Learnings at Product Conclave & Five Points for Educational Institutions.

If you are a technology enthusiast in India and want to know the new global tech trends, you should attend NASSCOM Product Conclave 2014.

About 1700 participants and 200 odd speakers from various parts of the world to help Indian Tech Product scene to go to the next level. There were about 120 Product Software startups showcased & there were a few more in the form of delegates.

I am here to share my perspective of sessions I attended. 

Day 1 - Growth Track

This was an invite only parallel track sessions. I chose the 'Growth Track' because I thought that would be relevant for me & found few workshops on Digital Learning & Marketing. 

Some terrific insights on how the digital world is helping small startups to reach mass audience in quick time through Content Marketing, SEO, Blogging, Customer Acquistion through Social Media channels  by Dhaval Patel of Kissmetrics.com & Pradeep Chopra of DigitalVidya.com were informative.

A session on how SimpliLearn, an Indian digital learning company cracked growth across countries in few years was worthwhile.

Pallav Nadhani of Fusioncharts shared how they built a milliondollar business through lean sales & marketing.

Dave McClure of 500startups shared some metrics that any startup should focus on.


Day 2 -

How Israel, a tiny country roughly 8 million in population is the 2nd highest tech startup country after US. This is just mindblowing. Unemployment rate is the lowest of 6%. Tech Startups come out of college in numbers. Indian universities has to seriously study Israel and replicate what they are doing right.

Ramesh Raskar of MIT Media Lab's research works are outstanding. He is an Indian like us but the research funding & ecosystem at MIT enables them to think beyond. The lowcost eyeglasses www.eyenetra.com ( Eye Tests using a smart phone app ) was phenomenal.

Girish M of FreshDesk.com shared how they went on to become a Global Product sitting out of India in a quick time. Very inspiring.

The art of starting Tech Ventures by Mahesh Murthy , Alok Kejriwal & Vishal Gondal was a rocking session. Alok & Vishal shared how they started contest & gaming companies in the late 90s.


Day 3

A lot of spoken about how smartphones have gone through mobile tsunami wave. Caeser Sengupta - VP of Google threw light on their future projects.
HackerRack & myNoticePeriod shared the future of recruiting & talent management through non-traditional methods & innovative strategies.

Bharat Goenka of Tally, the first ever successful Indian Software product shared how it scaled up from scratch with his witty & thought provoking one liners.

Finally, the world's most prolific early stage investor Dave McClure of 500startups who have invested in 900 companies so far finished with a strong answer to a question about Indian Entrepreneurs & their risk appetite, he said - 'It's actually the Indian investors/ venture capitalists who are yet to take more risks, not the Entrepreneurs'

Overall, there were about 120 Software Product companies that were showcased. About 1700 delegates across India and 250 speakers across the globe for various sessions were certainly worthwhile. This is an event if one really wants to know what's cooking new in the Indian Tech space.

Some of the popular jargons like SaaS, IoT, Mobile Payments, EdTech kept on resonating these 3 days.

Now I would like to share my perspective of how this ecosystem has to evolve in the next few years

Initiatives like 10000startups by NASSCOM, ProductNation, Incubators, Accelerators are supporting their bit to build this ecosystem.

While these ecosystems are getting positioned outside, it also needs to really merge with the Universities. Every third startup is worried that they are unable to get good programmers, design thinkers, digital marketers & problem solvers.

While majority of the universities in India still follow the 6 month project in the final years with certain rules that disallows both the student to contribute continuously & also several startups unable to tap these talent.

Here are 5 pointers that I think if it happens in Educational Institutions, can really boost the tech startup ecosystem & talent demands for the future in India.

1. Top Percentile Movement Reduction

Each institution has a few top percentile students in certain parameters like ACADEMICS, RESEARCH ORIENTATION, INNOVATIVE SPIRIT, ENTREPRENEURIAL BENT. These are students who easily get an on-campus job in any one of the SERVICES companies. Some of them may also take up Higher education abroad. In this movement, some of them lose their interest in Research & Entrepreneurship.  These are the students who can start-up in colleges or join early startups can potentially build a Google or Facebook out of college.

