Tag Archives: products

Pune Product Leaders Forum: 1-day conference on creating Software Products 21 Aug

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Product Leaders Forum (PLF), a volunteer-driven non-profit initiative to build stronger product mindsets and skill sets in India, is hosting PLF – Pune 2015, a 1-day conference on creating software products in the Indian software industry; either in startups, or established product organizations, or in services organizations as platforms and productized services.

This is a paid event; and normally we don’t promote paid events on PuneTech, but in this case we’re making an exception because the line-up of speakers is really quite good. The (Pune) heads of Persistent, BMC, Symantec, Amdocs, Allscripts, Sungard, NVIDIA are expected to be there, as are senior leaders from companies like Intuit, Cisco, TCS, Accenture, and so are a few VCs (disclaimer: I’m also a panelist for one of the sessions.) And they’re giving a 50% discount to PuneTech readers (use discount code PUNETECHDISC when you register.)

Agenda

There are 3 tracks. One track has workshops on “Productizing Services,” “Growth Hacking,” and “Gamification.” The other two tracks mostly feature panel discussions on topics like “Building Products & Platforms in the Services Industry,” “CTO as a Career Path,” “Art of the Start after 30,” “Product Management as a Career Track,” and “Product Management in MNCs and Indian Companies.”

See the website for the detailed agenda.

Intended Audience

For Product Managers, Business Leaders, and Technology Marketeers, this event hopes to provide you with active study sessions, and relevant networking: to help you get into a techno-business role, or accelerating your product management career.

For Engineering Leads, Architects, and Project/Program Managers, the event hopes to help you understand practical design thinking, to go from code centric to customer centric, and how the CTO career paths are different than people management, and how to leverage tech knowledge for better product roadmap decision making.

For Entrepreneurs and Intrepreneurs, this should give them examples of how they can start products and mini-startups “inside” the organization, with the help of fellow senior execs and BU Heads on how they are engaged in corporate innovation and inspiring intrapreneurs.

There are several ways in which this event promises to be different from other events. First, most of the sessions are panel discussions, so you get to hear from a lot of the leaders of Pune’s software industry. And second, it is focused on intrapreneurs & corporate innovation – so it is not a typical startup event.

Fees and Registration

Anyone can attend this event. The price of a ticket is Rs. 2999. Use discount code PUNETECHDISC to get a 50% discount. Register here

NASSCOM Product Conclave Pune 5th March (Early Bird Discount up to 21 Feb)

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NASSCOM Product Conclave is a day long conference focusing on Indian Software Product companies happening on 5th March. However, those interested should keep in mind that the early bird discount on registration ends on 21st Feb (tomorrow).

Here’s a description of the event from NASSCOM’s website:

It’s a great time to be a Product Entrepreneur in India with the buzz in domestic markets, increased interest in Indian start-ups by overseas investors and withmany fold improvement in infrastructure, India has become an attractive ground to breed start-ups. NASSCOM 10k Project is aimed at helping 10,000 start-ups to germinate & grow in India

NASSCOM Product Conclave 2013 at Bangalore, in October last year was a great success and a true show of strength by the Indian software products industry. The event spread over three days saw high voltage, adrenalin pumping, action filled activities involving more than 1400 software development practitioners interacting, learning and sharing. NPC2013 had 180+ speakers, many of them stars/super achievers in their own field including Nandan Nilekani, Rahul Sood, Rajan Anandanwho shared their experiences with an eager audience. It was a carnival of fresh thinking, innovation and match-making. After the huge success of NPC2013 and on the demand of the industry, NASSCOM is pleased to announce NPC West at Pune, a full day of excitement, knowledge share, networking and setting up agenda for the future of Indian product industry. NPC Pune is planned on March 05, 2014 and will be attended by star speakers from the Product Industry, VCs,Practicing Entrepreneurs, Consultants.

