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India has startup talent, but is it innovative enough?

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prasad1

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India's raw engineering potential is not in question, but the ability to drive real product innovation may be limited. An ET Magazine-Jombay study finds out...








Does India have the kind of engineers startups need -- or have they been educated and trained in a manner that suits traditional companies better?

To find some answers, Jombay, a talent analytics firm, analyzed data of 3,000 engineers in 150 companies (35 startups and 115 established firms) on cognitive and behavioural traits across seven cities. Companies chosen were both product and service ones (e-commerce, IT, ITeS, web apps, iOS, and Android apps), and the engineers included both entry-level professionals and laterals.

The findings: roughly one in three engineers in both setups (startups and established firms) scored at par or better than global standards on cognitive traits (IQ) like problem solving and critical thinking, the basic intelligence required for an engineer. However, notable differences were found in behavioural traits.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...it-innovative-enough/articleshow/47755698.cms
 
It is the dream of every engineer to engage themselves in start up ventures.

many of them take the IIM ahmedabad MBA route for this.

Most of them fail and very few succeed.

always three or four get together ,collect some capital from relatives and friends . some are smart to find some incubaters, venture capitalists to fund their enterprise

after struggles most opt out.

success rate is very low
 
I think the innovative ability of Indians is very poor. While our forefathers were, possibly, very highly imaginative and could think of aerial vimanas, brahmastras and so many different kinds of missiles (astras) and so on and include these in our scriptural texts, the post-Independence India has been (and, this includes my generation also) satisfied with simply copying things western and ever trying to "catch-up" with western style of living, western standards of prosperity and so on.

Unless this trend changes, innovativeness will not come.
 
1. The Indians' ability to innovate is as good as any other citizen of any other nation in the world.

2. Our yougmen study well, understand their subject well and then the desire to start a venture by innovating some thing -can be a product, a process, or anything else novel.

3. They innovate, find the product/process works and decide to start a commercial venture to market and prepare a project doc. On paper every possible risk is taken care of to ensure success.

4. They look for financiers and get them also in the go.

5. Their main weakness is in the area of managing the finance and people. They fail miserably in these two areas and wind up.

This is the story of 8 out of ten indian start ups.

Generally the time value of money is ignored completely and blunders are committed. Cash flows are never understood properly and are usually mismanaged.

Those who have the financial wizardry in their genes (like the marwaris and baniyas) shine and come up. They survive to tell you the story. Others go and end up as paid employees to make their employers' ventures successful. some of them with a big ego keep slogging and become a pain to the family members. The person who suffers maximum is the wife of such an entrepreneur. I stop with this as the genes theory has been quoted and there are members who will come running after me with a gun for that.
 
It would be a good idea if these start ups associate some senior people with exposure to finance and people management as mentors.

One requires deep pockets to fund such ventures.

I know many of my friends who have burnt their fingers in start ups.

Also many start up associates fall out and cannot stick together as a team to build a product and effectively market it.

There are very few success stories,

recently I came across a website portal Housing.com put together by IIT graduates for sale,rental of flats besides other related activites.

Its chief executive -a 26 year old Rahul yadav is making waves by giving away all 200 crores of his shares free to his employees numbering 2550 . the total value of his

housing portal is 1600 crores. it is one of the success stories.
 
I think the innovative ability of Indians is very poor. While our forefathers were, possibly, very highly imaginative and could think of aerial vimanas, brahmastras and so many different kinds of missiles (astras) and so on and include these in our scriptural texts, the post-Independence India has been (and, this includes my generation also) satisfied with simply copying things western and ever trying to "catch-up" with western style of living, western standards of prosperity and so on.

Unless this trend changes, innovativeness will not come.

I think it started earlier than that and you alluded to in one of your posts long time back.

It must have started from the period of BhAshyAkArs. One fine day they decided that there would be no more revelations of vedas (in the form of true knowledge), and started writing fables after fables in the name of various purANAs, ItihAsAs etc.

