May 8 2016

Take-away’s for Shakti – ~2 months down the line..

For Women’s Day this year (Mar 2016), I was invited to attend the event Shakti which was presented by National Commission of Women in collaboration with YourStory. Its been a while, but I came across some great notes I’d made at the event, so thought I should share it here on the blog for anyone who’d be interested.

* No limits to what you can do (as a woman) – Starts with a belief system in the mind

* Don’t feel you cannot do anything – Just do it

* Nobody is perfect – Learn to accept your imperfections

* Women have several born entrepreneurial skills ; Learn to use and hone them

* Make haste slowy

* Never argue with – Doctor, Lawyer, Finance person, Auditor and Spouse

* Important to engage with women in an economic way

* We are moving towards a Women based economy ; As of date no real calculation of GDP to women’s contribution

* As women, learn to stand-up and speak-up for yourself

* Women are used to work hard , now work hard as a profit

* As a woman, make yourself aware of government programs / any policies / laws that affect you –

* Don’t give up at the first sign of problems

* One of the best session was from Mohini of Ruosh . She presented a Listicle for startups. It was awesome, so I am summaring key points here:

1) India has a population of 1.27 billion (17.5% of world population).

50% are less than 25 years of age

65% under 35 years of age

By 2020, average age in India is 29 years, China 38 years, Japan 49 years

72% of India is rural India

Ample opportunities to solve problems for such a complex demographics- From basics to more advanced stuff, identify what problem will you solve;

As a founder, look for a systemic solution which is replicable, and which will Make money

2) Identify your consumer well and operate in his / her environment. Consumer values what you give in his context

3) Don’t stop if you are not the first one; look at what you can do differently / uniquely. Create a business where the customer comes back to you (high repeat rate)

4) Create that business plan – Be judicious on where you spend time, energy and resources ; You should get something in return – even if it is emotional benefits

5) The team is most important – Select the right people – and compensate disproportionately. Initial phases of growth you need Heart and Head – Believers and Doers ; Key is to take-off the run-way ; Compensate in time, areas of work

6) Ensure you communicate regularly with your team

7) Fail fast – Fail very fast; if possible in the first year – not after 3 years. Do rapid prototyping and adapt

8) Set performance metrics; not vanity metrics

9) Speed is very important – in execution

10) Continuously scan and track market indicators – industry, global and competitor. Invest some % of time in what is happening around you

11) It is a Lonely journey – so work hard, do your home-work and have realistic demands from yourself. Give yourself some down-time to re-energize

12) Exit parameters have to be very clear from a business perspective

13) You never know enough – stay humble and be grateful on your journey

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Blog: Nischala’s Space, Thoughts, Expressions [ Top Marketing Blogs in India, Directory of Top Indian Blogs and Most Widely read Indian Bloggers, Directory of Best Indian Blogs, Alltop]

Twitter: @nimu9 [Featured among Must Follow Indian Women on Twitter (2014), 50 Indian Women to follow on Twitter (2012)]

Industry Associations / Mentorships: SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – An IIT Mumbai initiative) | TLabs | Inc42 | SheroesIndia | BackToTheFront

Interviews and Media Mentions:
Newspaper Interview | Twittering Heights (Deccan Chronicle)
Featured in | #PowerWomenAtWork – the drivers of change
Featured in | 101 inspiring women aka rockstars
Featured in | Passionate Bloggers you should follow
Quoted in “Open letter to women looking for job”
Quoted in “The best advice you’ll receive as young women starting your careers”
Interview | My blogging journey – How it came to be?
Interview | A wise blogger
Interview | Secrets to Successful Blogging
Quoted in “Are entrepreneurs born or made?”