The focus of NPC Pune is to set a stage for Indian start-ups and emerging companies to access knowledge & support available in the ecosystem on building their markets, create performing teams and secure funding. People’ s Choice Awards showcasing Top 10 Products in the NASSCOM Emerge category will also be announced during NPC Pune. You can take advantage of workshops on Digital Marketing, B2B Sales planning and Product Design. NPC Pune will see a turnout of around 400 delegates and aline up of software Product industry, VC industry& Entrepreneur Speakers. We will also bring you the softer touch with an interesting speaker from outside the industry.This NASSCOM Product Conclave is being held in Pune, a strategic hub of Indian Product Start-ups. We wish to encourage all companies located in the region to participate and take advantage of interacting with some of the super achievers in the Indian Products arena.

Check out the NPC 2014 website for details on the speakers, agenda, venue.

Fees and Registration

This is a paid event, and the early bird fees are Rs 1500 for members, 2000 for non-members, and the full fees are Rs. 2000 and 2500 respectively. A special startup fee of Rs. 1000 only applies to companies with annual revenues of less than 1 crore, and which have existed for less than 3 years pay only Rs. 1000.

Please register here: http://www.nasscom.in/npc-pune/registration

Pune’s LinguaNext, a localization software company, raises Series A funding from Helion

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LinguaNext, a Pune-based company that provides a “langauge management platform” for software products, has raised a round of funding form Helion Venture Partners, reports VCCircle.

LinguaNext creates software products that allow enterprise software to be “localized” to one or more languages without requiring any change in the source code of the software.

What is Localization?

Most software in the world first gets written with English as the language of interfacing with the user. The menus are in English, and the messages, and labels on forms, and user interface buttons are all in English. If the same software needs to be used by a Japanese person who does not understand any English, she will either have to memorize the meanings and locations of the various English menu options and buttons, or the software needs to be modified such that all the English in the interface is replaced by Japanese. The same thing needs to be repeated for every major language in the world (where the company has customers).

This process is called Localization

Why is Localization Hard?

All the places in the source code of the software where English might be embedded, and all the images used in the user-interface need to be replaced. This is a huge task, because often, enterprise software contains millions of lines of code.

And this has to be done for dozens of languages, if not 100+.

And this can’t be done just once. Because every time the original software is updated, the various localized versions need to be updated.

Sometimes, the source code of the software might not even be available, or it might be too difficult to change.

What does LinguaNext do?

LinguaNext has products that allow their customers to localize the software they sell without having to modify the source code of the software. They can attach themselves to running programs, and modify the user interface screen of the software on the fly, and replace the English text with the appropriate text from the target language. Similarly, with web-browser based software, they can modify the HTML/JavaScript that gets generated by the software and do the language replacement before the webpage is sent to the user.

How LinguaNext Works
This is how LinguaNext works. Note that the original application (in blue) is not modified at all. Instead, when the original app is sending data to the screen (technically, the screen buffer), or to the printer, LinguaNext intercepts it, replaces the English Text, and sends the modified data to the screen. (Click for full-size image.)

This is excellent for the customer. Being able to localize a software without having to modify the source code is a dream of the marketing department (which, otherwise has to deal with the tech guys before they start selling any version of any software in a new country).

But, there are lots of little problems that need to be solved to make this a reality. For example, consider this tricky problem: what happens if the space on the screen (in the menu dropdown, or on a button) isn’t wide enough for the new word that they want to put there. i.e. if the Hindi word that replaces a particular English word is very long and it won’t fit. They solve this problem by having language experts who are able to suggest alternative words that are smaller, or by developing special narrow fonts to fit in words like these.

Although technically LinguaNext was started only in 2010, the core technology for LinguaNext, and the CTO of the company (Rajeevlochan Phadke), both come from an earlier company called Image Point that was around – doing similar software – since 2002. In other words, they have been developing, fine-tuning and selling this software for a dozen years.

They do this with Oracle or SAP Applications, HR Applications, Cloud Apps, Windows Desktop Apps, and now Mobile Apps are the next big target. LinguaNext already has customers such as SBI (State Bank of India), Punjab National Bank, and sofrware maker SAP.

What will they do with the funding?

