Author Archives: Hari

What is your Strategy?

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You have an Idea and it is your Eureka! moment. You are going to change the world with your innovation and you are proud of it. The next steps you take lay the foundation to the future of your idea and changing the world.

You will need to have answers to:

– How to make your idea into reality?
– How to take it to market?
– How much money is required?
– What is the gestation time?
– When will you make money?
– If it does not work, what is the Exit?

Strategy involves Understanding, Thinking and Predicting.

Understand the present. First, look at who your competition is. If you do not have competition, Congratulations! you have taken the first step to changing the world. If you do have, identify as many competitors as you can along with their offerings and USP along with their market reach and penetration. Understanding your competition is the first step in creating a niche product offering.

Think of what your USP is going to be. For each of your competitors marketing message, have a USP of your own. This will help your consumer to easily identify you and it will give them clarity as to why they should come to you.

Predict the future, not of your idea, but your consumer. How will your consumer benefit by using your offering?

Strategy is the fundamental understanding of what your consumer needs, how are you going to provide it to him.

Demand Aggregation

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What is the Business Model of eBay? It is a site where sellers quote their price and buyers come to buy what is being offered. In the process, the seller and the buyer both benefit and also the ratings given by both seller and buyer play an active role in determining the price point. This is called Demand Aggregation.

In today’s startup scenario, often founders are a little perplexed about the pricing point. There are numerous factors which go into identifying the price point of the offering. How do the airlines price their tickets? During weekdays, the prices are less and during weekends and holidays they automatically go up. Try booking a ticket for any festival time during the year, prices remain high. However, as the date of journey comes closer and if they are not able to sell the tickets, prices will continue to come down. In Europe for instance, it is the opposite. The nearer the departure date and time, the cheaper is the ticket. Airlines just want to sell and have a full flight rather than sticking to the price and flying with empty seats. After all, the success of an airline is based on the Passenger load capacity.

At Uber, during the peak hours, automatically it shows us that the price is 2 or more times higher than the regular price. The price goes up if the number of cabs available comes down. But the same times during weekend, prices don’t go up.

It is a wise business model to determine the price point. First, attract the consumer, make them use your offering and slowly increase the price. Having a huge database of consumers / potential consumers is what the makes the company attract the investors. That is the USP which many startups miss.

Thoughts?

Solving the Healthcare maze

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When India got Independence in 1947, average life expectancy was 47 Years and today, average life expectancy is at 66.21 Years (we rank 139). Japan leads the list with average life expectancy at 84 Years followed by Spain, Andorra, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Singapore and San Mario at 83 Years. The country with the least life expectancy is Sierra Leone at 49 Years.

Previously, technological solutions in Healthcare have been focusing on advancing the care (how to provide better solutions), but now, we are focusing on advancing the care process (how to deliver better solutions).

In the Indian context, Tech startup’s focusing on Healthcare have increased over the last few years. This is good and it will help bring Healthcare to the fingertips.

Most of the startups are focusing on providing “services”, meaning, connecting the consumer to the service. Apps for finding Doctors, finding Services available, e-Commerce, Wellness etc. This is a good approach. All of us have an inherent fear for Health. We are over cautious and we generally tend to avoid visiting the Doctor/Hospital and also at times go with self-medication. The technology today is focusing on providing introductions to the end user to managing Health proactively. With the advent of apps for monitoring nutrition, work out’s, doctor appointments, enrollments into wellness programs, the common person is now getting to understand how to manage and monitor his/her health.

Also, with Health programs getting advertised, many who did not have an understanding of various health scenarios are now getting educated. If you are someone who is born after 1990’s, chances are that your parents are maintaining your health record with all the vaccinations were given and the history of your well-being.

Biggest health problems cannot be solved in one day and the approach is painstaking. Governments should focus on building the infrastructure and organisations (startups and the big one’s alike) should help support the initiatives by connecting people with the care providers.

There is no short-cut’s especially in managing Health of individuals and the nation alike. Connecting the dot’s proves pivotal in creating a healthy nation.

