Category Archives: Interview

Interview with Atul Narkhede, CEO of GS Lab

(GS Lab, a high-end, specialized, outsourced product development and software services company, that was founded by Shridhar Shukla and Sunil Gaitonde in 2004, has now grown to 650+ employees, and has also spun off kPoint Technologies a product company. Recently, CTO Atul Narkhede took over as CEO and MD of GS Lab. We took this opportunity to talk to Atul about the transition, where GS Lab is now, and where it is going.)

You have been associated with GS Lab since the beginning. Can you briefly talk about your transition into this new role? What will Shridhar Shukla and Sunil Gaitonde (Founders of GS Lab) be focusing on?

Atul Narkhede: CEO of GS Lab
Atul Narkhede: CEO of GS Lab

GS Lab was formed with a long-term vision of building a company which will work on exciting technologies, take market risks with new ideas, invest in R&D, and keep our lives interesting while doing all this. The company has seen steady, profitable growth for the past 12+ years during which I focused mostly on the technology and incubation front as the CTO. Today, the company has built an excellent team of technology experts and I will now be responsible for the overall growth of the company as the CEO and MD going ahead. Shridhar and Sunil both continue on the board of GS Lab, and both will spend all their time leading kPoint (a product company incubated by GS Lab) towards its growth globally.

What challenges do you see in the market?

The business model for software products and services has been shaken up in recent times by the move to the “cloud model”. The prevalence of public clouds, container architectures, easy-to-consume third-party services and readymade PaaS platforms have fundamentally altered how new products are built from ground up. All companies have to adapt to this disruption, and GS Lab has invested significantly to adopt the new technologies/tools/platforms, train the staff, and change our engagement models with customers. This cloud approach of building products needs fewer engineers compared to large teams we saw earlier, but they need to be experts. GS Lab will need to invest to build such differentiated manpower, and it is no longer a “scale the headcount” game. As the technology adoption is universal, and no longer limited to tech-savvy customers, we need to innovate to be able to reach this new demographic (which is a sales and marketing challenge) and engage this customer base (which needs domain understanding and language) to provide complete solutions which just work out of the box.

What is the long term direction/vision for GS Lab?

We will eventually get into “high value” services and products. Our yardstick for measuring our success would be “revenue per employee”. Matching the global levels of this metric is a tough target. We increasingly see customer solutions needing expertise in multiple technology and business domains; hence we seek to partner with experts in relevant domains, to be able to build multi-disciplinary problem solving teams for future. We have been investing in IP, technology assets, open-source contributions and patents for many years in a chosen set of technology areas. For example, our exploration in video streaming area resulted in a full-fledged product in the “enterprise video” space and is now a separate product company called “kPoint Technologies” which has a large customer base of global MNCs.

What are the technology areas GS Lab is focusing on?

IOT (Internet of Things) is one of thrust areas for GS Lab in the near future. We realized the need for building hardware design capabilities in the org, and are running pilots to produce hardware device prototypes along with the software-based cloud stack to power comprehensive IOT architecture for our customers. When such a system has a large number of endpoints, all generating data in real-time, a key requirement is to understand the instantaneous behavior of the system and hence we’ve created a framework for generating ‘streaming analytics’ to monitor such large-scale systems. This analysis helps pinpoint bottlenecks in the system, and help scale up/down the cloud service based on traffic patterns observed. We’re trying to apply this IOT solution to the ‘energy management’ space in particular with focus on electrical power consumption and solar photovoltaic power optimization. Connected IP-cameras are omnipresent today given the security concerns at all commercial as well as residential installations. These cameras generate continuous stream of video data. While surveillance is the primary objective, these videos are increasing used for automatic event detection, object detection, counting object movements, etc. We are looking at some streaming video use-cases to incorporate into smart-city solutions that will certainly be deployed in near future.

IT Services is a crowded market. What differentiation does GS Lab bring to the table?

GS Lab has always had the philosophy of having “small but effective” teams to build technology products instead of “large solution teams” approach. For this, we’ve had to create technology depth with a focus on full-stack engineering. Most of the customers GS Lab engages with are startups at a very early (idea) stage. We have the ability to translate these ideas into PoCs and rapidly evolving cloud services which result in mature, robust, scalable solutions. We position ourselves as a provider which spans the range “from lab to complete solutions”; i.e., we are able to work with both – early stage products which require agility, low time-to-market, quick prototyping constraints as well as mature, complex products which need scalability, maintainability and monitoring as primary focus areas. As a result, we’ve had several instances where the initial PoCs we created for startups are today large-scale mainstream products at marquee technology companies post acquisition over the course of 5-9 years.

GS Lab has grown quite fast over the past 2-3 years. What is the current size (employee base)? Can you describe your hiring strategy and work culture? What are the challenges?

We are 650+ strong today spanning from campus hires to experienced employees who have worked all over the globe. We hire mainly based on references and we have strong incentives for referrals. Our employees come from all parts of India including quite a few from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Every year, we sponsor a large number of final-year engineering projects and offer internships; this is our primary source of getting campus hires, as against participating in campus placements. This long-term relationship with prospective employees enables both the company and the employee to understand each other better and results in a more fruitful relationship. GS Lab believes in hiring for attitude and aptitude as against point skills, and we’ve had several employees who have excelledin the company even when they did not have a formal background Computer Science.