According to the press release, they will use the funding to “expand in international markets, hire talent and scale up its mobile platform.” Going to Japan and Europe is likely to be one of their major priorities. India has lots of local languages, and lots of need for localization, but really, Indian companies don’t really like paying for software. Japan and Europe has the non-English speaking people who pay lots of money for software. And of course, as any website owner will tell you, mobile apps are taking over the world, and soon, localization of Android and iPhone apps is likely to be a huge market.

The end of the Indian IT Industry as we know it? -by @akkiman

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(This article by Akshay Damle was first published on his blog and is reproduced here with permission for the benefit of PuneTech readers.)

Over the past couple few weeks, I have been reading & thinking about the salary hikes that the companies are doling out. This year, it has been challenging to provide “good” pay hikes to most of the employees and most of them are ending up feeling disappointed, cheated even. There were even dharnas staged because companies could not fulfil their promises of hiring them after graduation.

There was a time in the early – 2000s when the IT industry was the sunrise sector in India. 20+ % pay hikes were very common for even above average performers in organizations. This behaviour carried on till 2008-09 when the global financial crisis unleashed itself. The financial crisis affected most mid to senior level employees and things changed for most of them. Even during this time, young graduates (<3-5 years of experience) would still consistently get “good” pay hikes. They were given to prevent them from jumping ship as the key to success was having good quality resources in your organization and also because it didn’t affect the bottom line much.

The last 1 year has been tough on the Indian IT sector Most companies are reporting flat growth, squeezed margins, and record low utilization levels. A few of the companies have reported that they may not hike their employee’s salary. Most of them are providing single digit pay hikes, quite a departure from the past. Most companies are also reporting record low attrition levels (<5 %). So what has changed? What has suddenly gone so wrong ?

In my opinion, quite a few things have gone wrong. Note that I’m no industry expert: :

The failure of the Indian IT industry to move from performing standard grunt work (Services) to innovation.

Initially, performing “outsourcing” work for global companies in India was highly lucrative. What with low labour costs, low infrastructure costs, and therefore high margins. The failure of these companies was to not divert these profits into more R&D work and instead hiring more and more grads to work on such projects. The “good” raises & hiring by the thousands meant that the margins reduced, quality reduced. The effect was that many of these global companies started moving projects out of India to other lucrative countries like China, Philipines, etc.

Proliferation of sub-standard engineering colleges across India.

Most of the folks in India were enamoured with the wealth that the early IT folk acquired. Everyone had a house (or two), a car, flashy lifestyles etc. Therefore, there was a demand across Bharat to become engineers and move to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgaon and get into big IT organizations. This meant that engineering colleges multiplied overnight and there were millions of new IT graduates. Most of the big IT companies had such huge requirements that most of them could fulfil this supply of hiring these engineering grads. What most didn’t realize is that it takes years & years of experience before a college can be considered good. You require land, infrastructure, good professors, excellent equipment to be able to impart quality education to students. Most colleges ended up producing half-baked graduates ready to take on the IT world. This has been the failing for many companies & colleges. What makes things worse is that most Universities are very slow to adapt their syllabus. In a fast-moving world of technology, this is a death-knell.

Near constant starting salaries

Ever since I graduated in 2001, the starting salary of an IT graduate has remained more or less the same. Most engineering students from the cities do not accept such salaries but then they have a choice of moving out for further education to the US, etc. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option for most of the folks coming in from middle India. Additionally, 2.5 lakhs p.a. is lucrative for most of these graduates. Most big IT companies are also more than happy to keep this salary constant for the past so many years. So what we now have are sub-standard quality graduates along with folks who are paid less. Not a good thing at all.

Rising costs & degrading urban infrastructure

This isn’t a direct reason for the downfall of the Indian IT but most of these jobs & companies contributed extensively to the tax-revenues of states, and the centre. Unfortunately, this did not translate to quality infrastructure in these urban wastelands. The accompanying real-estate boom & high inflationary rates have ensured that the cost of living increases quite a lot each year & house rentals are on an all-time high. Many of the new young graduates stay far away from the city in order to make rent. This all affects the quality of work.

