3 IITians crack the affordable devices market, make INR 50 crore in first year

Is it possible to build affordable smartphones and tablets for the mass market without being tagged as ‘Low Quality’? Most of us would say No. Yet, 3 IITians — Ravi Jakhar, Aditya Agrawal and Rohit Sharma – have been proving otherwise with their Mumbai-based startup, ICE X Electronics. Within a year of their products entering the market, they have clocked sales of INR 10 crore in their own brand, and about INR 40 crore in other brands. The key to it is their refusal to compromise on quality, focusing instead on technological innovation to make their products affordable.

“Our industry (affordable smartphones) is branded as highly commoditized, the general perception being that companies are importing handsets and tablets from China and selling them here under their own brand names. We also work with Chinese manufacturers. However, we don’t just import products from there. At ICE, everything, from product conceptualisation to technology integration, is done by us,” says Aditya. An IIT BHU and IIM Indore graduate, Aditya has worked with top companies like E&Y and Bharti Airtel. He specializes in telecom practice.

Ravi Jakhar, Rohit Sharma, Aditya Agrawal — founders of ICE X Electronics

A gap in the smartphone market

In 2010, Ravi was advising several companies on organic and inorganic growth when he began interacting with some of the leading Indian handset manufacturers. After a series of discussions on fund-raising, he realized that most of them were able to build their business on distribution strength with little focus on technology innovation. He saw this as a gap in the business chain. He reached out to his college mates, Aditya and Rohit. Together, they launched ICE X Electronics in 2011. The vision was to build affordable smartphones and tablets for the Indian consumer with a clear focus on technology and innovation.

 

The company started its operations with a small team of six people, which gradually grew to 25, while keeping all non-core activities on an outsourced model.

Right from the start, the 3 founders were clear that to succeed in the crowded space, they had to innovate and differentiate wherever possible.

 

For instance, the core chipset for tablets is built for global users and the first such chipsets for wifi tablets did not have support for dongles from Indian operators. Besides, wifi coverage in India is very limited. So a lot of people who purchased wifi tabs initially could not use them well due to lack of wifi hotspots. “We worked with the chipset developers and got patches built to solve dongle issues and hence our tablets could be supported by all the major Indian dongles,” Aditya says.

“Even after the final assembly of devices, there are a lot of bugs which emerge in the software, thus leading to unsatisfactory user experience. A PCBA developer made a PCBA for a calling tablet, which was used by us and others as well. However, we were the only ones who launched the final product with calling tray and free of bugs,” he says.

 

Technical expertise is their forte. “We are the only Indian company in its domain which is working on latest technologies such as wireless charging, 3D printing, 22 language keyboard solutions, own OS etc. all of which help in making better devices for the end-user. We have a tie-up with FTK Technologies, an Israel-based company, to launch India

ICE was the official handset partner of Dhoom 3. They did a contest around the movie, where the winners met Aamir Khan

’s first 22 language-enabled tablet,” Aditya says.

It doesn’t end at sales

All ICE tablets come pre-loaded with a customer service app, which customers can use to get online help to fix small problems immediately – “This is a first from ICE,” Aditya says.

Apart from tie-ups with more than 400 third party service arrangements, the company also provides for a pickup and drop of devices after repair. Customers can call a toll-free helpline number to log in their complaint and request for device pickup. “ICE is the first company to launch a concept of doorstep after-sales service for tablets and smartphones, which is now being upgraded to an ‘engineer at home’ service,” he adds.

Currently, the company is piloting a new model of after sales service. They have hired repairmen to go to the customer’s house with a tool kit and repair the device at home. “This is a model frequently used by consumer durable companies but unheard of in the mobile and tablet segment,” Aditya says.

To boost their sales network, they are piloting a new model of sales too.

1. Campus Ambassadors

ICE has tapped into college campuses, a hot market for affordable tablets and smartphones. They appoint ‘Campus Ambassadors’, who are generally students perceived as influencers in the campus. These ambassadors promote and use ICE products, resulting in sales in the campus. The ambassadors also help their friends in case of any after sales service. “We have recently hired a few interns from IIT to identify campus ambassadors in more than 500 colleges over the next 2 months,” Aditya says.

2. Society Ambassadors

ICE is also experimenting with a new model of sales at the co-operative society level. The company is planning to touch base with housewives who have a large social network in their housing societies. These ‘Society Ambassadors’ will use and promote ICE products among their groups.