What advice would you have for a young software professional, who is just starting his/her career?

The one thing I’d advise young professionals is to value the quality of work over the company brand or pay. The kind of colleagues you work with is also extremely important to how you grow and mature professionally. You must value the “degree of freedom/control” at work and should join an organization that encourages independent thinking, ownership and demands results. Look for a workplace that doesn’t straightjacket you into a narrow role, and enables contribution to various activities to let you discover your own passion and strengths. A right choice of the first company lays the foundation for a fulfilling career.

Interview with Monish Darda, Founder of Contract Management Software Product Company ICERTIS

ICERTIS is a Pune-based software product company that makes cloud-based contract management software. Yesterday, they announced that they have raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Ignition Partners, and existing investors Greycroft Partners and Fidelity Growth Partners India.

ICERTIS is a provider of contract lifecycle management (CLM) in the cloud. In the last year itself the company signed on clients like Cognizant, HBO and Airtel. In addition to helping users create contracts, the software provided by the company also tracks when terms are met, ensures regulatory compliance, and automates administrative tasks like sending renewal reminders.

We took this opportunity to catch up with Co-Founder and CTO, Monish Darda.

Congratulations on the new funding round. Can you discuss some of the funding details, and the expansion plans.

Thanks! We announced our Series B funding today – we raised $15 million, led by Ignition Partners and current investors – Fidelity and Greycroft. We plan to use the funds to expand our global operations, invest in marketing, and further enhance the Icertis Contract Management platform.

Can you talk about the vision for ICERTIS, and the product direction?

Our vision is to apply the cloud to unlock the power of contracts. The cloud has enabled the extended enterprise to be connected in ways unimaginable just a few years ago, and we are at the forefront of that technology revolution, helping the business get better and more efficient. We were one of the first Cloud Software Vendors to build on Microsoft Azure – Icertis Contract Management has evolved into a powerful platform for managing all types of contracts and is super easy to use, getting the consumer experience to enterprise apps. We will continue to build on that platform.

What is ‘Contract Management’, and how does software help in improving this business process?

Contracts bring the enterprise together – whether you are hiring, or acquiring a company and everything in between, you have a contract to make that happen. Icertis Contract Management (ICM), is a cloud-based contract lifecycle management platform designed to help global enterprises turn its contracts into powerful business assets. ICM provides a 360-degree view into an organization’s contract operations to increase compliance, improve governance, mitigate risk and enhance user productivity.

What are the industries, market segments where the ICERTIS Contract Management Solution is deployed? Can you talk about any customer examples?

Icertis Contract Management is deployed across many industries and market segments as it is able to manage all types of contracts. The platform is used to manage over 2 million contracts in 40+ languages by over 500,000+ users in 150+ countries. We have an elite roster of customers including Becton Dickinson, Cognizant, HBO, Microsoft, and Skullcandy; all of which use ICM to enhance productivity, increase commercial compliance, improve governance, and mitigate risk.

Can you discuss some of the technology issues in the solution? What are the technical challenges?

We developed the Icertis Contract Management platform Cloud First. This Born-in-the-Cloud Enterprise App sent some unique and interesting challenges our way: around security, robustness and integration. Cloud development philosophy is “loosely coupled,” bringing with it a different way of thinking, and attention to detail. We have explored the nooks and crannies of Azure, we use almost all PaaS services that Microsoft Azure provides – I don’t think there is so much Azure expertise concentrated so much anywhere else! Keeping up with the platform, and adopting it to deliver a best in class platform has been challenging, fun and fulfilling.

Can you share some thoughts about your entrepreneurial journey so far? What advice would you have founders who are just getting started with their startup venture?

I love the excitement. Entrepreneurship is in my bloodstream, and it is a high! Two bits of advice: First, go all in. You have to believe from day 0 that you are going to make it, so don’t hold back; if you don’t, it is not for you. Second, don’t overthink. That leads to starting trouble, procrastination and loss of confidence. Doing things and being smart about knowing your boundaries really helps!

This is an exciting time for India – the land of opportunity is here, nowhere else. Grab it with all you have got.

Interview with @NexusVP, the most active tech Venture Capitalists in Pune

Venture Capital firm Nexus VP, with 8 investments in Pune, is not only the VC firm with the largest presence in Pune, but conversely, they also seem to love Pune, with more investments here than any other city, including everyone else’s darling Bangalore.

Recently, Sandeep Singhal wrote this in a tweet:

Pune has the most product oriented culture. With 8 investments plan to spend more time there.

and soon after that, Nexus held an event in Pune showcasing 3 of their portfolio companies. With this much invested in Pune, and more activities planned, we decided to talk to Jishnu Bhattacharjee of Nexus to find out more about their Pune love affair.

How many companies have you invested in Pune? Can you name them?

