HR LESSONS FROM START-UPS

What crosses your mind when you think about HR in start-ups? Is it the absence of it? Or a bright coloured office and casual dress code? Startups are mostly run by a founder and his core team, who care the least about structures, functions and policies. That's why entrepreneurial HR is a system that works mostly on the basis of mutual agreement and unwritten rules.

"HR in start-ups is a lot more than free beer in the fridge and the ping pong table," says Kanchan Kumar, Founder, Emportant, a payroll processing firm. Start-ups, being nimble-footed, have the luxury of disrupting the HR function. And they are doing just that. When your employer spends his revenue to build your net worth and not merely to pay you a take-home salary, or when the founder himself delivers the induction programme to explain the companys culture right on day one, you know that the HR function is too mature to be called frivolous. Bring Your Own Device is now Bring Your Own Cloud, showing the transparency and the trust in employees that these start-ups are pioneering.

Blending roles and diminishing boundaries calls for the founder to deliver on HR responsibilities. The first priority is managing people rather than managing a product. "We don't have a traditional HR person. I double up as the HR manager, among other things," says Anand Jain, Founder, Clever Tap, a mobile technology start-up.

Let us look at each HR process and how it is being disrupted at start-ups.

Hiring: Set the ball rolling

Social seems to be the unanimous choice for hiring with referrals leading the way. A twist or two paves the way for integration of the new hires.

"All my employees were hired through referrals. The induction is informal. Since new employees come through referrals, they hit the ground running as they have the knowledge of the company and the product," says Jain.

Ankur Agarwal, Founder, PriceBaba, an online price comparison site, echoes this. "The biggest plus of social recruiting is that the candidate is vetted much before joining. We also have a good history of getting interns to join us full time after they complete their education. That loop is priceless. Once someone joins full time, he helps us recruit more good candidates from his college."

Crowd Fire, a social media product marketing company, approaches talent sourcing differently. It organises meet-ups for brainstorming design ideas and pools in talent for future hiring. WebEngage, a company that provides online marketing tools for ecommerce firms, flies down the interviewee to its office in Mumbai for several rounds to find the right capability, with minimal mismatch between expectation and delivery.

Instamojo, an instant payment solutions provider, focuses on direct hiring through sources such as the Career page, AngelList, Referrals and Instahyre. Referral bonus becomes a lump sum if the employee facilitates joining of five or more people. Media Magic pays Rs 10,000 to the interviewer once the candidate completes three months in the organisation. This builds ownership and expertise among the leaders in the firm.

FreeCharge also depends on referrals. Employee referrals are enhanced with gamification, which is interesting, fun and rewarding. As part of the programme, there is an online portal which helps employees share the jobs available on social networking sites and relevant forums. 'Tech Carnival' offers a Goa vacation after every successful referral.

New Hire Integration POCE (Post Offer Candidate Engagement) at FreeCharge offers a platform for candidates to interact and integrate and get to know the workplace culture, norms and expectations. New hires are invited for informal meets and greet lunch sessions with the hiring managers. New laptops are sent even before they come on board.

Big Basket invests in a strong cultural orientation with focus on integrity, speed and urgency. Growing at a whopping 200 per cent, deepening the vision and the mission of the founder remain imperatives. Creating the best last mile for the customer requires each and every employee to deliver on the core culture. Managing employees on payroll and on-demand labour requires rigorous training on the core culture and mission along with skill-based programmes.

Time Management

The focus at start-ups is on productivity and attendance is secondary. "We dont track vacation or work hours. If an employee is thinking about attendance, he is not thinking about the product or tech," says Jain of Clever Trap.

Work arrangement that works best for the talent is offered, and this goes beyond work-from-home. Agarwal of PriceBaba offers traffic-friendly work hours. "We never measure attendance. We ask team members to declare their leaves to their managers over email. We recently did away with timings altogether. Our previous policy was that employees could come in any time between 9am and 11am. We have now left it to the individual. So, employees choose the timings, and most of them have their creative ways of beating the Mumbai traffic."

