siliconindia june 12 issue

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA JUNE - 2012 SILICONINDIA.COM

PUBLISHED SINCE 1997sil iconindia

Mukesh Lulla, Co-founder & President NETWORKSecurity

A WINNINg STORy IN

In My Opinion: RahulKanodia, Datamatics

VC Talk: Niren Shah,Norwest Venture Partners India

In Conversation: Dr. WidoMenhardt, Philips

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Contents June 201214Page

COVERSTORY

Mukesh Lulla, Co-founder & President

Team Eagle: Leading HighPerformanceRahul Kanodia, Datamatics

[Infocus]

[Venture Chakra]

[VC Talk]E-commerce and e-Payments –There is still a lot of untappedpotentialNiren Shah, Norwest VenturePartners (NVP) India

06 [Business]Indian R&D market is on a Boomby Hari Anil

[Entrepreneur Talk]E-Commerce Players are on a High!Ravitej Yadalam, Pennyful

[In Conversation]Innovating from IndiaDr. Wido Menhardt , Philips

[Technology]Increasing ROI of CorporateDatabasesRaman Govindarajan, perfSYSTEMS

[Business]The Business of Making andKeeping PromisesMathew Augustine, Hanna GlobalSolutions

[Business]Opportunities Galore InRestaurant Industry Today!

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Remesh Kuruppath, NetvarthTechnologies Inc.

[Management]Bring Back the “Human” in HumanResourcesJim Finkelstein, FutureSense, Inc.

[CIO Insights]Moving to Cloud & Mobile ispertinent for BusinessesWalter Curd, Maxim

[Entrepreneur’s Corner]The Vc Pitch - Unwrapped: 4KTANaveen Bisht, TiE Silicon Valleys

[Business]The 4G challenge thatNetworking Users Now FaceDan-Joe Barry, Napatech

[SI20]

[Viewpoint]GROW or DIEBy Pradeep Shankar

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NETWORKSecurity

A WINNINg STORy IN

By Anamika Sahu & Vishwas Nair

Editor-in-ChiefPradeep Shankar

Managing EditorsChristo Jacob (U.S)Vimali Swamy (India)

Editorial Staff

Anamika SahuBenita MatildaHari AnilVishwas Nair

Sr.Visualizer Dipin DasVisualizer Hebert Emmatty

Subscription Manager P Magendran

MMaaiilliinngg AAddddrreessss

SiliconIndia Inc44790 S. Grimmer Blvd

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siliconindiaJune 2012, volume 15-6 (ISSN 1091-9503) Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc.

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JUNE - 2012

Editorial

Your identity is still Anonymous"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". Concept of iden-

tifying you in internet used to be unstable. Now the phenomena havechanged as the internet market has matured. The concept of ‘onlineidentity’ has become a critical issue as identifying a web user is re-ally a serious one for enterprises. Unlike virtual world, in real worldthere are established systems to prove your identity. Now most of theenterprises are feeling a real need of web user identity and there is alack of established systems to reveal your identity in virtual world.Lately social networks and major internet players have taken it veryseriously and that’s why big players like Facebook, Twitter, andGoogle are keen today to bet huge on identity race. This second phase of internet boom is much contrary to the de-

bates which we had two years back, where many were doubtful to say“RIP” to web. But today, we are seeing web evolving in multipleareas due to increase in ad spending. Foremost, being shift in the con-sumer behavior making the rate of iOS and Android smart deviceadoption more than four times faster than that of personal computers.Moreover we are seeing a trend among the average smart phone userwhere they spending more time in mobile applications than they dobrowsing the web. In the coming years, we will see our mobile andweb account becoming a one-stop-point to access for seamless dataaccess and establishing them as reliable identity service platform onthe internet. When this happens, it would be a big deal for big play-ers like Twitter, Facebook and Google. Even though, Twitter has a fairly put in efforts like powerful part-

nership with Apple through deep integration of the network into iOS5 , Facebook making early moves on identity arena, and Google try-ing to bring in change in search experience through Google+ service,these players have to still not solved the identity crisis. We need tofind a solution, where the identity created in a platform is valid invirtual world as well as real world — government organization, fi-nancial organizations, banks, schools, airports and many more, whichwill trim down complexities of having multiple accounts and pass-words for online and social activities. I believe U.S. is still the world's leading innovator and innovation

is still not dead! If the best of world's leading innovators and researchorganizations can come together to come up with a ubiquitous iden-tifier, where in virtual world and real world can identify a user, we aresolving the identity crisis to a greater extend.

Please do share your thoughts with us.Christo JacobManaging [email protected]

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promising people with greater zeal,to enable the company take maxi-mum benefit from the impending up-turn. As a result, “Team Eagle” wasformulated.

Team EagleTeam Eagle comprises of a group ofhigh potential and high performanceteam members. These team mem-bers from diversified functions arebrought together, nurtured and em-powered to bring an improvement interms of efficiency, quality of theprojects and increase profitabilitywith superior results. This program involves on-the-

job learning, strategic project-basedcapability building, team bonding,creating leadership skills amongstcross functional teams, and execu-tive coaching & mentoring, amongstothers.At Datamatics it is considered to

be a privilege to be a part of eliteTeam Eagle program. Team Eagle isselected through a rigorous processand is further divided into severalhigh performance teams, comprisingof cross-function members. So far,we have had four terms of Eagleprogram, with each one lasting forabout four months. They all havebeen a great success. To leverage onthe efforts put-in by the high per-formance teams, we have introducedan extended 30-60-90 days plan.This will ensure continuity.

How does it work?Like the Eagle, the Team Eagle atDatamatics soars high on innovationand takes challenges head-on. Thesense of focus and intense energywithin and across teams cultivates a

healthy competitive spirit necessaryfor the program.Each team is provided with a

project, with specific goals, targetsand definitive timelines. The proj-ects assigned to each team are usu-ally outside the comfort zone ofeach member. Adoption of cross-functional teams makes sure thateach process is viewed afresh whileensuring that goals remain attain-able. All teams are inspired and en-couraged to come up with radical,out-of-the-box approaches that re-sult in phenomenal improvement.These teams have the liberty to gobeyond the existing processes, hier-archy and reporting structures inorder to attain their goals/targets. Coaching and mentoring by sen-

iors team members and external pro-fessional plays a vital role indeveloping these high-performanceteams. Each team has its own men-tor, who is a senior level resource inthe organization. He guides, nur-tures and advices each member attheir call. These mentors are like theMission Directors, and act as a cat-alyst to transform passion into per-formance.These teams have a strong sense

of accountability for achieving theirgoals. Upon the achievement of thetarget or envisioned goal, the teammembers are rewarded in terms ofmementos, financials and tangibleawards. This ensures higher degree

of motivation and recognition acrossthe organization. This also leads tohigher scope of innovation andprocess engineering across the or-ganization.All teams are provided with ho-

listic training that adds to their ex-isting skill sets. To ensure higherlevels of passion and motivation,Team Eagle members are consis-tently imparted with inspirationaltalks by eminent and establishedprofessionals. Out-bound events areorganized with an objective to builda stronger bond between the teammembers and enhance their abilityto look beyond the obvious. Brain-storming sessions with directed au-tonomy are held to build up team’sself belief in coming up with solu-tions to the problems that will in-evitably arise.

The impactProject “Team Eagle” has resultedin a marked change across the or-ganization in terms of culture, inno-vation as well motivation levels.With cross functional teams work-ing together on common goals, theyare able to appreciate the efforts thateach one of us puts in to make anyproject a great success. The indige-nous program currently witnessingits fourth season has translated toproductivity gains of 250-400 per-cent, increased revenue and higherclient satisfaction.

Challenges and opportunitiesare two sides of the samecoin. The trick lies in con-tinuing to flip the coin,

when faced with challenges. It was inthe year 2008, when amidst the globalmeltdown we faced challenges relat-ing to growth and revenue visibility.The global uncertainties were fasttranslating into economic downturnglobally, with the western developedeconomies being at the core of thisvortex. This resulted in constraints ingetting new business and therefore itbecame pivotal for us to focus on cre-ating a sustainable organization thatwould not only navigate the turbulentwaters during downturn but wouldalso enable us surge to newer heightsduring upturns.

The ideaBeing a solutions provider to Fortune500 companies, we at Datamaticshave always considered people to beour greatest strength. It is normallywitnessed that during the downturn,people are generally considered to bethe first casualty for protecting thebottom-line, despite being the primeresource. Ever since our inception, wehave believed in the culture of puttingpeople first in every decision. Theidea of short-term gain, though entic-ing, doesn't lead to long-term sustain-ability for any business. Therefore,we chose to not only challenge thewide-spread industry practice of“slimming the workforce and protect-ing margins”, but also invest into

By Rahul KanodiaThe author is Vice Chairman & CEO, Datamatics

Rahul Kanodia

Team EagleLeading High Performance

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Datamatics a trusted partner to several Fortune 500 Companies, is a global provider of IT, KPO and Con-sulting services. The company (NSE & BSE listed) provides business aligned next-generation solutions to awide range of industry verticals that help enterprises across the world overcome their business challenges andachieve operational efficiencies. These solutions leverage innovations in technology, knowledge of businessprocesses, and domain expertise to provide clients a competitive edge.

Coaching and mentoring by senior team members andexternal professional plays a vital role in developingthese high-performance teams

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Pradeep K. Khosla dean ofCarnegie Mellon University'sCollege of Engineering, also

known as the Carnegie Institute ofTechnology, has been selected as theeighth chancellor of the University ofCalifornia, San Diego by UC presidentMark G. Yudof. This is the second big appointment

in U.S. academia for an IIT-ian in thelast few months. Prior to this SoumitraDutta, alumnus of IIT-Delhi was giventhe title of the dean of the Cornell Uni-versity's Johnson Graduate School ofManagement recently. This IIT-Kharagpur alumni Khosla will be re-placing Marye Anne Fox, who is retir-ing in August 2012.Serving as a dean for eight years at

CMU Kholsa had set the direction forgraduate and undergraduate research.He started curriculum reform, diversityefforts and instituted multidisciplinaryand multi-college research centres aswell as international programmes.

Khosla has also been instrumental inthe college's fund raising in a $100 mil-lion campaign for a university wide en-ergy institute and $90 millioncampaign for a 100,000 square footCollege of Engineering building forbiotech, energy and nanotechnology.He has received his master's degree anddoctorate in electrical and computer en-gineering at Carnegie Mellon in the1980s.According to Mark Yudof, Univer-

sity of California President, Khosla willset of attributes that will enable the uni-versity to build on the excellence thatbring to UC San Diego a distinctive hasmade it one of the top institutions ofhigher learning in the world. Talkingabout Khosla, Mark described him as atime-tested, oft-honored researcher, aninnovative educator dedicated to im-proving the quality of life for students,faculty and staff, and an entrepreneur-ial leader with a global vision andproven fund raising abilities.

Indian American IITian Pradeep Khosla appointed asChancellor of California University

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The Indian companies play a vital role in creating em-ployment opportunities in the U.S. and are also in-volved in 72 mergers and acquisitions, said TK Chand,

Chairman CII, Vizag Zone and director (commercial) of theVisakhapatnam Steel Plant. There has also been in an in-crease in the Indian companies in U.S. along with the in-crease in their employee count regardless of the seriousproblems related to financial crisis.CII conducted a similar study titled the 'Indian Roots,

American Soil: Adding Value to U.S Economy and Society',gathered information from 36 prominent Indian companiesdoing business in America in diverse fields and came up withsimilar conclusion regarding the increase hiring process byIndian companies during the time of recession. It was foundthat these 36 companies alone employ nearly 52,000 em-ployees in U.S. and they have also increased more than 70percent of their staff in the last seven years. They also planto create around 3,400 jobs, in the present year.

Indian Companies support Three Lakh jobs in U.S.

