Product cos call for more conducive ecosystem

It was a beauty parade of software entrepreneurs, made up of those who have arrived and the wannabees. Each of them showcased their products before an eminent panel of Nasscom in an attempt to be tagged an 'Innovative Emerging IT company in India.'

Some well known names such as Subash Menon of Subex Systems and Vinay Deshpande of Encore Software also put forth their ideas on what best constitutes the ecosystem for building a successful software products company.

Said Deshpande, the man behind Simputer and SATHI, an advanced GPS device for the armed forces: "Even though there is a growing sense of innovation and entrepreneurship in India, the ecosystem to nurture and develop them is lacking. The venture capitalists, at least the Indian ones, are sceptical about looking at intellectual property as an asset and the less said about the banks the better. The VCs are more comfortable with manpower numbers as against IPR. This should change."

Putting forth the view from a venture capitalist angle, Kiranbir Nag, Partner, Silicon Valley Bank India Advisors said: "The Indian entrepreneurs in the product space are wedded to technology and not much thought is given to how the business can be scaled and made commercially viable. This is an important space which should be worked on to become more successful."

He, however, added that entrepreneurs are now pretty much clear about their product roadmap, unlike during the dotcom-led boom.

Five companies from Bangalore "" Bangalore SoftSell, Skelta Software, CG-Smith Software, besides Subex and Encore Software "" have been shortlisted in the Southern leg of this Nasscom competition which will culminate in February.

Added Ganesh Natarajan, MD, Zenzar Technologies and a jury member: "The Indian IT-ITES industry owes a great part of its success to innovation, which continues to remain central to the evolution and rapid growth of the sector. These organisations have not only created newer, more imaginative and cutting edge products and services, they also have found revolutionary ways of satisfying customer needs."