Venture Center:

Venture Center – a CSIR initiative – is a not-for-profit company hosted by the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. Venture Center strives to nucleate and nurture technology and knowledge-based enterprises by leveraging the scientific and engineering competencies of the institutions in the Pune region in India. The Venture Center is a technology business incubator specializing in technology enterprises offering products and services exploiting scientific expertise in the areas of materials, chemicals and biological sciences & engineering.

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Interview with Dr. Chitra Lele: Pharma and Biotech outsourcing in Pune

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(This is an interview of Dr. Chitra Lele, Chief Scientific Officer of Sciformix Corporation, by Pallavi Kelkar, a Pune based tech entrepreneur, who interviewed Dr. Lele on behalf of PuneTech.)

Dr. Chitra Lele is the Chief Scientific Officer at Sciformix Corp, a startup focusing on providing KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) services to pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies. Chitra has done her PhD in Statistics from Stanford University, and she has more than 15 years of experience in this area.

This interview of Dr. Chitra Lele gives an idea of some of the areas of outsourcing the the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, as well as some of the challenges of doing this out of Pune.
This interview of Dr. Chitra Lele gives an idea of some of the areas of outsourcing in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, as well as some of the challenges of doing this out of Pune.

Before this, she was an Executive Director, at Pfizer Global R&D, where she set up India’s first biometrics center, providing services in clinical data management, statistics, programming and medical writing, and she successfully grew it to a size of over 400 staff. She has also worked as a faculty member at the School of Statistics at the University of Minnesota, and IIT, Bombay. She was instrumental in setting up Academy for Clinical Excellence (ACE) at the Bombay College of Pharmacy (BCP). She is a visiting faculty member at University of Pune, teaching Statistics courses and supervising PhD students. She is one of the founding members of “Indian Association for Statistics in Clinical Trials”.

She is a lady who wants to do quality work, and to make a difference.

Tell us more about Sciformix

My Company is positioned as a KPO and the primary domain is pharma & healthcare. Ours is a data management/analysis/interpretation related company. We work for Global Pharma companies, primarily based in North America, who outsource the work to us. There are four primary areas in which work:

  • Statistics & programming: Pharmaceutical companies have to conduct clinical trials before they bring new drugs into the market. These experiments / trials have to be designed statistically & analyzed. A lot of statistics & programming is involved in it. This includes complex statistical simulation, modelling and analysis. It involves extensive programming, primarily using the software SAS, which is the most commonly used statistical software in the pharmaceutical industry.
  • Scientific Writing: We do all kinds of scientific writing that pharma companies need. For example, once a drug is in the market and consumed by a large section of a population, what kinds of adverse reactions are getting reported & what do they mean medically? We summarize that data and submit a safety report. All the pharmacological details of a drug, protocols and study result reports for the trials, medico-marketing literature and much more comes under scientific writing.
  • Safety Data Management (Pharmacovigilance): There is a toll free number present on package insert of medicines that are sold in the West. There you can report any issues regarding the drug. In the western countries, more so in North America, there is lot of awareness about this. Consumers as well as health care professionals, and pharmacists call that number to report adverse reactions. We run such call centres. There consumers might call to report adverse reactions to the drug, or any other quality issues with the drug, or medical doctors might call to ask if a particular medicine can be given along with other medication that their patients are already taking. We record such data, enter the data in Safety Databases, analyze and interpret it medically (for e.g, we assess if the adverse reaction is medically serious, and if it could be causally related to the drug) and submit reports to regulators around the world, including US FDA.
  • Regulatory affairs: We primarily provide document authoring and compilation services in the Regulatory Affairs area. For example, if there is a small change in the manufacturing process of the drug, it has to be reported, along with a pharmacological justification that this manufacturing change has no impact on the availability and action of the drug on the body. The report has to be submitted to regulators. When companies want to market their product in different geographies, dossiers have to be written, compiled and submitted as per the country-specific regulations.

Any specific problems you faced while setting up your office in India?

Well, although connectivity & other infrastructure has improved significantly over last few years, (smiles) it’s still not the ideal, optimal scenario. We had some challenges. For example, when we started our office in Mumbai, although we chose a commercial & industrial area in order to have good infrastructure, only one provider was available at that time (3 years back), who could provide connectivity from this location. We had to connect to the client’s domestic office in Mumbai, and the client didn’t want us to use this provider. However, we didn’t have a choice, and had to manage the client’s dissatisfaction. But now other companies are available to provide connectivity from this location.