Challenge of changing perceptions

The biggest challenge before ICE was how to fight perceptions in the mind of general consumers that affordable handsets aren’t reliable, especially China-made handsets. “This perception has emerged because most other players have been importing low quality devices, and many consumers don’t think about the fact that China is the manufacturing hub for all brands, including Apple,” Aditya says. ICE tackled this by persisting with their focus on quality, and “over a period of time helped our supply partners understand how much of a difference a focus on technology can bring.”

The biggest regret Aditya nurses is that they couldn’t launch ICE sooner. “There were many firsts from the ICE stable and we couldn’t tell our consumers about it because we were so focused on bringing the best technology innovation to our phones and tablets that we didn’t give marketing its due.”

ICE tied up with Rajasthan Royals and released a limited edition tablet

 

Initially, the founders took a business call to go directly into the retail model. Typically, if you sell through retail outlets, the dynamics of the industry are such that there will be delays in payment collections. So if you don’t have an alternative sales channel supporting your business, going directly to the retail network can sometimes prove more of a roadblock. “Currently, we sell through all channels, including prominent ecommerce sites like Flipkart, eBay and Amazon. We have also launched our own exclusive online store icedigitalstore.com.”

The company has been funded internally, with the founders investing about INR 4 crore. “We have a turnover target of INR 100 crore this fiscal year. For this, we will be looking at raising some capital now from external investors,” he says.

Growth Strategies of Israel’s Burgeoning Medical Device Sector

 

Israel’s start-up community has gained wide recognition mainly because of entrepreneurs in the areas of communications, software, Internet and social media. Waze, a GPS application, made news because Google paid more than $1 billion for it. Trusteer — cyber security software — made similar headlines when IBM bought it for a similar sum.

Further out of the public eye, a similar flurry of activity is taking place in the field of medical devices. “Internet startups are sexy,” says D. Todd Dollinger, chairman and CEO of the Trendlines Group, a venture capital firm that focuses on medical and agricultural technologies in Israel. “It’s consumer products vs. medical products. When one uses medical products, you often don’t know their origin. Your doctor knows, but you don’t know.”

“Start-ups related to the Internet are fairly straightforward,” adds Guy David, professor of health care management at Wharton and a fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics .“To develop a successful [Internet] application you need an idea and programmers. But with medical technology, the matter is more complex because it involves potential structures in production.”

David notes that there are several things that make medical technology different from cellular or computer technology. “You don’t see the large global companies purchasing medical start-ups,” he says. “Besides, if you look at PillCam [a start-up in the area of capsule endoscopy] or ReWalk [a commercial bionic walking assistance system], they are brick and mortar in terms of development, not just software. They are real products.”
According to a 2012 study by Israel’s ministry of industry, trade and labor, the country was home to 656 medical device companies. Of these, 35 were publicly traded and 18 were owned by foreign companies. The global medical devices market was estimated at $322 billion in 2011. The Israeli market was $1.8 billion, but despite its relatively small piece of the pie, Israel is the leading country in terms of patents granted per capita in the medical devices field. In absolute numbers, it is fourth. “Few medical device industry executives would argue with the notion that Israel has been one of the leading sources of new device technology,” says Dollinger.

“It’s consumer products vs. medical products. When one uses medical products, you often don’t know their origin. Your doctor knows, but you don’t know.” –D. Todd Dollinger

“The industry is young” adds Eran Perry, managing director of Israel HealthCare Ventures (IHCV), a life sciences venture fund. Fifteen years ago, there was very little activity in the medical device field, he notes. At the first Biomed Conference — an annual meeting showcasing such technologies — there were a few people in a small room. Today, the conference fills an entire exhibition hall with thousands of people from all over the world.

Lean Companies

The sector has an advantage in that it can operate on a comparatively shoestring budget. Companies in Israel are very lean compared to those in the U.S., helped in part by the country’s start-up ecosystem: Clusters of similarly focused firms can share resources, meaning overall infrastructure costs are lower. Also, a singular feature of the industry is the small size of the companies in terms of manpower. About 56% have only between one and five employees. Only 3% have more than 100 employees.
“One of our recent investments is in Argo Medical Technologies, an excellent example of how a small budget can go a long way,” says Perry. Argo is a leader in the exoskeleton field; it has developed ReWalk, an exoskeleton suit that enables people with lower limb disabilities to walk. It was the first to reach the market with a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved device for rehabilitation centers, though the company’s investment was one-third that of the competition, Perry notes.

He also points to the success story of NanoPass Technologies, which develops micro needle-based systems for intradermal delivery of drugs and cosmetics. “When they approached us they had FDA approval, rich clinical data and impressive production capabilities. At that time, NanoPass had only one employee — the CEO,” says Perry. The company has since raised three rounds of VC funding. NanoPass has also announced several partnerships with multinationals, particularly in the area of prophylactic and cancer vaccines. But it has been hard work without support staff: “When becoming a CEO of a start-up company, or any company, one needs to be very persistent,” notes CEO Yotam Levin.