Currently 8 of our companies have offices in Pune : Pubmatic, Druva, Sedemac, Helpshift, Uniken, and 3 others that will be announced in time

What attracts you to Pune? What would you say about the Pune start-up ecosystem, in comparison with other cities?

We consider Pune as a key technology hub in India. We find very high quality start-ups in Pune. They are either starting up in Pune or are setting up engineering offices here very early on in their life cycle to tap onto the superlative engineering talent in the city.

What are you plans for 2014-15?

We plan to continue / increase our focus in Pune, hope to interact and partner with many more exceptional entrepreneurs in Pune in coming years.

What technologies do you see as most exciting for the next few years?

We expect that exciting startup opportunities will be unearthed at the intersection of different technology trends like mobility, cloud and big data, applied to all facets of life spanning but not limited to health and wellness, education, enterprise IT, retail, home automation, industrial automation, agriculture, etc. That said, rather than being thesis driven, we are fundementally bottoms up investors looking to partner with passionate entrepreneurs who create category defining companies.

What would your top-3 recommendations (advice) be for an entrepreneur?

  • Instill the sales DNA in yourself. No matter what your background might be, as an entrepreneur you would always need to sell : to your customers, to your prospective hires and employees, to your investors.
  • Always look to hire better than yourselves.
  • Less is more. It’s much more important to figure out what features your product should Not have than what features it should have. Start-up that thrives does One thing right and better than anyone else, that addresses one key pain-point felt by a big enough target set of users / customers.

According to you, what is the #1 mistake that most first-time tech startup founders make?

Point #3 above. Tech start up founders have the propensity to start building out the technology / product, without really understanding that key One thing that is needed in their target market, that they have a competitive advantage one. Achieving product – market fit is quite different than developing the technology. Key is focus and saying ‘no’ to features much more than saying ‘yes’.

Interview with @KevinHenrikson of @Acompli, hot mobile startup with Pune connections

Mobile email startup Acompli has been in the news recently for raising $7.3 million in funding.

Kevin Henrikson, co-founder Acompli, has a long history with Pune, and Acompli has a 4-person team in Pune which is expected to grow. Kevin is visiting Pune this week, and we took the opportunity to interview him for the benefit of PuneTech readers.

Can you give a quick overview of Acompli as you see it?

iPhone Email Just Got a Promotion. Acompli allows professionals to take more action with email on their mobile devices. Leveraging the full capabilities of smartphones, Acompli uniquely combines advanced email, full calendaring, file sharing, predictive search and smart contacts into one powerful app. Request an early invite to the iPhone app at http://www.acompli.com

Can you give an overview of Acompli’s development activities in Pune and overall – in terms of team size, composition, and responsibilities?

Vishwesh Jirgale leads a team of 4. The focus is identical to those in the San Francisco, CA USA office. Make Acompli the best place to work for those focuse on solving the hardest problems for professionals on mobile using email. Team is made up of experienced experts in both the email and mobile space.

Specifically, can you give details of the technology stack you’re working on, the kinds of skills that your team has, and generally the cool technology challenges you’re tackling?

We’ve got a very modern tech stack. Server side Java running on AWS talking to mailboxes on both Gmail and Exchange. We have a Python based Frontend device API proxy and a custom binary TCP based protocol that delivers lightening fast dat to our iOS Objective C client. In short we use the best tech for the task and are very focused on both end-user UX and speed of the application.

How did Acompli land up in Pune? Can you talk about the structure, and other important aspects of this relationship?

9 years ago I started a team in Pune for my last company Zimbra. After 12 trips to Pune in the last 9yrs it’s become like my second home. I know so many people and have so many friends it was an obvious choice for us when starting Acompli. Vishwesh and I connected via mutual friends and we quickly assembled a team from within our networks. Having a team in both Pune and San Francisco is a huge advantage to a small company like Acompli. We get 24/7 coding and operations support. We also get to hire the best talent from two super strong software cities.

Doing geographically distributed development is always a challenge – how are you tackling this problem at Acompli Pune?

Number #1: Hire great people. Great communicators, great engineers. The rest really just falls into line. Also you need to spend time together. I’ll be back in Pune the first week of March. This constant face-time with the team is the best way to build a strong team and great relationship. It’s also the best way to recruit. We are looking to hire a Sr Java Platform engineer and a Sr Android engineer. For communication we use Google Hangouts. It works really well.

(Kevin is visiting Pune this week. Those interested in meeting him should get in touch with him or Vishwesh)

Interview with Vaultize: Pune based Enterprise File Sharing and Sync Service

PuneTech has just learnt that Pune-based Enterprise file sharing and sync (EFSS) startup Vaultize has just received funding from Tata Capital Innovations Fund.

Vaultize builds cloud-based solutions for enterprise endpoint (i.e. laptop/desktop/mobile devices) sync, backup, encryption, security, and anytime/anywhere access to corporate file servers – all of this in a way that is visible to, and under the control of administrators in the company.