The policy of BYOD may pose athreat to company's data,whereas Indian enterprises seem

to be embracing the trend, where nearly80 percent employee’s surveyed sayingtheir companies allow them to bringtheir personal mobile phones and lap-tops to work.The research done by services

provider BT, where 80 percent of the In-dian employees surveyed said their em-ployers permitted them to connect theirpersonal devices to corporate networkand use them for work. The research isbased on survey of more than 2,000users and decision makers across 11countries, including India.But with this new policy, there are

concerns of data being breached. Thosesurveyed seemed well informed aboutthe risks that BYOD presents as 89 per-cent said "putting 24/7 access to corpo-rate systems into the hands of anincreasingly mobile workforce is now

the main threat toIT security." Theresearch addedthat "the adoptionof BYOD bringsto light new secu-rity issues." BTsaid IT decisionmakers now needto tackle a widerrange of issuessuch as securityconcerns, in-creased datausage expendi-ture, potentialthreat to intellectual property and thecost of infrastructure for multiple de-vices, before introducing BYOD at theworkplace.The security concerns, in fact, may

not be totally unfounded as 73 percentof the IT respondents said they have ex-perienced security breaches due to peo-

ple bringing in unauthorized devices.The research also pointed out that 65percent of the employees feel thatBYOD enables them to serve customersbetter, while 51 percent of the employ-ees felt "more efficient and productive"by using a personally-owed device forwork.

Indian firms Embrace the ByOD Trend

59 percent of the developers fail to earnback the sum they had expended to de-velop the app, while 80 percent of thefirms are struggling to generate revenuefor establishing an independent organi-zation, reveals a finding by App Promo,an App strategy and marketing agency.The survey also found that the top

earners in the group are seeing successbecause of the time and money theyspend on marketing their mobile appli-cations. The top earners represent 12

percent of participants who earned$50,000 or more with their most suc-cessful app. This group spent the mosteffort on marketing with an average of14 percent of their time dedicated topromoting their app and also had nearly$30,000 set aside as the average mar-keting budget. This is a stark compari-son to 52 percent of participants whospent as little as 5 percent or less of theirtime on promotion and had a marketingbudget of $0.

According to the App Promo CEO& Founder, Gary Yentin, “After twoyears of working with developers onincreasing downloads and money fortheir app, we wanted to do this surveyto dispel the myth that all you have todo is build an app and watch themoney roll on in. Our survey echoedexactly what we have been finding inthe market, developers have to spendmoney and time on marketing in orderto succeed.”

59 percent App Developers incur Loss

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Pradeep Khosla


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Dipchand Nishar, Senior VicePresident of Products and UserExperience at LinkedIn, is one

of the top paid managersat LinkedIn. Prior to thisNishar was the SeniorDirector of ProductManagement, handlingproduct development inthe Asia-Pacific region.He left the organizationin the year 2008 andjoined LinkedIn as thevice president of prod-uct strategy.Nishar’s salary

package in the year

2010 was $230,000 and previous year itincreased up to an amount of$282,500.Apart from this, the total com-

pensation he re-ceived in the year2011 was$3,905,250. KayLuo, a spokesper-son for the com-pany said, “Wewanted to findsomeone whoknows how tobuild a large organ-ization, but also hasan entrepreneurialbackground.”

While joining the firm Nishar said,“LinkedIn continues to become morerelevant as a communication and deci-sion-making tool for professionals andbusinesses worldwide. I look forwardto helping the innovation process atLinkedIn and bringing even more pro-fessional utility to LinkedIn members.”He holds three patents and was

also honored with the GoogleFounders Award for his work on theGoogle Ads System Automation. Hereceived his graduation from the In-dian Institute of Technology, Kharag-pur and Master's of Science inElectrical Engineering from Univer-sity of Illinois.

Dipchand Nishar Highest paid Indian in LinkedIn

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The CFO's role in technology de-cision making has increased inthe last year with 44 percent of

CFOs stating that their influence over ITinvestment has increased since 2010,says a joint study by Gartner and Finan-cial Executives Research Foundation(FERF), the research affiliate of Finan-cial Executives International (FEI).While 47 percent say that it has re-mained the same and just nine percent ofthose surveyed believe that their influ-ence has decreased.The survey of CFOs, which is in its

fourth year, is designed to gather per-ceptions from financial executives aboutthe economic environment, the CFO'srole in technology and their IT invest-ment priorities. The survey was con-ducted between October 2011 andFebruary 2012, and it included 255 CFOrespondents."The CFO and CIO are well-posi-

tioned to work togetherat generating businessvalue from enterprise ITinvestments. However,this performance isoften not achieved be-cause of poor percep-tions of IT, a parochialCFO or CIO perspec-tive, or simply a failureto invest in the CFO-CIO relationship. Thisyear’s results show that, in most organi-zations, the CFO and CIO work togetherto finance IT and provide informationthat supports enterprise processes. Butthere is also an opportunity for them toform a powerful alliance that generatesmore value for the enterprise," says JohnVan Decker, Research Vice Presi-dent,GartnerThe survey results showed that there

are many ways that CFOs are involved

in making IT investment decisions.41percent said that they were the actualleader of a group responsible for IT in-vestment, whereas another 41 percentwere part of a group responsible for ITdecision making, 16 percent provide ad-vice and one percent said they were thesole decision maker. Since the large ma-jority was involved in group decisionmaking about IT, engaging the CFO isclearly a critical issue.

CFOs role in IT Investment has increased from 2011

Dipchand Nishar


$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

Tapjoy, a mobile advertising andpublishing plat-form, launched the

Tapjoy Asia Fund, backedby $5 million investment.The fund is designed to en-courage and support de-velopers throughout Asiain the innovation andgrowth of Free-to-Playmobile apps for the An-droid and iOS platforms.With offices already

located in Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyoand Seoul, Tapjoy is marking its contin-ued commitment to the Asia Pacific mar-ket. The Tapjoy Asia Fund offersmonetary and marketing support to bothnew mobile game studios starting a new

venture and experienced game develop-ers looking to self-pub-lish and grow their userbase for current apps.“We are committed

to helping developersbring fun, engagingmobile games and ex-periences to marketsuccessfully. Providinga level playing field inwhich developers largeand small can have their

apps discovered will only strengthen themobile marketplace for everyone. It is ourhope that the Tapjoy Asia Fund will be aswell received as the Tapjoy Andriod Fundwe launched in the U.S. last year whichresulted in 155 new apps being devel-

oped,” says Mihir Shah, CEO, Tapjoy.Founded in 2007, Tapjoy is a mobile

advertising and monetization platformwhose unique Mobile Value Exchangemodel allows users to select personalizedadvertisements with which to engage forvirtual currency or premium content. Itsturnkey in-app advertisement platformhelps developers acquire cost-effective,high-value new users and monetize theirapplications, while its powerful advertis-ing marketplace lets brand advertisersreach a global mobile audience spanningmore than 20,000 applications. The com-pany is backed by top-tier investors in-cluding J.P. Morgan Asset Management,Rho Ventures, North Bridge Venture Part-ners, InterWest Partners and D.E. ShawVentures.

Tapjoy launches $5 Million Fund to supportinnovation in Asia

Big data analytics solutionsprovider Nuevora has securedtheir first round of institutional

funding of $2.25 million from FortisureVentures. The fund will be used to de-velop a suite of cloud-based business-processes-as-a-service (BPaaS) analyticsapplications.Headquartered in San Ramona, Cal-

ifornia and operates an analytics centerof excellence in India, Nuevora wasfounded in 2005 by Phani Nagarjuna.The company is a big data solutionsprovider that helps leading organiza-tions achieve positive, high-impactbusiness outcomes through the deliveryof continuous and context-sensitive pre-dictive insights. It works with some ofthe leading corporations in retail, finan-cial services, insurance, high-technol-

ogy, travel services, and other indus-tries. Nuevora’s vision is to help shapethe BPaaS market space and be a leaderin delivery of cloud-based advancedbusiness analytics apps for targetedbusiness problems.

“Just as software-as-a-service(SaaS) disrupted the traditional enter-prise software business models over thepast decade, Nuevora envisions a newwave of business processes-as-a-service (BPaaS) applications taking rootin major corporations that drive smarterdecisions through real-time and contin-uous analytics. It’s clearly becoming anapps-driven world, whether at the con-sumer level or within the corporate andwe intend to be among the leaders in thenew BPaaS market space. This newfunding will be instrumental in helping

us execute that strategy,” says Phani Na-garjuna, Founder & CEO, Nuevora. Nuevora develops business analyt-

ics solutions for major corporations inretail, financial services, insurance, hightechnology, and travel services markets.In doing so over the past few years, thecompany has built a proven analyticsplatform and targeted analytics solu-tions that can be delivered as Business-Processes-as-a-Service (BPaaS) via thecloud.

“We were drawn to Nuevora byPhani’s knowledge of the business ana-lytics space and our conviction that an-alytics provides tangible value tocompanies by helping them understandtheir customers better,” says Mani Sub-ramanian, Founder & CEO, FortisureVentures. si

Nuevora raises $2.25 Million in first round of institutional financing from Fortisure Ventures

Mihir Shah

The New York based Adaptly thatmanages ad campaigns acrossmultiple social networks suc-

ceeded in gathering $10.5 million in se-ries B round of funding led by ValhallaPartners, with participation from TimeWarner Invest-ments and ViviNevo along withthe previous in-vestors includingFirst RoundCapital, CharlesRiver Ventures,Lerer Ventures,and others. Thecompany plansto use the fundfor further globalexpansion, product development, and ex-pansion of its sales team.

The company has also launched itsEvergreen social advertising optimizationproduct that helps determine whichpieces of brand’s social media content areperforming the best, then converts themto paid media opportunity placement.

"This represents afundamental shift invalue for social market-ing. Paid is only as goodas the content behind it,and content is only asgood as how many peo-ple it reaches. Adaptlyaims to solve these mar-keting problems withEvergreen by givingbrands the power tomaximize the reach of

their highest quality content," says NikhilSethi, CEO & Co-founder, Adaptly.

Founded in 2010 by Nikhil Sethi andGarrett Ullom, Adaptly was incubatedthrough DreamIt Ventures and is nowbased in New York City. Its portfolioclients include brands and agencies suchas PepsiCo, Diageo, Showtime, Big Fuel,Kraft Foods and hundreds more."Adaptly is fundamentally chang-

ing the traditional advertising model.We have had the fortune of investing inseveral disruptive advertising technol-ogy companies, and are very pleased tobecome a part of the next age of adver-tising with Adaptly. Evergreen is thelatest example of how this talentedteam continues to innovate with a sin-gular focus on serving a brand's need toreach and engage with its audienceacross a wide variety of social plat-forms," says Kiran Hebbar, Generalpartner, Valhalla Partners.

Adaptly secures $10.5 Million in Series B Funding

The global provider of advanceddigital video service, Avail-TVNhas raised $100 million of new in-

vestment from The Carlyle Group. Theproceedings of the current round of in-vestment will enable Avail-TVN to ac-quire UK-based On Demand Group; aprovider of video on demand services tosome of the biggest television brands out-side of the U.S. Carlyle will join the ex-isting Avail-TVN investors includingColumbia Capital, Valhalla Partners,Novak Biddle and Pioneer Ventures.Stephens Inc. was an advisor to Avail-TVN on the transaction.Avail-TVN will use the fund for in-

ternational expansion and the develop-ment of new products and services for thecompany’s global client base of contentproviders and multichannel video serviceproviders. Merger of On Demand withAvail-TVN will bring together a diverse

customer base, strong content relation-ships with leading enter-tainment and mediacompanies around theglobe, highly developedand proven workflowand delivery systems,the finance and scale todrive aggressive revenuegrowth. Tony Kelly,CEO at On DemandGroup, will now reportto Avail-TVN CEO,Ramu Potarazu, and serve as a member ofthe executive management team."Our strategy has been to invest in

leading players across the digital mediaecosystem and incorporate them into onecompany to build Avail-TVN into thelargest provider of advanced digital videoservices worldwide. The Carlyle Group'sinvestment supports that vision, and pro-

vides the capital and global network tobuild upon this foundationboth domestically and in-ternationally. With the inte-gration of On DemandGroup, we broaden our ca-pabilities, extend our distri-bution and are able tofurther develop monetiza-tion opportunities for ourcustomers in the rapidly-changing digital mediaspace," says Ramu

Potarazu, CEO, Avail-TVN.The company is the largest global

provider of digital video services. Work-ing with both service providers and con-tent owners, it is focused on providing itsglobal customer base solutions that sim-plify content management and distribu-tion, and enable the monetization ofcontent.