Fellow entrepreneur Uri Arnin started his company, Spine21, more than a decade back after learning that 40,000 surgeries were performed annually to repair spinal deformities on teens in the U.S. Spine21 makes bionic spinal implants. Arnin’s vision was to develop a device to correct spinal curvature over a long period, as opposed to one-time aggressive surgery. The result: the ApiFix system, a minimally invasive device. The seed capital of $500,000 came from the Trendline Group’s Misgav Venture Accelerator. Later rounds came from private investors. The potential market for ApiFix is $600 million in the U.S. and $300 million elsewhere. “We are running clinical trials in Israel, and in Hungary and Romania, where the approval process is comparatively fast. Based on these trials, some devices have already been sold,” says Arnin.

A Low-key Approach

But why haven’t these firms garnered headlines the way some of Israel’s Internet-focused start-ups have? “People who go into the medical technology field are not as hungry,” David notes. “They aren’t interested in making a quick buck. They know that it will take longer” for their efforts to pay off.
Medical products are not as global as IT, adds David. “If you think about the Intel chip, or if you develop software for Google, it will be picked up everywhere. With medical technology the ability to scale it up depends on the country.” Every product is not suitable for every market.
Recent developments in the U.S. are likely to make it an even bigger market. In 2011, the U.S. accounted for $600 million of Israeli medical device exports. Exports to Europe were around $400 million, with China and Japan at about $100 million apiece. David explains that most emerging technologies are patient-centered, and many Israeli companies have made considerable advances in these areas.

“People who go into the medical technology field are not as hungry. They aren’t interested in making a quick buck.” –Guy David

“If you look at the statistics, five years ago, less than a quarter of the companies were generating revenues,” says Perry. “Today, about 40% are selling a product. Israeli start-ups have not been strong in commercialization; they are better at development. But, in recent years, some of them have been forced to go to the next stage because finding a buyer for the company was taking too long.”
Companies’ having to prove themselves commercially is good for the industry because it is now learning how to penetrate different markets. Medical device companies also have an edge because they can break even quickly; in certain areas, the devices can reach the market in only two or three years.

What makes Israel a leader in medical innovation? “It’s the mix of people and the culture,” says Perry. “In elite technology units of the army, young soldiers learn how to work as a team and solve problems. The medical device industry is about defining problems which have to be solved.” Some immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union have come from key scientific sectors and have added their experience to the mix. Top-tier academia and a defense industry that continuously provides cutting-edge technologies are also important factors, Perry notes. In addition, the government has been very supportive in R&D.

Cognizant incubates employees' ideas for in-house start-ups

Cognizant Technology Solutions, one of the country’s largest information technology service companies, has devised an innovative way to create start-upsvwithin the organisation.

Considered a front-runner in evolving for technologies of the future such as social, mobility, analytics, and cloud (SMAC), it has been encouraging employees who come up with innovative ideas for specific client needs or which set the stage for the future. Once the ideas clear a feasibility test, the staffers are taken off their job and asked to dedicate themselves to the project. Cognizant also provides the needed resources and funding for the idea to incubate.

The company says 30 such ventures have been funded and some of these solutions— such as Cloud360 and TruMobi — have already been deployed at some clients. “We at Cognizant have realised we will never be smart enough to figure it out all by ourselves, so we have to democratise it,” Malcolm Frank, executive vice- president of strategy and marketing, told Business Standard.

LOOKING INSIDE

Cognizant says 30 such ventures have been funded and some of these solutions have already been deployed at some clients This comes at a time when the $100-billion software export sector is trying to regain its entrepreneurial spirit after decades of capitalising on lower costs and cheaper labour Google allows its employees to spend 20% of their working time on a project of their interest Google says some of its most innovative and successful platforms, such as Gmail, have emerged from this

This comes at a time when the $100-billion software export sector is trying to regain its entrepreneurial spirit after decades of capitalising on the lower costs and cheaper labour in this country. As it battles challenges such as emergence of SMAC, saturation of traditional IT spending, regulatory hurdles for offshoring and the rise of artificial intelligence, the sector needs to move up the value chain through intellectual property creation.

Ramesh Panuganty of Cognizant stumbled on the idea of creating a product called Cloud360 when he realised the sector was moving towards fluid computing models and infrastructure was becoming available as a service. This was in 2008-2009. “The word ‘cloud’ did not exist at the time but it was clear the economics of scale could not justify legacy infrastructure models,” says Panuganty, now venture leader of Cloud360 at Cognizant.