In the next decade, I am sure India would be in a much better place in creating a healthy environment for all of us. With initiatives like the Aadhar (UID) slowly gaining popularity, am sure solutions would stem out connecting people to Government (to prioritise their health initiatives), Insurance firms coming forward to provide better Insurance assistance and Hospital’s connecting to communities to provide better proactive care.

Personally, I think we should look at various models across the globe and adapt what worked well into the new system we are creating. India being the world’s second most populated country, if we create a system which works, then the entire landscape of Healthcare in the world would change.

Landscape of Wellness

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Wellness has gained attention in the last few years. With proactive health care management gaining attention, fitness centers, food monitoring apps and health management centre’s have gained a lot of attention.

It is estimated that the Wellness industry is a $3 Billion Market in India.

What is the landscape of the Wellness? Even though the definition is broad, primarily the industry revolves around Weight loss, Nutrition Management, Workout monitoring and sports. Home care and post operative care is also becoming part of Wellness.

The concept of wellness has gained importance in today’s context when people are looking for ways to maintain health and being proactive to managing their wellness. Organisations are adapting to provide proactive wellness management facilitates to their workforce to ensure the productivity levels increase.

Is wellness new? Didn’t we need it earlier? We needed them. With the changes in globalisation, changes in the work style, travels and the basic living, being proactive to manage health not only requires effort but a little of education too.

There are various kinds of medicine systems and understanding and utilising them to better our health would be very good. How do we get there? Startup’s are focusing to bridge the gap. In India, Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopathy are various kinds of medicine systems and today, we have technology helping people utilise the benefits of all the systems. Recently, I met a founder of a startup who is focusing on bringing a collaborative approach to proactive health management. They understand the persons medicine history and help connect them to a combination of medicine formats through their doctors and also help the person monitor their progress through their technology offering.

This is a very good start and with the growing awareness, the concept of wellness is moving upward from just sports tracking apps to health management apps.

Investor Pitch Template

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Recently, there was a request in one of the groups to share a Investor Pitch presentation template and many shared various templates.

I did one investor pitch quite sometime ago using a well defined Business Plan template and a beautiful presentation template. After the presentation, one elderly gentleman came up to us and asked us if we created them and obviously the answer was No. He then recommended, one of the ways that you show creativity and individualistic thinking to investors is that you do your own way. When you re-use, you are naturally accepting the fact that you are ready to follow. What happens when you create your templates, it gives confidence to the party that even though there are options available, you still have the time and patience to create your own stuff and this will be a deal breaker.

Cut and Paste is easy, but the moment you design your own thing, it speaks a lot about you.

Quality Vs Quantity

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You decided to take up running. When you start any running plan, the first thing you need to decide on is the Distance you run or the Timing. Any plan starts with the distance and over the period of time, you begin to start looking at the timing.

When you start working, you first begin by learning the work and over the period of time you become expert at what you do.

When I started this year, I have clearly determined that to improve my quality of writing, I need to start writing. When I started writing over ten years ago, I began by writing off and on. I practiced. Over the years, I realised that my Quality did not get to the level I anticipated. So, this year I thought I should write more frequently and focus and practice writing. I am still not where I want to be, but still I keep pushing myself. I am sure over the period of time, I will get the quality I am satisfied with.

When you begin any thing in life, focus on the practice, and over the period of time, you will meet the quality standards.

Invention Vs Innovation

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Invention can happen with a single person, but it takes a long time and lot of efforts for that to become an Innovation.

Charles Babbage was the first person who invented the programmable computer in the earlier 19th Century. The following years and decades transformed the whole meaning and design of the Computer.

What we are dealing with today is the transformation of the Inventions to Innovations which can reach people and make lives much better.

Innovations deal with identifying solutions to problems in simplistic manner. There might be an existing solution, but if we can better that up, it is Innovation.

Inventions happen vary rare, and even if they happen, it takes a long time for them to come into light.

What should we focus on – Invention or Innovation?

