In My Opinion: Rajeev Madhavan,Magma Design Automation VC Talk: Sanjay Subhedar, Storm Ventures; Deepak Kamra, Canaan Partners

PUBLISHED SINCE 1997

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY

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IN THE U.S. & INDIA FEBRUARY - 2012 SILICONINDIA.COM

Its about Extreme and Stupid Optimism

Syed Ali, President & CEO, Cavium

Contents February 2012

COVER STORY
Page

14

Its about Extreme and Stupid Optimism

By Vimali Swamy

06

20 Consumer Internet is Fascinating 21 Trends and Hottest 22 [Feature]

By Deepak Kamra, Canaan Partners Technologies to Bet On By Sasha Mirchandani, Kae Capital 2012 Are Private Equity Players Going to Survive?
By Hari Anil

32 [Technology]

34 [Business]

Top 10 Reasons for Not Moving your Business to the Cloud in 2012 By Marcy Hoffman, InfoStreet Benefits of collecting and harnessing product operational data By Puneet Pandit, Glassbeam Ideas, Ideas, and an Awesome Idea: 4KTA By Naveen Bisht, TiE Silicon Valley Innovation - A Strategic Necessity By P .R.Chandrasekar, Hexaware Key Trends driving the Industry today Sridhar Nallani, Vice President IT, TRIA Beauty

17 [Technology] 18 [VC Talk]

Advice from a Serial EDA Entrepre24 [Business] neur:Find a Need and Fulfill It Want to Start a Company? By Rajeev Madhavan, Maybe You Should Play a Sport First Magma Design Automation Inc By Vasu Kulkarni, Krossover 08 [Infocus] 26 [Rear View] 11 [VC Chakra] Collaborate, Communicate and be Productive 12 [CEO Spotlight] By Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Polycom By Ashish Tandon, Indusface Facebook Pages an on-ramp to Mobile Marketing By Amit Nanda, CellZapp

38 [Entrepreneur Corner]

40 [CEO Speak] 42 [CIO Insight]

28 [In Conversation]

Indian Semiconductor Industry lacks VC backing?

PVG Menon, President of ISA

Venture Capital Today- A Perspective By Sanjay Subhedar, Storm Ventures

30 [CIO Insights]

Revolutionizing the Mobile Web By Hkon Wium Lie, Opera Software

46 [View Point]

44 [SI 20 Profile]

By Pradeep Shankar

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February 2012

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Its said that you can never count on a girl and a check. Both can bounce at any time. This statement brings me to the optimistic scenario of tech IPOs in 2012. The initial public stock issuance of venture backed Linkedin, Groupon, Pandora, Zynga, Zillow and Impreva shares was a silver lining for many investors in 2011. There were 44 U.S. tech IPOs last year, nearly double the number of offerings of any other sector. Of these, around half were Internet companies, including four of the five largest Internet IPOs in U.S. history. As per the industry insights, investors are expecting a similar momentum and they believe that prospects are going to be strong in 2012 as Facebook might be a Gorilla in the room. But, what if the current choppy markets, are not in favor of technology IPOs? Well, its always good to have a Plan B. The European debt situation, the Arab spring uncertainty, the forthcoming U.S and Congressional elections, the U.S. budget deficit and, mooted changes in the U.S. tax code for investors do not indicate a healthy season for IPO in 2012. Moreover, the investors are counting on most of the VC funded companies that are lining up for IPO and hope to have a successful cash exit. It is only then the Venture Capitalists will have clarity on successful funding cycle for their existing funds and be able to bring in healthy returns. If all this fall in right place, investors will be inclined to invest another round of funding in the portfolio companies. In short, the VCs are counting on eggs, which may or may not hatch. If the eggs do not hatch, I feel that all this will lead companies switching to traditional model of entrepreneurship, where in more of this community will start counting on angel investors and crowd funding as raising VC funds is not going to be the easy way. Moreover this will lead startups to follow Lean Startup Approach, which is being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. The lean startup method coined by Eric Ries, advocates the creation of rapid prototypes designed to test the market assumptions, and uses customer feedback to evolve them mush faster than the more traditional practices. The rise of smaller, fleet-footed companies in the lean startup mold is bringing changes in the venture financing, with funds as high as $500,000 or so from the angel investors, instead of traditional venture capital firms.

What if Gorilla Falls?

Editorial

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By Rajeev Madhavan

The author is Chairman and CEO, Magma Design Automation Inc.

in my opinion

Advice from a Serial EDA Entrepreneur: Find a Need and Fulfill It

grew up in Southern India in a very traditional family. My father worked for the Indian Revenue Service and my mother was a home maker. I was an average student, spending more time on cricket than any academic pursuit. I went to college and earned a B.S. in electronics and communication from KREC (Karnataka Regional Engineering College) in Surathkal. My first business was driven by me and my friends love for comic books. I recognized a market demand and devised a way to meet it. I started renting my comic books to other kids on the bus and used the money I earned to buy new ones. I even worked out a partnership with a bigger, stronger kid to help me collect the fees. When my teachers learned about this venture, I was suspended from the school bus. That experience and the conservative Kerala culture at that time did not encourage in me an interest in entrepreneurship. But then I went on to graduate school at Queens University in Ontario, Canada, earning an M.S.E.E. While completing my thesis, I went to work for BNR (Bell North Research), the research arm of Nortel in Ottawa, where I had the opportunity to create some CAD software applications to help complete chip designs I was involved with. Despite no traditional background in electronic design automation (EDA) or computer science, while working at BNR, I ended up developing a lot of EDA tools. By 1991, I was working at Cadence Design Systems in San Jose as a BNR engineer involved in a long-term partnership between the two companies called the Analog Alliance.

An important differentiating advantage that is critical to the long term success of an E-commerce company is the entire customer experience cycle.

challenge to calculate and then prove the value of our solution to our customers. At LogicVision, I had an opportunity to integrate LogicVision BIST into Synopsys tools. Having worked on synthesis at BNR, I felt there was room for another synthesis player to compete directly against Synopsys. So, I left LogicVision and founded Ambit Design Systems in 1994. It was the first synthesis solution to successfully challenge Synopsys and it was acquired by Cadence in 1998. After Ambit, I recognized the need for a truly different approach to IC design, synthesis and physical design needed to be integrated. We started Magma in 1997 based on that simple idea. Since then, Magma has become a leading EDA provider with seven of the ten top semiconductor companies using our software. In addition to learning to recognize a need and develop a product to meet it, I have learned important lessons about how to run a business from each of my three startups. At LogicVision, the learning was that creating great technology is not the only key to success. You have to know how to precisely define a problem, define the solution, determine the value of your product, communicate that value to the market and how to sell. After Ambit, I looked at myself to see what I could improve. It was a revelation to realize that I should have been better at communicating with employees. I learned that I had to be more extroverted. This was a life-altering shift and changed the way I ran my next company.

The Vice President for business development at Cadence gave me several start-ups business plans to look over and evaluate. By showing me those business plans, he helped me understand the venture capital business and how ideas are funded. It was eyeopening to me to learn that you could earn a salary while working at a startup and that you didnt have to be selfsupporting. After reading a few business plans, I decided I wanted to build a start up. While I was at Cadence, I was consulted on licensing BNRs BIST software since I had worked on it. With that background, it was natural for me to help found LogicVision, a provider of embedded test, BIST and automatic test pattern (ATPG) tools. The technology was innovative, but it was a

Lessons Learned

My steepest learning curve has been with Magma. Over the last 15 years, we have expanded our product offering from digital place-and-route tools to providing comprehensive IC implementation, analysis, analog/mixed-signal design and yield management solutions. We successfully took the company public in November of 2001 when the country was still reeling from 9/11, battled through a tough lawsuit, re-wrote our software, nimbly navigated through the economic downturn and are in the process of being acquired. Through all these changes and challenges, I have learned a lot about how to work with people. I now try to figure out what a person is all about and use that to help motivate them to do something great for the company. I have learned to agree to disagree without holding a grudge. Over the years, my engineering background has allowed me to understand the complex technology required to build ICs, and to understand the customers problems. But, one of the most important things I have learned is you cant solve all your customers problems. Clearly defining the problem and the solution and accurately calculating what that solution is worth to your customers, is critical. Otherwise, you may end up with a great technology that nobody wants to pay for. While the world economy may be experiencing some turbulence, I still believe that with a good idea, a smart business plan, persistence, good people skills and hard work, now can be a perfect time to start a company. A little set back should not keep would-be entrepreneurs from pursuing a dream. si

Seize Opportunities

Rajeev Madhavan
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Founded in 1997, San Jose, California headquartered Magma Design Automation (Nasdaq: LAVA) is one of the largest providers of electronic design automation (EDA) software. Magma products are used by the world's major semiconductor manufacturers to design the most complex, high-performance integrated circuits being made today. The company is currently in the process of being acquired by Synopsys Inc (Nasdaq: SNPS).
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in
Indians Second Most Confident of their Personal Financial Future
India is trailing Brazil in the same; the Brazilian consumer is expecting one of the highest rates of household income growth, with the majority expecting increases in excess of 10 percent, or around five percent in real terms. Just after India comes China. The survey also spotted that 70 percent of Indian respondents have no computers in the home and only 19 percent of them register having access to the internet. India is also showing increasing interest in educational spending. 32 percent of the respondents showed

in
Indian Advisor to the President of Harvard Varsity
fective and a parallel approach to international fundraising and engage Harvards alumni living abroad. Palepu will bring a global background and perspective to his research and teaching and will hold a critical position in contributing to the ongoing development of our global strategy. Harvard being one of the strongest platforms in the world for teaching and research, Palepu said, I look forward to working with President Faust to craft a more coordinated and strategic approach to

ndian consumer remains the second most confident in their personal finances looking forward. This was pointed out in the Emerging Consumer Survey 2011, conducted by the Credit Suisse Research Institutes. The survey was a detailed study of consumer sentiment within the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Indonesia. The survey took data from just over 14,000 adults, including more than 2500 interviews from both China and India and more than 1,500 from each of the other six countries.

ndian airport retail market is witnessing a very enthusiastic growth phase; this is reflected in the $1 billion revenue generated by the sector in 2011. The rise in revenue is attributed to the growth in passenger traffic and the increase in the number of people shopping at the airport. This was suggested in a study conducted by Bangalorebased consulting firm Asipac Projects. The study says that the business is growing at 17-18 percent annually, emerging as a feasible platform for retailers and operators of the new airports. The top categories emerging in the duty free section are beauty, alcohol, personal care tobacco, whereas, food and beverages, sta-

Indian Airport Retail Register $1 Billion Revenue in 2011

tionary, books are spotted in the dutypaid segment. The airports registered approximately $43 billion in sales globally with London Heathrow and Seoul's Incheon being the most profitable ones. Flyers hang around more at an airport like Bangalore as it is far away from the city. Also, shopping at airports in India has anovelty attached to it, considering it is a new concept for us, says Amit Bagaria, Chairman & CEO, Asipac Projects. The domestic as well international airport at Delhi terminal (T3) has

interest in giving their children education outside of typical schooling; last year the same stood at 23 percent. Also the percent of adult participation in extra courses has risen from 3 percent to 12 percent, showing a newborn interest in education in the country. The survey indicate that India has the highest bank account penetration and the fewest number of people claiming they have no extra money for saving. The life insurance industry (via tax incentives) and real assets such as gold and property substitute as the main non-cash savings for Indians.

cademician Krishna Palepu has been appointed as senior advisor to president of Harvard University to guide the institutions strategy. Harvards President Drew Faust announced that Palepu will take his new position of senior advisor for global strategy immediately. Palepu has taught at the Harvard Business School for over three decades. He will work closely with the president to clarify and test some operational proposals of the International Strategy Working Group. Palepu will help develop a more ef-

India can expect between 7.7 and 7.9 percent Growth in 2012-13

Harvards international engagement, supporting the expertise and ambition of our community. Palepu joined the HBS faculty in 1983. He received his doctorate in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holds a master's degree in physics from Andhra University and has done postgraduate work at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Palepu has an honorary doctorate from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration.