Speaker Sessions, Panel Discussions and Events (Real and Virtual):
“Career Investments that every women at work should make” ; Speaker session at Intel
“Navigating careers in large organizations” ; Tweetchat hosted by Wipro
“Making your network your net-worth” ; Panel Discussion hosted by BTTF (Back To The Front)
“MyDigitalStory” ; Tweetchat hosted by SheThePeopleTV
“The Art and Craft of Content” ; Speaker session at Wipro
“Importance of Mentorship for women” ; Sheroes Summit

Other events / conferences that I’ve graced : Bhasha , Shakti (Mar 2016), Surge , IAMAI (Feb2016), TIE – Women Entrepreneurship (2015), EuroFinance Cash Management Conference (2014), Sheroes Summit(2014), PaulWriter -The Futurist CMO (2013)

Apr 28 2016

My notes from IAMAI 2016

I had the opportunity to attend the IAMAI’s 10th Digital India Summit in Feb 2016. For those who don’t know “the flagship annual event of IAMAI – India Digital Summit has been the premier Digital event in the country. Entering its 10th year, the theme for this year is ‘Stand-Up Start-Up.’ Being one of the largest annual gatherings of the Digital Ecosystem in the country, the 10th IDS will play host to 1500+ Senior & Mid-level executives from a plethora of sectors like Mobile & Internet, Technology, Cloud, eCommerce, Travel & much more. The premier most agencies, FMCG & BFSI brands, Payment Regulators & Evangelists will be in attendance this year” [Src: IAMAI website]

In this post, I am sharing some quick notes and take-away’s from the sessions I attended:

As a founder, best to start early and young – You have nothing to loose
Find a big problem to solve ; Focus on solving a real problem where these is a market need
Be clear on how to make money – short-term or long-term
Build a great team – Focus on attracting talent and retaining them
Key for start-ups
- Hiring decisions and process
- Team sticks together ; Ideas can change
Celebrate failures and learn from them ; since you will have more failures than successes in initial few years
Start-ups are cash strapped and time-strapped ; Value both and make the most of them. Be lean – Conserve cash ; Cash is the most valuable asset
Early days of startups – You should measure everything ; Track your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) daily; micro measurement is key
Believe in your ability to do something big
Run company on innovation
Whenever you hit a road-block and are not growing, see how you can improve your product or service by 10X ; or make it 10 times cheaper
Attention to detail is key – for customer support and customer pitches; The initial customer interactions are critical for growth
Need to constantly remind the team of mission and reason why you are here
Digital independence where it is a level playing ground –and the merit of your idea is what gets you the success
India stack for future Payments
- Presence less
- Paperless
- Cashless service delivery
Let end users create solutions / apps and Aadhar / iSPIRT provide the infrastructure:
- JAM
  - JanDhan – Bank accounts
  - Aadhar – Identity – 1 bn in 2016 : Public platform
  - Mobile – 25 Mn new smartphone / quarter
- Use the power of API’s over JAM to create new innovative solutions
- 77K micro-ATM’s at PDS (Postal delivery Center)
- e-KYC : based on Aadhar Identification
- Increasing focus to design Consent architecture – where what you consume or experience is based on your consent to accept or engage with a service / solution / product / brand
- In future, every Indian should be able to pay to:
  - Mobile
  - Aadhar
  - Virtual address

Last but not the least, it was interesting to see that the 2 speakers who got a house-full are Mr. Rajan Anandan (from Google) and Mr. Vijay Shekar Sharam (PayTM) . So in any event, what draws an audience is who you are, where you come from and what you accomplished!

With that, I sign off for now..

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Blog: Nischala’s Space, Thoughts, Expressions [ Top Marketing Blogs in India, Directory of Top Indian Blogs and Most Widely read Indian Bloggers, Directory of Best Indian Blogs, Alltop]

Twitter: @nimu9 [Featured among Must Follow Indian Women on Twitter (2014), 50 Indian Women to follow on Twitter (2012)]

Industry Associations / Mentorships: SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – An IIT Mumbai initiative) | TLabs | Inc42 | SheroesIndia | BackToTheFront

Apr 21 2016

Surge2016 – What I remember after more than 1 month?

I had the opportunity to attend the Surge 2016 (way back in Feb) this year, and it was a great experience. The sheer energy, enthusiasm, people is amazing, not to mention the fantastic sessions and opportunity to network with a host of thought leaders, startups, VC’s, etc.