Innovation. Chain of innovations can lead to an invention.

Market Opener’s

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The key problems in this world are solved. Other not so high priority problems have undergone various iterations and almost settled now. The remaining problems are left for us to be solved.

Today’s innovations are mostly focused on enhancing usability and bringing technology more closer to people.

Each of us have varied definitions of Innovation. In their book on Innovation: 5 Disciplines for Creating what Customers want, authors Curtis R Carlson & William W. Wilmot summarize Innovation as the process of creating, producing and delivering value to what customer wants in the marketplace.

This absolutely stands good for today’s Innovations.

When we look at technology adoptions around the globe, each region/country has its own limitations and opportunities. Certain markets are mature and others are far behind. Can we truly bring the Innovations from the mature markets to the beginner markets? It might not work straight forward, but will create opportunity for competition. When there is competition, market slowly opens up.

The first true e-Commerse market place for India has been FlipKart. Slowly competition came up, and today, India is a mature market for e-Commerse. One company gave opportunity to many others – Amazon, Urban Ladder, PepperFry, Big Basket are just to name a few who are delivering anything and everything to the Indian consumer.

HealthCare is also opening up. With the painstaking effort’s of startup’s like Practo HealthTech market has opened up. Today, we have more than 200 startup’s focusing in the Healthcare space in various segments – Healthcare e-Commerse, Appointment bookings, Home Care, Searching for Doctors and Hospitals, maintaining Health records, Wellness, Specialized care etc.

In a country like India, opening a market might be easier said than done. What we need to work for is the acceptance of the solution. Breaking the barrier for customers to accept and engage themselves is the key; along with the Government regulations to “enable” the innovation and take it closer to people.

When the Aadhar Card (UID Project) came into existence, it is not made mandatory. Even today it is not, but for most of the important needs – Gas connection, Opening Bank account, applying for Passport etc, if you have an Aadhar Number, it becomes more easier. What happened here? Even though it is not mandatory, organizations have started to embrace this. In the similar way, technology needs to be accepted by hospitals and Doctors. This will pave way for acceptance in using technology in HealthCare.

This is a tough nut to crack. The approach of HealthCare startups has been to provide solutions to customer. When customers start using, Hospitals and Doctors might also start using. This approach will work, but will need commitment to understand the true needs of the customer and doctors to make this work.

A long way to go, but definitely I am being optimistic.

Kokoro

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Destiny favors the prepared in Body, Mind and Spirit.

We tend to start our journey with an objective in mind. We do various analysis and design a way to accomplish the task. At times we Succeed, at times we fail. We take the learnings from both of the outcomes and go forward.

What is important is just not the action, but conviction from the heart. More than hard work and determination to accomplish something, it is the feeling in the heart which plays a bigger role. You believe you can accomplish, you can. If you do not believe and you do not listen to your heart, you cannot.

When we have an idea, the usual tendency is to ask people around and go with what they feel. In this process, we forget out feeling. Listen to your heart. Apart from being a component of your body, the heart has a feeling and this is called Kokoro. Listen to it and you can do wonders.

Kokoro for the Japanese is the feeling of the Heart.

Set your goal

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When we start our careers we have varied goals (at least most of us) and over the period of time we tend to develop setting our goals and this is not wrong.

Before having an generalised approach towards life, we need to be very clear on what is the ultimate objective is? It can be anything, but the one aspect is very important. This one goal changes the way we deal with problems and helps develop the solution.

Gandhiji was just a practicing lawyer in South Africa. He was against racial discrimination and all that he fought was that. Later when he came to India, his objective remained the same (remove discrimination) and he continued his fight against the British for the same. What happened next is history.

Steve Jobs was always obsessed by perfection to the detail in the designs. When he started Apple and during his stint at Pixar and later back at Apple, the outcomes of his efforts are beautiful and user friendly products. His goal has always been perfection to detail.

The key attribute to success is we need to have a goal and we need to make that our DNA.

Unless we stand for something, we fall for everything – Rev. Chaplin