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the retail area of around two lakh square feet and built to tap the potential of retail revenues. Airport operators like GMR and GVK that started with very high rental rates are now moving towards a revenueshare model. Malls still work on a per square feet rental model, with few as exceptions. si

ndia's economy is expected to expand by between 7.7 and 7.9 percent in 2012 - 2013; down from 8.5 percent in 2010 says World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP), a joint product of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the five United Nations regional commissions. The report shows that this slowdown is not a local phenomenon but only a part of the global picture. This growth rate of India, even though lukewarm, is far better than that the developed world can expect and is only behind the forecasted growth rate of China. The global economy as a whole has witnessed a sluggish growth in 2011 and is ex-

pected to go through a similar phase in 2012. It points out that the country is unlikely to meet its deficit target. Owing to economic growth boosted tax revenues and the sale of 3G telecommunications licenses increased non-tax revenues, Indias fiscal deficit declined to 5.1 percent of GDP in the fiscal year 2010-2011. Still, due to the lower growth rate and on-hold disinvestments in state run companies, it is highly unlikely that the Government manages to achieve the target of 4.7 percent of GDP for the fiscal year 2011 2012, says the report. It is also forecasted that India and Sri Lanka will manage to generate more jobs in this timeframe than any other South Asian counterparts.

The report also said that recession in either Europe or the United States might not be enough to cause another global recession, but a collapse of both economies most likely would. In the pessimistic scenario of the United Nations forecast for 2012, the economy of the EU would decline by 1.5 percent and that of the United States by 0.8 percent, this would be a tight blow to the developing economies. Asian developing countries, particularly those in East Asia, would suffer mainly through a drop in their exports to major developed economies, while those in Africa, Latin America and Western Asia, along with the major economies in transition, would be affected by declining primary commodity prices, said the survey. si
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IT Managers in BYOD Deadlock
ith the introduction of tablets and the expanding popularity of smartphones, the businesses around the globe are changing. More and more employees have started using their own devices and this is making todays workforce more mobile than ever. Still an emerging market, 2012 is seen as a year in which enterprise-grade tablet computing will go through major change. A recent survey points out that the U.S., the country with the most experience in managing tablets, also ranks first on the "security issue". The survey which was conducted among 1500 IT managers and executives in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany and Spain to assess attitudes, fears and hopes for tablet form-factor mobile devices ("tablets") in the workplace. The survey, which was conducted by Redshift Research and commissioned by Cisco, exposed multiple aspects of this new paradigm. About 21 percent of employees in the U.S. have already requested for tablets and about 38 percent senior executives in the country are most likely to be issued a tablet. The main concern of IT managers when it comes to multiple devices in work space is related to security, with over 75 percent of U.S. IT managers saying new rules must be established around security
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AppDynamics Secures $20 Million in Series C Round Of Funding
California based application performance management solution provider AppDynamics has secured $20 million in series C round of funding led by Kleiner Perkincs Caufield & Byers (KPCB). The financing also saw the participation of existing and founding investors Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The funds would be used to fuel the companys growth and continue expansion of the engineering and sales teams to enable product enhancements and aggressive new customer acquisition. Previously the company had raised $11 million in series B round and $5.5 million in series A from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greylock Partners. The company provides Softwareas-Service (SaaS) and on-premise application performance management for modern application architectures in both the cloud and the data center. Its portfolio customers include Netflix, The Priceline Group of Companies, ZipRealty, Karavel.com, FOX News Channel, Cornell University, Taleo, Intuit, Conexus, AAA Northern California, Staples, Fresh Direct, Care.com, Swisscom, and many others. Modern applications are no longer monolithic in nature but are highly distributed and dynamic, fueled by architectural trends such as Cloud, SOA, Big Data and Agile Development. As a result, traditional application performance management solutions have become obsolete. We are leading the charge in next-generation management technology to address this generational shift in web architectures, says Jyoti Bansal, Founder & CEO, AppDynamics. AppDynamics, which was founded in 2008 by Bansal has a market size of over $2 billion and has about 90 employJyoti Bansal ees of now. Bansal previously led the design and architecture at Wily Technology. More than 60,000 people have downloaded AppDynamics Lite their free Java troubleshooting solution. The company has now raised $36.5 million in total.

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and device usage. Also, nearly half (48 percent) of all IT managers surveyed agree that access to company applications should be restricted for all employees. A staggering 48 percent of the respondents also said that their company would never authorize employees to bring their own devices (BYOD), yet 57 percent agreed that some employees use personal devices without consent. Using personal devices without consent was highest in the U.S. with over 64 percent of employees doing the same. Ciscos Security Annual Report recently pointed out that multiple devices are becoming very common now and about 77 percent of surveyed employees worldwide have multiple devices in use, such as a laptop and a smartphone or multiple phones and computers. The same report also suggested that enterprises and employees must find common ground, with the company recognizing the individuals need to use the device

of his or her choice and the employee understanding that the company must do whatever is necessary to enforce its security policy and stay in compliance with regulatory requirements related to data security. This essentially says that turning a blind eye towards BYOD will not work well in a long run. Mobile workers and virtual workspaces are here to staybut so are the demands on IT to continue to ensure enterprise-grade security, manageability and interoperability. 2012 promises to be an exciting year and IT leaders are a critical component in unleashing innovation and enabling organizations to take advantage of the next wave of business growth and opportunity, says Tom Puorro, Director of Product Management, IPCBU, Cisco Systems. Another major outcome from the survey is that 44 percent of IT managers worry that handling these BYOD-related issues has been diverting attention from other important projects. si

Palo Alto based app and browser extension developer, Spool has raised $ 1 million in seed funding. The round saw the participation of SVAngel, Felicis Ventures, Start Fund, Charles River Ventures, Vivi Nevo, Steve Chen, Elad Gil, Deep Nishar, Kevin Donahue, Joe Lonsdale, Bill Lohse, David King Nils Johnson, Matt Ocko, and Raymond Tonsing. They plan to use the funds to continue building their product, upgrade the infrastructure, and support their team. Spool was founded in November 2010 by Avichal Garg and Curtis Spencer. The founding team also includes Daniel Witte, Christine Tieu, Chandra Patni, and Aditya Koowal. The company labels itself as a hybrid between Dropbox and Google+. It is

Spool Raises $1 Million in Seed Funding

a personal internet recorder and enables users to view their favorite media on any device, at any time, regardless of being online or offline, and without worrying about the file formats or platforms. We see a global demand for our

Avichal Garg

product and millions of potential users, spool is a tool to manage media across multiple devices and is a means to consumer Internet content even of your mobile data connection is unreliable or if you use a mobile phone with Wifi only. In both the cases, we enable a user to cache content on a device and if you have multiple devices to easily move Internet content between devices, says Garg. The company currently has seven employees. Spools target audience is anyone who has a mobile phone and wants easy access to their content. The company aims to make it easy to save the content designated in the future as the company will be able to predict the content wanted by the customers on their device without having to request it. si
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February 2012

CEO Spotlight

thE thIrD PhASE oF It Boom

By Ashish Tandon, Chairman & CEO, Indusface

INDIA IS ENtErINg
I
ndia is now entering a third phase of the IT boom (started with Software development, then came BPO/Call Center), development and introduction of Software Products by Indian companies. India itself is emerging as a big captive market for the product companies 3G, 4G, LTE and broadband addressing the connectivity issues, availability of better physical infrastructure such as power, launch of low cost PCs, laptops, tablets and smart mobile phones, all these provides a great opportunity to introduce software products in the internet and ecommerce space. The future of IT is going to be shaped up with how much businesses can optimize products and services on the Cloud, Mobile and Social spaces. According to a Gartner survey, by 2015, low-cost cloud services will eat up the top outsourcing players' revenue by 15 percent. The market will become extremely price competitive, resulting in speeding up the transition towards cloud based services. Innovation and proper utilization of ones resources to grow in these areas will take one to the next level in IT industry. Another big change in the IT industry might be that the pay as you go model will most likely replace the traditional licensing model. The big names in Software industry are interested in moving to models where they do not have to negotiate on their costs but instead give what the CIO demands. Hence, the companies will be able to use only what they pay for. Also, SaaS (Software as a Service) will emerge as the preferred model of delivery going forward. According to Gartner, it will see a continuous healthy growth through 2015, when worldwide revenue is projected to reach $21.3 billion. An increasing interest in SaaS platform will trigger this growth and keep it moving. The main challenges entrepreneurs will face in this present scenario will be, rising interest rates of working capital, over cautious approach of Venture Capitalists and PEs to fund new projects, and the negative market sentiments due to the recent currency troubles in Euro zone, stock market fall, and decelerating growth in emerging economies. But, then again, these difficulties also present opportunity for businesses, especially in the markets where the competition might have weakened. si

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Ashish Tandon is a serial entrepreneur, and presently the Chairman and CEO of Indusface, a provider of end to end information security products, solutions and services. The company has recently launched its own SaaS based website security scanning and monitoring product "IndusGuard". With over 150 customers and 1000+ websites it received overwhelming acceptance of its product + SaaS model.
February 2012

Ashish Tandon

COVER Story

Its about Extreme and Stupid Optimism

ne may often wonder, if there is any single magic formula that one needs to crack to be successful entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs would agree that it is rather a combination of different factors that make or break them the passion, belief in one self and more importantly, the eureka moment when you realize that you have the ability to meet or create the need for something that has been eluding the market for long. When Syed Ali founded Cavium in 2000, he started with an idea of developing security processors, something the industry had not heard of but was in need of. Late 90s and early 2000s was the era of Internet. Ali saw that the Internet was expanding more and more into business communications and e-commerce, both of which required high security communication. Believing that security could be
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By Vimali Swamy

From a Startup to IPO

significantly enhanced by silicon technology, his company successfully offloaded all the heavy computational work onto silicon, which had not been done before. Just as Intel & AMD builds processors for PCs and servers, Cavium builds processors for different markets including networking, storage, wireless and security. It processes the new wave of data and secures it too. Today, the company provides highly integrated semiconductor processors that enable intelligent networking, communications, storage, video and security applications to worldwide markets and boasts.

Being first if its kind, Cavium since its early days had attracted quite a lot of attentions from venture capitalists. Menlo Ventures had started investigating the security

processor market in early 2002 with the premise that as networking speeds continued to increase, general purpose CPUs would be insufficient to handle ever-increasing processing needs. Products from all public and private companies were evaluated, and assistance was received from design teams at Cisco and F5, who were doing their own research. Menlo discovered that Cavium Networks was the only company designing security processors using full custom design methodologies. Cavium's full-custom chips promised to be smaller, run faster, use less power, and cost less to manufacture, while the competitors were using an ASIC design approach, which yielded chips with inferior performance. This boosted by seasoned leadership of Ali, and stellar software and IC design teams forced Menlo partner John Jarve to lead the first round of funding in April 2002. A key challenge facing Cavium in the early days was credibility with the largest and most important potential customers. After the technology bubble burst in 2001, large companies such as Cisco and Nokia refused to consider products from start-up companies like Cavium. They had seen too many start-ups go out of business, including some of their own suppliers. Menlo Ventures used its $1.5 billion fund to Cavium's advantage, guaranteeing future funding commitments and the financial stability of the Company. Additionally, Jarve met with multiple customers, including Cisco, to pledge financial support and help the company secure design wins. Winning large Tier 1 customers like Cisco is always a challenging task. Having Menlo and their large fund firmly behind us tipped the scale in our favor. Their financial support and guidance made the Menlo team a critical partner in our success at Cavium, says Ali, reminiscing of the old days.