For those who don’t know what Surge is – here’s a quick note “SURGE is Web Summit’s first conference in India. In 5 years, Web Summit, held annually in Europe, has grown from 400 attendees to over 42,000 from more than 134 countries. It’s been called “the best technology conference on the planet”.

I meant to do this post many days ago, but just didn’t do it. But now that I am doing a post – I thought I should write about what I really remember from the session – after so long! The key reason is that if I remember it even now, that means the message was important in my context.

So sharing below key points in random order:

* For any event of this scale – planning and preparation is key. I am told that the organizers start a year in advance!

* The next best thing I liked was the overall arrangement and number of volunteers to help attendees – all very polite and genuinely resourceful

* The music was truly catchy, and truly added to the vibrancy

* I loved the fact that every session was for about 20 min, and they mostly stuck to the time. So no rushing through any session, and that was GREAT!

* In the session from Mahesh Murthy (Founder of PinStorm), the below points stayed with me

Today is the time and space for extra-ordinary dominance in any industry ; No. 1 has 80%, No. 2 has 8% – no spot for No. 3. So as a startup / business, you have 2 choices – outspend or outthink
Product market fit is very important – no matter what you do
Word of Mouth – best marketing
Truly the age where an idea can change the world
Internet – 360 mn ; TV – 250 mn users. Internet is ahead of TV as a channel for content
Positoning matters – both within the company and in the market : Redbull – entertainment company whuch pulls out energy drinks
Your product is your best marketing
Truly the time when people who can use the Left + right brain will rise and shine

* In another session, the Foundation of any business was highlighted as:

Vision
Talent acquisition
Culture
Leadership

* Any business model should factor:

Product scalability
Market scalability

* A great initiative called CK12 (Started in 2007) provides free online learning material to schools, students and teachers. Has 30K students, and about 50X pageviews. Best part is that Teachers are part of the co-creation process for creating relevant content

Concept of Flexbooks – customizable textbooks based on students learning aptitude
Believe that e all learn differently
Early education has to be contextualized

* Globally, there are 3 mn professional mobile app developers. Wow!

* 700 mn – mobile audience in India ; Great untapped opportunity!

* Not to mention – my rendezvous with some so many uber-cool technology startups!

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Blog: Nischala’s Space, Thoughts, Expressions [ Top Marketing Blogs in India, Directory of Top Indian Blogs and Most Widely read Indian Bloggers, Directory of Best Indian Blogs, Alltop]

Twitter: @nimu9 [Featured among Must Follow Indian Women on Twitter (2014), 50 Indian Women to follow on Twitter (2012)]

Industry Associations / Mentorships: SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – An IIT Mumbai initiative) | TLabs | Inc42 | SheroesIndia | BackToTheFront

Apr 14 2016

My session at B-school on GTM (Go-To-Market)

A few days ago, I was invited to take a session on GTM (Go-To-Market) at a B-school. It was great to go back to a B-school after so many years, and more so to share knowledge and insights based on my experiences. I wondered what I should cover in this session. After much consideration and deliberation, I decided to cover the subject from a practitioner point of view, covering specifically what I wished I had known about GTM before I did the GTM for several platforms / solutions / services.

My presentation for the session is here.

It was well recieved, and was great to interact and engage with some bright young minds and hear their ideas on the subject.

Some feedback from the session is below:

“Wonderful session on Go-to-Market. Great insights and exercises. One of the brightest minds I saw.”

“Excellent session, extremely interactive with superb caselets. Will be looking forward to another session”

“The session was great and interactive. It gave us an understanding about GTM strategies with real-life examples”

“It was a very different session from our daily sessions and I really enjoyed. Full of insights and examples ; and the choice of topic was extremely important for us.”

“Very interactive and information. Practical examples were very good”

“Engaging, informative and practical examples – very good”

“Engaging exercises and clarity of thought”

“Something that the institute has been missing so far – Highlight engaging informative and of course an excellent speaker”

“Refreshing activities for expanding our thoughts on marketing”

“Implications of what we have covered in text books”

“Very interactive session”

All this feedback is a good catalyst to continue engaging with B-schools !