Training: Passing the Ball

Developing skills requires a similar focus. WebEngage, being a small and fast-growing company, doesn't have enough slack and structure to put employees through a training programme. So, the employee, after joining, is given a solo task. For techies, it is a problem they wanted to solve for long but couldnt focus on, due to various reasons. Sales guys attend a number of sessions with the CEO and the sales team where they decode the process they follow and note down points to be kept in mind while approaching the clients.

Instamojo combines various forms with hands-on training and interactive methods such as townhall presentation, role-playing, facilitation along with mentoring, and e-learning.

At times, employees are allowed to interact with mentors outside the firm."One of our biggest challenges is that our young team lacks the experience of setting up processes or dealing with tricky management issues. So, we have a set of mentors to help us out. We have empowered our team members to directly speak to these mentors. For instance, Jain of Clever Tap and Aditya Mishra of SwitchMe, a loan switching platform, are directly accessible to several people in our team as mentors. We have internal Barcamp-like unconference sessions, delivered by individuals within the company, and the topics can range from 'productivity' to 'spirituality', says Agarwal of PriceBaba.

FreeCharge organises 'bugathon' and 'hackathon' before the launch of any new product.

Teaming up

Structures are designed according to work and responsibility. Sampad Swain, Founder, Instamojo, says, "Considering that we are a very small group, we have no designations or hierarchies. This way each person focuses on his responsibilities, working as a team and learning. This also reduces corporate politics."

Kunal Shah, Founder, FreeCharge, says, "We follow a flat structure and this has helped us build a great work culture. We give our employees a lot of freedom to implement their ideas and access senior leadership teams."

But growth fuels structures. WebEngage, being at that stage, has leads to teams, including development, design, support, marketing and sales. "Timely execution of things demands ownership and, hence, the leads, but other than that we prefer no hierarchy as such and follow an open culture, both physically and philosophically," says the founder, Avlesh Singh.

The tools that are mostly used are JIRA for project management and Salesforce for the sales team. Trello, Slack and Google Docs remain the next favourites.

Measuring for a match win

Startup employees engage better with their employers, thanks to flexible HR policies

Media Magic's svadhyaya programme requires that employees review and rate themselves. It's a 100 per cent self-review system where the manager comments only on the ranking and not on the review. Founder Kapil Agarwal believes no one can own your success or explain what you delivered. "Often, this self-review makes the employee contemplate where he should have focused more. Hence, he can plan the goals for the next year even better." Jain of Clever Tap approaches it differently: "The speed of feature releases is a good indicator of output and efficiency."

Balancing act

When passion drives performance, the work-life balance is re defined. Jain agrees. "While there's no organised attempt at employee engagement, we try to have fun as a team as much as we can. We took the team out for an IPL match and called in an astronomer for a star-gazing event." At times, the absence of budget helps employees gel better. Kushal Agarwal, Co-Founder, Gift XOXO, shares an incident. "Our old office building required painting and decoration. Since we did not have a big budget, we announced a 'paint your wall' programme that became a hit with the employees. Everyone went beyond painting and decorated the office with captions and favourite cartoon characters. In no time, our office started looking swanky, with far greater sense of ownership among employees." Instamojo had a 'bring your pet to work' day. But it's the ease of work it focuses on more with work-from-home options, no rigid swipe in & out time and flexible work hours. There is also no restriction on the number of earned leaves as long as this does not harm the business/key deliverables. There are no defined work stations and employees can sit wherever they want. FreeCharge takes it a step ahead with flexible work hours and extended maternity leave.

Salaries, Not an Issue

Deciding compensation is like walking on a knife and requires maintaining a balance between being profitable and creating value for employees. Clever Tap offers market or above market salaries apart from stock options. The goal is to make sure that the employees are not worried about salaries in the short term. Stock options are issued to encourage them to build something they will be proud of in the next few years. This takes care of long-term wealth generation. A similar trend is followed at PriceBaba, where the employee can decide the distribution of cash and equity. "We never try to retain someone for money. That is a race we cannot afford to run and do not want to run. We offer leadership and growth to people. The key takeaway for them is the learning. At the same time, we offer a combination of equity and cash. The candidate can choose if he wants more equity or more cash," says Agarwal.