Through Vaultize’s endpoint encryption, sensitive corporate information remains encrypted on endpoints ensuring protection against unauthorized access and potential data leakage from lost or stolen device. In addition to on-disk protection, Vaultize’s patent pending encryption technology used in file sharing and backup ensures that the data is encrypted or decrypted only on endpoints – guaranteeing end-to-end protection

Vaultize, which so far has a presence only in India (with some sales outside via channel partners) will use the funding to scale up its expansion across the world, with immediate plans to establish operations in the US and Europe in conjunction with channel partners. The company will also use the funds towards building up its sales, marketing and engineering teams, and to enhance its global partner program.

PuneTech spoke with CEO and co-founder Anand Kekre. Here are some excerpts from the conversation:

Question: Another Pune startup in the storage and backup space, Druva.com, has been in the limelight in the last few years. How is Vaultize different?

Actually, we are not in the same market as Druva. Druva is more of a backup solution. Also, while they do have cloud-based backup, their focus traditionally has been on on-premise backup.

By contrast we are in what Gartner calls the EFSS (Enterprise File Sync and Share) space. We are more concerned with providing access to enterprise data from any device, from any where, without compromising on security. We ensure the enterprise data can be accessed from any device – including personal mobile devices – while at all times ensuring that the data is encrypted at all times, whether it is being sent over the network, or when it is stored on the disk in the device.

There are two major things we do that are unique to our solution. First, all the data that is being shared, synced, or in general being moved around via Vaultize is encrypted at source. This ensures that the data is never at risk once it leaves the device. Specifically, any data going over the network, or stored on Vaultize servers is always encrypted and the encryption key is only available at the endpoints (i.e. devices). Second, we do data de-duplication at source. That is, if the speed/latency and network bandwidth consumption is greatly improved by detecting whether the Vaultize servers already have a copy of the data that needs to be sent/synced (for example, same attachment being shared by various people), and only sending across the unique content. And this is achieved without losing the benefits of encryption-at-source, using patent-pending technology.

Question: So, your software can ensure that use of mobile devices with enterprise data is secure?

Across the world, there has been a proliferation of consumer file sharing and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) trends, and this has resulted in an increase in data loss, security and compliance risks.

There are two different aspects to ensuring security for BYOD devices. First, the enterprise needs to ensure that it is safe to allow a mobile device to connect to the enterprise network – i.e. it is an authorized device, and it only has authorized applications, and more specifically, does not have viruses and malware. This area is called Mobile Device Management (MDM). Vaultize does not deal with this issue.

Once a device has been allowed to connect to the network, Vaultize ensures that the data on the device is safe and secure by encrypting all the sensitive data on the disk, by being able to sync data across various devices, and geographies, and by providing secure (via encryption) access to the data from anywhere, in a way that compiles with all the enterprise security policies.

And it does all of this in a way that can be easily managed and controlled by the enterprise IT administrators.

Question: What is your team size currently, and how are you planning on expand
ing it?

Currently, we are about 15 people, all in India. Over the next year, we hope to expand our team to about 30-35 people. We will be looking to expand not only in the area of sales and marketing, but also engineering, QA, and support.

For more information about Vaultize, see http://www.vaultize.com

Excerpts: Interview with Hinjewadi Industries Association

Hinjewadi is easily the most important part of Pune as far as software technology is concerned, and there are many associated infrastructural problems that do not get the attention they deserve. The Hinjewadi Industries Association is an association of industries that is trying to change that.

The Economic Times has an interesting interview with SK Kulkarni, President of HIA. Here are some excerpts:

About Hinjewadi, and the HIA

Hinjewadi contributes around 60 per cent of Maharashtra’s total IT exports. As of now we are able to generate the revenue of Rs 35,000 crore. This area has around 90 companies employing people and generating revenue however, around 50 companies are part of HIA. The major players in this area includes Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, TCS, Persistent, KPIT Cummins along with Accenture and many others.

About the Industries in Hinjewadi

This area has around 85 per cent of IT sector; around 5 per cent of Biotechnology (BT) sector and remaining 10 per cent is manufacturing sector.

What is the objective of the Hinjewadi Industries Association?

The basic objective of the HIA is to have a structured growth of infrastructure, security and facilities for its member companies and their employees. Even today the major issues like security, traffic safety needs to be address.

For more, see the full article.

Pune’s Krayon Pictures Interview: The Technology Behind Delhi Safari

Delhi Safari, a 3D Animation movie made by Pune startup Krayon Pictures, is seeing a worldwide release tomorrow (19th October). Attached to the move, are some big names from Bollywood (Director Nikhil Advani, voices by Govinda, Sunil Shetty, Boman Irani, Akshaye Khanna, Urmila Matondkar, music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy) and Hollywood (Vanessa Williams, Christopher Lloyd, Jason Alexander, Cary Elwes), and one look at its preview will convince anyone that it is a quality product. Considering that it was conceived and fully executed by a company in Pune, PuneTech decided to have a chat with Anand Bhanushali, the Technical Director of Krayon Pictures, to talk about the technology that went into making Delhi Safari. The following article is based on our conversation with Anand.