Avail-TVN nabs $100 Million for global expansion

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Ramu Potarazu

Nikhil Sethi


One of the biggest challenges in cyber-securitytoday is how the software in our operating sys-tems and applications are full of vulnerabili-ties that can be exploited by hackers. Whiletraditional software makers have made head-

way in developing more resilient applications, embedded de-vice and system makers lag behind in secure system designand development maturity. It’s no wonder that top networkequipment makers like Cisco, NETGEAR, D-Link and oth-ers have begun to understand the kind of threat that networksare susceptible to, and are actively opting for embedded soft-ware to provide their customers a secured networking prod-uct. And helping these companies achieve is none other thanTeamF1.Founded in 1998 by two college friends, Mukesh Lulla

and Vinai Kolli, TeamF1, headquartered in Fremont, Califor-nia, is a preeminent supplier of OEM-ready software to theembedded systems market. Understanding the importance ofinnovative product technologies, and how efficient project

management techniques, well-honed software engineeringprocesses and a robust “production-quality” test environmentcontribute to the making of user-friendly and solid customerproducts, the company develops software modules andturnkey solutions to secure connected devices used across dif-ferent market verticals.

“With the most traction in this market, and a significantshare of customers and units shipped worldwide for small-medium business security routers, we are not wrong to be-lieve that we are a leader in our field. Our software today isan integral part of the networking devices developed by mostTier-1 networking equipment providers,” says Vinai, Co-Founder and Vice-President, TeamF1.

The Eureka! MomentBuddies since undergraduate school, both Mukesh and Vinaihad etched a career of their own in system-on-chip software,and embedded OS & device driver technologies respectively.After years in the industry, both decided that it was time to

NETWORKSecurity

COVERSTORY

Mukesh Lulla & Vinai Kolli, Co-Founders

A WINNINg STORy IN

strike it out on their own. It was ataround this time in 1998, the duo no-ticed that while chip makers were mov-ing to the concept of System-on-Chipby adding diverse complex functionali-ties on to a single chip and increasingtheir performance, software vendors ofthe time were trying to just stick withthe lowest common denominator, ratherthan target the new functionality. And amajor functionality was regularly un-derleveraged — Security. Enabling the embedded “security”

on a chip requires complex algorithms.“When we think of security, we dealwith large chunks of data. The chipshave low “horse-power” but have dedi-cated functionality typically for networkprocessing, routing and so on. While

these were capable of a lot more, thesoftware companies of that time weretrying to broaden their appeal by sup-porting the maximum number of chipspossible, rather than speed up process-ing using resources on each chip thatwere different from other chips. Takesecurity as an example - it would bene-fit the most from acceleration by usingnative resources on each vendor’s chip.What we aimed was to integrate thehardware and software in the embeddedchips and get the maximum perform-ance from the native chip functionality,”says Vinai. This was the idea that led tothe birth of TeamF1 and the rest, as theysay, is history. “Our technology offerings build up

on existing operating system blocks and

we offer our customers embedded net-work security and performance-critical,hardware-assisted software. We offerthese as stand-alone modules or com-plete turnkey solutions ready for pro-duction. We also augment thetechnology with our professional serv-ices offerings to customize our softwareproducts. We feel this leverages ourclients' core competencies by lettingthem focus on end-product definitionwhile TeamF1's combination of field-validated standard software componentsand custom development services helpbring a differentiated, advanced, end-product to market in a low-risk and low-cost way,” explains Mukesh. And this isindeed true – we find that TeamF1 par-ticipates in full life-cycle development

By Anamika Sahu & Vishwas Nair


on a wide variety of embedded softwareOEM projects using its technologies in-cluding the latest in telecommunica-tions, networking, internet appliancesand broadband access devices.With an emphasis on deep technical

expertise, superior quality, and respon-siveness of support, TeamF1's offeringshave found a home in a diverse set ofembedded applications -- internet ac-cess, secure communications, industrialautomation and control, and aero-space/defense equipment markets.Since its inception, TeamF1 has provento be a leader in delivering embeddednetworking and internet infrastruc-ture products. Through the years,TeamF1 has been instrumental ingetting products ranging fromset-top boxes to wireless Inter-net appliances & high-end data-com equipment out to marketfor key players in various seg-ments of the embedded world.Just like the unique core idea

behind the company’s formation,there is also a reason behind its un-usual name. “Vinai and I are both fansof Formula-1 or F1 racing. The under-lying theme of car racing is achievingmaximum performance while puttinglimits on the resources used to achievethat. Also the F1 key in a keyboard isthe ‘help key’. This is how we got chris-tened the company — TeamF1: we’realways there to Help you to get the max-imum performance out of hardware-software combination,” explainsMukesh.

Conquering the ChallengesToday, over a decade since its founding,the company is self-reliant, cash-flowpositive, and operating without any ex-ternal investment. As the founders liketo say, TeamF1 is “customer-successfunded”. But this journey has not been an

easy one for the two founders. In mid-2000, after nearly 18 months of work-ing to develop a product that addressedwhat they saw as a gap in current tech-

nologies, they were ready with a proto-type product to be tested in the market.“While we readied our first version, ourincome was only from providing con-sulting services and it was really to sus-tain the few of us that were there in thecompany including me, Vinai and thefirst couple of employees that wehired,” reminisces Mukesh, thinkingback to the early years of the company.But by the time the founders read-

ied the

p r o t o -type, the industry was in the throes ofthe dotcom meltdown, ripples of whichhad affected the networking and tele-com sector, and further down the sup-ply chain to the equipment providerswho would be the target market forTeamF1’s technologies. Potential cus-tomers of TeamF1 were facing the heat,leaving new product developmentbudgets scaled down, technologyspending cut, and the founders foundthemselves in a dilemma. The company had not yet sold their

products when things went topsy-turvyand they saw other technology entre-preneurs get the rug pulled out underthem by investors even if they were fur-ther ahead in their development of newtechnologies. TeamF1 had two optionsto choose from: they could fold the shoplike a lot of their peers did at that time

for lack of investment, or to see if therewas indeed interest in what they had tooffer to the market and if they couldmonetize that interest instead. And, it turned out that initial Tier 1

customers, including the likes of Ciscoand Avaya, saw a lot of value in the soft-ware they had developed. So Mukeshand Vinai decided they would licensethe software even though it was just amodule, since it did fulfill a particularneed. Instead of focusing on fundingneeded to grow a technology start-up,they went right ahead and kick-startedthe business model. Of course, itmeant a different trajectory for thecompany: instead of developing acomplete software solution, theydecided to license the softwaremodule-by-module as theyevolved their technology port-folio and use the revenuesfrom customers to grow thebusiness instead. The next fewyears were very challenging forthe industry, but TeamF1 suc-ceeded in adding to what they had

developed initially. Customers wereeager to license these modules since itwas a very intimidating problem forthem to solve, and they would ratherhave that technology in the form of asoftware “black box” that secured theembedded devices and took the problemoff their plate. Over time, as the company devel-

oped a critical mass of these modules, iteventually allowed them to launch com-plete turnkey product offerings, the flag-ship one being SecureF1rst SecurityGateway Solution (SGS), a turnkeysoftware package that combines field-proven, standard components with anarray of customizable options for the ul-timate in product flexibility. The prod-uct enables equipment makers to deliverleading-edge VPN/firewall gateway de-vices to the market in record time at farless risk than traditional developmentapproaches. Devices built around Se-cureF1rst SGS offer end-customersironclad, networking security; easy-to-

use management features; and multiplegateway options.Other products in the offering which

are making deep in-roads in the marketinclude Managed Access Point Solu-tion, CPE Gateway Solution and Net-work Attached Storage Solution.

Answering Security Needs9/11 played a key role in raising secu-rity awareness around the world. Whilethe company was founded on the prin-ciples of securing devices long beforethis, in the months and years following9/11, government and industry stan-dards around requirements for embed-ded devices grew more stringent. Thecompany’s customers were faced withthe prospect of not having their propos-als accepted if they did not meet specificsecurity requirements and with securitybeing a complex field, not everyone waskeen on developing such technologiesfrom scratch. What customers neededwas software they could integrate intotheir systems without much fuss, andmeet the security requirements withouthaving to learn all the details. The prob-lem is that customers already had net-working software and one of thecommon pitfalls in security is that it ismost vulnerable wherever there is aseam. All of this needed to be seamless.Connectivity to the internet is whatTeamF1’s customers were trying to se-cure. If their networking software camefrom elsewhere, and embedded securitytechnology came from TeamF1, puttingthis together required them to know alot about the internal mechanics of se-curity. So providing the networkingmodules in addition to security was anatural next step for TeamF1. The com-pany thus started developing network-ing modules as they grew, because ofthe seamlessness that was required to bemore efficient and more secure. Embedded software is the software

that resides in devices, giving them theintelligence that we see in our day-to-day lives as “smart appliances”. This in-cludes everything from a car navigation

system and home/office broadbandrouters, to mobile phones/tablets. Asmore of these devices are connected tothe internet (after all, witness the growthin mobile embedded devices withsmartphones), embedded connectivityand security requirements are on therise. For TeamF1, its emphasis on high-performance also meant squeezing the

maximum out of constrained hardware.Since its software is embedded, TeamF1works very closely with the hardware inorder to extract the expected perform-ance.

The X FactorIn the embedded world, traditionally,the biggest competitors for softwareproviders have been the customersthemselves, since equipment vendors(also called “OEMs” or original equip-ment manufacturers) also develop theirown home-grown software. But as soft-ware requirements get more complex,companies like TeamF1 are an attractivealternative. TeamF1’s ability to offer acomplete, customizable, security plat-form that can protect legacy systems

and be the cornerstone of next genera-tion ones makes it a win-win for cus-tomers wanting to move awaygracefully from home-grown softwarein existing legacy devices to adoptingrich new features that TeamF1 has tooffer, in their new products. TeamF1 found a vacuum where tra-

ditional OEMs were not able to cost-ef-fectively or efficiently solve theirproblems. They found that there werenot many commercial competitors inthis field which was good news; but thebad news was convincing customerswho sometimes think that this wassomething that they could solve on theirown. Many times, this required makingthem aware of problems that they werenot aware of earlier. As an example, a mantra in the se-

curity field is that “Security by obscu-rity” is fatal. The belief that secrecy(such as secret passwords or commandsto control the system that no one knowsabout) can secure systems from attackshas a couple of serious problems: if ahacker figures out this secret and worse,puts it out on the internet. It’s not justone device affected - companies cannoteasily recall all the devices from thefield. Another is that a secret is only asstrong as the people who keep them. Adisgruntled employee possessing a se-cret could put millions of devices in thefield at risk by threatening to expose apassword. The resistance TeamF1 facedfrom its customers was frequently notlack of credibility in its technology, butthe lack of awareness of security pit-falls. Some of the bigger companies andindustry groups have started recogniz-ing it and making it a requirement. “Customers are now becoming

aware that their device is connected tothe internet, and the internet is also con-nected back to the device. This lets themsee things in a very different light. Onthe internet people are able to probe yourdevice, query it and without your knowl-edge know the profile and signature ofyour device to hack it using any vulner-ability they may find,” explains Mukesh.

What customersneeded was softwarethey could integrateinto their systemswithout much fuss,and meet the security requirements without having tolearn all the details.