Disrupting the Game

Blending roles calls for the founder to deliver on HR responsibilities. The first priority is managing people rather than managing a product.

HR functions in startups run in the vein of every other process as managing people is deeply integrated with the development of the product. Segregation and defining of functions is secondary.

The founders are disrupting the process without often realising the maturity that they have achieved. The stickiness of disruptive functions in startups should help them solve bigger business problems as they grow.

Are such disruptions possible at large corporations? Big firms have better platforms and bigger budgets, with often the best brains, to innovate. Is it possible to have lean workflows with high degree of transparency where the employee will know his performance with every delivery and not with the year-end appraisal ranking? Can large organisations sustain the holographic structure where the core culture of the founder gets imbibed in each of its parts?

What would it take for the firm to orient and align the new leaders in the firm to continue with the legacy? Can large firms function like a hologram where every employee and vertical is exactly a copy of the whole?

Citation from Business Today :http://goo.gl/dfaJRm

 

10,000 STARTUPS A DAY BEING SET UP IN CHINA TO BOOST ECONOMY

BEIJING: More than 10,000 startup firms are being set up everyday in China as part of new reforms initiated by the Chinese government to halt the slide of the economy.
China sees more than 10,000 firms born every day amid government support forentrepreneurship and so far about six million new startups have been setup, Xin Guobin, vice minister of Industry and Information Technology said.
Most of the firms are small enterprises. Data was collected last March through the end of August this year and about six million firms were registered during the period, he said.
The government has been cutting taxes and fees, helping small firms save about 48.6 billion yuan ($7.93 billion) in the first half of the year, Xin said.

Lending to small firms stood at 16.2 trillion yuan ($2.7 billion) at the end of June, up 14.5 per cent from last year, Xin said.
However, he admitted small firms are facing challenges amid economic slowdown, slumping product prices, rising costs and production overcapacity.
The new startup campaign has been initiated by the government as the economic slowdown is causing big job losses all over China.
The startups, were expected to revitalise the economy taking advantage of the booming e-commerce.

The campaign was also expected to boost government's drive to boost the domestic consumption changing the orientation of the economy from export dependent to that of the one based on domestic consumption.
Chinese economy is currently hovering around seven per cent.
According to IMF, China's growth is expected to slow from 7.3 per cent in 2014 to 6.8 per cent this year and 6.3 per cent in 2016 as the country struggles with its shift from export to consumption-driven economy.

Citation from Economics Times :http://goo.gl/CY1aVJ

Before Initiate Your Startup Some Questions You Need To Know.

Startups love to talk about being in "secretiveness." It sounds so intresting, clandestine and illicit.

The realities of "secretive" are not always intresting. In fact, it's fairly debatable if companies should even operate in stealth.

Some startups want to stay super secretive to prevent someone else from stealing their idea. Others believe that staying quiet builds a bit of allure around your brand, which could turn into anticipation or buzz.

So how do you know it's time to launch? Sadly, there is no one-size-fits-all answer, but there are a few key questions that will help you determine when the best time to go live.

1. Have you gotten a lot of unbiased feedback on your product?


The biggest drawback to being stealth boils down to feedback. For a startup, that means you need someone who is not drinking your Kool-Aid to use your product as it was intended and tell you if it works outside of a carefully controlled environment. If you are designing for consumers, you need as much of that feedback as possible. Every person is a snowflake — you might give your product to 100 people and get 100 different responses on what they think.

If you are selling a B2B product, you need beta users to give you feedback and evince ROI. Without that, you are iterating on something that will likely need a complete rehaul. If you can get feedback at scale while you're in stealth, then by all means focus on fine-tuning your product until it is ready for public consumption.

If you can't, then know you will likely have to re-do a lot of the work that you've already done.

2. Is your team built-out?


The next question to ask yourself is: Do you have the infrastructure to support "what's next?" If you don't have (or can't yet afford) a sales and marketing team that can help take advantage of the attention and leads, then that spotlight is lost. If you don't have a team in place to nimbly adjust your product based on user feedback, then you will be dead in the water. Further, if you don't have a communications team in place to help manage things if they go wrong, or to engage with the people giving you unsolicited feedback, then you're going to miss a huge opportunity to turn your early adopters into product evangelists.