The Race is Still on

Like a horse thats been let loose on the race course, there was no turning back for Cavium since then. The companys stellar growth record came to its peak on May 2, 2007, when Cavium completed a very successful IPO on the NASDAQ Global Market with Menlo Ventures as the largest shareholder. Today, Cavium is the leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor processors for intelligent networking, communications, and security applications. Cavium has over 150 customers including Cisco, Nokia, F5 Networks, Nortel, Fujitsu, and Sun Microsystems.

Most entrepreneurs see an IPO as the ultimate goal and sign of success and tend to slow down their pace, things seems to be much different with Ali. He still exhibits the same excitement and adrenalin rush that one sees in a newbie entrepreneur. The most exciting part of my job Ali feel is to bring out great products and being able to compete very large multi billion dollar companies and win against them. Today, despite having all tier one companies in its clientele, Ali is on a crusade to be the largest share holder in the security processor market. Today, several product groups of Cisco, Juniper, Netgear and other companies use Caviums processors in their devices. Alis aim now is to ensure every product group in these companies build their products around Caviums device. For this he is stopping at nothing. To be successful, Ali and his team must determine what will be needed three to four years in the future. The team is actively designing new processing devices and engaging the various product groups at these companies. "The most satisfying part," he says, "is when the products actually come out, the markets develop, and you have the best product. That's a big high."

The most satisfying part is when the products actually come out, the markets develop, and you have the best product. That's a big high.
Additionally, he is also strengthening the companys product portfolio through acquisitions. Since 2008, the company has acquired Star Semiconductor, W&W Communications, MontaVista Software and most recently WiMax chip pioneer Wavesat. With the acquisition of Wavesat, Cavium is bracing go up against giants including Freescale and Texas Instruments in the market for chips that will run a new generation of miniaturized base stations for 4G networks. The company's Octeon Fusion family that was launched last year comes with software co-developed with a leading telecom systems company. Carriers are expected to deploy as many as two dozen micro- or picosized base stations for every full size LTE unit as one way to handle the exsiliconindia

What Next?

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ploding demand for wireless data. The small cell base station market could grow to be worth more than $8 billion by 2016, according to the analysts. A recent report states that about 1.5 million full sized base stations will be shipped by 2015. Carriers will buy as many as 15 to 35 million a year of the smaller base stations as the 4G ramp icks in over the next few years, Alis team forecasts. Most of the top ten telecom system makers are finishing up their first-generation systems for carrier trials starting early next year. More integrated

Living and working in different cultures is going to be more and more important, because they will be your future markets.
parts recently announced by Cavium, Freescale and TI are aiming at nextgeneration systems geared for volume deployments in 2013 and beyond. "There is a big tug-of-war over how chips for these systems will get integrated, creating a lot of opportunity," said Joe Byrne, a senior analyst at The Linley Group. With its products, Ali is not aiming for femto cells, low-end base stations serving a handful of residential users. What carriers need are small cells in campuses and malls where there is a high population density and that is where Ali is betting his money on.

Lessons from a Successful Entrepreneur

Ali believes that to be an entrepreneur, there are few things that one
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needs to keep in mind: 1. Be extremely and stupidly optimistic. 2. Must have a passion for building a great company 3. Be very careful about the team that one recruits. Ensure there is plenty of diversity culturally, educationally and geographically. 4. Finally, do not be afraid of failure. Its looks very difficult to be an entrepreneur and build a successful company but believe me it is not so difficult. Every one of you can start a company, if you have the heart, the desire and the ability to put in a lot of hard work, he often says. It is this zeal and focused vision that earned him the Ernst & Young Technology Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 award for Northern California. This apart, Ali also has a special interest in student education especially in his alma mater, University of Michigan. The University, in addition to their classroom learning, emphasizes that students work on extracurricular research projects, participate in team projects and organizations, and serve the community. To support their efforts Ali has established the Syed Ali ECE Education Fund. "I wanted to give back," says Ali (MSE EE 81) about the fund. "If it wasn't for Michigan I wouldn't be where I am today." Ali is committed to assisting and encouraging students in their education. Recalling his own experience at Michigan, he states, "I received excellent exposure to semiconductor design and technology. At Michigan, you could implement an entire design cycle for a product, including manufacturing it in the lab, and then testing it. This was very unusual for a University, especially at that time." Michigan is still doing a great job according to Ali, who adds, "Michigan grads are always among our top performers at Cavium." si

Advice for student entrepreneurs

Technology

Work in an area you love Visualize where you want to be in 10 years Work with a diversified team Interact with people from different departments and parts of the world Carefully hire your first 50 people Be prepared to adapt to changing markets Don't be afraid of failure Don't take the easy way out Living and working in different cul tures is going to be more and more im portant, because they will be your fu ture markets. If possible, every engi neer should go and work in a foreign culture before they graduate. Be stupidly optimistic The most important thing is to take a risk. Don't be afraid, do something different.

Facebook Pages
acebook is the center of our universe. Or so it feels like. With more than 800 million users, there is no doubt it is a major focal point. As more users spend more time on Facebook, businesses are also migrating their focus to this platform. Businesses are seeing declines in traffic to their own websites a 2011 Webtrends study revealed that 68 percent of Fortune 100 companies experienced a negative growth in unique visits in the last year, with an average drop of 23 percent. In a sampling of 44 of these companies, 40 percent experienced higher traffic to their Facebook Pages. Likewise small and medium businesses (SMB) are also increasing their Facebook marketing efforts. BIA Kelseys 2010 Local Commerce Monitor data showed that 48 percent of businesses had a Facebook Page. This migration and emphasis makes sense as not only are the users there, but adoption is greatly simplified by personal use of the social network. I believe that Facebook Pages can also serve as an on-ramp to mobile marketing and will discuss this in more detail. Even while the Facebook Page is becoming a major component in the marketing mix and businesses expend significant money and time to build up fans, there is an underlying problem starting to surface. Reaching and engaging these fans is not trivial. Data from Campalyst showed that on an average day, just 14 percent of users who are already fans will actually see Page updates. Further more a very small percentage of users will engage with the Page (Skyttle Friends data suggests less than 0.005 percent are core fans those fans that interact more than the Page average which is generally

an on-ramp to Mobile Marketing

By Amit Nanda, Co-Founder, CellZapp starting to use other methods to gain control over their fan investment. Some are trying to capture their fans via contact form and Salesforce connect Page applications. A very natural extension is to capture fans into a businesses own mobile database. Pulling Facebook fans into a mobile database enables an easy on-ramp into mobile marketing. When coupled with a text messaging capability, the Page owner is now able to ensure that their fans/optedin mobile subscribers will see their updates (as text messages have a very high rate of opens) and for about 10X cheaper than FB Ads. Fans can also interact with the business via text messaging and hence establish a direct 1-to-1 relationship. Most importantly, the business now owns and controls this mobile database and is primed to leverage this with other mobile marketing techniques. They can use embedded URLs in their text messages to drive traffic to their mobile landing page/site, to mobile video content, mobile applications and more. They can utilize this channel to provide coupons, deals. They can build in loyalty programs that gamify fan engagement. Their horizons are limitless in their control. si Founded in 2008, San Francisco headquartered, CellZapp deploys branded SMS/MMS communities for clients that are integrated with their mobile branding (short/long code), their website and social media presence. These communities can be deployed for clients around any theme that is relevant to their specific brand/content/region.
siliconindia

The Man Behind Cavium

From 1998 to 2000, Syed B. Ali was Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Malleable Technologies, a communication chip company of which he was a founding management team member. Malleable Technologies was acquired by PMC Sierra, a communication IC company in 2000. From 1994 to 1998, Ali was an Executive Director at Samsung Electronics where he started the Flash memory and CPU businesses and put together the business plans that drove sales in each line to over a $100M in less than two years. Prior to that, Ali had various positions at Wafer Scale Integration, a division of SGS-Thompson, Tandem Computer, and American Microsystems. He received a BSEE from Osmania University, in Hyderabad, India and an MSEE from the University of Michigan.

.................

once), which further impacts the ability to reach them via their newsfeed. More significant is the fact that Page owners do not really own their fan database and also have limited control over reaching them. Facebook provides various Ad units to help overcome some of these challenges but that still leaves the Page owners at the mercy of Facebook. Page owners are

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February 2012

VC Talk
and industries that fundamentally now have VC funds that have a sec- novations have built some great inchanged how we live our daily lives. tor focus or a stage focus or a geog- frastructure that enables new waves For example, in the old days to cre- raphy focus. When you are looking of innovation. Looking ahead the ate a major corporation, you would for Venture funding, entrepreneurs focus is not on MORE but rather on have to have your own manufactur- should make sure they are matching how you can do MORE with LESS. ing and your own sales force in the their needs with the VC funds focus. Investments in Virtualization, Cloud, major markets of the world therefore Some of the tech sectors that have Mobility, SaaS are therefore of requiring more money additional funds focused exclusively on them higher interest to us at Storm Ventime to build a $10 million, $100 are; Life Sciences, Biotech, Clean- tures as they can deliver increases in productivity and efficiency for entertech, Digital Media, SaaS. million or billion dollar business. Thirdly, the industry has become prises and consumers at a lower cost. In the four decades starting in It is an exciting time to be an in1960s innovations funded by ven- more efficient and more responsive ture capital delivered very impres- to the needs of the entrepreneur as a novator/entrepreneur. Just make sure sive amounts of computing result of greater professionalism and that you are addressing a market that horsepower, terabytes of storage and greater competition. Now most VCs is large, have some expertise and gigabytes of bandwidth all at very view themselves as service providers knowledge of that market domain low costs. Cheap and ubiquitous, whose job is to provide advice and and recruit a great team of engineers compute, storage and bandwidth en- counsel, this adds value to the enter- and marketers who know how to leverage the platforms for abled whole new business manufacturing like Foxcon, models. Content became digNumber of U.S. VC Firms and HTC and more. WIPRO, Inital and did not need a physCapital Managed fosys for software developical medium for delivery. Number of Active Capital Managed ment and testing, The Internet enabled producAt Year End (in Billions) Firms Computing (such as Amazon ers, manufactures and devel1970 28 $1 Web Services /AWS-EC2, opers to connect with and 1980 87 $4 Google App Engine, Misell to customers, and con1990 96 $28 crosoft Windows Azure, sumers quickly, cheaply and 2000 1022 $220 Rackspace Cloud); storage efficiently. The result as we 2010 462 $177 (such as Microsoft Windows have all seen is a flat hyper- Source: Source: 2011 NVCA Yearbook prepared by Thomson Reuters Azure xStore, AWS S3, connected world. Productivity and efficiency have increased and prise and to the entrepreneurs and to Dropbox). You should also underit is now easier and cheaper to get a bring more than just cash to the stand the platforms for marketing, new idea to market. Innovation con- table. Many VCs tend to be suc- distribution and word of mouth entinues unabated. Capital too is plen- cessful entrepreneurs themselves dorsements which are at very large tiful, both from VCs and a growing and can therefore relate to the chal- scale (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, breed of investors known as Angels. lenges faced by entrepreneurs and Google+) as well as Sales platforms The Venture Capital industry is can help with recruiting, partner- that can help you sell your product evolving and changing as well and ships for sales and distribution and or service(such as iTunes, Amazon, there are three BIG changes in Ven- strategies to finance and build a eBay, Force, Android Marketplace). These platform partners give you large successful enterprise. Entreture Capital that I will highlight. First, innovation has become preneurs should look for a VC that and your business the ability to scale more global and is no longer the ex- not only is a source of capital but quickly at low cost without comproclusive domain of Silicon Valley and also has deep industry knowledge mising quality and to do it all on a slim budget. Route 128 in Boston. Many of the and a broad network. It has never been easier to start a Ten years ago we at Storm VenSilicon Valley funds have opened offices in China, India, Israel and Viet- tures were investing in Bandwidth, company but it has become more nam. As a result VC funds have had Mobility and Intelligence. We were competitive than ever before. Sucto provide capital to these entrepre- looking for companies that could cess depends on execution which help deliver MORE Compute, depends on having the right team neurs in other geographies. Second, the Venture industry has MORE Storage and MORE Band- and the right strategy. Not easy unmatured and has become more spe- width. Today we are benefiting from less you and your team know how cialized and institutionalized. We these investments and those prior in- to leverage the ecosystem. si
siliconindia

