Thought Leaders in Big Data: Naveen Sharma, Chief Innovation Officer, Retail, Xerox (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: These are  good examples of taking data and doing something interesting with it to produce actionable business value but it didn’t really cover multi-modal data. You say it was one of the issues that you’re trying to illustrate. Can we take a use case where there is actually multi-modal data involved?

Naveen Sharma:  In this particular case, the multi-modality came from call center data. For example, I talked about call center audio files or recorded conversations. Also, meta data is captured as structured data so we had both kinds of data.

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Running A Global Virtual Incubator: 10 Lessons We Have Learned

Further to my earlier post, Mentoring Startups: 10 Lessons We Have Learned, I want to also go over our learnings through running, what is today, the world’s only global virtual incubation program.

1. Reach & Scalability: We have successfully created a virtual incubation program that entrepreneurs all over the world are using. The self-service curriculum is quite rich now, which makes the program scalable. Also, the online mentoring roundtables have been extremely productive, as discussed in the earlier post. We’re also running an active content organization that helps our portfolio companies get coverage, as well as distribution for their messages through social media (reach over 100k currently).

2. Inclusive vs. Exclusive: We have successfully reset the definition of entrepreneurship within the program from Entrepreneurship = Financing to Entrepreneurship = (Customers + Revenues + Profits), Financing and Exit are optional. This has enabled us to be inclusive, as opposed to exclusive. Unlike YCombinator that takes pride in how many entrepreneurs they reject, we take pride in the fact that we do not reject anybody. Over 99% of entrepreneurs seeking financing get rejected. We work with ‘The Other 99%’ irrespective of their fundability, helping them grow to become successful businesses, and to raise financing if appropriate. Also, you don’t have to move to Silicon Valley to get incubated with us, which also gives us tremendous flexibility on whom we can work with.

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November 20 – Sramana Mitra Speaking At Dreamforce

Sramana Mitra is a featured speaker at Dreamforce in the session “Stacking the Odds: Incubators and Accelerators,” on Wednesday, November 20, 2013, at 12:30 p.m., in the Union Square room at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco. You can learn more and register here.

How to Navigate India’s Seed Capital Gap

India has a minuscule seed capital ecosystem. Entrepreneurs thus have to be really creative to survive.

My new piece How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap in India offers a synthesis of how entrepreneurs are getting around. Two companion pieces offer perspective on why the ecosystem is developing so slowly: Seed Investors in India: Why So Few? and Venture Capital in India: Age of Reckoning. >>>

1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2013: Invention Labs, Chennai, India

Invention Labs develops augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) solutions like Avaz that help children with speech disabilities develop communication and language skills. Avaz represents ideas visually, as picture symbols that can then be sequenced together to create sentences that are spoken out. Unlike its competitors, Avaz is not English-specific and not only helps in communication but also in building language skills. >>>

Is Too Much Liquidity In The Angel Capital Market Good or Bad?

Too much dumb money rushing into the angel investment game is inevitable with crowdsourcing, AngelList and other innovations. Innovation is welcome. Liquidity for startups is welcome. How much is too much?

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Harvard Business Review: The Problems With Incubators, and How to Solve Them

Harvard Business Review has published Sramana Mitra’s piece The Problems With Incubators, and How to Solve Them. You can read the entire article here.

The Indian Startup Eco-System Wants Acqui-hiring!

I spent large chunks of time in the last two days with my friend Sharad Sharma, one of the true deep thinkers of the Indian startup eco-system. I first met Sharad when he invited me to co-chair the Nasscom Product Conclave in Bangalore with him in 2010. I really enjoyed working with him, and over the years, have come to appreciate what he is trying to do for the Indian eco-system.

Sharad, by the way, is one of the 20 odd effective angel investors who invest in the technology sector in India. While the total number of angel investors is much larger, many of them come from outside the sector, and hence are not capable of leading deals. If you look at Indian Angel Network or Mumbai Angels, for instance, a vast majority of the angels made their money elsewhere (like real estate), and often find it difficult to fully grasp what’s happening in the software, mobile or Internet businesses, let alone networking or semiconductor. Thus, these lead angels are critical for the eco-system to mature.

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