About Krayon Pictures

Krayon Pictures was founded in 2007 by Kishor Patil, co-founder and CEO of KPIT Cummins, Nishith Takia, a Masters in CS from University of Maryland, USA, and Namrata Sharma, who had 14 years of experience in Animation and Software in Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Mumbai. Unlike other animation studios in India who were simply outsourcing animation work from studios abroad, Krayon Pictures was started with the intention of producing their own movies – i.e. creating their own IP. They got an idea for a movie, roped in Nikhil Advani, and Delhi Safari was born.

If you cannot see the video above, click here for the preview

About Anand Bhanushali

Anand is the Technical Director at Krayon. He has been with Krayon since day 1 of Delhi Safari. Before joining Krayon, he had worked national and international animation projects, including character effects in feature films like Hoodwinked, Fight Club Gaming Cinematic and Tinker Bell.

He was also responsible for implementing Krayon’s proprietary pipeline and asset management tool for workflow automation and enhanced artist efficiency.

About the Infrastructure Used by Krayon

Krayon has a data-center at their office in the center of Pune, behind Le Meridien Hotel. The movies are rendered using their render farm which is a densely packed cluster of 100 nodes, each of which has two Intel Xeon quad-core processors with 8GB or RAM, running the Red Hat Linux operating system.

The Storage is based on SOFS – scale out file system – a high availability file system with a total capacity of 48 TB, operating at Raid Level 5 and having a HDD Interface that’s a combination of SAS and SATA with a bandwidth throughput of 500 MBPS.

The network is two-tier architecture made up of Cisco 6509E switch with Dual Sup720 3C 10G as a Core Switch with 8 10G ports, 96 Fabric enabled 1GigE Copper ports and 48 1Gige normal ports and Cisco 3750-E 48 port switch connected to Core Switch by 4 GigE copper uplink.

Challenges Faced while settings up the Infrastructure

Krayon was initially based in Kothrud (in KPIT offices), but soon moved to Hinjewadi once they realized the scale of the infrastructure that would have to be set up. Unfortunately, Hinjewadi did not work out as a location for them. The basic infrastructure (e.g. electricity) was not entirely ready when they moved in, and in spite of having mammoth UPS backups, they kept running into huge problems with electricity fluctuations that the UPS was unable to handle. This led to blowouts, server shutdowns, and artists having to sit idle while the electricity problems were fixed. Finally, they moved to their current location near Pune Station.

They spent 4 months with the help of IBM in just designing the hardware architecture. Here is a detailed description from Anand’s interview at CGTantra:

Softwares and hardware are definitely important and form the core of the studio pipeline. You have to be extremely careful and have all the statistics, data , research ready before you choose any software and hardware as its going to be with you for quite sometime. If you do a mistake, then its a very expensive mistake, and can take the studio and the project down. Stability, flexibility and support form the basis of choosing softwares and hardware for a studio. We knew with the kind of quality, we are aiming with Delhi Safari, we would need robust hardware, definitely a huge Renderfarm of our own. Mr Parag Patil – our technology director , all the credit goes to him as he is the brains behind all the hardware in Krayon. Parag and me along with the IT and R&D team worked non stop for 4 months, sketching, workflow diagrams, network diagrams, configuration of workstations, to servers.. Everything.. We partnered with IBM and took their expertise and they did the set up of the entire backend infrastructure of our studio.

About the team at Krayon Pictures

They have a team of about 120 people, most of whom are artists. The artists are divided up into various departments, including about 40 people working on the animation, another 30 on asset creation (i.e. creating the building blocks and characters that will be used by the other departments), 10 on lighting, and 10 on compositing.

Most of the work is done using Autodesk’s Maya Software, and the scripting is done using Maya’s MEL, or Python.

Here is a description of the early days, from Anand’s interview at CG Tantra:

We started Delhi Safari with 8 artist including me and a small management team. So we had to build the entire studio, lay down the pipeline and parallely start pre-production, recruit a team, and train them. It was the most challenging task i had ever done, my approach was simple, i was very clear right from the start that the way pre production, characters, backgrounds were being designed with lot of detail and vast extensive sets, there had to be a pipeline which artist could very quickly adapt to and not worry about file management.

So we formed a small research and development team , basically MEL and Python programmers and we started brain storming, bouncing ideas, discussion about what was the most disliked part in our jobs earlier, and since we all came from various departments like fur, animation, lighting etc., atlas most of us knew what we didn’t want in the workflow. We spent almost a year making a simple workflow for every department. Basically ‘clean in and clean out’ , it means whatever comes in the department needs to be a clean file and whatever goes out needs to be a clean file, so every department needs to optimize file and remove unwanted data.

Challenges Faced with Building a World-Class Animation Team in Pune

India is not known for producing high quality animation movies, but from the beginning the Krayon Pictures team was sure that they wanted to build something that was not just “good enough for Indian audiences”, but was truly world class. In doing this, they faced an uphill battle, because it was not easy to get people who have experience of working on that kind of projects.

In addition, things were difficult because Pune did not have too many experienced animation artists. Except for BIG Animation, there are no other big animation production houses in Pune, which meant that hiring was a challenge. Thus, they had to go all over the country, including Bombay, Bangalore, Hyderabad, to find good animators.

