Some gems I heard over the two days I was at the Nasscom Product Conclave (All paraphrased. Non italicized bits are mine):
- Indians don’t take risks. Yeah, right.
- Indians are immature. We should read more books. Whoa, there!
- Indians don’t know how to sell
So, more or less, “Me = All Indian” seems to be a strong foundation of the ecosystem. Add to that the repetition of the sentiment. And again. And expertise is thus born!
The hordes selling Tally, and of course making it, and the numerous loads who set up Potels, and the Tata Nano and the risk associated with buying a JLR or a Corus, the buying and selling of Glaceau – I guess no Indians in any of those pictures, eh ?
Ok, sorry about the sarcasm etc. I will confess it did get my goat and this was not a mature reaction. Should probably go read a book to figure that one out 
Seriously. Guys, please.
There are numerous other Indians who take risks, sell awesomely, and while they might not read books, their business maturity will be the content of many. Hordes of them.
We’re the nation who’s everywhere – amongst the largest trading, immigrating, innovating populations. (Its not, repeat not, repeat not about patents and lab research alone. Please get over that inferiority complex of yours. Please.) Yes, I personally suck at a lot of these attributes, and would love to learn how to deal with this gap. So do a lot many from the technology space, and this is surely a gap we need to bridge (probably through partnering).
So lets please find those Indians, learn from them. The sweeping generalizations will not help. A pets.com, amongst a gazillion similar examples, sucked as much, and the nationality tag doesn’t help at all!
If we all become a little more straightforward, show a little more honesty and humility, and focus on the solutions, we might yet create an ecosystem. Judgmental generalizations, though, will probably not be part of that…
Your opinion?
And how can we forget it came from Indians (NASSCOM). Pathetic! When would it happen that Industry would start analyzing the issues as their own, instead of opining like third-party.
But I’d still not disagree with them in entirety. We might be 6.5 on 10, If not 10/10. But that’s the case everywhere.
Talking about the risks, well why go beyond IT industry. Day-in-day-out we hear so many acquisitions of Foreign Companies by Indian IT Orgs.
I’d pretend that the speaker (who said all that) would have been little less prepared to analyze the ‘risk’ s/he was taking by uttering such things. Truly we Indians don’t take risks.
PS : Loved the blog. Keep it going!
-Tanuj
And am glad that pluggd.in isn’t part of ‘that’ ecosystem! We are happy doing stuff what we do.
Ecosystem quite lately has become a drama – get together every few months..talk of innovation and go home with some press coverage.
It’s time those ‘inside’ the ecosystem start taking risk and start doing more meaningful stuff!
Nevertheless, this is part of growing up..we cant expect anyone to be perfect..we are all growing..but like sameer said ‘lets be honest’!
I think that’s what matters.
I am wondering why comment is not approved yet?
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NASSCOM itself is sagging and losing credibility. For all these years they were the first to promote outsourcing and now they are playing this product/solutions trumpcard and blaming Indians.
It doesn’t go well when an organization (or people who endorse NASSCOM) like NASSCOM say this as they have done nothing to promote/create/nurture a culture of Innovation in India and rather tried to kill it working other way round
Well, in all fairness, the conclave itself was pretty good – especially from the pov of the participation roped in, and a couple of the sessions that were particularly useful. I can only applaud Nasscom for this effort. No other event I’ve been to in India has had the breadth I encountered here. Pretty impressive.
The ‘ecosystem’ I referred to in this post is some now-oft-repeated voices that get echoed by others. In fact, I’d say Nasscom was more about business and whatever else you might consider it guilty of, blaming Indians and being utterly cynical is not something they’ve done. Its our inward focused blogosphere thats more like that, unfortunately. The good news – I met a whole lot of people who’re starting to think differently and look at startups and product creation differently, and will hopefully negate such voices.
Business was about the services play – and there *was* surely innovation to be done within that. Nasscom, and the players that were part of it – have made India a major brand and while there are arguments against the ‘service’ industry etc, I’d actually want to acknowledge them to create a stable business model, a brand and a platform on which we can hope to create products. Its upto us to reach out, connect and understand the business pov, figure out how customers are created and managed, and brands grown. The event did provide a start. Let’s see.
Well, not sure about this event but I had been to TIE-ISB Connect last week in Hyd and there is tonal shift all over and everyone(especially VCs) seem to be focussed on addressing real issues and atleast seemed to be more open to understand and appreciate Indian enterpreneurs objectively for whatever they are and do not necessarily compare with silicon valley which is a good sign for the ecosystem. As always there would be exceptions.
Great post…Completely in sync with it…
There is one set of people like the ones you allude to who’re completely blind sighted to so many good and courageous things about India or from Indians… Often this is because this set of people is intellectually incapable of comprehending the larger processes that lead things come to be how they are, and so expect a complete ditto replication of what is available in Western societies/culture to be present here…
Then there is another set who is largely insecure and who want to be righteous about everything in India visavis other places; even some of the really bad things that need to change…
The people who have a balance are a small minority, it would seem. Hopefully this is changing.
Yeah! I’m positive its changing
I wouldn’t say its because they’re “intellectually incapable of comprehending the larger processes”. Its more that they’ve started to have a stake in the current models and status quo. There are events to be organized, books to be written, deals to be flipped, money to be raised, etc. Essentially – meta activity around the product stories that do bias them towards certain views, and provide a disincentive for exploring the larger business scenarios.