Working with Customers’ Business NeedsTeamF1 licenses its solutions to cus-tomers in a form they call “customiz-able software”. Once delivered to thecustomer, it is now “customized soft-ware” that is specific to that customerand by means of which they can dif-ferentiate their product in the marketinstead of competing only on price.TeamF1 has spent a lot of effort inter-nally to make sure that their offeringis comprised of standard buildingblocks while still being customizable.The customer provides them with theirend-product requirements – a blue-print. TeamF1 customizes its softwareand integrates the modules accord-ingly. This allows them to deliver thebenefits of custom software withoutthe high costs and long time-to-market pitfalls of developing customsoftware from scratch. Since TeamF1not only delivers the software solu-tions their customers need, they de-liver these right to the manufacturingfloor, so the software has to be “pro-duction ready”. This product cannot bean experimental technology left in thehands of the customer after that. It isdelivered in a form where the end-users can use their products as-is andso, quality remains the top priority. Se-curity is something that is “baked” intothe DNA of the product, and is whatthe company has always been knownfor. TeamF1 feels that on top of the op-erating system, there are three majorpieces every turnkey solution has: net-working, security and management.The company consults with customersduring the sales process on how to ful-fill their end-market or serviceprovider requirements. While TeamF1 still licenses mod-

ules to large customers seeking to solvespecific point problems, most of theirrevenue tends to be from customerswho take a complete software deliveryfrom them and pay licensing fees basedon the units shipped, which is aligned

with the company’s “customer success”based business model.

The Vision AheadDespite the success that the companyhas garnered, it has continued to driveand grow itself organically. Thefounders cling to the idea of being“Customer Success Funded”: the com-pany is only successful if its customersusing its products are. “In retrospect, it turned out to be a

very positive thing that due to necessity,the company’s growth has been gradualand organic. This helped us ‘embed’,

pardon the pun, the values that werecritical to the longevity of a softwarecompany and our vision for our corpo-rate culture. Whether it is our qualityprocesses within our company that haveevolved over time, the way new ideasare championed within the company,and rolled in without too much bureau-cracy, how new team-members arementored by the senior team when theyenter the company, or how merit-basedrewards are used to incentivize key anddeserving team-members, it has stayedtrue to the values we wanted for thecompany.” says Mukesh. Today, from a humble 2 member

company, TeamF1 is 150 people strongwith offices in both US and India. Thecompany’s view is that the market re-mains thirsty for secure connectivity ofa wider range of devices, especiallywith the demands of mobile and cloudcomputing. With its expanding technol-ogy portfolio and using its proven engi-neering processes, TeamF1’s vision is tofoster embedded innovations by en-abling a new generation of secure, high-quality networking products with theshortest time-to-market. Besides its cur-rent flagship security gateway and wire-less products, TeamF1 has on itsroadmap turnkey offerings targeted to(a) advanced broadband gateway de-vices that deliver a combination ofvoice, video, wired and wireless data(the so-called “quad-play”, consideredthe holy grail of combined services) se-curely to home and businesses, and (b)hybrid personal/public cloud storage de-vices that combine the ubiquity of cloudaccess with the security and privacy ofpersonal storage. For a company that has survived as

many as three economic downturns andhigh pressure customer demands, real-izing its vision does not seem impossi-ble. In keeping with their fondness forperformance car racing, as Mukesh andVinai like to say, more than a decadeinto the company’s life, they feel theirengines are just getting started and theyare geared up for the race to come.

Security is something that is“baked” into the DNAof the product, and iswhat the companyhas always beenknown for.

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VVCC TTaallkkTechnology Trends shaping the industryAs a country, India is growing welland the long term prospects lookgood despite some short term con-cerns. At NVP India, our focus forthe last two years has been on earlyto late stage Internet companies,and we expect that this sector willcontinue to flourish for many yearsto come. Within the Internet space,eCommerce and ePayments and theeClassifieds segments continue tohave significant potential. Internetis at an early stage in India butshowing significant growth espe-cially via mobile devices. Thisopens up a gamut of opportunitiesin terms of ePayment systems; pro-liferation of which will in turn drivethe adoption of trends like eCom-merce and eClassifieds. We also be-lieve that the Adtech revolution isjust hitting India. We are seeing thisin our companies like Fashio-nandyou, Pepperfry, Quikr, KomliMedia etc. Beyond this, we see‘SaaS’ type models having tremen-dous potential, since startups andbusinesses in India can conservetheir scarce resources by rentingtheir software etc as a service ratherthan buying licenses. In addition to this, at NVP India,

we are also focusing on spaces suchas consumer and healthcare espe-cially in areas where one can usetechnology to significantly increaseadoption. For instance, one of ourportfolio companies, Fitbit, a U.S.based startup, brings game mechan-ics into your daily fitness regime.One can watch one’s own workout,compare how you did against afriend, check out how long did yourun, what was your heart rate andeven stats like your sleep rhythmusing a watch-like device to be wornon your wrist.

Mistakes Entrepreneurs MakeIn the last five ears, we have wit-nessed a tremendous positive change

in the Indian startup scenario andecosystem. More and more qualifiedteams are accepting the potential ofbeing entrepreneurs and making theshift. However, when compared toSilicon Valley, the shift to entrepre-neurship still feels relatively slower,and that’s partly since we haven’tseen a ‘Google’ or a ‘Facebook’type exit event happen from India(as yet). Once people understand thateven a $100 billion+ company canactually be created from India, weexpect a sea-change in behavior to-wards entrepreneurship and startups. The primary investment criteria

for NVP India is the quality of theteam and the business idea, model,market size and its growth potential:Entrepreneurs need to be careful

about is the building of the coreteam. On several occasions we haveseen that one entrepreneur is basi-cally doing (or trying to do) every-thing. Instead, startups need toensure that they have a adequatenumber of high quality founders/se-nior management members. The coreteam should be able to scale thebusiness, have strong domain andother indispensable (and comple-

mentary) skill sets that will be testedwhen you are out to build a greatcompany. Another prime consideration for

founders of a startup should be thescalability of the business/idea anddifferentiation of the offering. Lastyear, when we were looking ateCommerce companies, we noticedthat in certain verticalized sub-sec-tors, almost 8 companies had a simi-lar offering. Startups must focus onthe areas which are differentiated.Innovation is the need of the hour inIndian startup landscape.

Advice for EntrepreneursFor the real entrepreneurs, this is thebest time in India’s history to go outand build something and take somerisk. Building a startup shouldn’t becontingent on getting angel/VC fund-ing. Most great entrepreneurial ven-tures initially had to be bootstrapped.Find an idea which you are very pas-sionate about, which you have donediligence on, which you feel couldreally work, rally some good co-founders and then commit by goingout and just doing it! The journey isthe destination, so enjoy it!!

Niren Shah is the ManagingDirector, Norwest VenturePartners (NVP) India. Hehas 18 years of entrepre-neurial, finance, investingand banking experience fromleading consumer orientedcompanies and global finan-cial institutions. He servesas an advisor on India-basedinvestments across a widerange of sectors and acrossvarious stages-from earlyand mid-stage venture togrowth equity. Prior to joining NVP

India, Niren was the SeniorDirector of Strategy andVentures at eBay Inc. He wasalso part of the Market-places Ventures leadershipteam, where he was respon-sible for considering newbusiness opportunities, ac-quisitions and potential in-vestments across the GlobalMarketplaces.

E-COMMERCE AND E-PAyMENTS THERE IS STILL A LOT OF UNTAPPED POTENTIALBy Niren Shah, Managing Director, NorwestVenture Partners (NVP) india.

si


BBuussiinneessss

Indian R&Dmarket is on a

India is fast becoming a favored R&D hub of theworld. More than one-third of the global 1,000 R&Dspenders already have centers in India and many more

will be here soon. About 718 Multi National Organiza-tions (MNC) currently have R&D centers in India and thecountry currently boasts an installed R&D talent pool baseof over 200,000 engineers growing at an average of 9 per-cent a year for the last five years. These results were putforth by a Zinnov as part of their study, ‘Compensation &Benefits Survey 2012’. According to the study, 2011 witnessed the strong re-

vival of R&D investments worldwide. The significant

growth in R&D activities across the globe signals the op-timism in world economy which had earlier registered adrop in R&D investments in 2010. Globally the spendingon R&D stood at $538 billion in 2009-10 period, whilethis in 2010-11 this grew at 8.2 percent to reach $582 bil-lion. The study also says that till about mid 2000s, MNCswere concentrating at tier-1 cities in India primarily dueto availability of rich talent, investment friendly policies,and high quality of life, but by 2005 this pattern startedchanging. Now MNCs have started expanding to tier-2cities as they offered advantages such as higher catchmentarea, lower attrition, and cost arbitrage.

Boom


In 2011, MNC R&D centers inIndia witnessed an average salary in-crement of 13 percent. Incrementsvaried between 10.1 percent and 13percent during this period. Whencompared to the salary increment ofthe mid 2000’s this number mightseem not at par, still post recessionthis increment is giving a new ray ofhope to the field. The study suggestedthat while salary calibrations did hap-pen across levels, the direction is stillnot very clear. Salary in all R&D po-sitions varied from city to city in thecountry with NCR and Bangalore tak-ing the lead in most positions whilePune and Chennai trailing them. Italso presented a comparison betweensalaries offered in the U.S. and inIndia, and this comparison proved thatthe difference between the U.S. salaryand the India salary tends to reduce asone moves up the hierarchy.Another major finding is related to

attrition in the industry. After a yearof very high attrition the scenarioseems to be changing and becomingmore stable. “Overall dip in attritionis a reflection of increased focus bycompanies on career development,communication and competitive payto retain talent,” says the study. Froma roaring 21 percent in 2010 the attri-

tion rate has finally come down to 17percent in 2011. Many of the best inclass companies managed to keep avery close check on their attrition rateand keep it much lower than the in-dustry average, with some even aslow as 8.7 percent. Increased focus oncareer enhancement by ensuring in-creased ownership might have helpedthese companies in attaining this, saysthe study. While attrition went down,

hiring went up and reached 32.7 per-cent in 2011, up from 31.5 percent in2010. A major finding in the study is that

more and more employees are nowlooking at the content of the job, in-cluding technologies, frameworks andforums, rather than just the compen-sation package. 60.3 percent of par-ticipants in the study said that contentis more important than compensationpackage. Another disturbing finding isthat about 70.2 percent of the totalworkforce in the Indian R&D centersis just graduates and the percent ofPHD holders stands lower than .3 per-cent. This is an issue that has been lin-gering in the industry for some timenow and has been discussed at severaloccasions. R&D talent pool in Indiacomprises of mostly young employ-ees in the age bracket of 25-35 years.Most of the employees of the R&Dcenters are in Product Development orSustenance, Product Verification orTesting areas; together these con-tribute almost 93 percent of the totalworkforce. Product management hasthe least number of employees, about.4 percent of the total workforce.“Product management function hasyet not matured in India and only ahandful of product managers are cur-rently available in India,” adds thestudy. About 82 percent of the surveyed

R&D centers are now offered joiningbonus to its employees in 2011, upfrom the 56 percent that offered thesame in 2010. The study concluded by forecast-

ing the expected salary increment forthe year 2012. The rate remains moreor less the same at an average of 12.6percent. Overall, the present scenarioin the industry looks great and theroad ahead seems to have great poten-tial. “MNC R&D centers in India areexpected to continue to focus on var-ious key enablers for higher valuegeneration,” concludes the study.

By Hari Anilsi

enterprise Social Mediaand Web 2.0 Market 2010,finds that the marketexperienced more than 20percent growth. itgenerated revenues of$28.6 million in 2010 andis expected to touch $126million in 2017.

Courtesy: Frost & Sullivan

Source: Zinnov analysis of MNC R&D ecosystem in India

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Hot trends in the industry todayThe e-commerce market in India is growingat an incredible rate. Shoppers are slowlybut surely beginning to trust the Indian e-commerce merchant. Just a couple of yearsago, the mindset of the average online con-sumer were a lot more averse to transactingonline. Today, one is a lot more comfortablein spending money on the internet. Broad-band penetration across the country, recog-nizable online merchants, skeptic-friendlypayment methods like cash on delivery,wide product choices, and unbeatably lowcosts are some of the factors that are drivingthis change.Riding on this wave are a growing set of

increasingly savvy shoppers who will leaveno stone unturned to find the best bargainsand offers on the web. These shoppers savea lot of money on their shopping, but alsospend a lot more than the average onlineshopper. Merchants are taking advantage ofthis and offering a lot of ways for shoppersto save money in the form of coupon codesand cashback through websites like ours.We are seeing the launch of new e-com-

merce players every day, and everyonewants in on selling to the growing onlineshopper community. While this is excitingnews for the online shopper, investors todayare a lot more conservative than last year infunding new e-commerce ventures in thiscrowded space. There has even been consol-idation resulting from lack of funds for ven-tures that have been around for some time. There is a growing opportunity for ven-

tures with products and services that enablee-commerce in India. Such ventures help e-commerce companies streamline paymentprocessing, shipping and logistics, or online

EEnnttrreepprreenneeuurr TTaallkk

marketing. Streamlining of these keyareas of e-commerce will enablecompanies to focus on their corecompetence and also cut costs onthese processes.