Venture Capital Today

A Perspective
By Sanjay Subhedar, Co-founder, Managing Director, Storm Ventures To understand Venture Capital about 1,800 funds (Venture firms today, we need to first look back at often have multiple funds). Then in the past performance of this invest- 2000, we had the dot com bubble ment class. Historically Venture burst and Venture returns took a Capital returns have been on aver- tumble, as did the NASDAQ, which age 800 basis points better than the peaked at 5,132 in early 2000. In stock market. In other words when 2008 we saw another big correction the NASDAQ, DJIA or S&P 500 in the stock market and the beginwere delivering 12 percent to 15 ning of the great recession. The percent returns Venture Capital Returns then the Venture (thru 6/30/2011) Capital industry S ll over 20 percent and higher then Stock Indices in aggregate was Period Ending 1Qtr 1 Year 10 Year 20 Year delivering 20 percent to 30 6/30/2011 7.0% 26.3% 1.3% 27.4% 12/31/2010 8.4% 13.5% -2.0% 26.3% percent. Now Early Stage Funds 7.5% 27.6% -0.4% 31.4% those were averLater and Expansion Stage 5.3% 32.7% 5.0% 21.7% age returns for Multi-Stage Funds 7.0% 22.1% 3.3% 24.6% the whole asset DJIA 1.4% 30.4% 4.2% 10.1% class with some NASDAQ Composite 5.3% 31.5% 2.5% 9.2% funds delivering S&P 500 7.0% 30.7% 2.7% 8.7% returns as high Source: Cambridge Associates U.S Venture Capital Index as 80 percent IRRs and correspondingly there first decade of the 21st century others with returns that were lower (2000 to 2010) has been tough for than the average or even negative. investors in all sectors; Bonds, On the whole, however, returns in Stocks, Real Estate as well as in Venture Capital were better than Venture Capital. As returns fell, venwhat you would have received by ture capital assets shrunk from the investing in bonds or stocks and the peak of $300 billion to about $180 venture capital industry therefore at- billion and the number of venture tracted more capital and more man- firms has dropped from over a 1,000 to just a bit over 794, of which 462 agers. By 2000 assets allocated to Ven- were in the U.S. Venture Capital has done much ture Capital had grown to a peak of over $300 billion (worldwide) man- more than generate returns, it has aged by over 1,000 venture firms in helped create new products, services

torm Ventures was founded by a seasoned group of industry veterans with the common vision of sharing their collective experience, passion and energy to help talented and driven entrepreneurs build great companies of enduring value. With over $500 million under management, Storm Ventures focuses on seed and early stage information technology companies which best leverages our operational experience and global network. Its limited partners include many prominent financial institutions, as well as over a hundred senior executives who have had successful careers in technology companies.
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February 2012

VC Talk

VC Talk

Consumer Internet
eepak Kamra is a General Partner with Canaan Partners, a global venture capital firm that is an early investor in some of the worlds leading technology companies, including Acme Packet, CommerceOne, and DoubleClick as well as healthcare giants Cerexa, Dexcom and Peninsula Pharmaceuticals. The firm focuses primarily on technology and healthcare sectors, and has invested in more than 250 companies so far. Kamra has been with the firm for over 20 years now and currently sits on the boards of, technology-driven global companies such as ON24, and Zoosk.

Trends and Hottest Technologies to Bet On

is Fascinating
By Deepak Kamra, General Partner, Canaan Partners model and is presenting a lot of space for start-ups. New collaborative e-commerce models have also grabbed my attention very well. Companies such as OpenSky, a shopping site curated by celebrities, and Gemvara, a custom jewelry shopping site, are both innovative and show great future prospects. New collaborative consumption models such as Lending Club, where people lend and borrow from each other, and OneFineStay, a home sharing service, also have gained my interest. I think these areas presently offer a lot of headroom for entrepreneurs and will be a really good target area for them. Crowdsourcing the ability to harness users across the internet to get work done; Internet of Things Machine to machine transactions and data analysis; these are two areas that offer a lot of opportunity for innovation and are areas that suits start-up very well. Entrepreneurs should never forget that a great product and an excellent user experience are critical to getting your company off the ground. Free is a good business model to start with to encourage fast growth, but from the beginning onwards you should design your strategy with monetization in mind, and a clear set of steps and a timeline to attain positive revenue. si

asha is Managing Partner at Kae Capital, an early seed stage fund. His specialties include early stage investing, angel investing, business development and deal origination. Kae Capital Invests in early stage companies which bring about innovative solutions for the existing gaps in the markets, all backed up by a great team which is capable to execute and build large businesses. Kae Capitals connections within several industries have been of significant value for the companies they have invested in. Kaes investments include categories in the field of healthcare, ecommerce, Services, Education, Mobile, Technology and more. Trends of investment in the Angel/Seed stage investing New dedicated funds coming up that specifically focus on the Seedstage investment Angel networks being formed in the cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune Time taken to scale a start-up has come down significantly. It would take around 5-7 years for a company to go from a Start up to an IPO. This was earlier more than 10 years It is becoming easier to raise venture financing if the company has received funds earlier from well known angel funds/groups Most angel funds will be investing in the range of $300,000-500,000 The deals have been coming from all corners of the country and not just Bangalore and Hyderabad which were earlier the only places for starting-up. Interest in this new asset class in attracting investors from across the globe Incubation centers and Business Plan

By Sasha Mirchandani, Managing Partner at Kae Capital

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There are several areas established and emerging that is displaying enormous growth potential. Internet, cloud, and enterprise, are such areas and as a result our firm invests a lot in these. In the internet landscape, consumer internet is continuing to fascinate me more and more. There are several trends emerging this space and I believe is going to grow exponentially in the near future. One such emerging trend in the space is the big data analysis as applied to consumer applications, examples are Kabam, a social gaming company or Zoosk, a social dating company. This is an emerging

New Opportunities for Innovation from a Start-up perspective Innovation is required in any business area and is one of the main factors for the success of the venture Social Commerce will be the driving force for the online retailers and people who come up with innovative solutions to acquire the customers will

Hottest technologies to bet on Mobile, E-commerce and SocialCommerce, Mobile Applications, Internet based distribution are some of the sectors where growth is expected. All these sectors are consumer technology focused. Growth rates are expected to be high in this mainly because of the easier availability of the enablers (3G services, Low Cost mobile handsets), greater broadband penetration, higher adoption rate of new technology and services among the youth. Use of technology in Education has opened up new avenues which earlier didnt exist. The entire education sector can be divided into segments which have very different requirements in term of the technology and hence there needs to be several solutions to cater them and not a one fits for all technology solution. Search and Recommendation Engines are seeing a lot of activity and getting attention by the investors in U.S and India both. This is a global business model and the ones who are able to come up with best in class technology and user friendly product wins the race. Social commerce is expected to play a major role in the online retail business.

competitions across the institutes in the country provide good platform to source the deals

lead the way Mobile - Coming up with innovative apps Gaming Industry is expected to see a high growth phase - Developing unique gaming content with a focus on social gaming. There is a need to have innovative solutions in the clean tech sector. With the government promoting the deployment of renewable energy, it will be a good opportunity for start ups to fill the various gaps in the value chain. Advice to entrepreneurs Be Flexible, change your business model if required. Experiment with several alternatives. There will be several opportunities in almost all the sectors mentioned above. Approach strategic angel investors but not just for the sake of money. An investor can bring a lot more on board than just the funds. If the business model is promising along with a sound team, entrepreneurs will surely get funding. si
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February 2012

Feature: By Hari Anil

porate finance funds raised $86.7 billion across 175 funds in 2011, a 42 percent increase in capital over the previous year. Within this sector, buyout and acquisition fund-raising increased significantly, as 75 funds raised $43.3 billion, more than double the 2010 total, point outs a press release from Dow Jones. But from the Romney issue it is very clear that buyouts have a major negative inclination, and this can, and will be exploited by opponents. Even though buyouts offer closure to shareholders they are sure to kill a few jobs. In todays world, where even developed countries are facing unemployment rate on the north side of nine percent, the damage a tag like job killers brings, will go a long way. So it would make much sense, at least in the first few quarters of 2012, for PE players to restrain themselves from getting much captivated by the opulence of buyouts. Also, the responses received to IPOs of companies like LinkedIn and Groupon makes one wonder if we are over-evaluating again, if we are heading for another bubble burst. No one, in their right senses, should forget the dotcom bubble burst and any hint that the economy is heading for another should be taken seriously. PE players should keep a check on the developments of the IPO space and make sure, even in investing, they are not repeating the mistakes they made towards the end of the last century. Moreover globally economy could not survive another bubble burst at this point. When we compare 2011 with 2010, what we see is an increasing and flourishing market, but if one is to take a step back and observe, it can be noted that this is anything but the reality. U.S. venture capital funds raised $16.2 billion across 135 funds in 2011, a 5 percent increase in capital raised despite a 12 percent decline in the number of funds that won commitments. Annual fund-raising, however, is now just over half the 2008 (an industry before recession) total, showing that the industry has not yet bounced back from the recession. Difficult market conditions have seen fundraising figures for funds of funds drop significantly in 2009-2011; $11.3 billion had been raised during January - November 2011, compared with $60.2 billion when fund of funds fundraising reached its zenith in 2007, according to the 2012 Preqin Private Equity fund of funds review. The review also points out a decline in the amount of capital fund of funds managers are targeting for their funds, with average final closes dropping from $369million in 2007 to $234 million in 2011. This stands testament that the industry is way down from its glory days. This is directly related to sluggish grow of the global economy; investors seems to be extremely cautious about their money and this is slowing down the fund raising of the PE players. The industry is still not out of its struggling phase and here pops the question, what will happen if the world is struck by another recession at this point? Global economic growth started to decelerate on a broad front in mid-2011 and is estimated to have averaged 2.8 percent over the last year. This economic slowdown is expected to continue into 2012 and 2013, says World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP), a joint product of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the five United Nations regional commissions. This, again, points out to the frail nature of the global economy. The report also says, Failure of policymakers, especially in Europe and the United States, to address the jobs crisis and prevent sovereign debt distress and financial sector fragility from escalating poses the most acute risk for the global economy in the outlook for 2012-2013, with a renewed global recession being a distinct possibility. Furthermore, it suggests that, even though a meager growth rate of the Europe and the U.S. might not cause another global recession, a total collapse of these economies might. There is nothing that is suggesting that this trend of global economy will change in this year, on the contrary, one has to expect the trend to continue till the next year if the status quo remains unchanged. From all these, it is can be said that if high hopes should not be put on financial prosperity this year. 2012 does not seem to put forth a positive equation for the PE players. With the uncertainty brewing in the market, it will be difficult to raise funds for investments, and to complete successful exits. The last quarter of the first decade of the new millennium was not very good for them, and this year shows little signs that say that this would be any different. si

ArE PrIvAtE EquIty PlAyErS

he Great Recession that is just passing has left the global economy severely traumatized, and now the disturbingly unstable European economic situation and sprouting movements in the lines of occupy wall street, is pushing it to the breaking point. Analysts and experts are predicting that this frail economy will soon give way for another major recession. All these, make it very clear that the Private Equity players are not entering into a dream come true new year. Now, add Mitt Romney, the probable republican presidential candidate, into this mix and we have ourselves a lethal mixture, which has the potential to ruin the PE world. So, how is all this adding up and what is going
siliconindia

goINg to SurvIvE?