Then they started writing BhAshyams on that, then kArikAs, then vishleshans, then tippaNis then tukdis etc. etc. on the same topic. Almost no record is maintained of achievements in any sphere other than God pleasing kAryakramams. They had decided to eschew all originality.
 
I think it started earlier than that and you alluded to in one of your posts long time back.

It must have started from the period of BhAshyAkArs. One fine day they decided that there would be no more revelations of vedas (in the form of true knowledge), and started writing fables after fables in the name of various purANAs, ItihAsAs etc.

Then they started writing BhAshyams on that, then kArikAs, then vishleshans, then tippaNis then tukdis etc. etc. on the same topic. Almost no record is maintained of achievements in any sphere other than God pleasing kAryakramams. They had decided to eschew all originality.

Shri Zebra sir,

I am glad that you have corrected my impression, but do you still consider that all those Bhaashyams, Kaarikaas, Visleshanas, etc., were the handiwork of one or the other group of non-brahmins and that the brahmins were, by and large, innocent of all these? If that was so, then we should have found a good amount of innovativeness among the brahmins of the present day, is that not logical to expect?
 
When the land was plenty and fertile, people were generally non-violent, when the rains were regular and nature had provided a strong and virtually impenetrable fortress around the plains, when the ratio of male to female in population remained ideal it was heaven on earth and there was no need to explore any thing external. so the next best thing was done-explore internally the mind. The ever mysterious God idea was always available as it remained always a mystery. We came to have vedas, upanishads, Sutras, bhashyams, Karikas, vrittis etc., etc.,

This is the story of India, or the Bharath untill the invasion by Alexander and then by the tribes from the west.

When the life is fairly comfortable there is no incentive to invent.

British exploration of the sea lanes, its subjugating the peoples of its string of colonies, the challenge from Germany, the wars and every invention in science in Europe had their base in violence and disturbances. Until the American continent was discovered. Then it became a different story of plenty and the melting pot of civilizations.

Now India is under pressure-of a different kind. It is its population and its aspirations. So the next century will belong to India because it is the cyclic requirement. Its internal pressures will make it innovate, invent, invest and produce. Only there may not be any violence. That is not because violence is not a solution but because mindless violence is not there in the genes.

We are back at the Gene theory. LOL. I stop here for obvious reasons.
 
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Not everything is in Genes.
The same people from India, are able to innovate, lead, and succeed in the west.
So it has to do with environment as well. Indians working in foreign lands win Nobel Price, and become CEO of large Multinational companies and are the innovators. Why it is not duplicated in India?
Indian Industries are family controlled and generally not very innovation friendly.

I used to work for a automotive company in India. They collaborated with an American excavation company. This American company also collaborated at the same time with a German company. The managing director of American company came to visit the plant after 5 years. He was impressed with the quality and volume of production in the India, but he was terribly disappointed with the R&D work (1970s). He compared the R&D of the German venture where in same 5 years they had suggested 150 product improvement, where as in India it was just 5. These were all engineers from best collages.

Similarly we in India never bothered to produce our own Engine Till Tata Automotive took up the challenge. We were happy with the HM Ambassador which was a British Morris design from 1940. All our National Institutes (NML etc) were hotbed of politics and nothing more. Even today we are not even able to produce indigenous bullets, gun, planes, submarines, etc.

We are also not able to copy like the Chinese.
South Korea produces quality product and dominated the market in Electronics, Automotive, and table wares.
 
I have a lot of hope that India will change.

Compulsion of the time to come will force our youngsters to innovate and produce better products ,local solutions for a market thirsting for them.

one can see new and substitute products by the dozen hitting the markets.

Youngsters are floating startups to fulfill various needs and hunger of the consuming class.

for every product from western country , a cheaper subsitute with indian content makes an appearance very fast.

their only competition are the chinese products of low reliability.