One thing they never compromised on, was the quality of the people they hired. Thus, their hiring took longer than expected, but they decided that delays were preferable, but having the right kind of team was more important. They focused on trying to find people who were truly passionate about animation – because the other things can be taught via in-house training programs, but passion cannot.

Advice for Pune based entrepreneurs

Delhi Safari has proved that truly world-class intellectual property can be built out of Pune. However, the whole process was not easy. In addition to all the problems they had to solve in getting the movie made, there were a further set of issues to be faced after the movie was complete. Initially the movie was made in 2D, and then ran into some issues with the international distributors. At this late stage it was decided that the movie needed to be in stereoscopic 3D, so a lot of work had to be done to re-do the movie in 3D.

As a result of this experience, Anand has this important piece of advice for entrepreneurs: Do not start work on developing your IP, before you have sold the product. What he means is that you should validate the market, figure out your distribution channels, and only then develop your product. This is advice for any product entrepreneur, not just movies and animation. It’s interesting to note that this is exactly the same advice that serial entrepreneur Anand Soman gave Pune’s technology entrepreneurs 3 years ago. See “Don’t develop any software until you have a customer” for more details.

Specifically for those interested in building their own animation IP, Anand suggests that they should not start with a movie – that is difficult. Start with smaller things and slowly work you way up to a movie.

Delhi Safari is releasing in movie theatres tomorrow and we wish them the best.

Profile: Renu Electronics & Ajay Bhagwat

(This article is a based on a broad and free-wheeling interview of Ajay Bhagwat, founder of Renu Electronics, by Navin Kabra and Amit Paranjape)

To a large extent, the computer technology in India is synonymous with software technology. So, when we found that Renu Electronics manufactures all its own hardware for all the products it sells, including LCD panels, and that this is all being done in a small building on Baner Road, we were shocked.

Renu Electronics, founded by Ajay Bhagwat, has generally maintained a low profile, but has a very interesting story to tell.

Early Years

Ajay has an interesting educational background. After his engineering at IIT-Bombay, he went to the US on an L&T scholarship, and did his Masters from the University of Iowa. Here, he excelled, finishing his Masters in 9 months, in the process getting some really interesting results. Specifically, he figured out an algorithm in control systems to determine whether a particular system’s transfer function could be identified adaptively or not. This result was useful enough that some senior professors from UIUC and industry folks from GM requested him to do some additional work on this algorithm to get some specific results they were interested in. For this additional work, which he did in a few months, he got an one more Masters degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne.

1990s – Starting Renu Electronics

Ajay came back to Pune in 88, and by 1992, had decided to start Renu Electronics, 100% export oriented unit selling HMIs (human machine interfaces; i.e. front end control panels for industrial control systems). The basic idea was to sell a common front end panel that could talk to many different backends and give the customer a common interface. The trick is to be able to talk all the different protocols of the different backend systems (which did not have standards or interoperability). This was done using a core firmware and then pluggable drivers for each backend – which also made it easy to add support for new backends. This was a big improvement in usability since having to teach floor technicians a different front end interface for each backend manufacturer was a major pain point for his customers.

At this time, the majority of the business came from white labeling this technology to established brands. Even GE approached them and started selling this technology under the GE brand. He was one of the few people in India at that time who was exporting technology to the US and Europe instead of importing it. When he was filling out a customs department form for this purpose, he got scolded by the customs officer for putting machinery in the outgoing column and money in the incoming column. The officer knew that things are supposed to be the other way around. It took a long time to convince him that the form was indeed correct.

Building Products

Renu’s flagship products are HMIs which allow industry floor operators to do configuration entry, monitoring of status, alarms in case of exceptional conditions, production of reports, and trends (graphs).

By 1995, Renu had decided that they would manufacture all their own hardware. By designing the entire system in-house they were able to achieve efficiencies that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. For example, they used the 8051 chip, and made maximal use of all the features of this chip, so that they were able to do alarm handling, interfaces, dual-port communications, using just the internal RAM of the 8051 chip – which is just 256 bytes. This gave them a huge cost advantage. At one time, they got threatened by a competitor from Europe that dumping (i.e. selling a product at a price less than it costs to manufacture) is illegal and they would take action. The competitor was very surprised to learn that Renu was actually making a 20% profit in spite of the ridiculously low price.

Renu have always been a product company. They have never done a custom product for anyone, and they’ve always owned their own IP.

Initially, they were only providing the front ends, but soon they wondered whether they they should make their own PLC. All the top PLC companies were Renu’s customers, and Renu did not want to upset the customers. But it turns out that customers actually encouraged Renu to enter this space. They were not worried about competition from Renu, but were happy that Renu would understand the market and domain even better and come up with even more innovative products that they could white label.