2012

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to be the scenario for the PE players this year? The campaign that Romney's political rivals have started against him has tarnished not just him, but the whole PE community. The tag jobkillers will not be so easy to get rid of, especially in todays deteriorating economic conditions. PE players know this and are now trying to repair this damage as well. There is a lot of misinformation being spread, purely for political purposes and on both sides of the aisle, as it pertains to private equity. Whats been lost is an understanding of the critical role that private equity investment plays in growing the U.S. economy and delivering more than a trillion dollars in investment re-

turns to pension funds, endowments and charitable foundations. While the business model has evolved over time, the fact of the matter is private equity provides capital and operational expertise to companies that are often underperforming or on the brink of failure, says Steve Judge, Interim President and CEO, Private Equity Growth Capital Council (PEGCC). This statement that came on the wake of the attack on Romney, points out the gravity of the situation. But will they be able to undo the damage that has already been done and will be done in the course of Romneys campaign? Buyouts are turning out to be the order of the day, U.S. buyout and cor-

February 2012

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February 2012

Business

Want to Start a Company? Maybe You Should Play a Sport First

By Vasu Kulkarni,CEO, Krossover

Photo by David Yellen

f you think startups are fun, consider this: I am writing most of this as I conduct my morning business in the bathroom because thats pretty much all the time I am going to have today to get this done. Actually thats not true, but I would have to give up my two hours of basketball at the gym and thats really not something I would be happy about.
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Point is startups are a ridiculous amount of work and the payoff is going to take a very long time to come, if at all. What you read on TechCrunch is not the whole story. For every one of those posts, there are probably about fifty other untold horror stories of actual blood and sweat that ended up with tears. Which is why I always find that athletes are best fit to do a startup (note,

People are yet to open up to the idea of using these online payment gateways for their day to day requirements such as paying utility bills

I said do, not successfully do the success part I know nothing of; if I could figure out the secret sauce to guaranteeing business success, I would not be writing this, I would probably be retired in the Bahamas with a strawberry daiquiri, taking part in a girls gone wild shoot). Sports teacher of life. Nothing else in the world can prepare you for the emotional rollercoaster that is a fledgling business. As a former college athlete, and someone who hangs out with other entrepreneurs and athletes on a daily basis, I find a high degree of overlap between the personalities and general demeanor of these people. Sports teach you to handle extreme highs and lows in the same stride. They teach you to dream, to believe the impossible is indeed possible. They teach you the importance of teamwork, how to be a leader, and how to get up every time you fall. They teach you about competition. They make you believe that comebacks are possible, and that Cinderella stories do in fact exist. As clichd as all this may sound, startups really are all about being able to start, endure, and figure out a way to finish strong. Just like sports. Most importantly though sports are supposed to teach you that it is not necessarily about the outcome, but about the journey that leads you to the finish (ironically enough, my personal motto has always been nobody cares about how you play the game, winning is all that matters, but let us go with this for now). As the famous line from the movie Any Given Sunday goes, On any given Sunday youre going to win or youre going to lose. Point is, can you win or lose like a man? As you go through the process of starting a business, take some time to soak in every moment. The first paying customer you get. The first time you go to production. The first

time you have a customer who is unhappy. Someone wants to buy you. And you turn them down! You run out of money and have to make payroll in 2 weeks (Okay, that part is not a lot of fun, but it is still one of those defining moments). You raise a pile of venture money. And hopefully, an eventual exit. Take pictures. Take lots of pictures. Those feelings will eventually go away they are the same feelings you feel every time you suit up for a big game, kiss your first girl, get married, or have a child. So do what you can to make them last. I think there is no bigger trend today than entrepreneurship. It is nice to be a startup CEO, in the same way that it was to be a professional athlete (it probably still is great to be a pro-athlete). My experiences on the basketball court have transcended into the tiny office in Manhattan that we work out of. The lessons I learned growing up as part of a team on a daily basis, have no doubt helped me in my irrational quest to sell my tech startup for a bazillion dollars (I leave you with quite likely the most ridiculous statement I have ever made Play a sport. Even if youre really good, youre probably not going to go pro. So start business you love instead. Hopefully youll be pretty good at it.) Krossover Intelligence is a New York City based technology company with a focus on the online video search industry. The company's first vertical of choice is the sports world, with the aim of helping to raise the level of competition through technology innovation. Krossover's flagship product, the Krossover Sports Intelligence Platform is the first of its kind, allowing coaches to search through their video footage, and dynamically generate statistics, all in an online platform. si
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February 2012

Collaborate, Communicate and be Productive

Rear View
Sudhakar Ramakrishna, EVP & GM-Unified Communications Solutions & Chief Development Officer, Polycom opens up with siliconindia the trends that drive the industry and Polycom Sudhakar Ramakrishna is the EVP & GM-Unified Communications Solutions and Chief Development Officer at Polycom (NASDAQ:PLCM), a leading provider of standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions for telepresence, video, and voice. He joined Polycom in 2010 and is responsible for defining and delivering best in class unified communication products and solutions and driving revenue growth and profitability. Before Polycom, Ramakrishna was Corporate VP and GM for Wireless Broadband Access Solutions and Software Operations at Motorola where he was instrumental in scaling the 4G (WiMAX and LTE) and Software business, and led large multi-function teams of more than 2300 employees, and businesses across the globe. Previously, he held senior management roles at Stoke Networks, 3Com, U.S. Robotics and other companies. Key Trends Driving the Industry and the Company One of the key goals at Polycom is to make video collaboration ubiquitous. How can you make it much more pervasive, much more easy to use and cost effective so that the adoption grows dramatically? One way of doing it is to cloud enable the application and deliver it to the service providers. Cloud is going to be a major driver in the coming years and keeping this in view we have rolled out the first phase of implementation of our cloud strategy early this year enable service providers to offer cloud-delivered, Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) solutions to its customers. Polycom RealPresence Cloud is the first in this family of solutions. RealPresence Cloud solutions are designed specifically for service providers to equip them with the carrier-grade infrastructure, endpoints, and services they need to offer businesses of all sizes subscription-based solutions for video collaboration. The new offering for service providers is designed to accelerate the penetration and adoption of Polycom video collaboration solutions among SMBs (small to medium sized businesses) and enterprises who want either a hybrid solution of both premises-based video collaboration solutions and video on demand, or a pure VaaS solution. Polycom RealPresence Cloud solutions compress the time-to-market and time-to-revenue for service providers to deliver VaaS solutions. Powered by the Polycom RealPresence Platform, a complete and interoperable solution for universal video collaboration, RealPresence Cloud provides the carrier-grade scalability, reliability, availability, and security required for service providers to offer VaaS to SMBs and enterprises. RealPresence Cloud solutions encompass a fully managed multipoint video service that supports a multitude of connectivity options between standards-based
siliconindia

room, mobile, PC, and Web-based endpoints, as well as Microsoft Lync 2010, IBM Sametime, and endpoints supporting the non-standard TIP protocol. Service providers can leverage Polycom RealPresence Cloud solutions to offer their customers a true business-tobusiness VaaS solution without having to fully integrate and support the core infrastructure on-premises. This solution leverages the Polycom RealPresence Network (formerly the Halo/HVEN network acquired from HP in 2011) to allow service providers to fast-track their capability to deliver video from the cloud. The other key driver is mobility. One of the things we have to make ubiquitous is to deliver the services and capabilities on the devices of customers choice and enable trends like BYOD. Thus instead of building our unique device, we are trying to enable devices like mobiles, tablets independent of the OS they run on and convert them into an enterprise application which can be used for multitude of purposes. The final key driver is social collaboration. In Novemebr last year, we acquired a young startup Vivu, which integrates video within Social Media. We are trying to integrate this into our social collaboration initiatives for certain verticals. Today several of our clients applications such as Tibcos Tibcast is powered by this.

is a large competition but we prefer to see this as a good thing as many are betting on this space and it means we are on the right track. Our competitors play across several horizontals while we are solely focused in UC market.

Market Challenges Despite the growing rate of the UC industry, from an adoption standpoint, the numbers are quite low. The analysts predict the current penetration of UC to be less than 10 percent. But we see this positively as this means there is a huge market opportunity for that additional penetration. The reason for these low numbers may vary from region to region. For example in India it might be the bandwidth which is the reason for low adoption by CIOs. Due to this, the experience of video conference is not great. Another is the complex nature of the solution. Hence, it makes us wonder constantly as to how we can make our solutions simple? How do we demystify the complexity of the concept? Also when we talk to CIOs, they have addresses certain concerns as well.

Sudhakar Ramakrishna

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Market, Opportunities & Competition The market for UC is growing at a frantic pace and estimated to reach $20 billion in next three years. With in the UC market its self, we are identifying new trends, one such being the non-real time conferencing. Today all the video communication happens in real time but how would it be if you could start a conversation or a meeting with your peers from where you left last time. This is an area of our interest and we are trying to deliver non-real time capabilities. As the market for UC continues to grow, so does the competition. Yes there

63 percent of U.S. households spend 35 percent more on technology bills than utility bills with mobile phone expenses topping the monthly expense chart. On average, users spend up to $94 a month on mobile services and an additional $19 on downloading games, music, movies and more.
Courtesy: iYogi

My Top Three Priorities: In the next three to five years my priorities are: Realize the cloud vision - Cloud based delivery model is the way to go in the future. Ensure that the user experience of making a video call is as simple as that of making a phone call Want to be known as the company that helps people communicate better, collaborate better and be more productive. si
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Fostering Innovation: Innovation has been a core part of our business and we have always strived to infuse it in every product and solution we develop. The India R&D centre has been quiet active in this regard. In fact, the team here is currently active in exploring the opportunities in non-real time collaboration. At Polycom, we realize that innovation can not be forced. Hence, we are realistic when it comes to what is capable and what is not with in the realms of the company. Hence, whenever an opportunity arises, we as a team readily embrace innovation from outside the organization. For example, Vivu was hot startup that had successfully managed to collaborate video with social media. This indeed was one of a kind innovative solutions and we felt it could be easily integrated with in our solution portfolio. And we are today quite proud to have Vivu as part of Polycom.

Their primary worries include how candid the interface will be and how is their investment be protected. As much as you want to invest in new solution, you still want your older investments to not to go waste. This is where our approach plays a huge difference. As a company we believe in playing to the standards and enable inter-operability. The fact that we do not develop proprietary solutions gives CIOs tremendous confidence in standards, operability and longetivity of their investments with us.

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February 2012

In Conversation: By Vishwas Nair

Indian Semiconductor Industry

lacks VC backing?

that the VC industry in India needs to re-align its vision and re-look into what really needs funding. VCs here are risk evasive and very rarely invest in core product companies. Services companies may fulfill their wish for a successful payback in a short time but I dont see them adding sustaining value i.e. not creating any IP from India. At ISA, we have been trying to create a supporting ecosystem to motivate startups. ISA has been working in close association with the government to set up incubators across the country. Semicon startups need access to several cutting edge technologies such as EDA tools, hardware labs and more. Hence, a shared ecosystem like that in incubation centers is very helpful. The first of such incubators will be rolled out soon, starting with Bangalore as a potential place to experiment.

The newly joined President of ISA, PVG Menon shares his insights about the emerging Indian Semiconductor Industry.