Launch is a big part of the equation, but the challenges come soon after. I always ask companies what their marketing and communications infrastructure looks like. You need to follow up with engaging content to keep people interested in your company — a cadence of news, thought leadership, user stories and relevant data to show that you are alive and kicking.

3. What's your customer acquisition strategy?

Many companies make the mistake of thinking that a communicated launch of their product will function as a their primary lead-generating activity. For example, we frequently hear from companies who inquire about a "huge press push" around their emergence from stealth, only to cut ties with us after a month.

My first question is: "What is your strategy for acquiring customers?" If the company doesn't have a post-launch marketing plan, then I usually suggest that it might be best for them to put their PR budget towards sales and marketing. I see many consumer-facing companies in particular holding onto stealth mode because they don't feel the product is perfect. What happens a lot, however, is that they launch with a huge spectacle and then go quiet; people forget about the app or product.

Although some products do grow organically, the crowded landscape of products targeting consumers means that you have to put some promotion behind it.


4. Do you have proof that you have a business?

We agonized over the angles asking ourselves what insights and assets we wanted to give the reporter, and what narratives we wanted to push.

After the journalist accepted the embargo, took the interview and listened to the story, he said, "You know, I don't like to cover companies coming out of stealth. At that point, you are an idea. Come to me when you can prove that your idea is a business."
To write a story that readers won't see through, the media needs proof that your company adds value. Funding is always a good affirmation, but with the flood of VC money into the market, it is not always enough. Proof can come in many forms: user traction, successful beta users and other forms of user data are evidence that the market needs your product.

While we're taught the importance of making a good first impression, we can't forget the vital impact of good second and third impressions. If you fail to follow up with early users, who's going to remember or trust you. Focusing too much on your emergence from stealth without looking at the long game is an easy way to end up on a "Where Are They Now" list.

Disclaimer :- Following article come from Mashable Business

TECH STARTUPS CHASE SOMETHING OTHER THAN PROFITS

At a demo day in San Francisco on Wednesday, Joyce Kim’s presentation of her financial tech startup sounded a lot like a tech startup pitching venture capitalists for funding. She scrolled through a slide deck and stood at a podium, sporting a t-shirt of her startup.

Until she came to her financials. In a pilot, people around the world used her tech to complete 6 million transactions country to country, she said. The fees she collected came out to approximately 20 cents.

Ms. Kim’s venture is not a typical tech startup. It is not trying to join the billion dollar club, and its goal is not to make money.

Her startup, Stellar.org, is one of a new breed of tech non-profits whose ambition is for technology to help solve some of the world’s most intractable problems such as global poverty and climate change. Ms. Kim participated in Fast Forward, an accelerator funded in part by Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Alphabet Inc.Google+0.64%, and investment management corporation BlackRock Inc.

Also this week, startup accelerator Y Combinator announced a new research lab, YC Research, designed to tackle work that requires a long time horizon and seeks to answer very open-ended questions.

These non-profit startups are doing everything their for-profit peers are doing: modeling themselves on lean startups, writing scalable business models and attending accelerators.

“We’re not doing this with the goal of helping YC’s startups succeed or adding to our bottom line. At the risk of sounding cliché, this is for the benefit of the world,” wrote Y Combinator president Sam Altman.

The problems these startups take on resonate with what many in Silicon Valley see as their mission to solve the world’s ills.

The demo day in San Francisco was the culminating event of Fast Forward’s 13-week accelerator program. Started in 2014 by software entrepreneur Kevin Barenblat, founder of social-marketing company Context Optional and social entrepreneur Shannon Farley, founding executive director of Spark, the largest network of Millennial philanthropists, Fast Forward provides workshops, mentoring and $25,000 in seed money to a cohort of tech non-profits. Google.org and BlackRock pitched in $1 million.

