Quotes from Enterprise panel discussion

We had the enterprise segment panel discussion yesterday. Here are a few words of advice to entrepreneurs from our speakers:

C Mohan, Chief Scientist, IBM India and an IBM fellow: “One thing that I would like to mention is that there is the IBM’s venture capital group that partners with small companies to use IBM’s products with a view of future investment opportunities. It is also possible that you can leverage some IP that you created while working for a client. India’s PhD conversion rate is very low – 38 in India, 2200 in China! A research kind of focus needs to brought on this part of it. There has also been an experiment at IIIT-H that some of the UGs are exposed to research in the second year and this has converted a number of people towards a graduate degree.”

Dr. Lin Chase, Director, Accenture Labs: “Mobility is going to be big in India. This is not something that has happened in US yet. There are huge number in India that need to be employed and moved. So there is a very important need to employe more people and make them more productive. It is also a need to make women more a part of the working population. And given that most of our working force is illiterate, there is a need to bring computing to the only thing they might have – the mobile phone.”

“There only way you can make a successful startup is by putting in extra hours and some real passion.” “How can you start as a company and at some point become a product company and go on a non-linear growth path in a way that makes sure that recurring revenues stabilize over a particular time?” “Somewhere the universities need to become the hotbed of innovation.”

“IIIT-H is known for being a research institution. The students have a brightness in their eyes about. Keep networking and talk to big guys who are well networked. They can take you places”

Loganathan, VP, Pramati: “Online stores and online social networking needs to collaborate. Other key trends is emergence of web-desktops and virtualization.” “In valley it is very very clear what it takes to make a product success. IIIT Hyderabad was one of the first institutes to promote student entrepreneurship. Though that has not worked so well but some one them have gone ahead and started up sometime later.”

Rimi, i-Flex: “Product and services in BFSI sector – Banking sector is actually undergoing a major transition in its operations with regard to the risk analysis. End to end high availability of systems is very important. Another thing is on the interoperability area.”

-Posted by Arpit