What’s shaping the industry innext few years? 2011 saw a lot of investor interest inthe Indian e-commerce market. A lotof what happens from here will prob-ably be determined by how much thisinterest is sustained.Another factor that will have an

impact on the industry is the cost ofcustomer acquisition. Currently, highcustomer acquisition costs make itextremely difficult for smaller play-ers to compete with larger VC-backed ventures. Here too,online-marketing-focused e-com-merce enablers will play a key role inhelping to bring this cost down andimprove sustainability.Interest from global brands to

open shop in India will also have asignificant impact on the e-com-merce landscape. In addition tobringing in more capital, these com-panies bring knowledge of globalbest practices that can improve everyaspect of the end user’s experience.As it has been in other emerging mar-kets, the entry of global brands

would create a whole new categoryof consumers which would eventu-ally benefit the local economy andother domestic players.Brick and mortar retailers are

starting to take notice of the risingnumber of online shoppers. They areinvesting heavily on taking theirbrands online. If this trend continues,there will be a lot more choice for theonline shopper.COD (Cash On Delivery) is the

most preferred payment method foronline shoppers today. But there are ahost of challenges that the merchantfaces while fulfilling COD orders,starting from cost of delivery to re-turned merchandise to payment col-lection. E-commerce enablers areaddressing some of these concernsby innovations such as separatingpayment collection from product de-livery, thereby reducing probabilityof returns. Profitability will dependon how many of these challenges canbe addressed, and how soon.

Challenges faced by entrepreneurstodayIn today’s increasingly crowded mar-ket, it’s more important than ever forentrepreneurs to have a clear valueproposition and differentiated posi-tioning. There is no shortage of

funds, and companies that are builton strong fundamentals and validatedbusiness models are not likely to findit difficult to raise angel or institu-tional investment.While it is advisable to bootstrap

a venture till some level of customervalidation of the model has beenachieved, exorbitant costs of customeracquisition make this a challengingtask for internet entrepreneurs whousually work with tight margins.Although improving greatly over

the last year or so, building consumertrust is arguably the biggest challengefaced by e-commerce entrepreneursin India today. Educating the cus-tomer about the product or servicebeing offered, and keeping expecta-tions real are essential in providing agood customer experience. In spite of the all the challenges

and hurdles that our e-commerce in-dustry faces, it is still one of the morepromising markets in the world forentrepreneurs today. There will un-doubtedly be exciting times in theyears to come.

E-COMMERCE PLAYERS ARE ON A HIGH!

Ravitej Yadalam

New York headquartered Pennyful.com, is a pioneer in online cash backshopping. It works on a simple model: every time you purchase through itswebsite store links, the respective stores pay Pennyful.com a commission,which it simply splits with you, thereby giving a win-win situation to both. Ravitej Yadalam, Founder & CEO, Pennyful shares his insights into the

state of e-commerce sector in the industry today.

Smartphones helps younavigate highways and streetsbut the global positioningsystem (GPS) goes blind in amega mall. researchers havedevised a navigation systemfor interiors. it cleverlycombines sensors, enablingthe device to track themovements and position of itsuser with precise detail.

Courtesy: Germany's FraunhoferInstitute in collaboration with theBosch Corporation.


line by themselves, through a mobiledevice or through near field connec-tivity. This whole chain that includessensors, mobiles, and cloud based in-telligence has tremendous potential torevolutionize healthcare. In the de-veloped world it is all about con-sumerism, now consumers will startgetting more power in their health-care. In developing countries this willmake access to healthcare easier.

India Vs Developed MarketIndia is still very much behind onClinical IT, so this means managingpatient data in a digital form is non-existent to a large extent. If you goand take an MRI you still get a filmhere in India, of course you can askfor a CD, but if you come back amonth later you can be assured thatyour data will not be there in theclinic. So connecting all the health-care information and storing all thehealthcare information, managing pa-tients in hospitals or in healthcaresystems digitally is yet to be built. InU.S. or in other developed countrieswe already have several systems thatdo this, but in India it is different andthese systems cannot be adapted andit has to be developed separately. Forexample in developed countries thehealthcare payment is either carriedout by insurance or National Health-care Systems where as in India thereare a lot of out of the pocket pay-ments, this alone makes the scenarioa lot different here. The growth herewill come from equipping the health-care systems with technology that isbuilt especially addressing all the dif-ferences of this market.

Innovations from IndiaIn healthcare IT in the U.S. there is nosuch thing as UID, in India also it isnot there yet, but it has the potentialto create a huge opportunity. You takean X-ray or a CT scan from one hos-pital, then at some later point of timeyou go and take another X-ray or scan

from a different hospital, now the doc-tor from the second hospital wants tosee your previous X-ray or scan butthey are in some other hospital. So thepatient needs to carry the films or theCD around. Unifying all these UIDsor identifiers will help change this sit-uation, it will give doctors access tothe data of their patients from anyother health centers. The doctor canuse the UID and access his patient’smedical history easily. This process iscalled federation and the federationsolution for Philips Healthcare IT isdeveloped out of the Indian center. Another contribution from Indian

Innovation center is CAT scanner sim-ulators. When they developed, the en-gineers often need to use actual catscanners to see whether what they areworking on actually works. A realCAT scanner costs a couple of hun-dred thousand dollars, and for a sig-nificant CAT scanner developmentprogram they need dozens of CATscanners just for the engineers andthis will result in a huge cost. In orderto save these costs we have developedsimulators, both software simulatorsand hardware simulators at differentlevels. These can replace the real catscanners and get the job done at muchlesser cost.Another contribution of the India

innovation center is in the lightingarea. When you get a batch of LEDbulbs from any company there will becolor variations among differentLEDs. Even if they are all red orwhite, there will be minute color vari-ations between them. But when youare manufacturing fixtures with mul-tiple LEDs, you have to make surethat all the LEDs are of the samecolor. So the manufacturers take theLEDs, measure the color and mix andmatch the LEDs from different boxesif necessary. We have developed a so-phisticated software for this in India. Our portable music players con-

nect to the Philips cloud backend todo software upgrades and collect cer-

tain statistics of their usage and errors.The software that runs in these playersas well as the software in the cloudbackend is developed in the India cen-ter. These are some of the many inno-vations and developments that theIndian center is carrying on.

Staying at the Forefront of TechnologyThe enthusiasm and the commitmentof the people here is unparallel. Ourengineers are very driven and curiousand they stay up to date with all thepublications and developments. Alsoonce a week we have a tech talk in-side the company where either one ofour engineers or somebody we invitedfrom outside talks about a particulartopic to educate the rest. We have spe-cial interest groups in the campus, forexample a special interest group oninteroperability, and this is a very crit-ical element for all of our businesses.We also make sure that we strengthenour technical career path. Irrespectiveof the size of the team each seniorswill enjoy the same power dynamics. Our vision is to take control of the

Indian local market and to drive inno-vation for India and the entire worldfrom here in India. All MNC are nowcreating a very strong process cultureand I think it is a very essential part.To make sure that you do things in arepeatable, traceable and docu-mentable way you have to create astrong process culture and we havedone this. Also we have a culture thatentertains innovation. My vision is totake this spark of innovation andchannel it properly so that it becomesall the things that we need it to be.With it we also create an innovationengine here that drives innovation forthe world. In Asia people normally do not

move fast enough and they wouldwant to do things the same way theyused to do it and that is a major chal-lenge for a person like me.(As told to Christo Jacob)

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Dr. Wido Menhardt is a seasoned technology executive with apassion for taking technology ideas from scratch to market, andto then scale them to volume deployment.He started his career at Philips medical systems in Hamburg

(Germany) and Eindhoven (Netherlands) where he authoredmore than 50 papers in journals, and at conferences, presented ontopics ranging from MRI Physics to Fuzzy Logic. Wido has spenthis career in software development and executive management, inmultinationals like Kodak and Philips. He has also worked withstart-ups in innovative display technologies, artificial vision, andsearch engines. He has eight patents to his name.Dr. Wido holds a PhD in Computer Science from Hamburg

University, and an MSc in Physics from the Technical Universityof Vienna. He has studied, lived, and worked in Austria, Germany,the Netherlands, Canada and the U.S.

INNoVATING FRom INDIA

Wido Menhardt

Healthcare Technology and Indian MarketAccess to healthcare and assisting healthcare pro-fessionals in their daily work with technology isgoing to be a big opportunity. We have a shortageof skilled doctors in India, and may not have doc-tors at all in rural areas. By providing access topatient information anywhere, through mobiles,cloud based solutions, and computerized decisionsupport we can help put an end to this problem.If a doctor is in a rural area analyzing a patientand then entering that information on a mobile,that goes into a cloud, so somebody else can lookat that data and provide feedback and help thedoctor in the rural area to decide on the treatment.You will also see more and more sensors thatconnect to mobiles or internet, devices like bloodpressure cuff or electrocardiograph that measuresthe patient’s vital signs. These devices can be on-

Philips Innovation Labs in Bangalore, re-cently showcased the in roads it has made intodeveloping India specific innovative products.In a candid chat, Dr Wido Menhardt, Head ofPhilips Innovation Campus, Bangaloreshared his insights into the Indian Healthcaremarket, the vacuum, opportunities and plansat Philips to lead the market.


1. Challenges of Database Technologiesa. With the proliferation of web technologies, applications, and

multimedia data types, emergence of newer applications like so-cial media and mobile applications, the database sizes and trans-action volumes are rising in alarming proportions. Also mostcorporate applications are data centric, and with databases sup-porting APIs from most platforms, and having an effective data-base (logical and physical) design is of utmost importance. Someof the key metrics in measuring the database maturity or effec-tiveness are: overall system and application stability (no down-times), reasonable and industry standard performance levels likeresponse times, industry standard security compliance, harmonyof the database with the applications, operating systems, net-working and storage systems etc.

INCREASINg ROI OFCORPORATE DATABASES

By Raman Govindarajan, CEO, perfSYSTEMS

However, from a purist’s stand-point, a lot of large enterprises’databases have flaws in approach,architecture, design, choice of plat-forms etc, reflecting in difficultiesin achieving the above goals. Withpowerful and adaptable hard-ware/software/database platformsand technologies, these flaws maynot surface as noticeable problemsupto a threshold size/tps levels.When the database sizes and tps in-crease, corporate run into many is-sues and hence their ROI and usersatisfaction levels would be inade-quate.b. Lots of Organizations are still

using archaic database methodslike flat files, unsupported legacysystems and their applications, etc.Some rush to open source databaseplatforms for obvious, cost reduc-tion and faster implementation pur-poses. These platforms may not bescalable, and not support ACIDproperties especially for missioncritical 24*7 applications. Whileon the short term they may appeareconomical, the long term costsmay or may not be. c. Database Security is a huge

issue, as lot of corporate data canbe sensitive, and there is a lot ofloss of data, due to internal and ex-ternal threats.