In 2010, the combined report by ISA and analyst firm Frost & Sullivan stated that the Indian semiconductor market is expected to grow to $400 billion by 2020. Though 2011 has been slightly challenging, we are still going ahead with our earlier forecast. There has been a definite slowdown in the growth. But things seem to be on the promising side in the year 2012 and the National Electronics Policy is the reason behind it. The moment we have national mission on the surface, pretty much all vectors of the industry begin to align. Considering the developments that followed during the 60s and later, we can be sure that the rate at which this electronics mission will progress is sure to witness the same multiplier. The policy talks about 200 companies growing to self sus-

Outlook for Indian Semiconductor Industry

taining size in four to five years time. ISA envisages that we should have at least 50 semiconductor companies from India. This would in turn leverage the talent and the IT pool that we have here because we have always believed that India is a powerhouse for talent. The tragedy is that we do not have products from India. The hope is the lot of funds will be unlocked via the EDF and other market access which will guarantee some sort of market pull for people who are coming in would create a virtual cycle in which we can get products that are made in India. Compared to any other industry vertical, startups in semiconductors are comparatively few. What is more challenging is attracting VC investments in this sector. I personally feel

The moment we have a national mission on the surface, pretty much all vectors of the industry begin to align.
Additionally, we are looking at the budgets to see what allocations happen. There are three components to it. One is the Seat component which will be capped at some level. This will be linked back to the incubator so that the cash burn that an entrepreneur does can be minimized. He not only pays his employees salaries but also to buy tools and other expensive equipments. Unlike VCs, the incubation centers, who will have a share in the startup, will not force the entrepreneur to merge sellout or go public before it is ready. These companies require somewhere around 5 to 7 years to establish ad be self sustaining. And we hope to give them that supportive ecosystem.

Boosting Startups in Semicon

Though the opportunities for semiconductor companies seem to be on a rise, thanks to the Electronics Draft Policy, there is also a rising concern of shortage of skilled engineers. The entire electronic system designing ecosystem will generate around 28 million jobs in 10 years, but there arent enough skilled professionals in the country. From an expert engineer in an R&D to a basic technician in a manufacturing unit, there is a dearth of skilled people. Hence, to counter this ISA is actively putting together sector skills council for the hardware industry in association with the National Skill Development Corporation. We are trying to develop the hardware industry just like how NASSCOM helps the software industry. Over the last seven year, ISA has taken up several initiatives. We started with the technovation program which helped recognize academic excellence. A techno mentor would evaluate the best faculty, best MTech and PhD thesis, the best lab, and several things like that. This apart, we also have signed several MOUs with universities. The structure of this association is yet to be finalized after which, a proper rollout in accordance to the industry and academia needs will be done. A lot of money is also being spent on things like National Program for Technology Enhanced Learning. In order to introduce the students to real world challenges while they are in the college, ISA has helped them do projects or internships in manufacturing units and factories right from the first year. This program has been quite successful, with many solutions being devised by the students for the real life challenges.

Talent Crunch: A rising concern

tive as other segments, it still continues to have several success stories to boast of. There are several home grown companies which have taken on category leaders and busted them at their own game. There are companies like Tejas and Juniper who are home grown and capable of competing neck to neck with players like Huawei in telecom industry. Sling Media is an example for they have revolutionized TV viewing. There is a startup run by ex-technologists from Philips who have made industry grade retina scanner at a very affordable price. There is yet another startup that has been developing cutting edge electronic components for DRDO and being used by the Indian Air Force. There are numerous success stories and we hope to see them rising. si ISA is the premier trade body representing the Indian Electronic System Design and Manufacturing ESDM industry and has represented it since 2005. It has close to 160 members both domestic and multinational enterprises. ISA is committed towards building global awareness for the Indian ESDM industry through focused initiatives in developing the ecosystem.

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Though the startup ecosystem in Semiconductor industry is not as ac-

The Success Stories

A growing user acceptance of in-game purchases and a sharp rise in Smartphone adoption will push sales of in-game items from $2.1 billion in 2011 to $4.8 billion in 2016.
Courtesy: Juniper Research

February 2012

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February 2012

CIO Insights

In a candid chat with siliconindia, Hkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software talks about the company's future dockets and their operations in India.
Opera started out in 1994 as a research project within Telenor, Norways leading telecom. In less than a year, Opera Software ASA was launched as an independent development company. Today, Opera is headquartered in Norway, with over 700 employees in offices around the world and over 100 million opera users. Operas founders and employees believe that access to the Web is a universal right. This has guided the company to adapt various platforms, operating systems and embedded Internet products which include Mac, PC and Linux computers, tablets, mobile phones and PDAs and various game consoles and other devices.

revolutionizing the mobile Web

Everything that is produced by humanity and Web will become the master format for our knowledge.
Mobile landscape today

here are about 150 million people who use Opera Software worldwide and India ranks second just one step behind Russia which bags the first place. Opera offers a browsing experience to people who may not have access to a Desktop or a laptop, in a mobile phone as it is extensively used worldwide. By using Opera mini they could get a similar experience of the Web in a mobile phone at a very low price. So the plan now and always will be to provide this platform to the next millions of people with the software that can give them the best internet experience.

One thing we are working on right now is just in a demo stage and it is the "Opera Reader". It is a technology that reads Web pages which has a typical scroll bar on the right hand side and splits them up into pages. This is built to navigate from one page to another not by using the scroll bar but by using the simple method of sliding the finger to flip the page. For example, on a tablet, we can use a finger to navigate pages or if we are using a TV we could just use the remote control to change pages by pressing the next page button. We at Opera plan to keep it very natural as we have in the newspapers and books. We think it is always better to have a technology which does not use the scroll bar but uses pages instead. We are launching the "Opera TV Store" in which we enable browser suites on TVs. We have browsers on computers, on Tablets and Mobile phones. We believe that there will be compelling ways to get Web content in TVs and the Opera TV Store is being launched in order to offer internet content for TV users so that they purchase apps, content etc, through their TV sets. We work with TV vendors like Philips and Sony in order to install a browser into their devices (TVs). These make the TVs smarter. Well, we are working hard to support the developers community. We have people on the ground in India and other places as well to make sure that the developers have the right kind of information in order to create great content for not only for our browsers but also for all other browsers. We also help them in solving the problems if they face with

What is brewing in Opera?

viewing. In some capabilities of the mobile web continue to increase; we can trade very compelling applications.

any by debugging the code, provide them with the tools that are required for debugging etc., its a big part of our effort these days that we not only provide the product but also provide with services that support our product. One challenge that we face is that we are trying to develop all platforms. The other browsers like Microsoft that supports the windows platform, Apple that supports Mac and Google has its own platform. We dont have our own platform. We try to support all the platforms regardless of what it is, games, laptops, desktops etc., So thats the challenge for us to be up to date on all these platforms and to integrate all available resources. I would like to say that Web will be the one platform that has everything that a human needs. Everything that is produced by humanity and Web will become the master format for our knowledge. For example, if we need something to be printed, it will be printed from the web. And hence we need a choice of many browsers by which users makes his choice of picking the best one that is suited for him/her. We hope that we continue to give our services the way it is right now and also hope to increase the number of users in India. si

Challenges On the Road

Opera Reader - the new roll out

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The mobile market looks very promising. Roughly speaking, rate at which the mobile phones are sold outnumber the computers being sold at a big ratio. Hence, our hopes of increasing the number of users remain strong in India and rest of the world. We at Opera make sure that we are technologically updated by creating and writing the perfect web application that customers feel comfortable with. The three standards we use are HTML, CSF and Java Script. These specifications form the platform for our web application. By using these specifications, we can actually write applications that give users the same experience as they have in more proprietary applications that have been built recently. For example, in the web apps, we can give the location of the person Hkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software

Association with the Mobile development community

Maintaining a blog has a stronger positive outcome on troubled students' well-being than merely expressing their social anxieties and concerns in private diaries.
Courtesy: Meyran Boniel-Nissim, University of Haifa, Israel

February 2012

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February 2012

Technology
Dont you want your team sitting at their desks all day instead of being on the road meeting with potential clients?

10
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TOP

REASONS FOR NOT MOVING YOUR BUSINESS TO THE

#5. Ease of Implementation: Your IT person has set up your entire system to work, most of the time. He has everything networked and is available within 23 days to fix whatever is broken. Its true that implementing cloud services is easy as and reduces both time and cost but what are you going to do? After all, your nephew has been working so hard to get everything working properly.

#6. Disaster Relief: Disasters come along so infrequently that why worry about the occasional flood, storm, or hurricane? Its true that the Cloud safely stores everything on secure data centers, accessible anywhere employees have an internet connection, but with your PCs and servers safely tucked away in your old coat closets, your business has nothing to worry about.

CLOUDin 2012
By Marcy Hoffman, Vice President of Demand Generation at InfoStreet. #8. Automatic Updates: Your Company has been using the same software for years and the provider sends those pretty CDs for every update. You then get to use the extended quality time to bond with your staff while you plow through the upgrade efforts. The Cloud eliminates the need for IT to worry about paying for your future updates in terms of software and hardware, but what will your staff use for coasters? #7. Remote Access: The Cloud allows your employees, partners, and clients freedom to access and update information wherever they are, without having to run back to the office.

#4. Skilled Vendors: Who would you trust to manage and protect your data? A company such as InfoStreet (with over 16 years experience serving enterprise clients), IBM or Amazon or your IT staff? After all, your nephew has been working so hard to get everything working properly. #3. Even playing field for your small business: You dont want to grow your small business too quickly and you certainly dont want to project the image that you can compete with your larger competitors. The Cloud gives your small business the same tools that Fortune 100 companies use yet your business will only have to pay for what you need (see #2). Small is cute so why change?

#9. Scalability: The business climate is tough and you cant worry about potential growth. The Cloud allows companies to scale their business storage needs seamlessly, using and paying for only what they use, but why worry about the future now?

#10. Reduced costs: Youve spent considerable dollars on computers, servers, and software over the years. While its true that much of it is outdated and many new programs wont operate on your older machines, it still works- sort of. We know that Cloud computing reduces hardware costs and networking management, but why improve on what works- most of the time.

#2. Flexibility: Kids play with building blocks so they can build whatever their imagination designs. The Cloud will allow your business to select what your company needs, when you need it, and use it how you want to. You can select an intranet as your platform, email and CRM from InfoStreet, email marketing tools from Topica, financial services from Kashoo, you use and pay for only what you need. Youre not a kid so grow up and operate the business the way your father did decades ago.

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#1. The most important reason not to move your company to the Cloud: Because if you dont, we will. si

InfoStreet is a Cloud Apps provider. Widely regarded as a pioneer in Cloud-based Apps, InfoStreet introduced its first business solution via the Cloud in 1995. InfoStreets flagship offering, StreetSmart, delivers 100% Cloud-based business solutions that increase employee performance, strengthen customer relationships, improve communication, and reduce costs.
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February 2012

Business

BENEFITS OF COLLECTING AND HARNESSING PRODUCT OPERATIONAL DATA

By Puneet Pandit, CEO of Glassbeam product operational data, and to present deep analytics to product manufacturers in a compelling, graphical format. The platform lets one define a scalable data warehouse from any kind of semistructured data in a single development step, at a fraction of the cost, that would otherwise take multiple people number of months to execute as a complex IT project. There are three broad functional areas that can greatly benefit by an analysis of log file data emanating from devices in the field: 1. Support 2. Engineering and Product Management 3. Sales and Services Support teams Support teams of almost any complex product manufacturer frequently face one seemingly intractable problem: quickly identifying the root cause of any issue and efficiently delivering a solution that is satisfactory to all stakeholders. The products they support are constantly exposed to scenarios where interacting or embedded systems malfunction, or to maverick customer behavior like undocumented and unwarranted changes to existing configurations. When a problem occurs there is often no efficient way to collect and assimilate relevant data and make it available for analysis. There has traditionally been a paucity of powerful tools that collect, sort, and distill this semi-structured machine data, transform it into discernible trends, and present these through a powerful visual interface. In addition to the need for resolving support issues expeditiously, there is also the desire to integrate knowledge or bug databases allowing the system to set up incoming alerts and error messages that

raditionally, we have lived in a world where technology manufacturers build, ship and install their products at customer sites and then tend to lose sight of it. There is little information on products actual configuration, performance, and related usage characteristics - that is on how customers are actually using different features. Today, the sources of feedback that typically relay back such information on a products current state could be CRM systems, Databases that log support cases, emails and conference calls with field sales engineers or customer contacts. Needless to say, these sources are archaic in nature and are unsuitable for a rigorous and timely analysis of a products operational state. This old paradigm is changing rapidly where todays world is characterized
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by intelligent, networked products that routinely generate and send back machine data to a centralized location. This data (sometimes referred to as callhome data or support bundles) contains valuable information about performance trends, defects, configuration changes, and on the state of the installation at client sites. If harnessed correctly, it contains information that can provide immense value to an organization -- helping them resolve support issues more efficiently, building smarter product roadmaps, understanding the extent of exposure to a product defect, creating new service revenue opportunities, and in enhancing overall product differentiation in the market place. Acting on this market need, Glassbeam has developed a new, patentpending technology to collect and parse