If we look at the Silicon Valley in the US, the number of startup stories has at least a few Indians at the early stage. Fundamentally, they remain the same individual just that the ecosystem in the US helped them to be a part of university startup culture. If some of the top universities together create some serious startup university culture, then these top percentiles are going to work in this setup. Kerala has become a frontrunner in this experiment in a large scale by setting up www.startupvillage.in that aims to create 1000 startups in 10 years working with local universities. If there can be multiple IITs & multiple IIMs, there can certainly be multiple Startup Village setups. Time will decide.

2. Cultivate Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a way of thinking that has a multi-dimensional approach to solve complex problems with constantly setting newer goals along the path. It's a quick cyclical process that involves Emphathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype & Test. The intermediate solutions is encouraged to be starting points for solving new problems. This encourages greater creativity & better solutions. This will encourage unconventional thinking.

Design Thinking is something to be encouraged to be used by students in Schools & Colleges and well as by teachers. This video will give an understanding of Design Thinking.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sEoEvT8l8

3. Incentives for FAILED Projects

Thomas Edition quoted ' I have not failed 1000 times. I have successfully discovered 1000 ways to not make a light bulb' . This statement is enough is say for every innovation/invention there are several minor/major failures.

There are several students who enthuse to innovate & try projects that is never tried. A lot of these experiments fail in execution. There should be a forum to discuss & share FAILURES in projects. Is there a constant motivation for these students to try again?  There are several brilliant ideas that goes to die because the execution methods was incorrect or the market/ecosystem was not ready. If the ideas or mindset need to be continued, the students should be encouraged, celebrated & praised for their failures.

This is nothing to do with those fail in academic papers. That's a different debate altogether.

Students who work on innovative projects should be celebrated irrespective of the short term results. Events like 'FAIL CAMP'  at a regular interval in university campuses will certainly bring a healthy Research & Innovation culture.

4. Multi-Disciplinary Project Groups

This is an important aspect that enables a project to succeed. It is important to allow students of different disciplines to join together while working on projects.

Every product idea needs contributors in the form of Hustler, Hacker & Designer. These are 3 different minds with individual strengths. Hustler is the one who focuses on product ideas & features. Designers is the one who thinks from usability point of view. Hacker is the one who architects the product. Add to this list, a Marketer is also required to present to users & get feedback and understand if people be ready to pay for the product.  'Go to Market' is something we Indians fail miserably.

Several Private Universities in India should use their multiple-stream setup to let some of the bright minds of different disciplines to work together on certain product ideas. This work structure can certainly be streamlined to form an eco-system for brighter ideas within the campuses.

Universities can certainly partner with the startup ecosystem to organise Hackathons to inculcate Multi-disciplinary Projects.

5. Educate Entrepreneurship also as Mainstream

It's quite amazing that India as a country that been fairly entrepreneurial when there was no internet, unscalable atmosphere has not taken in further when the technology revolution happened. The society has acknowledged Doctors, Lawyers, Auditors are self-employed professionals. They are Entrepreneurs in a small way. The same society doesn't allow Engineers to experiment. Every parent wants their son/daughter to join Infosys, TCS, Wipro. 'What if fails?' is the question that is done & dusted. Let them fail & learn. Every success comes after several failures irrespective of the profession. So its important for different stakeholders to educate the society constantly.

While this blog is mostly technology related, but the 5 pointers are certainly extendable to non-tech setups as well. This is just my personal opinion based on my current understanding & limited knowledge. Very open to understand others ideas as well.

Where to find those startups who are recruiting?

In this blog post, let us understand how we find those startup companies who are recruiting. While some of them relevant for all industries, it is understood that the blog gives more importance to technology related companies.

Startups can be categorized into 3 types based on their stages

1. Founder Startups
2. Bootstrapped Startups
3. Funded Startups

Founder startups are typically where only the founders are busy building the product and doing experimental marketing. These startups are aplenty in our country today and they would love to hire interns for small tasks.