2. How can one overcomethese issues, and increase ROIwith databases:a. One has to start with using

appropriate staffing models, choicedatabase and hw/sw platforms ar-chitectures (using some of the nowcommon strategies like virtualiza-tion, clustering, appropriate cloudcomputing methods etc) it is possi-ble to provide appropriate supportfor corporate data, and other met-rics such as acceptable perform-ance level, comply with dbsecurity requirements, achieveminimal downtimes with fault-tol-

erance, disaster recovery etc.b. There are many strategies

and products for corporates to havesecure database – to do compliancechecks, and reporting, based onthe industries’ requirements andlegislation. These products andservices that help customers tohave industry compliant securedatabases, following appropriatecompliance such as HIPPA, SOX,DISA, BASEL etc. c. Old methods/architecture,

tend to be expensive to maintain.These companies have to migrateto appropriate modern technolo-gies, which might be many ordersof magnitude cheaper, handle largevolumes of data, and are more effi-cient to manage and for the usersand their applications.d. Also, many corporates see

expenditure in data management asa cost item, and do not realize theimportance that effective data pro-cessing with appropriate databasetechnologies. First it (efficientdata processing with databases, es-pecially with database centric ERPsystems) can result in more rev-enue generation (in efficient andfaster order booking, tracking, op-timal cost of delivery etc). Sec-ond, by storing historical corporateand demographical data in data-bases, they can make business de-cisions more scientifically, basedon past patterns of consumer be-havior, trends etc. Business ana-lytics using data warehouses isgaining importance as one of thetop growth areas in IT in recentyears.After all, Data is one of the

most important corporate assets,and can emerge and grow naturally(in most cases without incrementalcosts of acquisition), it just re-quires appropriate maintenanceand utilization, for providing ef-fective incremental value andhigher ROI to its owner.

California based perfSYSTEMS is aprovider of products, solutions and serv-ices in Database Security and Perform-ance, PISO, Vulnerability Monitor, andIT Auditor. By leveraging their expertisein developing customized performance,security related products, database andInternet solutions, and large parallelserver architectures, storage systems ,the company helps their clients to buildoptimal, perfect and fast performing sys-tems and solutions.

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Many corporatessee expenditure indata managementas a cost item, anddo not realize theimportance thateffective dataprocessing withappropriatedatabasetechnologies.

b. Deadline mandatory – the timeby which the promise has to be deliv-ered is not negotiable, and an exter-nally specified deadline has to bemet.

All the above promises could be:1. Implied – maybe implied in

some other promise or communica-tion given to a client, and not explic-itly stated as a promise.2. Assumed – a client assumes a

promise to have been given, eventhough it has not been explicitlystated.Sometimes one may not evenbe aware of a client’s expectationsbased on this assumption.3. Explicit – is given in writing to

a client, as either part of a largeragreement, or service level agree-ments, or specific discussion and ac-ceptance.Avoid implied and assumed

promises, and move ALL promises tobeing explicit.This means all prom-ises must be written down, to ensuresuccessful long-term client relation-ships.The core to the structure of a

promise is the setting of an expecta-tion. One must try to capture as muchof this as possible in a Service LevelAgreement, by listing out a Statementof Work and Service Level Expecta-tions. Refer to these documents often,to make sure you are meeting stan-dards promised, and coaching clientsto expect these standards. There mayhowever be many ad hoc require-ments that come up on a daily basis,in any relationship with clients, and itis not practical to cover all situationsin an agreement. Try to capture asquickly as possible, in writing, the ex-pectations that are set in the course ofa conversation with a client.Most often, promises are made by

sales members or client relationshipteam members. These are people whodo not control the actual delivery ofthe promise. Promises that are deliv-ered by other people in the company

must not be confirmed without veri-fying with the parties concerned.There will have to be differentprocesses for negotiating the terms ofthe three different types of promises –voluntary, discretionary, and manda-tory. If it is voluntary, that is, if no

client is asking or forcing one tomake it, suggest ideas to a clientwithout confirming it can be donewithin the expected time, and then getback later and set the expectation,after confirming with other parties in-volved in the delivery of the promise.

If it is discretionary, that is, if con-tent or deadline is negotiable, discussthe tradeoff of time vs. content withthe client, so that the right balance oftime vs. content may be confirmed toclient, after discussion with other par-ties involved.If it is mandatory, that is, there is

no option to say ‘no’, understand the

source of the compulsion, what drivesthe mandatory nature of the require-ment, if there are components of thepromise that may be negotiable, ifthere are options to phase delivery ofthe promise, and so on. The discus-sion with the other parties involved indelivery in this case is most probablynot whether it can be delivered, buthow it can be delivered, and howmuch the delivery will cost.What is our challenge as a service

delivery business? To make and keeppromises, day in and day out, to ourclients, and to other members of theservice delivery team. If we make toomany promises, or we don’t haveenough resources to keep them, wehave dissatisfied clients, and they willleave.If we don’t make enough prom-ises, competitors will woo them awaywith more promises. It is a balance...as is all of life! An understanding ofthe categories of promises, and thestructure of a promise, can help usachieve the right balance, and run asuccessful business.


Almost all human interaction isabout making and keepingpromises. For a company that

delivers services to its clients, it isONLY about making and keepingpromises.A promise to someone is the set-

ting of an expectation in the mind ofthat someone that something willhappen at a certain time. Typically,that something, and that certain time,are variables, and can be negotiated,with more being done faster for ahigher price.

What are the categories of prom-ises?1. Voluntary promises – No one is

asking, or forcing one to make it.It isvolunteered to a client, with the ex-pectation of getting something backfrom the client (increase in relation-ship ‘equity’).2. Discretionary promises – one

agrees to do something that is askedfor. It is not required by the client byway of contractual obligation, or tomeet a committed service level andyou can say not without compromis-

ing the relationship with the client.Onecould say no to either the content, orthe deadline of the promise.3. Mandatory promises – there is

no option to say ‘no’, as there is some-thing else beyond the control of theclient that is driving the requirementof this promise. The mandatory naturecould be either by way of content, orthe deadline.a. Content mandatory – the spe-

cific content of the promise is not ne-gotiable, but has to be carried out asrequired.

The Business of Making and Keeping PromisesBy Mathew Augustine, Principal & COO, Hanna Global Solutions

Hanna Global Solutions is anEmployee Benefits advisory andadministration firm specializingin the design and delivery ofcomprehensive H.R. and benefitsolutions, tailored to fit today’scomplex needs.

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If we make too manypromises, or we don’thave enough resources to keepthem, we have dissat-isfied clients, andthey will leave. If wedon’t make enoughpromises, competitorswill woo them awaywith more promises


Has there been much change inthe Restaurant Industry in thelast 12 to 13 years with re-

spect to their usage of Internet tech-nologies? Overall, it is a NO! Thelimited attempts were Open Table’s(NASDAQ: OPEN) capitalizationearly on restaurant reservations andSnapfinger.com’s presence in the On-line Food Ordering for large chains.But the majority of restaurants in theU.S. belong to the category of solorestaurants and small chains. And theirpotential to use Internet technologiesfor marketing as well as for operationsis not still addressed well by the IT in-dustry. The IT industry can help theserestaurants in Social Media Marketingwith Facebook pages, Facebook Appsand so on. But very few restaurants areinto making use such promotional op-portunities. Restaurants should be creating for

the minimum a Facebook page andgenerate “Likes”. They should updatethe page on a regular basis with spe-

cial restaurant offerings and promo-tions. It is also important that theRestaurants should maintain a dy-namic website and update it regularly.The Facebook page should be pointingto the Restaurant website. Restaurantsneed to systematically create and mod-ify their menus on a regular basis.They also should be able to publishSpecial Occasion menus as and whenneeded. Still, a standard or leading ITprovider hasn’t emerged in this areayet. Restaurants also need Web/Mo-bile Apps in real time interactions withthe restaurant patrons/customers.Restaurants should have promotionaldiscount programs including Printedcoupons and eCoupons. This is a mustto increase visibility and engage cer-tain segment of the restaurant patrons.Restaurants also should avail the op-portunity to take food orders online.This would allow them to attend to theorders offline unlike phone orders. Acost effective IT solution offering has-n’t made in-roads into the industry yet!

Restaurant also should send regu-lar Newsletters to their loyal customerbase to keep them engaged and excitedover the many different offerings atthe restaurant. It is natural to suggestthat Restaurants should offer Cus-tomer Loyalty programs because 20percent of their customers account for80 percent of their revenue. Restau-rants also should allow their patrons tosign up as Frequent Diners and availthe many different customer loyaltyprograms. In short, restaurant ownersand managers should be cost effec-tively use Social Media and other In-ternet and Mobile Apps to generatemore visibility and as a result morerevenue and profit. And this necessi-tates the IT industry to provide cost-effective solutions to address these.

OPPORTUNITIES gALORE INRESTAURANT INDUSTRy TODAy! By Remesh Kuruppath,CEO, Netvarth Technologies Inc.

Netvarth Technologies Inc is aprovider of web based RestaurantManagement System (RMS) throughForkWorld.com. It provides a widerange of solutions that manage dataacross multiple departments within asingle repository. Using its Web-RMSa restaurant can change customer ex-perience to another level while effec-tively managing business operationsand reducing IT costs dramatically.

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When you ask yourself or oth-ers why you work, does theanswer not stare back at you

with a blank smile? You smile becauseyou know you have to work. But thesmile is blank because you have no ideawhy you have to. Do you have to workto survive? Or do you work because it’senjoyable and meaningful?The world of work is in a state of

transition. The value of work has be-come so utilitarian – making money topay for bills – that we have taken allmeaning out of it. It is now facing a new direction.

The financial crisis beginning in 2006stimulated changes across the board forwork and life. What has been broughtto a clear forefront is the nature of eco-nomics, work and business as usual.Corporate scandals, corruption, greed,housing crisis, bailouts and bonuses

have all become acronyms, householdwords and/or fodder for late night talkshow hosts to most working adults.Employees – people – have becomedisposable. Why have we let this hap-pen? And, more importantly, why dowe let this continue to happen?It all has to do with the way we

view the world, our place in it, and thevalues that we share with each other.Most organizations have operatedunder a mechanistic mindset for thebetter part of the century, chugging andchurning away towards an idealized no-tion of progress. Contemporary HumanResource circles claim to focus on boththe human and the resource, howeverthese claims are just not true. For toolong a time, they have focused on theresource side, using the same mecha-nistic language and processes to referto their employees. They view their em-

ployees as “capital to be invested in” or“resources to be utilized” (aka de-pleted). This mechanistic/industrialmodel has forced us to abandon funda-mental values about how we treat otherhumans.Losing sight of these values is de-

stroying our economy and culture. Jobrates are lower than ever and job satis-faction is down too, not just as the re-sult of a failing economy. Populationpressures, pollution, and stress are nownormal facets of our existence. TheAmerican population actually reachedits peak happiness in the 1950s and hassteadily declined since. An ultimate lowpoint has been undoubtedly reachedwith the current recession.What we need is a new paradigm to

the way we view work – one that weare all calling for in our hearts andsouls. We have placed enough attention

on the resources side and need to bringback the human in HR. This will bringabout a more engaged workforce, fur-ther stimulating the economy and ourquality of life.

Tracing the AgesTo understand where this new para-digm is going, we must understandwhere it came from. Since the early1900s, the industrial model has domi-nated the American workplace. At itsonset, the model presented companieswith mechanized improvements offer-ing increased efficiency and productivecapacity. Machines and productionlines replaced hands-on craftsmanshipfor goods and services. This revolutionpresented the American worker withmore opportunities to raise their socio-economic status and the allure of theAmerican Dream.Believe it or not, the industrial

model never left and still prominentlyexists as the dominant paradigm ofwork and life in the West. In the late1900s and early 2000s, another transi-tion occurred – the Technological Rev-olution or Information Age. Workersagain fled one site for another, leavingthe factory for the office cubicle wherecomputers replaced hand tools. Thesame set of industrial rules and cultureapplied. Workers reported for duty,clocking in 9-5 under the watchful eyeof their superiors. They processedpaper work, wrote program codes, ordeveloped marketing schemes. Theyreceived employee identification num-bers along with sets of guidelines andinstruction manuals. Their role withinorganizations existed as componentparts of a system.Looking back, in the grand scheme

of things (meaning: the entire scope ofhuman existence and social organiza-tional models), the industrial system isrelatively young and short-lived. Whenmillions of workers lost their jobs, re-tirement plans, and homes, it was clearthat the model had some pitfalls. So,where does this model fall short?

