India’s Big Opportunity In SaaS

It was clear to me way back in the nineties that India’s journey forward as a center of excellence in software would not gain legitimacy without some home grown product companies. Amidst the outsourcing boom, however, it was impossible to gain traction for the idea. Since March 2007, I have often orchestrated discussions on my blog on why India was still lacking in product companies. In June 2007, I interviewed Sridhar Vembu, the now famous founder of Zoho. Soon after, in my Forbes column, I introduced him as the smartest unknown Indian entrepreneur.

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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2011: FreshDesk, Chennai, India

A finalist in the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge, Freshdesk is a SaaS company that provides small and medium businesses with on-demand customer support software that offers multi-channel social support. Freshdesk introduces itself as a kind of Salesforce.com for customer support so to speak. Small- and medium-business owners can set up online customer support platforms that combine the backend help desk system used by agents (ticketing, knowledge management) with an online customer portal (self service, forums, idea management, voting, etc.) on the front end. >>>

1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2011: Bizosys, Bangalore, India

Bizosys Technologies, a Bangalore, India based software engineering company was founded in 2009. The founders, Sunil Guttula and Abinasha Karana are experienced IT professional with 15 years’ experience between them solving various enterprise IT problems. Guttula, Bizosys’ CEO, and Karana founded the company with the goal to “simplify software development.”

Toward that end, they have created two products. The first is HSearch, a NoSQL technology based search engine for big data that aims to break the barrier of scale of growing information and accessing it across information silos. The second product is 10Screens, a tool to visualize business requirements critical to software development, which tend to be hampered by poor communication among various stakeholders. 10Screens is currently a finalist in the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Diane Bryant, CIO Of Intel (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Siddharth Garg and Rahul Nagpal

Sramana Mitra: Now, switching gears a bit. In all this work you have been doing – and you are deep into the process – what are some of the holes you see? I run this program called One Million by One Million, and the goal is to help a million entrepreneurs reach $1 million in annual revenue and beyond. Part of the blog’s effort is to highlight blue-sky opportunities and open problems within the cloud world. From your vantage point, what do you see as open problems that you would like to point entrepreneurs to? >>>

1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: Contify, Delhi, India

Contify is a content aggregation and distribution company based in New Delhi, India that markets content obtained through its partnerships with 250 of India’s leading and niche publications. That content, more than 3,000 business news stories, is then distributed daily to clients in the form of global information databases such as Dow Jones Factiva, Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, and Bloomberg.

The idea for Contify came to Delhi native, Mohit Bhakuni, during his tenure as the head of the content syndication department at Hindustan Times Media Limited (HTML). He had experience working with information databases like Factiva not only while pursuing his MBA at INSEAD in France, but also while working as a consultant for Deloitte Consulting in the United States. He returned to India in 2005 and started working for the Indian Express Group (IE). From there, he went to HTML. Working with the content license managers of information databases showed Bhakuni that “there is much demand for good quality content from India.” >>>

1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: BonitaSoft, Grenoble, France

Deal Radar revisits open source with Grenoble-based BonitaSoft. The company creates a functional open source business process management (BPM) solution that designs, simulates, and automates processes. The aim is to allow businesses to turn their processes into business applications. Bonita Open Solution is designed to be comprehensive and scalable BPM solution that includes three main components: a process studio, an execution engine, and a Web user experience. >>>

1M/1M: Message To Incubators

We are engaging with a lot of incubators, and I want to address you specifically, as we consider incubators around the world to be a very important set of partners for us.

One Million by One Million, as you know, is a global initiative that aims to nurture a million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars each in annual revenue and beyond by 2020, thereby creating a trillion dollars in global GDP and ten million jobs. We want to achieve this WITH you.

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1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: DisputeSuite, Tampa Bay, Florida

DisputeSuite develops niche technology and education services to assist credit repair companies in the management and growth of their business. These companies help consumers who notice an error on their report or whom want assistance in rebuilding or repairing their credit. DisputeSuite provides an interactive platform for professionals to communicate with consumers in a secure environment while tracking and managing the consumer’s credit repair process. >>>