The other day I bought chinese fancy wall and ceiling lights with reliable indian interior leds . the local had stripped it to remove the bad elements and replaced them

with reliable brands such as philips and keeping the total cost low. The overall costs of electrics for a new home has drastically come down

Indians have become experts in repairs of laptops , TVs using parts from discarded units for repair. the numbers of companies offering wi fi connectivities in homes has

multiplied and all are competitively priced, Furniture prices are getting lowered with latest designs from web based marketing companies. online marketing is seeing a

huge jump -from groceries,food ,travel, holiday packages , hotel all are in for radical change. let us not under estimate india
 
only veda, vedanta related works have been jealously guarded, preserved and passed on for generations. All know who deserve the credit. Work done in other fields, astronomy, science, architecture, are lost, scattered, stolen, shifted to libraries. A large body of samskrit and local languages is gradually seeing daylight. There is a strong foundation in terms of knowledge, wisdom, work culture, inquiring mindset - the future is bright in all fields for indians.

I think it started earlier than that and you alluded to in one of your posts long time back.

It must have started from the period of BhAshyAkArs. One fine day they decided that there would be no more revelations of vedas (in the form of true knowledge), and started writing fables after fables in the name of various purANAs, ItihAsAs etc.

Then they started writing BhAshyams on that, then kArikAs, then vishleshans, then tippaNis then tukdis etc. etc. on the same topic. Almost no record is maintained of achievements in any sphere other than God pleasing kAryakramams. They had decided to eschew all originality.
 
I think our ability to go in depth is an issue in India...

We all want to be generalists...

How may patents are filed by our research labs...Research is affected by lack of funding & politics thus genuine people loose interest and start dabbling in extraneous matters...

Let us make our Labs completely independent and strive to take care of all their needs in terms of facilities including salaries....

Let us for a change, provide Global salaries to our scientists and see the results..

May be someone can pilot this..It will be definitely an eye opener

Conducive environment as pointed by Sri Prasad is very critical
 
Let us make our Labs completely independent and strive to take care of all their needs in terms of facilities including salaries....

Let us for a change, provide Global salaries to our scientists and see the results..

May be someone can pilot this..It will be definitely an eye opener

Conducive environment as pointed by Sri Prasad is very critical

We just saffronized school science.
Stem cell therapy was performed thousands of years ago, by an Indian Hindu sage called Rishi Vyas. The first aeroplane in the world was ‘Pushpak Viman’, a flying chariot used by Hindu God Rama. Prehistoric Indians had invented television for their use.


These are not excerpts from any fiction book but some ‘pearls of wisdom’ picked up from a school text book called “Tejomay Bharat” (‘Glorious India’ in Hindi) that has recently been introduced in government schools in the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-run state of Gujarat.

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh blamed certain BJP leaders for “politicising” the issue of setting up of the Central University of Himachal Pradesh (CUHP) campus.

Your dream of independent research Lab will have to remain a dream.
 
We just saffronized school science.




Your dream of independent research Lab will have to remain a dream.

Let us not be apologetic about the past...Sage Sushruta (600 BC) was the first to describe the various surgical procedures in Sushruta Samhita...Buddhist monks had disseminated Indian medical knowledge to Persia ...Even Rig Veda talks about astronomy (2000 BC)
 
A report in the NDTV quoted Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi as saying,"It is very important in our current environment that we promote scientific temper in education. We are seeing that this is gradually being eroded. Science is being mixed with religion and mythology. We must accord due respect and understand that there is a separation that exists."
Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy criticised the BJP MP and also took the opportunity to criticise HRD minister Smriti Irani for visiting an astrologer in Rajasthan recently.
While the opposition and other parties were up in arms against the statement made by Pokhriyal, the BJP MP stuck to his stand and said there should be a proper discussion on the subject and astrology "should get the respect it deserves."
 
Why should any government politicize an educational Institute? Higher education and research should be free from government interference.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani caught up in yet another educational institution storm in the wake of the resignation of nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar as the chairman of the board of governors of IIT, Bombay, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today accused the government of “politicising” educational institutes.

Anil Kakodkar has resigned apparently because of differences with the HRD Ministry over selection of some IIT directors.

“The development is in continuance of the government’s plan to push right wing ideology in the country’s education system through its chosen people with RSS background,” a party statement said.
Referring to reports that a private school here allegedly forced its staff to enroll with BJP, the party said, “The BJP agenda of rewriting Indian history is showing effects with school administration openly carrying out membership drives for the party.”
 