The problem with the industrial modelis two-fold:1) It relies on the perception that end-less growth and progress – dependentupon inexhaustible resources – isneeded to secure the future of humansociety2) Component parts – whether humanor machine – must be maintainedWe know now that planetary re-

sources are, in fact, finite and limited.You cannot have infinite growth on afinite planet. We also know that humanbeings are not mechanized parts of asystem and seek further goals in life.Economics is a non-meaningful rela-tionship created by people that seekmeaning. These facts prove both pointsabove to be incompatible with any fu-ture development and decry a coming(or the current) change.This system has recently offered in-

dicators of a massive change, beginningwith the financial crises of 2006. Sincethen, we have seen expanding statisticsof joblessness and job dissatisfaction.Health care costs associated with theselifestyles continued to boom and Amer-ican culture suffers. Can we really ac-cept that this system is working?

The Effects of ChangeSo, what happens when a change be-falls the existing status quo? Some failand others succeed, some suffer andothers prosper, some cease and othersthrive. The “Great Transition” is uponus, coming to its greatest fruition per-haps this year.Charles Darwin, in his theory of

natural selection, was often misquotedas saying evolution is driven by “sur-vival of the fittest.” What he actuallymeant to say, correcting himself later,was that it is driven by “survival of themost responsive to change.”Currently, the companies that are

thriving (think Google, etc.) not onlyhave a tight business plan and im-mensely valuable services, but are alsoreturning back to an older model ofworkforce engagement. They are

bringing back the human in HumanResources, recognizing that theirworkers have needs, feelings, andgoals in life. Will other companiescontinue to follow these models?What happens if they don’t? Whatdoes this new model of workforce en-gagement even look like?

A SolutionPrevious times were more polarized,but we believe in the concept of“both/and.” The new paradigm ac-knowledges the accomplishments ofthe industrial and tech revolutions andtheir mechanistic views. It is both a tes-tament to those models and a re-ac-knowledgement of human needs andvalues.For example, employee engage-

ment surveys have traditionally beenvery impersonal and scientific. Psy-chology and statistics now deem howmuch one is “engaged” by their workthrough a series of numbers and sup-posed inferences. Standing alone, thesesurveys fall short of actually cultivatingengagement. We believe they have im-mense value, but should never be usedin lieu of human-to-human accounta-bility. As a social species, we thrive bestthrough direct human interaction, but inlarge and complex organizations, thesesurveys do provide insights that maybenefit the workforce as a whole.What this new model is straying

away from is the treatment of employ-ees as components of a system. Theyare no longer just numbers or workingparts. They are valuable members ofan organization or a community work-ing towards a common goal. Theyform relationships with each other anddevelop true senses of teamwork andcollaboration.This new paradigm is a boomerang

thrown into the wind because it chal-lenges the status quo and the estab-lishment. Things are changinginevitably, so it up to all of us – in-cluding our leadership – to adapt sothat we may thrive.

Bring Back the“Human”in Human Resources

Jim Finkelstein is the leader of people in business. With over 34 years of consulting and corporate experience, he has specializedin business and people strategy, motivation and reward, and organizational assessment, development, communications and trans-formation. Finkelstein has worked for diverse industries, from health care to high tech. He has built programs and provided serv-ices to Boards of Directors, senior executives, management and employees. His experience includes being a partner in a Big Fivefirm, a CEO of a professional services firm, a corporate executive for Fortune 500 companies, and an entrepreneur with his cur-rent company, FutureSense®, Inc. He has experienced business from every possible angle and through every possible change.

By Jim Finkelstein, FutureSense, Inc.

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Jim Finkelstein


Changing Technology TrendsThe real overriding trend is the complexity that is increas-ing. The reason being that for 10 – 15 years excluding thedot com there were a clear set of enterprise IT vendors. Wewere equipped with the SAP or ERP; we had the Microsofton the desktop CISCO on network. Something that has fun-damentally changed in the last 3 – 4 years is the whole con-ception piece. Consumers are becoming more IT savvy andconsumer IT way surpassing enterprise IT. Big companieshave big margins and the gap between the consumer offer-ing and enterprise IT is expanding. With the growing amountof consumer offering we have several options in the majorcomputing world. Such things are observant by the SiliconValley. It has been different here and it has been in the restof the country for the last three years. We had three boomsgoing on in the same time, ‘Cloud’, ‘global’ and ‘social’.From consumers stand point everything is cloud. Whereasfrom an enterprise stand point the rise of companies like‘Salesforce.com’, ‘Workday’ that provide single purpose sortof cloud solutions. It not only provides you with an oppor-tunity to do things faster but also at a lower cost. This reallyincreased the complexity.Earlier you would buy application from Oracle or SAP.

But now we are in a much more fragmented situation— thereason being the solutions that are being provided by variouscloud vendors today. These solutions are easy to implement aswe are free from the technical complexities on the back end.Taking a look at the cloud standpoint at Maxim, we push alot of things. We are Salesforce and Workday customers andour strategy is to avoid buying in-house software applicationunless there is no other way to do it. We focus on the innova-tion of infrastructure but more than that, we focus on appli-cation. The cloud revolution is on and we are focused on migrat-

ing to it. Immigration to cloud means, before we implementit, we need to make sure that we have listed we are universallytied to it, and we can move the data back and forth properly.That is how the cloud has affected us. Additionally, the mo-

bile revolution in my view has beengreat for consumers and great forbusiness. The conferences I attendedI notice they talk about mobile andthey get stuck on the hardware side.Because they think mobile is abouthardware but the fact is, it’s not.Now everyone is already mobile.With this you not only can workfrom anywhere but are forced towork 24 hours a day 7 days a week. From an enterprise IT stand

point the issue with mobile is waybeyond hardware i.e. really trans-forming the IT organization to thinkfrom a mobile capacity standpointon the application side because thetraditional programming methodol-ogy the traditional thought processis around functionality and mobileis an after part. Thus my big chal-lenge is moving mobile in the fore-front of application development sothat anything we do is usable on mo-bile platform and that was the cloudmobile, and on the social side whichseems like the least relevant to theenterprise IT organization.

The technology / enterprise problemWe do not have to deal with soft-ware or technology problems. Takea look at the U.S. technology thereal problem is with the people inthe process. From IT standpoint it’sabout buying the top notch peopleand retaining the top notch people tobe able to execute on these technol-ogy. Whereas from the people stand-point having the people in thebusiness with the a vision to makeuse of these technologies, who havea proper focus on the business sideand the IT side in order to drive theusage of that, to define the benefitand to achieve the benefit. Technol-ogy moves forward but people moveforward at a slower rate. If you havethe technology but lack of people inthe business to take advantage, itwon’t work. It’s a very mundanething but it’s a fact.

Driving Innovation within the teamIt’s a lot easier here in Silicon Val-ley to be innovative. I have a goodteam of people. It’s not a significantamount of money but I call it we arein the budget. So have our researchand development compounded of IT.Constantly pushing these guys andthey are pushing me as well. Wekeep trying out new technology. Forinstance 3-4 years ago the pricepoint got to a point where may betwo years ago where you couldmake a reasonable cost effective ar-gument. So we started putting upeverything on laptop and this speedsthe performance by five times. It’s arational case we started doing it. Alot of companies are not even doingnow but some of them are. After thiswe looked at ways to discourage tothe use of our data center. Becauseif we can speed up are business in-telligent reporting by five timesspeed up or engineering simulation,there is a massive marketing impact.There are people working on evalu-ations and some of the newer tech-nologies.So that’s an innovation thing.

Whereas training for people, wehave conferences where we quiz thepeople to network with their peers tosee what they are doing. It’s similarto giving order to your troop andfinding out what is happening in the

rest of the valley the rest of the in-dustry and IT in general and track-ing what the technology does andwhat they can do for Maxim.

IT initiatives at MaximWe are a 28 years old company andwe are into manufacturing and alsohigh volume transaction. So we do alot of fundamental things that has tobe there and that have to be fixed.We are really fixed on showing oursort base set of application as wellour infrastructure. I have been herefor four years. We are now focusedon pricing and coding as well as up-grading our manufacturing systemthat are not modern. The social sidehas driven for a couple of years andmobile devices which are a sort ofBYOD policy for several years. Thetransactional application is to keepthe company running. We have beeninto manufacturing, sales and engi-neering and is a big function. Forengineering we hire engineering ar-chitecture the way we do engineer-ing from a computing stand pointand basically been able to speed upour simulation times by nearly 50percent.

Future outlookFor us, we are adamant that therewould be no more in-house applica-tions. We essentially have no reasonto buy in-house software anymoreand are moving much of our noncore functionalities to the cloud.That will help in freeing up some ofthe resources to. We are makingeverything mobile and becomepretty much device agnostic. Ourinitiatives are focused on moreprocess and people. The programmanagement office is focused on en-gaging with business executives andmaking sure we understand the keyperformances and indicators andthen working with them to get tech-nology that will push them eitherforward.

CLOUD & MOBILE

CCIIOO IInnssiigghhttss

MOVINg TO

Walter Curd is the VP and CIO for Maxim Inte-grated Products. Headquartered in Sunnyvale,California, Maxim Integrated Products (NAS-DAQ: MXIM) is a $2.5 billion in annual revenuethat makes highly integrated analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. In his current positionCurd has led a modernization effort of infrastruc-ture and applications that has begun to producesubstantial business benefits. Curd insures thatMaxim is an early adopter of consumer technolo-gies, cloud computing, and most recently enter-prise social networking. Prior to joining Maxim,he built the Information Technology Services or-ganization for Marvell Semiconductor to supporttheir growth from $300M to over $3.0B during histenure. He has also led the IT organizations forFujitsu, Electroglas, and CyberIQ Systems.

Walter Curd

IS PERTINENT FOR BUSINESSES

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Immigration tocloud means, beforewe implement it,we need to makesure that we havelisted we are uni-versally tied to it


will need to go through thisprocess. The process starts withhaving several meetings with theVC and his team over the course ofa few months. First, find someonewho knows the VC to introduceyou. It will improve your chancesof getting a meeting quickly. Foryour meeting, be prepared. Knowyour product and numbers verywell. For instance, if a VC asks youwhat your revenue projection is orhow much revenue you did lastyear, you should be able to answerit right away without consultingyour CFO or looking at slides orpapers. If asked to demo the prod-uct, you as CEO should be able todo it without seeking help fromyour product manager or anotherteam member. The reason is simple.The CEO of a startup is the ChiefSales Officer of the company. Heneeds to know what he is sellingand the revenues for last year, thisyear and future years. Knowingthese by heart and articulating themclearly shows confidence in yourabilities.2. Excellence in Execution – In

order to continue to build trust andconfidence and hence, your rela-tionship with the VC, you need toshow progress on the business orthe product development in yoursubsequent meetings. For example,if you committed to some mile-stones in your prior meeting, thenshow that you have accomplishedthose milestones. If there werechanges, then have clear reasonsfor the changes in terms of what,why and how. What changed inyour milestones? Why did it hap-pen? How did you do go aboutsolving issues or finding an alter-native strategy? VCs know thatplans change and they are lookingto see how fast you learn and howyou deal with changes.3. Voice of the Customer –

When you are asked by the VC how

your product compares to competi-tors or to other approaches that aresolving the similar pain point, youneed to be fully prepared to answerthis from a customer’s perspective.This is what I call the voice of thecustomer. Why would a customerbuy your product? Why would heput his job at risk by buying from astartup? He would rather stay onthe safe side by buying from one ofthe large vendors or waiting forthem to come out with a producteven if it is late by a year. Articu-late your company’s advantagesclearly and crisply - whether it is adelightful customer experience thatyour product provides such as easeto use, install, configure, and man-age or 10X performance advantageor 10X lower cost. Whatever thesecret sauce is, make sure it reflectsthe real voice of the customer, not

just a technology benefit that cus-tomer may not care about.4. 4. Clear Expectations – As

first time entrepreneurs, we assumethat after our first meeting, we willleave the meeting with a check inhand. However, the reality is farfrom that. Consider it just like sell-ing a product. It may require manymeetings with a customer to closea sale. It starts with an initial meet-ing to describe benefits of your so-lution, the pain points it’s going tosolve and showing a product demo.It is then followed by customerdoing a product trial before he isready to buy. Similarly, a firstmeeting with a VC is your entrypoint and your objective is to get afollow up meeting. A follow upmeeting shows VC interest for amore detailed presentation fol-lowed by further meetings includ-ing due diligence with customersbefore having a full-fledged meet-ing with other members of the VCfirm. If you have gone this far, thechances are that you are moving inthe right direction. The final step isthat the VC and his partners arefully excited and ready to negotiateterms of the deal. It’s essential tohave a clear expectation for thesteps and the timeline of this entireprocess. Make sure that you clar-ify the timeline with the VC in yourfirst meeting. Also, make sure thatyou are transparent in your dealingwith the VC and providing correctinformation to them. If you buildtrust and confidence in your abili-ties and vision, then you might beon your way to getting your com-pany funded by this VC firm. Thesteps outlined are as essential as thetactical steps in pitching to a VCand hence, it will establish trust. In summary, my four 4KTAs are to

establish trust, confidence and builda relationship, excel in execution,focus on the voice of the customer,and have clear expectations.