Another, and a bigger, problem is about availability of skilled resources in the areas that we are focussed on. The entire area of pharmacovigilance was very new in India, and hence people were not aware of it. There are a lot of training institutes who train people in clinical research domain, so we do get people who have some basic awareness. But getting health care professionals to work in this area is not easy. In the west, it is common for certified nurses to work in pharmacovigilance. In India, it is not common for people having a degree in nursing to enter the corporate world. Not many MBBS doctors are willing to get into it. The clients often don’t want doctors with degrees in alternate medicine to do the medical review and analysis of safety data. So, to find the right people is the biggest challenge. And of course, we need to invest a lot in training these individuals once we hire them. The other problem area is statistics and programming. There is a pool of people in India who have a basic degree in statistics or who have done some course or certification in SAS software. But the average quality of these resources is not good, hence it’s difficult to recruit good statisticians and programmers.So we also recruit fresh graduates and train them form scratch.

One of the reasons we have our office in Mumbai is availability of experienced professionals in Mumbai, and we expanded in Pune because we can easily get fresh graduates here.

Do you find any difference in terms of quality of graduate students, between Pune and elsewhere?

Not really. One clear advantage of Pune is that Pune University’s Statistics department is very good. We don’t recruit hundreds of statistics graduates – we just need 1 or 2. We get them easily in Pune.

On a negative side what we have been experiencing is on an average, English language skills are significantly inferior in Pune compared to Mumbai.

In terms of infrastructure, what are the advantages and disadvantages of Pune?

Advantage: In Pune, it is easy to get office space. The scale of the city is such that you can reach anywhere in an hour. This is not the case in Mumbai.

Disadvantage: Every time they dig the road our phone lines are down. This is not the case in Mumbai. And of course, the biggest problem in Pune is the power situation, which is not at all an issue for us, given our office location in Mumbai.

One of the reasons to have an office in Pune is the low expenses. After accounting foreverything, it is much cheaper to operate from n Pune than Mumbai.

Being a woman in a team of men, was there any advantage or disadvantage?

I was in charge of my unit in Pfizer, my previous company. I didn’t find any disadvantage of being a woman at all, although I was the only woman in the senior executive team for quite a long period there. I was respected for my work, my capabilities. Even in my current company, I am the only woman in the senior executive team. Disadvantages, if any, are primarily due to personal biases of one or two individuals, and are not a general issue.

Advantage: In general, there’s a gender difference in terms of the style of management. Women have an advantage in some aspects, but I can’t generalize to say that there’s an advantage to being a woman manager. There are many men who are good managers as well.

There is a general impression that women take their work casually, have you experienced this?

I don’t think so. In fact, 2/3rd of my staff at Pfizer consisted of women, and even at Sciformix, more than half the staff comprises of women. The impression is created, mostly because of family responsibilities. Even today, in general the expectation is that women will take more responsibilities of house and kids than men, even though their husbands try to help. But women are able to deliver things in whatever limited time they have.

Also, there are enough examples of men taking their work casually, especially young graduates.

How do you balance the work-life cycle?

(Laughs…) In terms of work life balance, I don’t think I am doing a good job at all; I know I need to improve on that. I am a workaholic, working for very long hours on weekdays and working on weekends too. When you take an entrepreneurial route, it is even more challenging. There is no limit to how much you want to do & how much you want to grow.

So, what I do is that for 1/2 or 3/4ths of a Saturday or Sunday, I try not to work.

As an entrepreneur, what are the changes you had to make in your personality after starting a business?

Before starting my company, although I was doing a job and my employer was a large company, I was given the responsibility of starting a separate unit for them. I set up the group of 400 people. I had support, but lot of things I had to do myself. So, I had that experience with me, nothing was new for me in this aspect.

I had to change my personality quite a bit to bring in the business. Lot of persistence is required here. If I want to get some work from people then I have to keep following-up, and pushing people, which was new for me. Sometimes, I knew that I am much better than some of the people I am talking to, and I would wonder why do I have to give in to their whims and fancies…but I need the business, and they are in a position of providing me with that business, so I have to do it – this where I had to change myself. All such things require a very different mindset, persistence and aggression. Over the last three years, I think I have developed a good amount of skill of talking to clients. The way I talk now is very different from the way I used to speak before. Trying to market your company, talking about your capabilities now comes spontaneously to me in every conversation I have with the client. But I had to develop this very consciously.

How do you manage your stress? It must have increased compared to before.

Yes, it has increased. I try to manage by doing some exercise every day, which is a good stress buster for me. I have learned playing musical instruments. I do not play currently, but I want to start again – that can also be a stress buster. As I have already told, I try to be stay away from company work for at least half a day every weekend. Also, I have significantly increased the number of movies, plays and concerts that I go to. I catch one of these at least every other weekend. That is the stress buster too.