“The non-profits said they felt like weirdos because they didn’t fit into tech accelerators as a non-profit, and they also didn’t fit into non-profit communities as tech companies. This program is designed to bridge these connections,” Mr. Barenblat said.

In addition to Stellar.org, eight other startups also presented. They included TalkingPoints, a platform for parents who don’t speak English to text a child’s teacher and Callisto, a confidential way to document and report sexual assault. The founders were more diverse than those at most pitch events. Of the nine founders on stage Wednesday evening, just two were white men.

The approximately 60 angel investors at the demo day opened their wallets after the presentations ended, handing out about $150,000 in funding, according to Mr. Barenblat.

“People can see the passion in the entrepreneurs, they understand what their challenges are,” said Mr. Barenblat.

At the pitch event, held in warehouse-style San Francisco office of Alphabet Inc., Ms. Kim played up her site’s technical chops. “Under the hood, it’s a decentralized, distributed database,” she said. Before pursuing this startup, Ms. Kim worked in venture capital before launching the startup a year and a half ago.

Instead of measuring profits, Ms. Kim determines her success by how many people her startup is able to impact. Her goal is to create the financial system for the world’s poor. There are currently 2 billion “unbanked” people in the world, so she has her work cut out for her.

Citation from Wall Street Journal (blog) : http://goo.gl/5cSvLo

http://www.ventureart.biz/

THE BIG BUSINESS OF SMALL COMPANIES

Around the world, the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector is a vital engine of innovation and job creation. Understanding the real challenges and opportunities shaping the future of SMEs, then, is a matter of the highest importance.

Small business is – quite frankly – big business. It is estimated that more than 90 % of the world’s businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Surprised? Don’t be. SMEs are, on average, the businesses that are generating growth, creating jobs, growing faster and innovating more. But most of all, they are a good deal less complicated (structurally) and more efficient and flexible than are large firms.

It’s not all a bed of roses though. While SMEs make a huge impact on income, employment and wider economic output, their fortunes have been disproportionately affected by the financial crisis. SMEs are both an engine of job creation and a significant factor in job destruction, making them the embodiment of Schumpeter’s “creative destruction”, i.e. the disruptive process of transformation that goes hand in hand with innovation. Confirming these observations, an EU estimate alluded to the shocking fact that as few as 50 % of firms that started trading in 2001 survived beyond five years.

The question of how to serve SMEs is not new. Many researchers, academics and economists have searched for a winning formula over the years, with mixed results. So the question remains: what can be done to bolster SMEs? There is no magic formula for ensuring there is a thriving global SME community – if so it would have probably been implemented long ago – but the expanded use of International Standards can foster entrepreneurship and help small businesses compete on an equal footing.

Why small businesses matter

 There is no global agreement on the definition of SMEs, but one thing virtually every country does agree on is that they are essential for economic prosperity. Small companies make up the vast majority of businesses in most countries and employ a significant percentage of the global workforce. Although precise data is unavailable, World Bank research across the world’s economies has estimated that SMEs consistently form around 95 % of existing businesses and employ approximately 60 % of private-sector workers. They are also believed to contribute about 50 % to world gross value add (GVA).

In the USA, for example, the Small Business Administration identified more than 28.2 million businesses operating in the country as of March 2014, with about 63 % of new jobs being created from small business between 1993 and mid-2013. Of these 28.2 million enterprises, most have “self-employed” status, making up roughly three-quarters of the US’s total business pool.

Path out of poverty

 According to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, which sees to the economic welfare of developing countries, integration into the global economy through economic liberalization, deregulation and democratization is seen as the paramount way to triumph over poverty and inequality. Important to this process is the development of an animated private sector in which SMEs can play a central role.

Export specialist Khemraj Ramful, Senior Adviser, Export Quality Management, International Trade Centre, explains how SMEs are essential in poverty reduction programmes because of their potential contribution to economic growth. By facilitating their access to information on technical regulations and standards, assisting them with meeting the requirements of International Standards and paving the way to competent conformity assessment services, we can help these small-scale firms to thrive in an increasingly competitive global market, so that they can play their part in alleviating poverty.