Renu was the first company in the world to put the PLC in the HMI itself. This works well for smaller systems. But it also led to too many different products and was messy in terms of sales and marketing – and was confusing to customers. So they designed a modular system which allows PLCs to be chained together to create simple or complex PLCs depending upon what exactly the customer needs. This makes it easier for the customer to create a customized system that exactly meets their needs, without having to go for a high-end, expensive system. The fact that the HMI can be with the PLC, and there is no new system and software to be integrated and learnt is another advantage. Now, finally, they have started a line of modular PLCs without the HMI, and most growth in recent years is coming from
the modular PLCs (with or without HMIs).

Focus on Quality

One of the biggest problems faced by Ajay was that neither he (nor most other people in India) understood how to create an industrially robust process. This resulted in manufacture of components that had latent problems – i.e. units that work perfectly fine, but stop working 6 months later. After they continued to have latent failures they learnt from their customers the various things they need to do to ensure long-term quality of their devices. They spent lots of time and money getting in-house quality control equipment and processes. This high level of quality control results in very reliable products – and this is now one of the USPs of Renu Electronics.

We took a tour of the premises and saw some of the advanced equipment used for testing at Renu. There’s one unit that allows devices to be tested at temperatures from -40 to +60 degrees Celsius. Another unit allows humidity testing up to 98% humidity. A voltage fluctuation/spike/pulse tester can produce a spike of 2Kv in 1 nanosecond. This is in addition to vibration testers, RF interference testers, and 60+ other tests. They have installed anti-static flooring on their manufacturing area. This is very expensive at Rs. 1600 per square foot, but has paid off handsomely, because their latent errors are now down to almost zero.

Staying Ahead of The Curve

Renu believes in implementing processes that they believe are the right thing to do in the long term irrespective of whether they are immediately required by customers or the law. For example, Renu is one of the few ISO-14001 compliant companies. Sometimes, this causes a problem for other companies, because Renu sets the standard and soon the others are expected to follow. On the other hand, sometimes this causes a problem for Renu.

For example, Renu was one of the first companies companies that was ROHS compliant. For this, they had to invest in ROHS compliant machinery and components – which cost significantly more. Further, their running costs went up, because the components they needed on a regular basis were more expensive. But, they’re still ROHS compliant because it is the right thing to do. This story has a happy ending (financially) though – from 1st January, 2012, this investment is going to pay off because there are two new Indian Government directives that will enforce control of hazardous materials, and Renu will already be compliant, whereas other companies would have to struggle.

KPIT Story

Ajay Bhagwat was also one of the promoters of KPIT, one of Pune’s most well known software services companies.

When Ajay was in IIT, he was very interested in music, and would organize and compete in music competitions (he was one of the people behind the creation of a program called Sur-Bahar, which still happens). Shirish Patwardhan was one of the people Ajay used to bump into at music competitions at IIT. Later, in the late 80s they met again in Pune, and started talking about starting a company for doing software products/services. So Ajay joined the software wing of Kirtane and Pandit (an accounting firm) and KPIT was born. Ajay helped set up the quality systems, and the embedded team for KPIT. Although Ajay has been out of day-to-day functioning of KPIT for a long time, he was a director of KPIT until recently.

Contributions to the tech/startup ecosystem in Pune

To those watching the startup ecosystem in Pune, it is clear that Ajay is also one of people helping TiE Pune’s revival this year. This year, TiE has had fortnightly ‘My Story’ sessions with very interesting and accomplished entrepreneurs, and monthly ‘Breakfast sessions’ with more free-wheeling discussions on issues of interest to entrepreneurs. This vitality of TiE in Pune is a very welcome addition to the startup ecosystem in Pune, and will certainly go a long way in cementing Pune’s position as one of the top destinations for doing startups in India.

As a charter member of TiE Pune, Ajay also sets aside 5 to 6 hours every week for one-on-one mentoring of entrepreneurs in Pune. This is a non-trivial time-commitment for any busy executive, but even that, says Ajay, is not enough. There is need for more mentorship of entrepreneurs in Pune. If you have a startup in Pune with actual revenues and enterprise sales, we would suggest talking to Ajay
for some guidance.

PuneTech Video: Basics of REST

A few weeks ago, the TechNext group, which holds fortnightly talks on advanced tech topics in Pune had an event titled Indepth – RestFul Web Service, Cross Site Scripting and Web Security hacks. Vivek Shrinivasan and Meher Ranjan who attended the talk interviewed the speakers to get a quick overview of the talk.

The interview, where Loukik Purohit gives a basic overview of REST, has been put up on the PuneTech YouTube Channel:

You should see the video above, but if you don’t go to http://youtu.be/Y61lPZWF2uI.

Note: this is a very, very basic introduction to REST and should only be considered as an appetizer to get you interested in REST. There are major important aspects to REST that anyone who’s really interested in REST must understand, like server statelessness, hypermedia as the engine of state, which are not covered in this video.

Interested readers are encouraged to read Dhananjay Nene’s very long but excellent post “Why Rest”.

Interview with Mahendra Palsule – Editor at TechMeme

(Mahendra Palsule is one of Pune’s most well-known people in the technology news / social web space in the world today due to his role as Editor at TechMeme, which is one of the most influential technology news websites. BlogAdda has a great interview of Mahendra where they cover his blogging, his work, personal life and other things. We have excerpted here, with permission, portions of that interview that are related to his work, for the benefit of PuneTech readers.)