Where can you find them?

http://startupsaturday.headstart.in/ - This is a forum where a lot of startups meet discuss and validate their ideas on Saturdays across different metro cities. This is a good place to send a few of your best students to interact and build relationship.

http://jobs.startups.in/ 

Bootstrapped Startups are typically where the product is slowly accepted in the market and the founders are using their savings to market the product. These companies prefer to hire interns who can become employees in the future. They generally hire independent interns specific for Designing, Development and Marketing with different expertise

Some of the prominent sites where Bootstrapped startups post their internships & jobs.
http://jobs.yourstory.com/jobs/listing
https://hasgeek.com/

Funded startups can be also be incubated or accelerated. These are startup companies where they have sought financial or incubation support. These companies prefer both full-timers and interns who can work on different functions.

Some of the funded/incubated startups post their job postings here.

 www.startatsv.com/category/jobs This is an official blog of Startup Village, Kochi which frequently posts Job requirements in incubated startups.

www.vccircle.com - This is a website that tracks all the investments ( Private Equity, Buyouts, Sellouts ) of different companies in India. In most cases, whenever any companies gets funding, they use a large part of it to hire ( development, marketing & operations team). So this is a good place to potentially understand who will start hiring.

www.techcircle.in - This is a website which is more specific to deals that happens in Technology related companies.

Some mid-level companies post their jobs here  - http://jobs.siliconindia.com/

Employability vs Deployability - Are both the same?

As a follow up of earlier post, let us bring the perspective of 'Deployability'!

We know what is Employability now and this is what the HRs want from institutions. But the Project Managers need 'Deployable Talent'. So what's the difference?

Employable Candidates are the ones who are JOB SPECIFIC TRAINABLE and once trained, they can become DEPLOYABLE. As we all know that any fresher recruit undergoes an intensive training once they join any company. The training period varies between 1 - 4 months depending upon company. Now the cost involved to shape a fresher runs to lakh for each company. Only after successfully completing the training, the candidates becomes DEPLOYABLE.

Almost all SMEs want Deployable Talent as most of them cannot absorb the cost of training an employable candidate. And even large organisations today would love to absorb Deployable talent to reduce their cost of training and start generating output from the first week.

It's a fact that only a very few percentage are Deployable on recruitment as we are still fighting to solve Employability problem. Now how really this can be solved? Should we solve first Employability & then after 5 years talk about Deployability? Deployability is already discussed a lot in companies.

We are forced to compare this scenario with western countries where students opt for real time internships in startups/SMEs whether paid/unpaid. The culture of INTERNSHIP makes the difference. In India, a large percentage of COLLEGE PROJECT is done on something outdated and not relevant to the problem worked by the companies.

Several Indian companies especially startups today hire through internships. The student is allowed to work on real-time projects for 3-6 months and based on their LEARNING CURVE, a large percentage of companies absorb them. This is at a very nascent stage in India and requires a lot of drive from universities & prominent institutions to position internship as an important step towards Employment. And it is important to educate our students that Internships is more to LEARN than to EARN pocket money. The student should be guided to apply for internships based on their interest & skill rather than seeking the one which pays more money!

A student can do at least 2 internships before completing their college. One of them can be related to their educational background and one can be on their additional interest. These internships will help the student to explore their skills and shape it better for the future.

Top institutions like BITS Pilani, IITs and few courses in CEG,CIT,etc have a mandatory 6 month internships. Several private universities are actively working to implement successful internship model. A lot of work needs to be done to make internship culture as a significant part towards creating employment.

There are some companies which help students to apply for internships. A large percentage of companies do pay stipend for internships. You can find some prominent websites that help students for internships.
www.letmeknow.in
www.twenty19.com
www.letsintern.com
www.hellointern.com
www.10internship.in
www.blog.internshala.com/

While we are helping our students to make them employable, let us also guide them to be deployable!

See you in the next post!

Bye
Praveen

Employability Demystified

The whole country is talking about one thing for years now - 'Employability' . Infact not just in India, it is one of the main agenda in many countries today.

Yes there are some definitions.
Some say - 'The ability to be employed'
Some say  - 'The ability to  gain employment, sustain employment & make transition in employment with a set of SKILLS'

Now, the next question comes immediately , 'What are those skills?' A lot of HR Experts give a common word as  'Soft Skills'. First it was told as 'Employability Skills' and when asked what is it, the answer is 'Soft Skills' . If I am student and especially a rural student, these words actually doesn't really help me what I should learn. The least I would expect as a layman is to explain me clearly what are those skills.