Case in point: I’ve been a co-founder of one startup. Should I claim business expertise and suchlike, and pass judgment ? Truth is, as the landscape gets more “real” I’m almost at level zero and the little bit of “wisdom” I’ve garnered is best discounted except for specific skills. This is what I mean by honesty.
Sure I see a lot many of us who’re more or less in the same boat, but I want to open my eyes, understand and learn from those who’ve been taking the risks, doing the selling, and have demonstrated business maturity with or without being vocal about it. I’d rather not close my eyes and says “oh but we’re all like this” and be the Guru amongst the lost
If they’re not intellectually incapable they’re insincere/disingenuous — which is probably even worse…
I’ve seen both kinds.. But I dont know too many organizers, stakeholders and event coordinators etc of these kinds of ‘ecosystem events’ so maybe you’re right about this set…
Risks – i agree to a certain point. But that is the culture. For us family and providing for our family is most important. Most households have only one working member managing 3 – 5 others. Risks at individual level can be taken when certain responsibilities are taken care of.
Immature – Not sure what that meant. I would say misinformed.
Cannot Sell – Are you kidding me. Indians are by far the best salesmen and deal makers. We just got into limelight after 2002 . Wait for a few years and you will see Indians selling ice to the Eskimos.
In a panel discussion opinions will be expressed. And as always, some will agree and other will not. To be fair, most panelists were accomplished in various parts of the products and startups space. From entrepreneurs to mentors & investors to product engineering professionals/management. And more. And before we get too stiff lets understand two things: a) The context was ONLY original software products from India. b) We dont have many major software product brand to talk of (save a handful of companies like iFlex or Subex). Many of these discussions were only alluding to this fact. And trying to identify areas that we could look at that (if improved) may help increase the presence and success in this space. In any case, am sure all the comments above will be factored in. And ensure this viewpoint (discussed in this thread) is also taken in when doing the next event.
I attended this really great session by Mr Vijay Batra on motivation last week. He mentioned that being critical is natural while being constructive is unnatural (like being poor is natural while rich is not and being happy is unnatural and being angry / sad is not).
I think psychologically that thought extrapolates here. I also dislike generalizations strongly – although overall I would actually agree with some of the speakers.
However the way I look at it is a Problem-Solution continuum than a statement only. Ashish – you did mention the possible solutions – look at the good examples and learn from them. I would think thats the best way to go.
Lastly I also dislike these conclaves with the “holier than thou” suited fuchs who come and lecture there. The free alcohol is what saves me from the “Echosystem”
And so what are we saying … we are Mature Risk-taking Salesmen
take it easy guys… neither their comment nor your opposition is going to change the reality.
cheers
Kasi
I, for, am certainly not!
Have been learning to take risk and surely not there yet. Figuring out selling from a complete scratch. But the awareness of this, and exploring the process to fix it, hopefully, qualifies me as mature.
All that the post said was that “Indians….” is a lousy way of putting it, and closes too many doors. Even within software, and products, we have great examples and lets just learn from them without putting everyone in one [trash] bucket.
General “bakar” at such conclaves discourages me from attending them. There are no such things are rules or mantras or general characteristics (like immature!!) – generalization is stupid and irritating.
Having said that, Indians are more risk averse than US citizens who get a support called “social security” which we don’t. But here again, there are no rules and exceptions – all kinds of entrepreneurs, rather people, exist everywhere.
Indians have a serious inferiority complex while dealing with white skin!
While I will agree that generalizations don’t help, for those who are trying to bring about a change, it is important to see patterns. And as they say that “exceptions prove the rule”, having couple of examples on one side or the other will only prove that most of us are just sitting on the fence
As an entrepreneur, the facts I see around me
- Number of people doing a startup is surely increasing. But is the number of people willing to work for a startup also increasing? Working for a startup == working without taking a 10% raise above market salary, working for equity
- Nothing against services industry but why do I see a lot more people leaving Amazon, Yahoo, Trilogy and starting up/ joining startups than from Infy, TCS, HCL or Wipro?
Another thing, instead of thinking about it as our people not willing to take risk, I tend to think that the perceived risk is much higher in our case – partly because of our past, partly because of social conditioning and hugely because of our education system. There are companies in Noida who ask for Rs.60k (refundable) deposit to take on freshers as employees and people pay that happily instead of living off that 60k for 6-9 months, working freelance or starting on their own. And this happens because 1) the education system neither tells them nor prepares them for real world 2) the perceived risk of failing is too high.
I think if things need to change at a bigger scale, the players in ecosystem have to attack this perceived risk (I am assuming changing society or the entire education system is a much harder task) and bring it down. Tell everyone that it is going to be alright after all. Life gives everybody a second chance. So “Don’t Panic”
Abhaya
I believe the recession did it’s job..now ppl know ‘layoff’ and ‘not going to office’/
) is doing for those who have started, those who have already taken the risk?
What’s lacking is simple – What is the ecosystem (the standard one which comprises of all the famous entities
You make good points. Surely the appetite for risk can be whetted further. But thats unlikely to happen because of broad strokes painting everyone in the same colour – that might actually be counterproductive.
There’s also the issue of going beyond these early hypotheses. A lot many have taken the risk – tentatively – and unless we create depth in the ecosystem, real world issues may erode that risk taking. Those real world issues have to do with real biz, real selling etc – and closing one’s eyes to the numerous numbers actually doing those around us – yes, Indians! – cannot be smart.