Here’s my latest Forbes Column: The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur.
What is touching, is that the entrepreneur profiled here is also infinitely humble, embarrassed by this sort of attention from the media. In my private exchange with him, I have expressed my deepest respect, and the reason I want to feature this story repeatedly is that I truly think it is a case study worth emulating.
So Indian entrepreneurs, please pay attention to this story. There are many lessons buried in it.
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Srinivas,
filing patents is no good indicator of innovation. I in my 3 years of tech career, had filed one. My college milind owns 15. He wrote one application, when we were presenting at Proto.in. Thats a stupid American way for save guarding your IP. Today virtually NO software can be written without violation a M$ or IBM patent.
It taks 4-6 years to get a patent accepted or rejected and y that time story of a startup is already over.
I am not a fan of Zoho technology, I think lately they have compromised on quality for quantity. Look at CRM and Email. But as a company they have done what many of us have always dreamt of.
@Rehan and Srinivas,
Yup, I guess Indian companies lack that marketing and product positioning edge. Thats because of teams and I guess also because of lack of guidance from the ecosystem. May be because, The history of good Indian “product” companies is very recent.
I know an excellent Indian drug discovery company which is bitten by same bug.
The ecosystem – investors, market, money all have to evolve to support innovators in India.
I think India lacks worldclass teams simply because their teams are very India centric and unexposed to global practices. Once Indian companies change themselves from the inside and acquire the finest talent from all over, much like you find in the US, they too will become excellent product companies.
I was just pondering over few things –
a. Are Indian product companies complacent?
b. Do Indian companies with innovative and creative products really market and position their products well in global markets?
c. What is it that differentiates an American product company and Indian product company?
I think these threee questions can be of a subject of good debate.
Any thoughts?
maybe they don’t want to patent. Though I am sure they can file many patents based on Zoho as there are some very innovative products there.
Dilip,
Does that mean that the technology tools built by ZOHO can not be patented or they are not patented as yet?