As an Employability Skill Development Company for 21st century professionals, our focus in the last 4 years was to demystify those skills and give a clear understanding to the learned community so that one can adopt certain process methodology to build those skills.

As a company, we've researched, studied & learnt that the there is definitely clear demarcation of those skills, however in practice, all these skills work only as a combo but not individually. In terms of learning, all these skills definitely can be learnt individually.

These are several feedback that any institution receive from companies over the last 10 years.

1. Recruiter says 'Students lack Soft skills' . Actually the recruiter wanted to convey about 'English Communication' but was not be specific.
2. Recruiter says ' Students are below average in Aptitude'. Again recruiter hasn't given a specific feedback on whether is Analytical Skills or Logical skills or Verbal skills or Comprehending ability.
3. Technical Interviewer says 'The students are unable to recollect subject fundamentals'.

Now, a Recruiter is possibly not skilled enough to give specific feedback as it varies from person to person in an institution. Also, a Recruiter's feedback is only with respect to the requirement of his/her company & the role they are recruiting for.

Hence, one cannot generalise the pain point that easily.

Please go through this depiction what I call 'Circle of Employability Skills' to set a context for our discussion. These are the set of skills that makes one a 360 degree well rounded professional where one is required to keep increasing the diameter of this circle and continuously to learn to be competitive to meet the demands of  one's Industry, Company & Role .  

In the corporate world, there is  always a debate of who is important between Tech & Non-Tech roles. The truth is all the roles require all the above skills to a certain extent except that the weightage varies based on the role and each role is aligned towards the betterment of the company.

 To my understanding, every role in any profession has certain 'Core Skills'.  Design Engineer has to design, Software Engineer has to code, Analyst has to analyse, Manager has to administer, etc. Now these are skills that forms the crux of the profession.

What complements the core skill is actually Aptitude. A salesman's aptitude lies in his ability to quickly arrive at an attractive price point when the customer wants to buy his product. While Quantitative ability is more to do with Analytical & Problem Solving ability, Reasoning is more to do with Logical/Creative & Holistic thinking. These 2 skills are truly essential for any profession. Anyone who is good in these 2 skills certainly is good enough to become stronger in Core Skills. The 3rd one being Verbal indicates the comprehending ability of the problem to be solved. To be precise, it is to do with 'Reading & Writing' in English. For example, I cannot work if I am not able to read a document & understand what I should do.

The third circle which has English & Communication is to do with 'Listening & Speaking'. Communication is generalized as English communication. Communication is the ability to make the listener understand one's message in any language. English being the official language used for Communication, it is required to have both skills together. There are people who are very good speakers/communicators in native language and there are also people who are good in English but very shy to speak in a group.

The outer circle that surrounds is the combination of One's Personality & Interpersonal Skills.  First, Personality is not just wearing a suit with a tie. Personality indicates one's Attitude, Ethics, Goal-focused, Confidence, Self-Awareness, Self-Discipline, persistence & many more. Interpersonal Skills is the set of skills that one exhibits within a group. It includes Team Dynamics, Leadership, Inter-cultural sensitiveness, Group behaviour, etc.

Since Personality & Interpersonal Skills are the one that is exposed to the external world first, it is placed in the outer circle.

These skills are essential for all Professional roles. Some of these skills may not be required for semi-skilled & unskilled roles.

Now, knowing fully well that these are the skills that is required for anyone seeking professional employment, let us find out what is the optimum level required.

There are 2 types of companies based on category and 3 types of companies based on size.

Based on Category

Product focused
Services focused

Based on Size

Large,
Small & Medium
Startups

The table gives us some understanding on Skill Percentage expected by different companies based on size & category and industry. It is very essential for the applicant to know about the company before they sit for the interview process.

Following a Systematic Skill Development Approach with sequential milestones will certainly improve the skills of our students significantly over a period of time before graduation.

Your views and thoughts are most welcome!

We will come up with more informative updates in the future articles.

Wish you all a Happy Republic Day!

Team SkillPro
www.skillpro.co.in