Increasing credit debt

It’s absolutely sad to see many of these young graduates caught up in credit card debts. There was a time around 8 years back when credit cards were doled out to IT workers as if they were visiting cards. I have seen quite a few colleagues who are stuck in credit card debts, personal loans, etc. Leave aside owning a home, they are struggling to make payments. At the same time, everyone wants the flashy phone, the flashy clothes, good food, etc. It’s appalling to note that many workers don’t even know how Income tax is calculated! So when these guys are offered single digit pay hikes especially when they’ve seen some seniors in the past get 20%+ pay hikes, they are disappointed and get unmotivated. To make matters worse, they can’t switch jobs because no one is hiring at that experience level. This all translates to poor quality of work.

It isn’t all a bad thing though. Many companies have started seeing the big picture and involved in improving their bottom lines. They have started investing more & more into innovation. Some colleges at the top-tier are changing their syllabus on a yearly basis. Also if you can innovate in your job, you still have multiple growth opportunities. Most folks are unaware of the emerging technologies, market trends, global financial news, etc. This is extremely vital if you want to grow in your role. If this is followed, many can still reap the financial rewards and grow. If this isn’t followed, sadly the IT industry isn’t the utopia that it was made out to be.

I’ll end this by saying that there is still hope but yes, the Indian IT industry isn’t what it used to be.

About the Author – Akshay Damle

Akshay Damle is a Pune-based technology enthusiast. During the day, he manages teams that are involved in building scalable payment systems infrastructure. He has over 11 years of experience in building enterprise applications. His interests are following emerging technology trends, current affairs, finance & general knowledge. You can follow him on twitter @akkiman.

Advantage Pune Panel Discussion: Opportunities for Pune to become an Innovation Hub

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These are a few quick ‘n dirty notes captured during a Panel Discussion that was held as a part of the “Global Conclave: Advantage Pune” event held in Pune yesterday, organized by Zinnov and Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP). The panel discussion was on the topic “Opportunities and Challenges for Pune to become an Innovation Hub”. The panelists were:

  • Bhavani Shankar from Zinnov
  • Akila Krishnakumar head of Sungard India
  • Ashish Deshpande from Google (based in Pune)
  • Kiran Gadi head of Motorola Mobility India
  • Omkar Nimbalkar head of Tivoli Group IBM India
  • Tarun Sharma head of BMC India

Overall, a few themes that most people touched upon were these:

  • Pune isn’t just about software. It has automotive, manufacturing, sciences (for example, NCL), and other things going for it. So it is more rounded than other cities
  • Pune has great climate
  • Pune has lots of educational instiutions
  • Pune is still not as crowded as Bangalore, so growth is still possible in Pune.

Overall, these are the advantages that Pune has for driving innovation.

Here are some additional interesting points made by the panelists:

  • [Akila] Sungard is probably one of the earliest Software Product MNCs to set up in Pune (back in 1993). Pune has 20% of Sungard’s global R&D strength. BFSI is the biggest market for the software sector, and hence a lot of innovation in Pune’s software industry has to happen (will happen) in this space
  • [Kiran] Our Pune center had lower attrition than other cities. This was a huge advantage.
  • [Tarun] 23% of BMC is in Pune. Largest in the world. This gives huge advantages – having many different teams in one location. This is easier to achieve do than in other cities.
  • [Omkar] Pune has an advantage over Bangalore that it still has space to grow. In Bangalore, it is very difficult to find space.
  • [Tarun] Pune definitely has a better perception of quality of life compared to Bangalore. It’s still a small city compared to Bangalore – you can get anywhere in 30 minutes. And the culture and art is great.
  • [Akila] Pune and Germany have had a great relationship, because of the auto industry. Pune has the largest concentration of German companies in India. This is a great opportunity for Pune’s software industry – it needs to leverage this and grow the software market in Europe.
  • [Kiran] The great thing about the Pune Community is that all the different groups (Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP), PuneTech, TiE, Pune Open Coffee Club, Head Start, CSI Pune) all talk to each other and co-operate.
  • [Akila] Pune’s demographics are interesting – lower than average age, and higher than average per capita income. It is easier to find early adopters in Pune, and easier to do viral (i.e., cheap) marketing in Pune. For example, it is not a surprise that it is the gaming capital of the country.