Let us not be apologetic about the past...Sage Sushruta (600 BC) was the first to describe the various surgical procedures in Sushruta Samhita...Buddhist monks had disseminated Indian medical knowledge to Persia ...Even Rig Veda talks about astronomy (2000 BC)

The crux of the matter is that it was the Buddhists who pioneered the medical research. What we now have is a book updated by Nagarjuna, is it not?
 
Let us not be apologetic about the past...Sage Sushruta (600 BC) was the first to describe the various surgical procedures in Sushruta Samhita...Buddhist monks had disseminated Indian medical knowledge to Persia ...Even Rig Veda talks about astronomy (2000 BC)

There is no apology needed.
What you say is true and belongs in a Museum. It should be dusted and seen occasionally. Those knowledge are great motivator and pride in our heritage.
But that knowledge and $1 may buy you a can of Coke.

Can you make An "apple" watch that the entire world is waiting for? Can you make a Tesla Car for which there is 1 year waiting period? Can you go to Mars and come back.
Talk is cheap, Even Jules Gabriel Verne wrote volumes and gained popularity.
Actually producing products that is needed, providing jobs to others are lot different than "past writings".
 
It is not that Buddhists are not Indians, but the fact that under Hinduism there is very little scope for innovativeness.

Sangom Sir,

Most of your posts are objective, but they are at times more critical of Hindus and brahmins than others. The Indian society as a whole failed the Indian state to rise to the challenges of the times.

(1) During your youth you must have seen the "Victoria" horse carriages in Bombay as also the jatkA-vandis and mATTu vandis in native Kerala and Tamilnadu. None of the jatka-wallahs thought of providing the comfort of cushioned seats etc. to their customers in the interiors of the southern states.

(2) We read about "Gears & Pullys" in our fifth standard general science books (around 1960s), but geared bi-cycles came into common use only by 2010. Same thing about shock absorbers or pneumatic tyres.

(3) We all talk about ahimsa being the "original" idea of Indians and debate whether the thought originally came from Hinduism, Buddhism or Jainism. But none of us contemplated much on the cruelty of nailing horse-shoes on horses and oxen. If human beings can wear shoes without "nailing" the shoes on to their feet, such a possibility should exist for fitting horse shoes too, I feel.

(4) None of the Indians, including IIT-ians and doctrates in physics did even basic innovations on common things like the above.

(5) You, me, your father, my father et all paid income-tax and various other taxes to subsidize the education of the brilliant minds at IITs, who couldnt even bring about basic improvement in the quality of life to Indians. Instead the said IITs produced bridge players and anarchists like Arvind Kejriwal.

(6) Education during the congress rule was mostly mass production units of clerical staffs and nothing more.

(7) And we had communists opposing them, who wound do mass agitations against introduction of computers, but will not teach their comrades to total up five numbers correctly.

Many of these things/thoughts I did tell my father when I was a kid, but I was silenced by these words "aamaam, nee periya C V Raman. Vaaya moodindu padi porum". I would believe the same situation would have prevailed in most of average Indian homes and there were no takers for innovations.

So we were actively encouraged to keep the "study part" distinct from its application part.
 
Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who himself congratulated Pichai via Twitter, has asked why the country lags many other economies when it comes to major science and technology breakthroughs and innovation. “Why is it that a company like Google isn’t born in India?” Modi asked recently, speaking in Hindi, at the inauguration of Digital India, a multibillion-dollar program to bring Internet to the country’s villages.
Pichai’s appointment has roused similar sentiments among others in India too: “Great news for Indians, but think what could have been the situation if similar opportunities and environments were made available in India to people with such caliber,” wrote Times of India reader Bhadresh K., on a forum hosted by the newspaper.
“If there is one word that captures [Pichai’s] success, it is emigration,” wrote pundit Vikram Johri in an opinion piece on Tuesday.
Johri suggests that part of the problem may be cultural. He contrasts Pichai’s success with the perceived failure of Rahul Yadav, an undoubtedly brilliant young entrepreneur who founded the Indian startup Housing.com. Yadav quit the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai before graduating to build the dot-com, but his irascible personality eventually got him booted from his own company earlier this year, by which time it counted SoftBank as an investor.
Johri argues that India is unforgiving of the eccentricities of young geniuses, who are often at the forefront of world-changing innovation. He points to how Uber’s Travis Kalanick’s bad-boy reputation didn’t stop investors from funding the ride-hailing company with billions of dollars.
Satapathy echoed the sentiment, saying Pichai’s rise, based on his ability, and enabled by Google’s culture, couldn’t have happened in today’s India. “I can’t imagine someone going that quickly up the ladder in India. We have a long way to go to get into that level. We have to see first those kind of enterprises being created in India, then we can talk about execs rising up in them,” Satapathy said.
Another contributor to India’s failure to launch companies that create market-leading products is that the country’s tech industry is built largely around outsourcing giants like Wipro, TCS and Infosys. Much of the work they do involves programming and coding of products designed elsewhere. “It’s still a services mindset,” Satapathy said.


With a population of more than 1 billion, India also boasts a strong domestic market for digital services, including telecommunications and online entertainment. Domestic spending on information technology in 2015 is expected to grow 9.4 percent compared to 2014, to $73.3 billion, according to Gartner. Companies that dominate locally could use their profits to fund international expansion. Indian carrier Bharti Airtel, for example, has already reached beyond the subcontinent and now provides service in 20 countries in Asia and Africa.
“So it could happen. Maybe a certain ripeness of time is required; maybe now is the time,” said Krishnan

http://www.ibtimes.com/why-india-pr...ceo-sundar-pichai-still-cant-innovate-2052197
 
Sangom Sir,

Most of your posts are objective, but they are at times more critical of Hindus and brahmins than others. The Indian society as a whole failed the Indian state to rise to the challenges of the times.

Shri Narayanan,

I am a smartha brahmin and supposed to be so starting from my Gotra Rishi. Even so, it has been my nature to say what I sincerely feel is the truth and that has brought lot of criticisms until one or the other of my observations benefitted any of my firends/relatives when they change their attitude towards me.

(1) During your youth you must have seen the "Victoria" horse carriages in Bombay as also the jatkA-vandis and mATTu vandis in native Kerala and Tamilnadu. None of the jatka-wallahs thought of providing the comfort of cushioned seats etc. to their customers in the interiors of the southern states.
You may recall that many of our old people would not travel even by a single-bullock cart; it was considered inauspicious. They will take only a 'pulpAy' for their seat because anything touched or used by the low-caste cart driver was unwelcome and, in any case, our old brahmins would not even drink water until they got down from the bullock cart, took bath and changed their clothes because of the 'aSuddhaM' caused by sitting in that cart. In such a situation supply of a cushion would definitely have been an object of abomination; so which cart driver would have exercised his brains about a cushion?

So, you see, the brahministic culture was such that it throttled almost all innovations.

(2) We read about "Gears & Pullys" in our fifth standard general science books (around 1960s), but geared bi-cycles came into common use only by 2010. Same thing about shock absorbers or pneumatic tyres.

Bi-cycle itself was the Sahib's innovation and, for quite some decades brahmins looked at it as something unholy. Its plain leather seat was again 'aSuddha' even when I learned cycling and so I had to come home through the agraharam back door and take a bath before entering inside the house! If the cycle had a stuffed seat with a fabric cover, then this aSuddham multiplied very many times in intensity!

What we had in villuvaNDis and even horse carts of those days were primitive kind of wrought iron shock absorbers only I think (correct me if I am wrong.) but it was for the cart driver or the bullock/horse to think of any innovations about the shock absorbers because the passengers were not much bothered about comfort.