Did you think of giving up at any point of time for any reason?

Yes, such thoughts do come. When we have to deal with unreasonable customers, it is difficult. But things stabilize after a while. Sometimes, you have a difference of opinion with your peers and you strongly believe you are right, at that time it happens – but there has never been a make or break situation so far. I take it as a probably good learning for the future. The thing is, I look at the bigger picture.

I left my job because I wanted to test my credibility in terms of bringing in business and building an organization, without having a big company’s backing. I also wanted to do something that makes a difference to the environment. I think I have done a reasonably good job in this respect. This experience has given me greater confidence to encounter and mange difficult situations in the future. I believe that every experience, good or bad, teaches you something and makes you a better and a stronger person.

How is your family support system like?

My support system is primarily my husband. Ever since we got married, we have stayed away from each other a lot, in terms of being based in different cities, both in the US and in India. I took up whatever seemed to be the best opportunity at every stage of my career. He always believed that I should do what I think is good for me and has always encouraged me work where I can use my capabilities. Everything that I have been able to do and achieve has been possible because of his strong support & backing.

Was your career planned, I mean had you decided that I will do PhD and be in business after some time?

No, nothing was planned as such. By nature I am not the kind of person who decides what I will do 15 years down the road. At every point of time I did whatever I thought I wanted to do.

The only thing which was planned was my PhD. Nothing else was planned. So, if you ask me, what I will be doing after 3 years then I won’t be able to tell you that.

What are your hobbies?

Nothing unique. I like classical music; I am not practicing it now but I do listen to it, and reading and traveling.

Any guidelines for upcoming entrepreneurs?

I would say 2 things. First & foremost, be very clear about what you fundamentally want to do and achieve through the entrepreneurial venture that you undertake, and second, have the right kind of people with you.

Any regrets looking back & anything that you think of as a turning point?

Looking back, I think that every experience was enriching whether good or bad, so I have no regrets. The turning point for me was, when I decided to go for BSC in mathematics. I was a good student throughout my academic years. So it would have been natural for me to go in for medical or engineering degrees. I thought at that time that I liked Mathematics and Medicine. After the 12th standard, I chose to go in for BSc instead of trying to get into medicine or a field related to medicine I am convinced that it was the right decision. Though my parents were disappointed at that time, they are now happy that I chose this path.

About the Interviewer – Pallavi Kelkar

Pallavi is a co-founder of Krishna Infosoft, a software services company based in Pune. She has 3+ years experience in programming & development, and she works on .NET technologies, PHP etc. Pallavi is involved in design and development of customized desktop and web applications, and enterprise applications. Pallavi is also a co-founder of TechMarathi, a non-profit venture, where you can find information in Marathi for everything related to Tech.

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Research Institutions in Pune

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(This article by Amit was first published on his blog and is being reproduced here with permission.)
Pune is well-known in India and internationally for being a hub of education and research. It has a wide range of academic & research institutions spanning various domains in science, technology, medicine, agriculture, arts, humanities, law, finance, etc. This blog article is an attempt to list out these various institutions. If you find any missing, please add a comment.

Science & Technology

The University of Pune (photo credit: Shreesh Kawthekar, via Wikipedia)

Arts, Humanities, Management & Law

Defense Related

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Interview with Nitin Sonawane – co-founder of Tap ‘n Tap

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(Last month, Tap ‘n Tap, a Boston based startup that has a development center in Pune, and which aims to “bring multiple iPad competitors to the market”, announced that it has raised $2.25 million in Series A funding led by New Atlantic Ventures. PuneTech interviewed Nitin Sonawane, co-founder of Tap ‘n Tap, and an ex-Pune-Nashik-ite, who is currently visiting Pune.

For more background on Tap ‘n Tap, see this MIT Tech Review article and this this detailed profile from MassHighTech.com

Disclaimer: Navin is a consultant for Tap ‘n Tap, and hence the PuneTech blog never covered Tap ‘n Tap, in keeping with PuneTech’s editorial policy. However, a Series A funding round is a rare and significant enough occurrence, that we felt justified in post.)

Nitin, congratulations on getting funded. Can you give us an overview of what Tap ‘n Tap does?

Nitin Sonawane is a co-founder of Tap n Tap. Having worked in Pune for a while before moving to the US, he knows from personal experience that Pune has lots of high quality talent available.
Nitin Sonawane is a co-founder of Tap 'n Tap. Having worked in Pune for a while before moving to the US, he knows from personal experience that Pune has lots of high quality talent available.