Indian Product Managers Association Pune – First Meeting 29 April

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  • Are you a passionate Product Manager or Techie who wants to build great products?
  • Are you a Product Manager who wants to network with other professionals?
  • Are you looking to switch over into the exciting world of Product Management? Or simply want to learn the basics of the discipline of Product Management?

The Indian Tech world is full of people who understand services, and even product outsourcing. But the one big thing missing from the IT ecosystem here is the ability to visualize and build great products. And, if things go well for the Indian IT industry, then the most important trend of the next 10 years will be the rise of product companies out of India, and with that, the field of Product Management.

So, if you have any interest in this area, then the Pune Chapter of the Indian Product Managers Association, which is being launched this Friday is the place for you to be.

IPMA Pune Inaugural Event – Details

Vishwas Mahajan, Co-founder and Former CEO of Compulink and member of Senior Management at Glodyne, will inaugurate IPMA Pune Chapter and kick start the Monthly Speaker Series.

Mr. Mahajan will be speaking on: “Made in India .. for Global Markets”

About IPMA

India Product Management Association (IPMA) is a not for profit, grassroots organization. IPMA’s mission is to Foster product design and innovation and Catalyze product management talent in India. IPMA organizes monthly speaker series, workshops and more for professionals interested in product management and marketing. For more information about upcoming events, visit http://indiapma.org

Membership of the IPMA is free at this time.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend, but registration is required. The event will be on 29th April, from 4pm to 6pm, at BMC Software, Tower A, ICC Tech Park, SB Road.

Microsoft Office 2010 Launch Event by PUG – Aug 7

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What: Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group‘s Microsoft Office 2010 Launch Event
When: Saturday, 7 August, 9am-1pm
Where: Sumant Moolgaonkar Auditorium, ICC, SB Road
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here

PUG is Pune's user group for Microsoft Technologies. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles related to PUG.
PUG is Pune's user group for Microsoft Technologies. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles related to PUG.

PUG Developer Summit

Microsoft Office 2010 Launch Event

Pune’s Microsoft Technologies User Group will have a half-day event this Saturday to give developers details of the latest features in Office. Pushkar Bhat will speak about what’s new in Microsoft Office 2010, and Aviraj Ajgekar will talk about Microsoft Online Services.

About the Speaker – Aviraj Ajgekar

Aviraj is a Computer Engineer from Mumbai and currently working with Microsoft India. In his present role he’s accountable for managing IT Infrastructure of Microsoft India – West Region. An active member of IT Professional communities across India specially Mumbai User Group and Pune User Group supported by Microsoft. A real blogger, he is very compulsive on adding his thoughts to online blogs, forums, community and media. You can check his technology blog at http://blogs.technet.com/aviraj. He is very fanatical about speaking on IT Professional topics such as technology screencasts for Microsoft TechNet EDGE @ http://edge.technet.com/people/aviraj. He a regular speaker at various Microsoft Events such TechEd, MS TechDays, Virtual TechDays, Microsoft India Webcasts and many more technology events. In his spare time he likes to spend time with his family, hang around with friends, listening to rock music and he’s also passionate about long drives. You can follow him on twitter @aviraj111

About the Speaker – Pushkar Bhat

Pushkar is a Solution Specialist at Microsoft; he works with customers in the Manufacturing and ITeS vertical on solutions for Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Portal Strategies, Document Management and Business Process management. His specific area of interest is in B2B and B2C Collaboration Portals which integrate analytics and innovation management frameworks for large enterprise. Another area which I have worked off and on is Enterprise Project management. He is also keeping alive my interest in the area of Demand Planning, Supply chain optimization, Sales Reporting and Sales Force Effectiveness.

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Pune-based Innovize Tech Launches Productivity Measurement Software

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Last week, Pune-based product startup Innovize Tech announced that it has received funding of $350k from the Indian Angel Network. (Note: Indian Angel Network had also invested in another Pune-based startup Druva.)