Ramful firmly believes that standards are the solution. “ISO International Standards have a definite role to play in the removal of technical barriers to trade and in assisting enterprises in developing economies that are connected to global value chains. Implementing International Standards can help provide that confidence.” But most importantly, he asserts, “For the man on the street, this means that International Standards like the ISO standards can contribute to improving exports, which would have an impact on job creation and poverty alleviation in developing economies.”

As good as it gets

There’s both good news, and bad news. The good news is that International Standards provide as many benefits for small businesses as they do for global enterprises. The strategic use of International Standards can make a significant difference to the annual turnover of an SME, sometimes the difference between success and failure.

For smaller firms, some of the benefits of using International Standards include:

·         The opening up of export markets as products become compatible on a global scale

·         Heightened operational efficiency

·         Increased confidence as customers from all over the world recognize ISO International Standards

Be that as it may, for many small businesses, making the decision to participate in a standards development process remains difficult, as managers are typically reluctant to allocate resources to a long-term process that promises, at best, intangible benefits. However, if the company is committed and participates actively in the process, the return on investment can be substantial.

The principal benefits of participation include visibility, in-depth understanding, innovation, competitive advantage, networking possibilities, and opportunities to access potential customers. In other words, non-participation in standardization hands decision making over to the competition.

Small business is big business.

So what’s the bad news? A number of recent surveys have linked the low representation of SMEs in standardization to such obstacles as time, personnel or financial resources. According to the 2014 German Standardization Panel, a report on how companies conduct their standardization activities and implement standards, small firms are hampered by financial constraints that prevent many of them from taking an active part in standards development.

According to Knut Blind, Europe’s most prominent academician working in the field of standardization, “formal” standards, such as ISO standards, are used in almost equal measure by all of the thousand or so companies involved in this annual survey, regardless of size. There is one exception, however: while the larger companies of this world have the resources to develop and implement complementary company internal standards, smaller companies with fewer resources rely more heavily on the availability of formal International Standards.

For Blind, it is still a challenge to convince small companies to participate in standardization and send people to the committees. “Most SMEs, particularly the smaller ones, lack the necessary resources to commit to long-term strategies and investments, which are only paying back in the future. Their management is largely involved in daily operational practice, and there is no time or money available for activities not directly related to the daily business. They are forced, therefore, to have a short-term view of their business and are limited in reacting to anticipated changes such as future regulations or the development of new standards.”

Not all benefits are equal

Where Blind sees fundamental challenges for small companies, which must be addressed by awareness-raising activities, a number of small businesses are already reaping the profits of standards use. In a recent interview, Isabelle Jacobi Pilowsky of Rentes Genevoises, the oldest contingency-fund company in Switzerland, extolled the virtues of standards. The small company has long been committed to managing its real estate portfolio responsibly using ISO standards, in particular ISO 50001 to control the energy expenditure of its buildings.

The first results are very positive, enthuses Jacobi Pilowsky. “Our target was to cut our CO2 emissions by 3 % and in 2012, we achieved a 4.7 % reduction.” An excellent initiative for the 30-person company. ISO 50001 allows the institution to set itself targets – and keep to them – such as improving the energy efficiency of their 60-strong building stock and reducing the cost of energy consumption while improving comfort for its tenants.

When asked about advice for other SMEs, Jacobi Pilowsky clasps her hands and exhales. “There’s plenty!” she says, listing a score of useful tips which include the need for measurement tools and scorecards to track performance, the constant monitoring of objectives, and training of all stakeholders. For more tips, see “Secrets to energy success” below.

While Rentes Genevoises succeeded on its own terms, the role of trade associations in improving the situation for SMEs should not be forgotten. Quite simply, trade associations are “strength in numbers”. A top priority would be therefore to establish or improve relationships with these industry groups, discuss their respective roles, and provide them with knowledge and materials.

In Brazil, the non-profit Sebrae helps small businesses compete on an equal footing and get a toehold in the market. It aims to strengthen the national economy, where smaller companies make up an astounding 99 % of all Brazilian enterprises and contribute to 25 % of the country’s GDP. The organization provides support on many levels, such as information technology and finances as well as on ways to access innovation and technology through standards.