Tap ‘n Tap is a software and user experience design company. We are building a complete OS for Web connected Tablet devices. Tap ‘n Tap was founded almost two years ago, long before Tablet’s were cool. We envisioned a category of handheld touchscreen devices to conveniently enjoy best of the web at home.

Today people connect to the internet primarily through PCs and smartphones. PCs, while powerful, are not always-on and nearby where people spend time at home. Smartphones, while great on the go, have small displays that limit website viewing. Tablets fill in this gap in our enjoyment of the web at home.

Tablets can be permanently kept in high-traffic areas of the home on the wall or tabletop, and will be always-on while docked. The devices can also be removed from their dock and used in handheld mode at the kitchen table, on the sofa, in your bed, or anywhere in the home.
We believe these devices will become part of the daily life of a family and shared by everyone.

So your product is actually a handheld device targeting family audience for home use. Are you a hardware or a software company, or both?

Tap n Tap is building a full software stack for bringing touch based Home Internet Devices to the market.
Tap 'n Tap, which recently raised $2.25 million, is building a full software stack for bringing touch based "Home Internet Devices" to the market, with the help of their development team in Pune

Good question. We are actually a software and user experience design company. On a Tablet device a great user experience is critical. Now while the UI is what the user sees, behind it needs to be extremely well engineered software.

So Software and User Experience is our core competence. We are partnering with multiple hardware manufacturers, including OEMs, to bring our software solution on their devices.

I believe you’ve been working on this for a while now – before Apple announced the iPad. How does Apple’s entry into this market, and and apparent success of the iPad affect it?

We see the iPad as a very positive development for us. Apple has now established that there is a market for Tablets, and lots of other large players want to follow. We believe we are in a unique position to help them get to the market fast with a high quality product that will be needed to be able to compete effectively.

Apple is a large company which would have put in tons of resources to come up with its offering. How does a small company like yours match up to it?

Our software stack is based on the Android framework. So we are leveraging the work that Google and other open source developers have done for Smartphones. This allows our team to focus on what we really want to focus on – which is to build a really compelling and “wow!” Tablets . While we focus on the core of the Tablet product, Android also allows us to bring great third party applications written for Android smartphones to the Tablet world

If that is the case, what is the barrier to entry for any small company to come up with a similar offering?

History has repeatedly proved that building a really compelling and “wow!” product is very difficult. It cannot be done by just throwing a bunch of developers at it. What is needed is an intersection of top quality design and some really challenging technical problem solving to implement that design. Designing a great user experience requires some very smart usability people, and is something that developers, or “average” “ui designers” cannot really do; and implementing it to perfection requires very talented engineers, and is something that average engineers fail at. What happens when the design calls for capabilities that don’t really exist in the underlying software platform? What happens if a particular feature runs a little too slowly on the given hardware? An average-to-good developer will tweak the design to fit within the limitations of the software/hardware, and in the process killing the user experience without even realizing it. A great engineer will go to great lengths to make it happen without compromising the integrity of the design.

And you think that kind of talent is available in Pune?

Absolutely! Pune definitely has both, the design talent pool and the developer talent pool that can build a product on par with the best in the world. We have already formed the seeding team of both types of people and are actively looking at adding to it.

The process of setting up such a team has been both challenging and fulfilling. Our selection criteria went beyond the traditional ones of experience and software skills. We hired people with the ability to simplify complexity, very good problem solving skills and the ability to come up with multiple solutions to difficult problems and select the one that will appeal to users. Needless to say, they also looked for the ability to work under pressure that start-ups demand. We continue to look for the right talent to add to this strong team.

Why did you pick Pune? How did you go about it?

Pune has long been a high-tech center with a lot of world class colleges in the vicinity. There is high quality talent available and I happen to know this first hand :-).

We decided that for ramping up quickly, instead of starting from scratch, we would be better off partnering with some startup in Pune who could help us build our team. We picked Clarice Technologies because it had a very strong background in both core software technology, as well as usability and user interaction design – a combination that is not only difficult to find, but also absolutely essential to the success of Tap ‘n Tap.

The team in Pune is integrated with the team in Boston, we’re involved in all the hiring decisions, and as far as we are concerned, every member of the team is a Tap ‘n Tap employee.

Also, we are not viewing the India team as a source of cheap labour for low-end work. We want to tap the Pune talent pool and are willing to pay for it. The team here has the entire responsibility for a bunch of modules of the software stack. This includes everything, right from conceptualization of that the requirements for the module would be, to architecture, design and implementation. If you take a look at some of the things our team here has done, you’d think it came from Google or Apple. Their work so far is really world class and we expect that to continue and grow.