Innovize Tech Logo
InnovizeTech is a Pune-based startup that builds employee productivity measurement software. Click on the logo to go to Innovize Tech's website.

Innovize Tech has built a software product, called Sapience, that helps companies measure the exact amount of time spent by employees in various work related activities.

LiveMint has a nice article explaining the Sapience product:

For example, an investment banker working on a deal will use several applications, such as MS Excel to do financial analysis and modelling of companies, and MS PowerPoint and various in-house databases to obtain information and do analysis.

Sapience will be customized to register these applications as work applications, and will calculate how much time the banker spent on them at the end of the day.

This would help his managers know how many hours the investment banker actually spent working, out of the time he was in office. They can also find out if the banker was spending too much time on some aspects of the work.

The article further points out that:

The software can be installed at company data centres. Smaller firms without a data centre can operate it from a so-called cloud server managed by InnovizeTech.

Its target consumers are software firms, banks, insurance firms and other firms whose employees use computers to deliver their output.

The key USP of Sapience is that it is a highly automated method of accounting for time spent by employees on different software packages (and hence different activities). While information can be manually fed, Sapience has an API that encouranges programmatic sourcing of this information. Further, nit uses learning and rules based intelligence, to increasingly automate this activity. Further, it can handle various difficult cases, like different employees sharing the same PC, or the same employee using different machines, or an employee logging in remotely to a server. They have applied for a global patent on their technology.

It then aggregates the per-employee information at team, project, and other company levels and locations. The product’s analytics and trend engine then provides insightful information that helps senior management to enhance overall business efficiency, and individual and teams to improve their own productivity.

Sapience is priced on per-user basis. The per-user permanent license fee is equivalent to a few hours of average per-employee cost to company. They point out, on their website that they demonstrate savings of several hours of productivity within the first 30 days of deployment. Therefore, Return on Investment (ROI) period is typically one month.

Innovize tech was started last year by Swati Deodhar, Shirish Deodhar, Hemant Joshi and Madhukar Bhatia. The Pune startup community will remember that Shirish, Hemant and Madhukar were also the people behind nFactorial software, the Startup Mentoring company. nFactorial has not been accepting any new mentorship engagements for a while now, and the founders are now primarily focusing on Innovize Tech. For more details on the executive team of Innovize Tech is on their About Us page.

NASSCOM Product Forum, Pune (Thu, Sept 25)

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What: NASSCOM Product Forum

When: Thursday, 25th September, 10am to 1pm

Where: MCCIA (Hall No.4), A Wing, MCCIA Trade Tower,5th Floor, ICC Complex, Senapati Bapat Road

Fees and Registration: This event is free for all. Please RSVP Paresh Degaonkar at paresh@nasscom.in  or call at 91 9850049251

Details:

The NASSCOM Event at Pune slated on Sept 25, 2008 will unveil “NASSCOM Software Product Study” and the announcement of “NASSCOM INTEL  Product Connect Initiative”.

The NASSCOM Software Product Business Study presents the findings of our latest research effort focused on the Indian software product business environment. It provides a comprehensive review of the Product Business History, market landscape; highlights the key opportunity areas; identifies enablers for growth and suggests some targeted actions that key stakeholders should undertake to enable the next phase of growth for Indian software product businesses.

The “NASSCOM – INTEL Product Connect Initiative” is a collaboration to contribute to the overall software ecosystem by empowering NASSCOM’s member companies (software vendors) to innovate and develop a commercially viable application for businesses or Consumers. Beginning with strategic planning and insights into Intel’s technology roadmaps, the support continues through product development and application enablement, and the cycle is completed by augmenting your marketing campaigns with downloadable marketing resources and access to the Intel® Business Exchange portal – to enable you to reach new customers worldwide, and gain access, on a selective basis, to the investment wing of Intel.

Who should attend:

  • CXOs of Product Companies
  • Incubation Centers
  • Product Managers
  • Product Architects
  • Investing Community
  • Entrepreneurs

To keep in touch with all interesting tech events happening in Pune, check out the PuneTech calendar.