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Blog: Nischala’s Space, Thoughts, Expressions [ Top Marketing Blogs in India, Directory of Top Indian Blogs and Most Widely read Indian Bloggers, Directory of Best Indian Blogs, Alltop]

Twitter: @nimu9 [Featured among Must Follow Indian Women on Twitter (2014), 50 Indian Women to follow on Twitter (2012)]

Industry Associations / Mentorships: SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – An IIT Mumbai initiative) | TLabs | Inc42 | SheroesIndia | BackToTheFront

Apr 7 2016

Jan to Mar | Round-up of events to note, and attend ?

As I mentioned in my previous post – In 2016, I decided to attend more real-world events (face-2-face) – Be it industry, art, networking, technology, startups, academia – It was a personal resolve to just get out there, hear / see / read to what’s happening in spaces outside of my world.. My only preference was that the event had to be in Delhi (or nearby) or Bengaluru which I travel for work.

In the process, I did manage to attend a couple of events so far, but what I also discovered was that there are a host of amazing events. In this post, I am sharing a list of events that I have come across in the past 3 months:

Jan-2016

Marketing / Leadership / Business / Industry / Technology

Great Indian IT Marketing Summit and Awards

Brand Partnership Meet

Others

Jaipur Literature Festival

Indian Art Fair

Dastkar Design Fair

Feb-2016

Marketing / Leadership / Business / Industry / Technology

IAMAI

Surge (Web Summit)

Others

Surajkund Crafts Mela

Auto Expo

Mar-2016

Marketing / Leadership / Business / Industry / Technology

The Coalition

Ad:Tech

Lets Ignite (Startup event)

Others

Shakthi

Bhasha (Indian Language Festival)

World Culture Festival

Did I miss any interesting event? Leave a comment to let me know

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Blog: Nischala’s Space, Thoughts, Expressions [ Top Marketing Blogs in India, Directory of Top Indian Blogs and Most Widely read Indian Bloggers, Directory of Best Indian Blogs, Alltop]

Twitter: @nimu9 [Featured among Must Follow Indian Women on Twitter (2014), 50 Indian Women to follow on Twitter (2012)]

Industry Associations / Mentorships: SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – An IIT Mumbai initiative) | TLabs | Inc42 | SheroesIndia | BackToTheFront

Other events / conferences that I’ve graced : Bhasha , Shakti (Mar 2016),Surge , IAMAI (Feb 2016), TIE – Women Entrepreneurship (2015), EuroFinance Cash Management Conference (2014), Sheroes Summit(2014), PaulWriter -The Futurist CMO (2013)

Mar 31 2016

Jan – Mar 2016 | Highlights, Highs and More…

Ever since I became a mom, I attempt to do something new every year.. Sometimes it is about writing (blogging), sometimes reading, sometimes cooking, sometimes just experimenting with stuff…So in 2016, I decided to do few things :

1) Spend more time with family and friends
2) Be at atleast 1 event / month – industry, art, etc.
3) Speak / Share my views @ atleast 1 event or forum / month, i.e, get on the stage
4) Experience new things – Things which I have not done for a long time to push myself out of the comfort zone

3 months down of 2016, and I’ve been successful. A quick round-up of the details are below, but more importantly the reason I am even writing about it is that my efforts of these 3 months made me realize that it is really about FOCUS.. What I mean is we are almost always running short of time. 6 months back if anyone had mentioned any of the above I’d laugh and say “No TIME”. But the reality is that when I set my mind on it, it just happened. We are all busy, especially if you are a working mom. But if you really want it, the time will find a way into your life. Just try it!

1) Spend more time with family and friends

* Have been instrumental in having a high school re-union after more than 2 decades : It was awesome to see how much everyone is still the same @ heart and yet how far we have all come; And there really can be no relationships like the ones you make with school friends

* Family re-unions : It was good fun to have 3 generations meet, interact and just be under the same roof. The energy, stories and humor is truly memorable

* Attended weddings in the family : Good to meet the whole family and see how almost evey single woman of my generation is working. Was super proud to see all the mom-preneurs !