February 2012

Engineering and Product Management Teams A majority of technology product manufacturers incorporate market signals and customer needs into their product roadmaps. However, a deeper analysis reveals that they use numerous unscientific and purely anecdotal signals to define product direction. In a typical scenario, product managers conduct some primary research, collate findings with inputs from field sales, engineering teams and marketing managers and then triangulate with numerous external consiliconindia

flag specific recommendations. Support and field engineering teams can act upon threshold summary reports and e-mail alerts to take requisite remedial action, or to provide proactive recommendations to ensure optimal system performance. Let us take an example: A disk drive at a customer location is reaching its storage capacity. In a world without callhome data, the drive would malfunction at some point and this would also degrade the performance of systems it interacts with. The system manufacturer would get a support call and typically spend considerable time understanding the issue, assigning it to the right support person, and then delivering a solution. However, if the manufacturer has access to a system that collects and analyzes log file data, then support teams can be notified in advance of a possible technical issue. Support teams can quickly access relevant information, cross-verify it with relevant data points, act proactively to inform the customer of the scenario, and implement steps that prevent any degradation in the systems performance. Glassbeam Support Portal helps support engineers address and resolve technical issues. It parses, organizes and presents relevant information about product configuration changes, patterns of events and statistical readings on parameters including performance, capacity, and whether products are being used outside of normal limits or baseline configuration.

siderations to define product roadmaps. The approach has several shortcomings: Focus groups and e-mail surveys provide only a fragmented slice of the overall product usage information. Customers are typically averse to detailed surveys and focus just on burning issues that need to be addressed urgently. Second, the data can easily get distorted by personal biases, incomplete responses, and pure lack of knowledge regarding where, how, when, and to what extent products are actually being used. Finally, CRM datasets can only provide ad-hoc and incomplete analysis that skews vital statistical information on actual product deployment status. In a world characterized by closed loop feedback, technology manufacturers can avail of granular, real-time data from installed devices to get an accurate and detailed picture of their install base and on how their products are being used by customers. Glassbeam Business Intelligence (BI) Workbench provides a user interface (UI) and query tool that enables the parsing and mining of countless parameters and combinations of data and presents the information in an easy-tounderstand format. This enables them to get powerful insights into popular features, optimal system configurations, and

Nearly one third of organizations either already uses or plans to use cloud or software-as-a-service (SaaS) oerings to augment their core business intelligence (BI) function in the next 12 months.
Courtesy: Gartner

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Services Teams Services organizations are constantly looking for opportunities to deliver value-added offerings to existing customers. However, the approach towards a potential sale or a services contract is influenced by classical inputs volume, discounts, customer history, buying patterns, competitor offerings and industry-specific dynamics. These inputs are often combined with stale and inaccurate data in CRM systems to arrive at a customer profile which in turn forms the basis for deciding on the likelihood of succeeding at renewal, upselling and cross-selling opportunities. In an operational setup characterized by access to relevant, timely and actionable machine data, Service and sales teams can complement traditional up-sell and cross-sell methods by leveraging the truth being reported back home. Sales operations can study daily usage trends to track customers that are peaking at capacity. Such customers become active prospects for proactive sales and marketing campaigns. Service teams can use Glassbeam Dashboards to launch Health Check Services that can provide their customers centralized access to key reports like current configurations, capacity usage and trends, and performance summaries. These reports can be used to track current data and trends across the entire installed base, segment events by severity and location, identify applications or groups that are utilizing full capacity, determine causes of network congestion, and numerous other important metrics. The reports can be used for better planning and resource allocation to ensure all installed products are functioning at optimal capacity. si

on various other parameters. The data and inferences drawn from analyzing the findings can form the basis for a much more informed product roadmap that accurately aligns new features with customer needs.

February 2012

Entrepreneur's corner
gles. Be relentlessly curious, rather be over-curious. Keep asking questions. Seek answers from your colleagues, your customers, and your industry contacts. Be objective and also, dont take analysts forecasts for granted. They will give you some ideas on major trends that may be occurring that you can take advantage of. However, keep in mind that industry pundits can be wrong. All of these things are, what I call, just the dots. Now, you need to connect them to form your own idea, see a pain-point and provide a solution for it by starting your company. You should go through the presentations and articles of veteran venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, on various topics ofentrepreneurship.. They are very insightful and full of wisdom. Finally, make sure that you listen to your gut. As Vikram Mehta, Founder and CEO of Blade Network Technologies, now part of IBM, pointed out in My Story program recently at TiE Silicon Valley, Dont second guess your instincts nothing great has ever come off listening and adhering to conventions. 2. Initiate: So now you have your starting point your idea. Its your starting point to solve a particular pain-point for your customer. Think of it as your process of discovery that will lead you to that awesome idea eventually if you persist and keep pivoting, keep pivoting until you hit your jackpot. My first company Ukiah Software Inc. started with a simple idea for developing an IP to IPX gateway software but it ended up becoming a firewall/proxy software product, then a wide area network bandwidth optimization product and policy management software before it was acquired by Novell within three years since its inception. Similarly, according to Bhaskar Roy, Co-founder of Qik, now part of Skype, they were passionate about real time video communication and felt that there was a need for a high quality two-way video communication service, and that existing solutions were of low quality. So they started their company to initially develop it for desktops but then pivoted it to provide a solution for mobile networks and hence, reached a much broader user base. 3. Validate: Now, how do you validate your idea that this is now an awesome idea? Well, there are various schools of thoughts. Logically everyone will tell you to go and talk to prospects who would become your customers. However, many times even customers may not have thought about it and secondly, they may say yes its a great idea but the question is if they will buy the product when you have it ready. How do you get that commitment? If you can get your customer to pay for it in advance, youve got your validation. On the other hand, legendary visionary like Steve Jobs envisioned great products such as Apple Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad with his own intuitive analysis and was hugely successful. This comes back again to the points made earlier that always pay attention to your gut. When I asked Bhaskar how they validated that they had hit upon an awesome idea. He replied that during their private alpha launch, his team noticed that end users were using it daily, and more users were clamoring to join alpha testing. Additionally, through tremendous word of mouth, the product was getting a lot of publicity. No wonder then, that within eighteen months, Qik had over a million users and today it has over thirteen million users 4. Execute: Once you have found validation for your awesome idea, its time to execute, execute, and execute. Always remember what Thomas Edison said, Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. So you need to out-execute since there will be plenty of competition on the horizon from startups and large companies in adjacent markets noticing your success. The great news is that now this is your day! You will be chased by everyone from venture capitalists, investors, corporate partners and prospective employees. So you need to take advantage of it rapidly and build upon it. Remember stories of Netscape Browser and Microsofts Internet Explorer, Mac, Windows and many more. So execute and execute aggressively whether it be forming an eco-system around your product, creating more stickiness for end users with continued user delight, or expanding distribution channels. This is what Qik did by integrating with Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and making it available on multiple mobile platforms, thereby broadening and deepening its reach. Similarly, at Ukiah Software, we formed partnerships with large vendors including Novell, who ended up acquiring the company. In summary, my 4KTA points for finding an awesome idea is to use F.I.V.E. strategy - Find, Initiate, Validate and Execute. si
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IDEAS, IDEAS, AND AN AWESomE IDEA: 4KtA

By Naveen Bisht, Board Member, Chair Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE ) eing in Silicon Valley, every day I come across so many brilliant people that its amazing to learn about new and interesting things. However, I am quite surprised when I suggest to them that they should be starting their own companies. Their reply quite often is that they dont have an awesome idea. They would further add that its also so hard to find such an idea. So I start wondering what a great idea looks like. How do we know that the idea we have is an awesome idea? My theory is if we start with the belief that its hard to come up with an awesome idea, then its a non-starter and hence, you wont be able to generate ideas. My experience is most startups end with an idea that is far from what they started with.. So the initial idea is your starting point, and here are my four key take away (4KTA) points on this topic. 1. Find: How do you find your awesome idea that you can start your business upon? Then, how do you make it hugely successful? And as a result, make tons of money and/or make a huge difference to your customers, whoever they may be consumers or enterprises? Here are a few places to look for that awesome idea. The starting point is to review your own skill sets, your domain expertise, your industry, and try to find pain points that your customers tell you about. Make sure you feel passionate about solving that problem. Another is to attend industry and analyst events, read voraciously about market trends, and analyze them from different an-

Naveen Bisht is a serial entrepreneur and Board Member, Chair Programs, The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE ) and member of TiE Angels Steering Committee, based in Silicon Valley, California.

The global redemption rate of mobile coupons will average at over eight percent (600 million worldwide) by 2016; an eightfold increase over the best paper coupons campaigns. North American and Western European markets are now beginning to follow the same growth path as the Far East and China.
Courtesy: Juniper Research

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February 2012

Innovation - A Strategic Necessity

Driving Innovation Innovation is a strategic necessity at Hexaware which differentiates us from others, particularly from the larger players. It enables us to provide tangible benefit to our customers. The need to innovate makes us seek ideas from all avenues and encourage/fund the right ones. To institutionalize the culture of Innovation, we at Hexaware have set up an Innovation Council. We not only fund large COE teams in all business units but we also ensure that they are amply focused and results oriented through goal setting and timelines for each initiative Priority as a CEO The key priority is to drive healthy revenue growth along with a strong profit margin performance while sustaining high levels of employee morale Trends driving the market The current trends visible in the market are in the areas of Cloud based services, Mobility and Social Media P.R.Chandrasekar has a successful track record of driving revenue growth for a company including experience in mergers and acquisitions, business development, channel development and strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Hexaware, he was President Americas and Europe at Wipro and was responsible for the strategic development of these geographies. Chandrasekar joined Wipro in May 2000 from GE India where he was Director, Business Development. He has a degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) and has done his MBA from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai University. Chandrasekar is based out of Hexawares office in New Jersey

CEO SPEAK

P .R.Chandrasekar

A CEO's dilemma It would be to balance revenue growth with profitability and balance longer term investments with immediate quarter on quarter demands of a public listed company. Challenges faced by CEOs in 2011 At Hexaware, our main task/target was to get our core business model ticking, drive broad based performance and derive growth across focus geographies, verticals and horizontals.

Approaching growth in the post-crisis business environment We have continued to emphasize our attention on our select focus areas where we can differentiate ourselves in the market place and deliver value to cussiliconindia

Thoughts on Risk Management and Sustainability From a growth standpoint this would drive broad based growth, so one is not vulnerable to a decline/shock in any segment of business. It would require us to Invest in both deepening ones capability in our focus areas, while consciously build out new ones. For instance, we are not only continuing to strengthen our Asset Management and Airlines (both existing Focus Areas) but also have started building out our Healthcare vertical (new area).

Thoughts on Leadership Leadership means to lead by example; to take charge; encourage positive reinforcement and to demand excellence while providing means to achieve the same.

tomers by providing innovative solutions and leverage our IPs & platform based capabilities to be able to do more with less

Operationally, to institutionalize Risk Management we have a Risk officer, a clearly thought-out Enterprise Risk Management framework & a monitoring process in place and frequent reviews with the Board of Directors on the same.