Naveen Bisht is a serialentrepreneur and BoardMember, Chair – Pro-grams, The Indus Entre-preneur (TiE) and memberof TiE Angels SteeringCommittee, based in Sili-con Valley, California.

Wafer-thin device embedded inthe sole of your shoe harnessesharmless viruses to turnmechanical energy intoelectricity with the movementof your feet. this approach wastested by creating a 'live'generator that producesenough power to operate asmall liquid-crystal display. itworks by tapping a finger on astamp-sized electrode which isconverted into electric chargeby the specially engineeredviruses.

Courtesy: Seung-Wuk lee, scientistin Berkeley lab's PhysicalBiosciences Division.

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Pitching to a venture capitalist(VC) is a key step in theprocess of raising capital for

your startup. If you do Google searchfor pitching to a VC, you will getthousands of links. Lots of them maybe useless, but a number of them cancover tactical steps you need to take.I would encourage you to read a blogby David Cowan of Bessemer Ven-ture Partners, focusing on many top-ics for entrepreneurs, and an article“A VC’s Advice on how to pitchVCs” by Raj Kapoor of MayfieldFund. They provide tons of useful in-formation on how to prepare for yourpitch. All the important informationthat you will need is there: keepingnumber of slides to less than 10 or12, the team’s background, product,market opportunity, competitive dif-ferentiation, business model, and fi-nancial projections. My focus,

however, on this article is to provideyou a different perspective with myfour key takeaways (4KTA) to helpyou through your funding process. Itis based upon a number of importantpoints from my discussion with Ar-mando Pauker, General Partner atApex Venture Partners, an early stageVC firm focused on high technologyinvestments.1. Establish Trust, Confidence

and Build a Relationship– There isan old saying that in money matters,the first and most important thing isthe trust between two parties. Inorder to establish trust, you need toestablish a solid relationship first.How do you establish a relationshipwith a VC? If you are already one ofthe sought after startup companies,then VC financing may work rapidlyin your favor. However, if your com-pany is still in its infancy, then you

THE VC PITCH - UNWRAPPED: 4KTA

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By Naveen Bisht, Board Member, Chair – Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE ) Silcon Valley


One of the biggest technical challenges facingthe networking industry today are the de-mands that the next generation of cellularcommunications – known as 4G (for fourth

generation) – will place on the network backhaul andcommunications networks generally.4G – better known as Long Term Evolution by those

in the know – is a revolution in terms of data speeds, butis actually a natural upgrade for existing 2G and 3G cel-lular networks, achieving downstream speeds of an as-tonishing 300 Mbps and uplink speeds of 75 Mbps. Andjust to make life interesting, because LTE is designed – asthe name implies – as an evolutionary standard, evenhigher speeds are made possible through the use of LTEAdvanced (LTE-A) technology. Early tests of LTE-A sug-gest that mobile data speeds of 1 Gbps (yes, a gigabit per

second) downstream are going to be the norm when thetechnology arrives commercially in the latter half of thedecade. Achieving this kind of speed on a mobile basis is not

actually that difficult because of the cellular/wirelesstechnology involved, but the real fun and games - from anetworking perspective - comes when all of this dataneeds to be backhauled across the wireline network andinterconnected with the Internet and other mobile serv-ices.“But hey, it’s mainly voice communications we’re

talking here and voice calls consume only a smidgen ofnetworking bandwidth, so what’s the big deal?”This might have been true in the past, but figures re-

leased late last year by Three – the smallest of the UK’sfive main cellcos - show that 97 per cent of its mobile

Dan-Joe Barry, VP Marketing with Nap-atech, looks at some of the challengesthat 4G cellular poses the networkingcommunity..

The 4g challenge that NETWORKINg USERS NOW FACE By Dan-Joe Barry, VP Marketing, Napatech

network usage in the UK is data-based (http://bit.ly/xZv8B8). And ifyou need confirmation of how muchbandwidth is being consumed by thecellcos, take a look around you whenyou’re next on the train, and you’llalmost certainly see a lot of people -surfing, emailing and interacting –and all using their smartphone or lap-top computers.This surge in cellular networking

usage will need four main pillars ofsupport: excellent network monitor-ing, testing, security and optimisa-tion. Since 4G mobile networks likeLTE are entirely packet based (ratherthan circuit-switched like 2G and3G), there is a greater need to moni-tor mobile networks in real-time tounderstand where traffic is comingfrom, where it is going, which appli-cations are being used and by whom. This information can be used for

efficient planning and anticipatingnetwork problems before they occur.But, even more importantly, this in-formation can provide the basis formaking more intelligent decisions onhow to offer services to customersand under what terms. Since packetnetworks are shared, one user can po-tentially hijack bandwidth starvingothers in the process. So, while youmight have a 1 Gbps download ca-pacity, you are not able to downloadas that bandwidth has already beentaken upstream. One of the potential areas of con-

gestion in mobile networks is the in-crease in signalling traffic. Each timea service is used, signalling is sentback and forth to help setup and sup-port the service. With the multitudeof apps on smartphones today, thereis a real danger of signalling explo-sion on mobile networks. Excellentnetwork testing based on protocolanalysis and synchronized trafficgeneration helps planners to ensurethat these scenarios are taken into ac-count. Protocol analyzers use probetechnology to remotely monitor crit-

ical points in the network analyzingand collecting information on sig-nalling traffic amongst other things.This allows operators to monitor per-formance in real-time. Synchronized traffic generation

allows multiple time-synchronizedload testing systems to be located atvarious geographic locations simu-lating a large number of mobile de-vices. Since the systems aresyncrhonized with nanosecond preci-sion, it is possible to load the net-work with data from multiplelocations at exactly the same time.This is an invaluable tool in simulat-ing potential “network-crashing”events. Optimum security for these IP

transmissions will also be required,as the sheer volume of data flowingacross cellular network backhaul net-works will make the backhaul net-works a key target for cybercriminals– remember that a growing numberof mobile broadband users will beaccessing their online bank accounts

and making transactions with theirmobile phone.The final networking pillar re-

quired will be excellent network op-timisation, which will help thecellcos – and their national networkpartners – extract optimum band-width out of their finite network re-sources.Indeed one can take this one step

further and call it service optimisa-tion, as the main goal is to ensure thatmobile users can access the servicesthey need when they need them witha quality of service for which theyare willing to pay. Optimising thenetwork is thus a part of the serviceassurance process, but the informa-tion gathered by network optimisa-tion nodes, such as Deep PacketInspection probes and Policy En-forcement Servers can be used bycellcos to offer services, which aremore in tune with subscriber needs,such as ensuring maximum perform-ance for Facebook or Gaming or pro-viding higher bandwidth services atdifferent times of the day. The common theme for these four

pillars is the need for a network mon-itoring and analysis infrastructure tocomplement the communications in-frastructure of 4G mobile networks.To ensure that available bandwidthand resources are used optimally, es-pecially in the face of explosive datagrowth, it is essential that the rightnetwork monitoring infrastructurebased on independent deep packetcapture probes is established. This approach is already widely

used for network monitoring, testing,security and optimisation of Ethernetand IP networks and can be readilyapplied to 4G mobile networks. Running a mobile network with-

out an effective network monitoringand analysis infrastructure is likedriving a sports car at night with thelights off. As long as the road isstraight, no problem. But, when theroad turns...

One of the potentialareas of congestion inmobile networks is the in-crease in signalling traf-fic. Each time a service isused, signalling is sentback and forth to helpsetup and support theservice

BBuussiinneessss

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INDIA INDEXIndex of the top tech public companies in India

Tata Consultancy ServicesInfosys TechnologiesWipro LtdHCL TechnologiesMahindra Satyam Tech MahindraMphasis Patni CompFinancial TechnologiesCMC LtdMindtreeRolta IndiaPolaris SoftwareHCL InfosystemsNIIT LtdGTL LtdSasken Communications TechnologySonata SoftwareMoser BaerSubex Systems

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The Indian IT industry hascome a long way. Includingthe domestic IT business, the

industry has crossed $100 billion inrevenues with over 3.5 million em-ployees. Five of the top 10 globalleaders in software services are In-dian companies. With all Indiancompanies put together accountonly for 10 percent of the $850 bil-lion global IT services industry in-dicating there is ample space forgrowth.However, the growth for Indian

IT industry is choked at present. Al-though India's IT services exportsgrew by a robust 19 percent year-on-year in dollar terms in 2011-12,the trends in the last two quartersare worrisome. Hit by the continuedmacro-economic woes in developedcountries that resulted in delays inproject ramp-ups, the top four In-dian IT companies grew at 17 per-cent in the third quarter and 14percent in the fourth quarter, againsta healthy 24 percent in the first-half.In the current volatile global

economy even achieving growthrates of 10-14 percent has becomechallenging. Some of the after-shocks of this global economicdownturn are already visible. TheBFSI (banking, financial services,insurance) industry, which has beenthe bread earner for the IT servicesindustry —accounting for morethan 40 per cent of Indian IT serv-ices players revenues— is lurchingfrom one crisis to another, neverhaving fully recovered from the2008 meltdown. In 2011, globalBFSI clients reported a dip in prof-

itability due to lower revenuegrowth and pressure on margins.Telecom clients too, have beengoing through tough times. As a re-sult, the cash flows and discre-tionary spending of such largeclients have come down signifi-cantly in the last few quarters of2011-12 and is expected to remainsubdued in the next few quarters.In such a scenario, the competi-

tion for Indian IT service players isnot from the global IT service ma-jors. The new competition is mainlybetween Indian offshore playersleading to lack of pricing power,commoditization and reduction inmargins. There will be growth butmargins will be lesser. To remain profitable companies

will have to change strategy and in-vest in consulting space, handlingbusiness transformation projectslike how IBM or an Accenture hasbeen doing. As one of the eminentindustry observer puts it, "The In-dian players will need to build ahigh-quality consulting and do-main-rich front end, change sales toa partner model, empower the frontend, create a more visible countryspecific local leadership, spendmore on marketing and brand eq-uity, change compensation structureand move the center of managementfrom India to the countries wheretheir market is. The existing deliv-ery-based centralized power struc-tures need to morph into clientfocused groups, more federated andless control based. It also meanschanging the focus to tackling busi-ness challenges leveraging technol-ogy, transforming enterprises, than

being purveyors of technology-ledprojects. In short, from deliveringprojects to transforming enter-prises."

Unlike the past, this phase isgoing to be painful. Many of thecompanies are directionless. This isinteresting times to be a leader inthe IT services space. It is a true testof ability of today's leaders if theycan pull this through. On their abil-ity to transform themselves to meetthe needs of the market will lie theirsuccess and profits. The risks aretoo high. If they succeed, they aregame in. If they fail, perhaps thereisn't a second chance.

By Pradeep Shankar

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GROW or DIE

The Indian players willneed to build a high-quality consulting anddomain-rich front end,change sales to a part-ner model, empower thefront end, create a morevisible country specificlocal leadership, changecompensation structureand move the center ofmanagement from Indiato the countries wheretheir market is.

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