* One house party with 15 women – great experience and lessons on event management and engagement [Food, Games and lots of hard work go in to make any event happen!!]

* Met in the real-world with a lot of new people – whom I actually got introduced in the online world ; A lot of genuinely nice people do exist

2) Be at atleast 1 event / month – industry, art, etc.

Feb 2016 –Surge , IAMAI , Surajkund Crafts Mela

Mar 2016 – Bhasha / Shakti

Wonderful to just get out and see the amazing things that people are doing

3) Speak / Share my views @ atleast 1 event or forum / month, i.e, get on the stage

Jan 2016 – “Navigating long term careers in large enterprises” | Tweetchat for B-schools

Feb 2016 – “9 Investments to fast-track your career” | Session at Intel

Mar 2016 – “GTM Strategy” | B-school session

4) Experience new things – Things which I have not done for a long time to push myself out of the comfort zone

* Design is the next big thing anyway, so I thought let me experiment on myself by applying all that I know about design on the clothes that I wear, so designed a few clothes for myself: Best part is aunties who rarely pass compliments say its good, Wow

* Attended a Day @ the Farm with kids : Was a new experience to do yoga in a farm while kids got to play with organic foods!

* Did a trial art class with the kids ; Re-discovered the world of colors and beauty of art

And not mention, all my writing / blogging / social media highlights that happened along the way…

* For Women’s Day, did a special series on the blog “Looks & Cooks to Voices, Choices and Joys”. It has received some excellent response from personal and professional networks

* Featured in #PowerWomanAtWork (along with Indra Nooyi and Kiran Bedi)

* Published 50+ posts across all my blogs so far!

Phew! Been quite an amazing and busy quarter so far this year.. and Hope the trend continues rest of the year..

Mar 24 2016

CareerHacks for Women | What skills are key at what phase of growth?

Last week, I posted about my session at Intel on “Career Investment which are important for women at work. I had highlighted 9 areas of importance.

One of the senior leaders in the audiences asked an interesting question.

She said “9 is too much for anyone to do at any point. Can you highlight top 3-4 skills for women at different phases of growth“.

My response to this question is in the infographic below.

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Blog: Nischala’s Space, Thoughts, Expressions [ Top Marketing Blogs in India, Directory of Top Indian Blogs and Most Widely read Indian Bloggers, Directory of Best Indian Blogs, Alltop]

Twitter: @nimu9 [Featured among Must Follow Indian Women on Twitter (2014), 50 Indian Women to follow on Twitter (2012)]

Industry Associations / Mentorships: SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – An IIT Mumbai initiative) | TLabs | Inc42 | SheroesIndia | BackToTheFront

Other events / conferences that I’ve graced : Bhasha / Shakti (Mar 2016),Surge (Feb 2016), IAMAI (Jan 2016), TIE – Women Entrepreneurship (2015), EuroFinance Cash Management Conference (2014), Sheroes Summit(2014), PaulWriter -The Futurist CMO (2013)

Mar 17 2016

My session at Intel on “Career Investments that every woman should make”

A few days ago, I was invited to Intel at talk about “Career Investments that every women at work should make” [PS: The request came out of my article on EconomicTimes]. From what I gathere, they conduct such sessions regularly as a part of their initiatives to enable and equip women to craft out long-term careers. Usually, internal women leaders are invited.

But starting 2016, they decided to invite people from industry. I was excited since I was the first external speaker, and that was an absolute honor.

It was a full house (much to the pleasant suprise of the organizer’s themselves), and very engaging and well recieved session.

My presentation is here.

The response and feedback from the session has been awesome. Some excrepts from the feedback are below:

“This was one of the best sessions I have attended on this topic. I can see what mistakes I am making and what areas I need to work on”

“Very true and loaded with real-life wisdom and experiences. Given me lots of food for thought”

“As a working woman, I know that I don’t invest enough in my personal brand and professional networks. Time for me to take action”

“It was great to listen another Indian woman who is experiencing a lot of similar issues like me. Sometimes just knowing that I am not alone is a great feeling”

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