Take, for example, the beauty parlours business. There are about 500 000 legally formalized beauty parlours in Brazil, which, until recently, were operating without parameters or formal standards. This is why, a few years ago, Sebrae (in collaboration with ISO’s Brazilian member ABNT) set up a project to help the beauty sector with their standardization needs. In 2014, the first national standard for the beauty sector – was published by ABNT. To help the sector’s SMEs get to grips with standards, two supporting documents are also being made available: Good practices for beauty establishments andCompetencies of people working in beauty stores.

“The wave of professionalization initiated by the standardization process was divided into two law bills which regulate the beauty services business in the country (law bills are still in the National Congress),” explains Heloisa Menezes, Sebrae’s Technical Director. “Sebrae, as the coordinator of the process, now has the challenge of disseminating these new technical standards in Brazil, to promote competitiveness and complement systemic improvements already underway with entrepreneurs.”

Doomed to fail?

Are all small businesses doomed to fail? The answer is of course “no”. Interestingly enough, a small number of high-growth businesses do go on to reach a significant size and employ many workers. Furthermore, within the cycle of business births and deaths, SMEs expose incumbents to competition and innovation that force them to change and become more productive. That innovative stimulus helps economies grow.

SMEs are responsible for introducing most of today’s products and services on the markets and are typically much better at identifying and adopting new trends than larger, established corporations. They promote diversification of economic activities, support sustainable development, stimulate innovation, develop entrepreneurial skills, not to mention the significant contribution they make to exports and trade. More importantly, they are structurally a good deal less complicated and more efficient and flexible than larger firms.

With small businesses accounting for approximately half of a country’s business and workforce, we need standard solutions that help small businesses leverage their competitive advantage more effectively. While standards will not shelter small companies from failure, nor will they increase their survival rate, they will level the playing field, allowing them to compete on fair and equal terms. And when they do, we can look forward to a new economic map emerging, where smaller businesses play a big role in shaping the world – at last.

Citation from ISO : http://goo.gl/eYYiM6

This is how IBM is helping start-ups reach cloud nine!

Flipkart's Big Billion Day Sale is approaching and people are waiting with bated breath to see whether it would be a roaring success or a doomsday sale like its previous stunt last year. One of the main reasons why it failed like most databases do is lack of adequate storage of data. 

Likewise, if we think about the Smart Cities project, there would be large scale application of IoT (Internet of Things). The big question is where can we store such massive bulk of data securely? 

The solution is on cloud, literally. Cloud is upending the industry. Large enterprises, midsized companies to even start ups are moving toward a scalable infrastructure that is optimized and responsive to help them meet new business demands. Cloud models also help businesses to work smarter through more flexible and cost-effective access to technology and information. 

"Now we live in a generation where if start-ups need to start new applications, by default their option is cloud. It provides a quick solution to get the infrastructure up and running," said Radhesh Kanumury, Country Manager, Global Entrepreneur Programme, IBM India/South Asia. 

How IBM is helping start-ups reach cloud nine 

1. IBM's cloud platform offers solutions to cater to the needs of SMBs, start-ups and developers which constitute a huge portion of the cloud market. As per a report from Evans Data Corp, India is slated to have the largest developer community in the world by year 2019. The report further goes on to state that the number of developers is expected to grow to 26.4M by 2016 and the percentage of developers expected to develop in the cloud will grow by 44% to 12.5M by 2019. 

2. As enterprises increase the adoption of cloud based consumption of IT, they will have a need for an integrated and secure view of IT across on premise, off premise infrastructures and applications. IBM helps customers create this hybrid environment. 

"It gives startups the freedom that they need to quickly build applications. One can develop applications faster than before, even develop 4-5 builds (transition from prototype to product) per week," said Srinath Ranga, founder of Opteamize Cloud Solutions Pvt Ltd, an IBM Business Partner offers Cloud and SaaS solutions focused on accelerating the student recruitment processes. 