An unforgettable day as the CEO There have been several such occasions, but more recently when a valued customer genuinely thanked Hexaware and the team for solving a major crisis through innovation, incredible effort, team work and REAL desire to help! We were then awarded multiple other projects. At another instance, almost at around the same time during our recently held TechSummit (Hexawares technology gathering) a group of employees approached me and voiced their pride in being Hexawarians and thanked me personally for getting the company on a growth mode and becoming a Star among the mid caps. si

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February 2012

CIO Insights: By Benita Matilda

tEChNology toDAy IS ABout BEINg AgIlE

Sridhar Nallani is the Vice President IT, TRIA Beauty, a privately-held, venture-backed medical device company that develops and markets lightbased therapeutic beauty systems. He is placed in San Francisco Bay Area. He has over 17 years of experience in building high performance teams. His expertise spans areas of Ecommerce, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Architecture, Application Development including ERP/CRM transformations and Cloud/Virtualization. Prior to joining TRIA he was a Senior Director of IT at Microsoft under the CIO and earlier to that the First Vice President of Technology at WaMu under the CIO and CFO. He is known as an accomplished technologist and leader who applies a rare mix of technology depth, relationship skills, and business acumen to direct strategic enterprise software development, management and customer delivery.

business intelligence has taken a new meaning now as well. Innovative IT teams are getting away from developing canned reports and moving to developing self-serving dashboards with drill down capabilities and putting the power into the business users hands. Challenges of a CIO There are a few key challenges for any CIO today. How you constantly assess and inspire your current team, add more talent and improve from a people point of view is a big one. How you keep pace with new trends like cloud, mobile and social networking and use them as game changers for your company is another. In this context then its not on when to adapt them but how is the key; e.g., public or private cloud, data and security aspects, on-premise or hosted, the budgetary aspects related to all these and more. Also important is the state of the IT team and how you are taking it to the next level. Using Gartners maturity model of functional, enabling, contributing, differentiating and transformational, where does your team stack up and what are you doing to move it up a notch. The aspect of data security and recovery plays a very critical role as well. Every CIO needs to be paranoid about how well their data and systems are secured and actually proof test their recovery mechanisms if a disaster were to occur. The other important thing for any CIO is to be connected with his or her peers and share ideas so they dont try to reinvent the cycle and learn best practices. Im part of a CIO group in the bay area named CISE (Consortium of Information System Executives). Founded in October of 2003, the CISE is a forum of 28 Bay Area Information Technology executives which meets monthly to discuss current and future enterprise IT challenges. This forum also enables its members to collaborate on various ways of solving their IT issues, through the sharing of relevant and timely information. It helps expand

my ability to generate a competitive advantage for my company. The 3 key areas this forum focuses on are the People (recruit, retain and develop and build partnerships with exec management), Processes (Best practices and benchmarking) and Technology (various technology options available, leveraging existing systems, case studies and ROI).

Every CIO needs to be paranoid about how well their data and systems are secured and actually proof test their recovery mechanisms if a disaster were to occur.
Is a CIO a Decision Maker of the Company? Let me flip it this way. For most people who join the company they have a clear idea of what their role is and what is expected of them. But when it comes to a CIO, it depends on their personality, their background and their passion on how they architect their role. The eventual goal is for sure to become part of the decision making process and be a business owner and not get settled for a supporting role getting just IT stuff done. It does not happen on day one though. One needs to clearly understand where the company is, where it is going and constantly question whether the IT strategies in place are setting it up right to realize the overall goal. That is the only way a CIO can be a game changer for the company. It is very easy for someone to fall into the trap of getting in and basically increasing just efficiency of an existing system and team and keep doing just that. The approach I took was to spend the

first 90 days in understanding the current team, my boss vision and my peers goals and came up with a 6 to 18 month plan. The initial focus was on building credibility with all the stakeholders, so the plan of attack was look at the low hanging fruit. While there were 200 business processes and possible gaps we identified just 3 to 5 key ones with gaps and looked at improving and automating them 100 percent. Not resolving these would hinder the growth plans of the company. Once the improvements were made I had better leverage in taking up more strategic initiatives like centralizing systems, systems that would be needed for scale etc and was able to get the support needed from my peers. All the while adjusting and improving the IT team and getting it into a leaner model utilizing the offshore capabilities. Also key was to establish a solid leadership team who can own and be accountable for key areas like business intelligence, infrastructure, ecommerce and application development. Once you get a few wins and the operational aspect of IT is taken care of, you can then become a true partner to business and be part of the decision making process. Driving innovation within the company Most of the companies look at their CIO for innovation. This does not happen by accident but only by creating and encouraging a culture in the IT team that not only gets things done thats been asked of them but constantly looks at new ways of changing the game, bringing forth ideas of more than one way to solve things, on how to positively impact areas like revenue generation, productivity, growth and risk mitigation. An IT team can also dedicate a small part of the group to just focus on testing and trying new technologies like building new mobile apps more like an R&D team and then the CIO can bring back any promising possibilities to his peers and get support. si
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Sridhar Nallani

Key Trends Driving The Industry Today Technology is not just limited to the IT segment but has been a big driving factor for emerging companies in sectors ranging from retail to agriculture to help them boost their business growth. Our perception towards technology has completely changed. There has been a shift from a more traditional life cycle developmental methodology to a more
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agile methodology. One of the key trends that seems to have made a come back is e-commerce. Additionally, there has been a rampant adoption of cloud computing, social networking, mobile computing and other new technologies as each company is trying to make these trends a competitive edge. Today the emphasis is on delivering value much quicker and earlier than we traditionally did. Days of waiting for 2

to 4 years for a software release are gone. Its more an agile based lean model where business would be looking for delivery cycles every 2 to 4 weeks incrementally. On the cloud technology front there are different types of data that could suit well to different options available, from a private to a public cloud with some companies looking into a more hybrid model. Also data from traditional data ware house &

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February 2012

siTech20
U.S INDEX
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 RANK COMPANY
Index of the top tech public companies in U.S founded and managed by Indians

Stock Price (US$)Closing 26.01.2012 71 22 46 37 25 54 23 46 29 17 34 38 54 36 18 24 24 20 12 7

52 Week HIGH 83 45 53 42 31 58 36 62 29 19 48 40 57 44 20 30 34 28 19 9

52 Week LOW 54 17 32 29 18 34 16 38 19 12 24 27 31 29 9 13 16 11 7 6

% CHANGE IN PRICE 4 Weeks 52 Weeks 11 5 -8 0 4 4 21 -2 16 13 21 6 10 6 13 10 0 11 9 17 -2 -39 -8 0 19 6 5 -16 32 -6 -17 6 42 -3 20 1 -17 -13 -25 -22

CAPITALIZATION In $ Millions 21520 11770 11150 7100 4200 2890 2440 1920 1890 1720 1670 1660 1070 1020 1010 895 868 846 837 789

Cognizant Tech. Juniper Networks SanDisk Corporation Microchip Tech Tibco Software Concur Technologies Aruba Networks Syntel Semtech Corporation Qlogic Corporation Cavium Networks Plantronics, Inc. OSI Systems Power Integrations, Inc. iGate Ebix, Inc Make My Trip NetScout Ixia Infinera Corporation

CTSH JNPR SNDK MCHP TIBX CNQR ARUN SYNT SMTC QLGC CAVM PLT OSIS POWI IGTE EBIX MMYT NTCT XXIA INFN

INDIA INDEX
RANK COMPANY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Index of the top tech public companies in India

Stock Price INR Closing 27.01.2012 2725 1109 418 637 428 76 381 729 467 47 79 47 444 19 900 142 42 112 23 31

52 Week HIGH 3305 1247 490 798 527 94 695 740 486 437 171 116 551 58 924 213 61 182 50 83

52 Week LOW 2162 902 311 477 360 54 278 714 250 29 50 36 288 13 880 112 34 91 20 23

% CHANGE IN PRICE 4 Weeks 52 Weeks -1 -6 3 12 9 19 14 34 5 21 41 12 13 27 11 22 14 18 5 29 -15 -8 -6 -5 -16 17 -48 2 1 -89 -44 -55 -16 -65 -57 -19 -25 -30 -47 -55

CAPITALIZATION In Rs. Crore 156000 217000 103000 8107 29565 8961 8000 3362 6254 454 1274 1040 1797 311 2756 1415 694 288 244 214

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Infosys Technologies Tata Consultancy Services Wipro Ltd Tech Mahindra HCL Technologies Mahindra Satyam Mphasis Financial Technologies Patni Comp GTL Ltd Rolta India HCL Infosystems Mindtree Moser Baer CMC Ltd Polaris Software NIIT Ltd Sasken Communications Technology Sonata Software Subex Systems
February 2012

few months back, Kapil Sibal, Indias telecommunications minister, reportedly asked the Internet companies to have employees prescreen content before it is posted to ensure it is not offensive. It was widely reported that he specifically demanded they keep derogatory material about the countrys leaders off their websites. In another case, last month, the Indian court told Internet giants Google and Facebook that their websites can be blocked "like China" if they fail to come up with a way to remove "offensive and objectionable" material from their web pages, especially religiously offensive content. The magistrate of the trial court had observed that the material submitted by the complainant contained obscene pictures and derogatory articles pertaining to various Hindu gods, Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ. While the step taken by India's political establishment and the one by its Judiciary need to be seen differently, the recent activities clearly indicate a strong leaning towards censorship of the Internet. Is India only attempting to emulate China or really wanting to go beyond in curbing free speech on the Internet? In its attempt to govern the Internet, the Indian government has chosen a hegemonic path. In the aftermath of last years Arab Spring, which was facilitated in many countries (especially Tunisia and Egypt) by network-enabled mobilization and at a time when autocratic governments are cracking down against online freedom, it is worth pausing to get straight the concept so many hold
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Censorship in the worlds largest democracy?

By Pradeep Shankar

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dear. As the Arab Spring demonstrated, the Internet can quickly transform local incidents into national flashpoints turning the new connectivity into a potential source of political instability and turmoil. But that has been the case only in countries ruled by highly unpopular autocratic regimes. And then there is the dark side of the Chinese Internet explosion, that is widespread censorship and constraints on individual freedom of expression. Chinas SkyNet team, which is rumored to be greater than 30,000, is the largest cyber police force in the world. Moreover, while China is not alone in censoring the Internet, self-policing by many of the nations largest portals amplifies official oversight and surveillance. Recent restrictions on microbloggers especially denial of access to those who use untraceable aliases have heightened concerns over Chinese Internet freedom. Such restrictions, of course, cut both ways potentially limiting personal expression, but also constraining disguised and reckless vigilante attacks. As India celebrates the 63rd Republic Day, we need to protect free speech and the freedom of expression as enshrined in our constitution, even as regards to matters relating to the Internet and the electronic domain. While we enjoy freedom of speech, large quarters of people agree that impermissible content such as child pornography, obscenity, hate speech, and religious insults, should not be available on the Internet, there are methods by which this can be curbed and it is important for the government to apply that methodology.

Vint Cerf, one of the Internets founding fathers and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, recently argued in the New York Times that Internet access is not a human right. He says, Technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didnt have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, Im not sure where I would put it. As greater proportion of human activity is mediated through Internet-based technologies, the extent of our online rights and what we really mean by Internet freedom will take on greater importance in political and economic life. Government officials and their private sector counterparts have a key role to play in all of this. We need to formulate acceptable international definitions of Internet freedom, aggression, and cyber security. We also need to continually articulate the distinction between political speech permissible and truly illicit online activity (like child pornography, cyber crime, and terrorism). None of this will be easy. While we are on the journey towards finding an "acceptable" solution, we can expect some interesting debates from different quarters. si

February 2012