Q: 19 years in IT industry and counting. You have been a witness to the fall and the rise of the industry. What have been your prominent observations in this period? Based on these observations and your experience, what changes do you predict in the next 10 years?

A: In the early days of my career, the entire IT industry in India was purely services-based. I always lamented the lack of product-based companies in India. Seeing the proliferation and rise of many Indian product-based companies and startups, is the most fulfilling observation in all these years.

Predictions for the future are always a dangerous game with many unknowns, but here are some I’d dare to make:

The Indian startup ecosystem will mature significantly in the coming years, making life a bit easier for entrepreneurs who undergo a difficult struggle today.
Indian IT outsourcing companies will face significant challenges and opportunities in several areas – getting qualified labor in India, diversifying geographically outside India, capitalizing on the growth of SaaS, etc.
In terms of overall online space, we are already witnessing a shift to a personalized experience. This will only get bolstered further in the coming years, with relevance filtering, giving you an optimal experience in everything you do online.
User behavior online will increasingly tend to share more publicly, leading to continued discussions and concerns about privacy.
User behavior online will increasingly tend to share more publicly, leading to continued discussions and concerns about privacy.
Q: Being a first ranker in college for all the years, is a fulfilling achievement. Can you share some very special moments from your college days that still bring a smile on your face when you think of it?

A: I was once asked by our Electronics professor to take a guest lecture on Multivibrators, in the middle of the year. When I started the lecture, I realized that my class wasn’t following me, because they had not understood what had been taught in the earlier months. So I reverted back, asked them if they knew how a transistor worked. By this time, our class got bold enough to be frank and replied in the negative.

So, I eventually ended up starting with basics of how diodes worked, followed by transistors, and then covering multivibrators over a span of 3 lectures. After I was done, my fellow-students suggested that we get rid of our Electronics professor and just use me instead.

Q: ‘Mahendra embodies the ideal Program Manager I would like to be working with’ & ‘He is one of the best Project Manager I’ve worked with’ is what some of your ex-colleagues say about you. You are now an editor at Techmeme. How and Why did this shift happen? Was it because of your keenness to explore new frontiers and realization that communicating well is your forte or was it something else? How did your friends and family react to this move?

A: The Project/Program Manager role in large Indian IT companies is a stressful balancing act dealing with challenges on three fronts – your bosses, your client, and your team. After 18 years of working in this role on several US & European projects, I realized I wanted a change.

I have always been an avid researcher, with a huge appetite for scanning a multitude of information sources and filtering the best from them. My present job goes hand-in-glove with this innate skill, and makes me think I was born to do this kind of work.

I have a hard time explaining what I do to my friends and family. Initially, they were skeptical, but over time, they’ve slowly realized the fulfilling nature of my work and accepted it. The fact that I work from home is an added benefit.

Q: Your current role at Techmeme is ‘Editor working as a human filter for automated algorithm’. Do you think an automated algorithm, no matter how intelligent it could develop into, can replace the intelligence and editor skills of a human? Also, is it better to ‘crowdsource’ and let users decide the relevancy and usefulness of a story, rather than an editor or team of editors doing it?

For a news aggregator, automated algorithms have limitations that can’t be overcomed.
A: For a news aggregator, automated algorithms have limitations that can’t be overcomed. Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme said it in 2008 when Techmeme hired its first editor.

Whether one decides to crowdsource or use an internal editorial team depends on one’s target audience – both models have been used online to varying degrees of success.

Q: ‘Relevance is the only solution to the problem of information overload’, according to you. Relevance is subjective. Do you feel the relevance could be influenced with popularity and things that might not have been relevant to someone would appear like one, just because it was shared by his/her friends or popular personalities? This seems like a constant challenge and it’ll be great to hear your views on how do you think this issue can be addressed and your suggestions for an individual to handle the information overload he faces everyday. You can even suggest tools if you like.

You will find both popularity-based and personalization-based relevance models to continue to coexist in the future.
A: Yes. As I described in the article, relevance is very dynamic and difficult to pin down. There are times when what is most popular is most relevant, and there are other times when a personalized approach is more relevant. This is why you will find both popularity-based and personalization-based relevance models to continue to coexist in the future.

My tips for handling information overload are listed on Quora:

Q: In one of your recent post, you opine that Facebook and Quora should be worried about Google+ but have not mentioned about Twitter, where asking questions, sharing links and speed seems to be the key. According to you, will Twitter not get affected by this? What kind of innovations do you want to see happening on Twitter, to counter any threats from other networks?

Twitter’s 140 character limit will remain its USP against Facebook and Google+
A: Twitter’s 140 character limit will remain its USP against Facebook and Google+. This limit makes it more suitable for sharing links & hence its suitability as a news-discovery network. Twitter needs a better on boarding process for new users and a flourishing developer ecosystem – both of which are weak areas today.

_(Please read the full interview at BlogAdda for more. Also check out the recent PuneTech article about Google+ which features the views of Mahendra on why Quora and Twitter should be afraid of Google+.)