3. In pursuit of creating the best suite of solution for customers, IBM invested $7 billion in building a high value cloud portfolio. With a strong portfolio at every level of cloud- SoftLayer at the infrastructure level and Bluemix, the platform-as-a-service, IBM serves Indian enterprises with the solutions, depending on varied business requirements. 

4. Apart from providing cloud infrastructure, IBM also provides hands-on training to the start-ups to get the maximum out of cloud. This is also followed by technical assistance when and where needed, which is done in real time through cloud. 

5. Though bandwidth and expensive hardware would be the two main challenges, but the government is on its way to provide cheap bandwidth to even the remotest of the villages in India. As per bandwidth is concerned, the best use of cloud is one can store data offline on cloud and when connectivity is there one can send the data to the database. 

How start-ups are reaching out to cloud 

1. Start-ups, related to medical services, are taking to cloud to store medical data of their customers. With the smart wearables available, start-ups are taking to them too. A Bombay start-up is developing a device to detect heart attacks and send help on an immediate basis. 

2. Cloud platforms are used by start-ups like LightMetrics to measure fuel efficiency of a vehicle, harsh braking and violation of traffic rules and hence manage the traffic on real time. 

3. Another start-up has taken to IBM solutions to monitor the energy usage of an electrical appliance. 

4. A Tamil Nadu based start-up have solved the problem faced by crab breeders where maintaining the pH level of the water is critical to the life of the breeds. As soon as the level increases, an alert is sent to the smartphone. 

5. Radhesh also said cloud can also help police to monitor riot prone areas. For example, if there are more than 10 people at a place where they shouldn't be, an alert is sent and necessary steps can be taken. 

Citation from Business Insider India : http://goo.gl/n23eMs

What six top accelerators want to hear from startups

It’s a rare opportunity for a startup to pitch in front of one accelerator, let alone six on the same day. Recently, representatives from 500 Startups, Alchemist, Startup Bootcamp, Seedcamp, Open Network Lab and Chinacclerator watched nearly 40 startups deliver two-minute pitches in Seoul.

After the pitches, all of the reps came up on stage to give the startups advice on how to improve their pitches. Here are their eight top recommendations:

One: Your goal is to get a meeting

The reason you’re making a pitch is to get a meeting, not to convince an accelerator or VC to make an investment on the spot. Meeting One will lead to Meeting Two, which will hopefully give way to Meeting Three. Don’t lay out your entire case. Make your strongest points and cover the details or secondary business models during your meetings.

Two: Talk about your team

What makes your team uniquely able to execute your idea? The team and your passion, more than anything else, separate you from competitors. You must demonstrate a personal attachment to wanting to solve the problem you’re tackling.Otherwise, the accelerators will assume you’ll give up when things get tough and your bank balance is sitting at zero.

Three: Don’t pretend you’re perfect

What do you need help on from an accelerator? If everything is perfect, you’ll be fine on your own. Don’t be afraid to demonstrate a need.

Four: Talk about specific plans for growth

How will you get your first 100 or 1,000 customers? It’s easy for startups to make up market projections or valuations. What’s harder is sitting down and coming up with a strategy or traction or early growth. Make sure to talk about how you will grow and be specific about the next milestones you plan to reach.

Five: Focus on what the accelerators don’t know

Most accelerators can guess at the total size of the market you’re trying to tap. If you’re pressed for time, you can skip over this in your pitch. The exception to this is if you’re taking on a niche or re-segmented market that’s harder to gauge.

Six: Talk about how well you understand your customers and market

This isn’t just about proving that you’ve done your homework. It’s about showing that your strategies match up with actual customers, not just hypothetical ones.

Seven: Tell a story and capture attention

Having thought through your problem and solution is great, but the way you present that problem and solution is just as important. The story needs to be simple enough that anyone can understand, but you need to include details that show you know what you’re talking about. Accelerators and VCs see lots of startup pitches. They only remember a few.

Eight: End your pitch with a strong call for action

This can be a specific ask from the accelerator or asking the audience to download your app for something in return. No matter what the call to action is, it should be aimed at making you more memorable.

Citation from Your Story : http://goo.gl/uT26pf