India: Beyond Programming Code
posted in Outsourcing News and Top Outsourcing deals, Outsourcing to India |Source: www.redherring.com
While, US senators and UK union bosses may vent their spleen over outsourcing to India, far from the madding crowd of code crunchers and call centres, Proto.in brings innovators and investors together. End result? In what is a little known fact, pockets of India’s IT sector, aside from software development etc., are involved in innovation and product churn.
The launch pad for emerging technology’, Proto receives a flood of applications from little ‘jump-start-me-ups’, but Proto organisers admit, having to explain to Indian entrepreneurs ‘what demonstrating a product’, is tough going.
Even so, the show will go on in Chennai over 20th – 21st July 2007, a show where Proto will provide 8-minute slots for presenting elevator pitches by the 27-jump-start-me-up finalists netted from 117-nominations, earlier this year.
“We have more than 20 Venture Capitalists calling us, saying they want to be part of the selection process,” says Vijay Anand, a serial Proto entrepreneur, on whom the onus lies to ensure the event doesn’t degenerate into a “business plan competition”.
Having founded LeadStep Technologies, his firm based in Ottawa, Canada, Anand is involved in mentoring a bunch of start-up firms at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras’s incubation centre. Experienced, having been around the block a couple of times, he is aware a platform like Proto could trigger some ‘productisation’ of initial offerings in India’s fledgling tech start-up community.
“Indian entrepreneurial activity is young in high-growth economies like the Internet, software products, and the VC industry,” says Mukul Singhal, an investment analyst with Canaan Partners. “Such events provide those role models.”
For SmartPundits, an R&D start-up finalist from Bangalore, the inventor of a smart headlight controller for cars, garnering the attention of giants like Siemens and NXP, meant a huge head-start in the field of innovative business, with the firm bragging, it is close to bagging a two-year research contract from a major German carmaker.
“We have built an algorithm combining pattern recognition, motion detection, and neural networks that can go into several next-generation automobile products,” says Najeeb Narayanan, co-founder of SmartPundits, and confirms several more products, such as, the lane departure warning system, adaptive cruise control, and adaptive front lighting system, are in the works.
Sequoia Capital, Clearstone Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, GreyLock Partners, and NEA Indo-US Ventures are just some of the confirmed participants from the world of venture capitalism, and the entry fee of $250 means, start-ups may finally realise power-packed networking is an easy way to get capital for their innovative genius.
As Indian techies turn entrepreneurs and innovators, it is more than likely they will be snatch the mantle of technological superiority and innovativeness from USA. Indeed, their incredible success in outsourcing has worked to help India’s software developers and IT industry in getting rid of the ‘cyber coolies’ label fast. A label American techies tagged them with, when they found their jobs Bangalored! In a fast table turn, it won’t be long, before India’s IT industry’s entrepreneurs, hire them to work for them as ‘cyber coolies’.
Already, it has already begun to happen, as India’s burgeoning economy ensures an Indian experience is a ‘must have’ on every American or European CV, and they come looking for that all important Indian experience!
