Bangalore has many well established captive R&D centers. Over time, some pockets in these R&D centers have assumed responsibility for components or sub-products. Now there is angst among the senior leaders in these captives to incubate whole products from India. In effect they would like to become intrapreneurs.
Intrapreneurship is particularly challenging when it has to be done from a remote development center. There are a number of barriers to success. While some of these barriers are similar to what one encounters in entrepreneurship, there are also subtle and significant differences. Funding, lining up sponsors or go-to-market are some of the obvious areas of divergence. The context is also different - intrapreneurship is more about sustaining innovation while entrepreneurship is often more about disruptive innovation.
Having successful intrapreneurship out of India is important for entrepreneurship as well. Experience of Taiwan in early 80s and Israel in early 90s has shown that intrapreneurship primes the pump for entrepreneurship. Most of the early entrepreneurs there came out of captive R&D centers. This dynamic is starting to play out in India as well. There are a number of examples: Ugenie (ex-Amazon India), Monsoon Multimedia (ex-Adobe India), Evergrid (ex-Veritas India), Panta Systems (ex Veritas India again), etc. I see these startups as a good thing. They make the whole ecosystem stronger.
All this has led to a debate among some of us on how best to promote intrapreneurship in Bangalore (later in Pune and Hyderabad). Should we form a Special Interest Group (SIG) – essentially a new community – to do this? Or is this best left for each company to figure out themselves?
There are arguments for both sides. I am firmly in the camp of setting up a SIG. Bangalore has a number of thriving technical communities and so this new one should be able to take root easily.
What do you think should be done? Are you in favor of setting up an Intrapreneurship SIG in Bangalore? If so, what should be its focus? I look forward to hearing back from you.
Hello Sharad,
Being from Pune (as of now at least), I am a little selfish to say
that I would like such a movement to take shape in Pune simultaneously,
even though the scale may be lesser than that envisaged for Bengaluru!
Coming to your question of whether or not to let a SIG germinate,
my humble opinion is that it is necessary to propagate such
fori in India. My experience says that many start-ups are
afraid of marching ahead because of the general lack of approval
of such ventures in the immediate socio-economic circles. There
are simply too few of them there, to bring about a change in the
hearts of people. How can a small start-up plan to hire people
when it is anyone’s guess how long will these guys remain with
the poor fellow! The encircling socio-economic layer will simply
drive these emplyoyees to join ‘big names’ as soon as possible. Only
when there is a ecosystem where people generally know each other
and are aware of what someone else can add to his/her own offering,
words will spread, community confidence in their technology/business
and long-term goal will increase, people will want to work for
them, money will soon follow.
I feel that current Indian IT scenario is overwhelmingly in favour
of size (and Share Prices), not quality or strength of solution
offering. This can be successfully countered by a collective
move, not by individuals!
My 2 cents!
Nirmalya
Dear Sharad,
There are a good number of us who have been in this business for a while and have a built a knowledge base with our experience. I strongly agree that rather than go about it ourselves, for the collective good of the country and a small community of R&D/product engineering/development folks (as compared to IT services/BPO), we should share best practices and mentor product startups. The SIG then can focus on identifying missing gaps and build a healthy eco-system to nurture and build a product innovation culture, besides taking it to market globally. Some of us,especially the SME specialize in niche areas and interactions through SIG’s could bring greater awareness, collaborations etc.
I vounteer some time to help start the SIG..
regards,
Raj
Thanks Nirmalaya and Raj for your comments. Raj, I’ll take you up on your offer to volunteer time if the SIG takes shape.
Hi Sharad,
In my opinion. Definitely some kind of a community is needed for Startups in India, whether it is in the SIG form or some other form. We need the buzz here similar to the Bay area, which people like Paul Graham (I see that you have linked to his blog also on your page) talk about. As of now, we only have largely service Industry to show our credentials in the HiTech area. No real big Indegenous HiTec product story. It is heartening to see that many guys like Ugenie and others are stepping out and trying to create a story.
- K Naqvi
PS: Its also great to come across your blog. I have really missed good bloggers who write on Technology aspects, from India. Now definitely looking forward to read your feeds.
Naqvi, it seems that the SIG may take shape under TiE Banaglore. More on that in the coming days. And thanks for the kind words about the blog. Hope to see you more often in the comments section.
Sharad, I did get a call from a person who was doing a market feedback for TiE. One of the comments i made to him was that TiE currently is focussed primarily on two groups - VC’s and startups that need capital. I personally dont know of a mechanism of how people like me who do not fall under either of those categories can help in mentoring / sharing ideas and experience with startups - especially in some niche domains and technology areas. They are a good number of veterans in Bangalore, given an opportunity/forum to channel this kind of activity to propagate this besides of course network and share ideas amongst the more mature organizations in the product design space.