I am not sure whether pneumatic tyres would have been suitable for the untarred country roads we had back in those days; any sudden puncture might have broken the neck of the bullock/horse. But we could have attached, by nailing, tyre tread on to the wooden wheels and this sort of innovation was introduced, here and there, by around the late 1950's. Blacksmiths were not interested in modifying the iron girdle put over the wooden wheel and used to demand huge charges.

(3) We all talk about ahimsa being the "original" idea of Indians and debate whether the thought originally came from Hinduism, Buddhism or Jainism. But none of us contemplated much on the cruelty of nailing horse-shoes on horses and oxen. If human beings can wear shoes without "nailing" the shoes on to their feet, such a possibility should exist for fitting horse shoes too, I feel.
Nailing horse shoes or bullock shoes is still the accepted method. I am told that the nailing itself, if done carefully, does not cause any pain because the hoof is insensitive. I feel even in western countries this is even now the accepted method. A shoe made of leather will also tear apart after the horse takes a few steps, that is the kind of force exerted.

(4) None of the Indians, including IIT-ians and doctrates in physics did even basic innovations on common things like the above.

(5) You, me, your father, my father et all paid income-tax and various other taxes to subsidize the education of the brilliant minds at IITs, who couldnt even bring about basic improvement in the quality of life to Indians. Instead the said IITs produced bridge players and anarchists like Arvind Kejriwal.

(6) Education during the congress rule was mostly mass production units of clerical staffs and nothing more.

(7) And we had communists opposing them, who wound do mass agitations against introduction of computers, but will not teach their comrades to total up five numbers correctly.

These are all known, and possibly unchallengeable facts. What is relevant is why our IITians even did not innovate at all. I feel it has to do with our age-old culture. Brahmins are accustomed to a living without much hard physical work like tilling the soil, climbing the coconut or palm trees, digging wells or ponds, managing an "Ettam" all day long till sunset, for irrigating his farmlands, and so on. Brahmins had the mumbo jumbo of exotic sounding mantras with which they could convince the rest of the people that they were in possession of some unknown, mysterious and divine kinds of powers in themselves. And it was the brahmins who monopolised study as an avocation. Hence, there was no innovativeness left.

Many of these things/thoughts I did tell my father when I was a kid, but I was silenced by these words "aamaam, nee periya C V Raman. Vaaya moodindu padi porum". I would believe the same situation would have prevailed in most of average Indian homes and there were no takers for innovations.

So we were actively encouraged to keep the "study part" distinct from its application part.

We must recall that at the time of Independence, brahmins were on the verge of losing out on every front and the only sure thing before them was english education, a clerical job and income therefrom. Families also used to be large, with 6 or more siblings and so the father, the only earning member, had somehow to see his children settled in life. Ours was not the kind of parent-child system which existed abroad; parents were rather over protective and overly concerned about their sons, especially. Hence you might have heard those discouraging statements. But that is immaterial today.

BTW, so much is being made about Sundar Pichai, etc. What innovation/s did he orginally make? Was he also not a glorified employee in whom the promoters of the company developed trust?
 
Sri Sangom Sir,

BTW, so much is being made about Sundar Pichai, etc. What innovation/s did he orginally make? Was he also not a glorified employee in whom the promoters of the company developed trust?

By all accounts Sri Pichai must be an outstanding Team Leader. He took over android application business from in Rubin and it wasnt an easy transition at all. Google's workforce is huge and there is always politicking going on among various groups, though much do not come out, except while making odd comparisons with Google's competitors.

As regards innovation etc. he must have contributed a lot to the innovations at Google. especially in their browser and toolbar technology. But I suppose in tech companies, the credit is given to the team members and the innovations are patented and copy-written in favour of the Company.

He managed to sell one billion android phones, a vast chunk of it to China and a good portion to India, in a single year. This has to be a stupendous achievement, because even if the net profit was a mere $ 10 per phone, a bottomline of 10 billion dollars in a single year has to be huge. Even a single achievement in one's life time would be normally unparalleled and cannot be duplicated.

I would think he is much more than a glorified employee and his elevation goes beyond mere reposition of trust in him by his employer.

I think this link may shed a bit more on him: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/15/google-ceo-sundar-pichai
 
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