He compares the idea to the emergence of railroads in America, which connected the fertile agricultural land in the midwest to the barren one in the west. “Cloud360 is what we call the railroad helping our customers adopt cloud computing.” According to the company, at least 15 organisations have adopted Cloud360, which helps to lower the cost of managing applications and improving their performance. It manages applications across private, public and hybrid clouds and makes it easy to scale systems up or down, based on real-time needs.

“For those ideas that go on to become their own offerings, the founder often becomes the leader of that offering,” says Sean Middleton, chief operating officer, Emerging Business Accelerator, Cognizant. He adds the company's chief executive, Francisco D'Souza, was once part of a team of folks with an idea. "We make that career opportunity available to every one of our people today."

Google Inc allows its employees to spend 20 per cent of their working time on a project of their interest. The company says some of its most innovative and successful platforms, such as Gmail, have emerged from this.

 

Middleton of Cognizant says in a number of cases, ideas such as Cloud360 or TruMobior assetSERV spawn new business offerings that generate revenue streams. "In other cases, those ideas become sources of continuous improvement...In other cases, a thought leading idea might prove infeasible but by sharing it with a client, we deepen our relationship and give birth to a new idea.

Cognizant banking on ‘code halos’ to bag big deals

Cognizant has come out with a new approach called ‘code halos’ that it believes will open up more multi-million dollar business opportunities. The company, which expects to record 16.5 per cent growth in 2014, taking its revenues to over $10 billion, says the new approach will throw open business opportunities for itself as well as outsourcing companies, large and small.

 

The ‘code halos’ or virtual ‘halos’ will help companies make sense of Petabytes of electronic information from smartphones, wearable devices and any gadget that leaves a digital footprint.

“We call this data ‘code halos’ as it accompanies people, organisations and devices and, when properly harnessed, contains a treasure trove of business value,” said Paul Roehrig, Assistant VP and Co-director of the Centre for the Future of Work at Cognizant. Roehrig, along with Ben Pring, the other co-director, plans to launch a book on the concept.

 

Real-time data

Citing the example of Progressive and Allstate, two insurance companies Cognizant has deals with, Roehrig stated that with ‘code halo’ thinking, vehicle insurers can look at real-time data of people’s driving history and price their premium accordingly instead of blanket pricing based on old parameters such as age of the vehicle. “Insurance companies can create new business models, which can help in more tailored pricing,” said Roehrig. “So, a driver who brakes frequently puts more pressure on the vehicle and hence would incur a higher premium,” he added. Companies such as Cognizant are trying to take this approach in a market where competitors are speaking a similar language and offer similar technology services.

“Our competitors approach this from the technology side but the real pain problems are on the business side,” said Roehrig, adding that this kind of approach would help a start-up or a Fortune 500 company.

 

Software revenue

The market for this kind of offering is rising. According to Gartner, worldwide software revenue totalled $407.3 billion in 2013, a 4.8 per cent increase over 2012, driven by trends such as ‘big data’. Cognizant classifies revenues from such services under the head Social Mobile Analytics Cloud or SMAC. The company has clocked SMAC revenues of $500 million, more than most Indian software exporters.

Mindtree may spin off two company-incubated start-ups

The idea is to support those who may want to be entrepreneurs

 

Two entrepreneurial ventures, started in and incubated at Mindtree Ltd., are now not only catering to over 10 clients each and making revenues for the mid-sized software services exporter but also on the brink of being viable market-ready products.

 

Mindtree will, in the “coming three to six months”, consider opening up, spinning them as independent ventures and getting aboard external investors for the two promising projects that are currently in the field deployment stage.

 

The company has so far invested $4-5 million in the two ventures — one cloud management and security offering called VMUnify and a digital surveillance and video analytics product.

 

Tech event

These projects have been incubated in the products and platforms vertical, under a programme called ‘5 by 50’.

 

“The idea is that the company supports any idea that we think can be a $50 million dollar business in five years,’’ according to Janakiraman S, CTO at Mindtree, who was speaking on the sidelines of the company’s annual tech event Osmosis.

 

The second phase of ‘5 by 50’ is now on, with Mindtree choosing three of 260-odd entries.

“The idea was to support those in our company who may want to be entrepreneurs and create business opportunity but want to minimise risk,” Mr. Janakiraman said.

 

Mr. Janakiraman believes that projects like these will help differentiate Mindtree, a company that is “nimble and agile enough to take risks”, and that this will pay off well in the long-term.

“Mindtree has been growing organically in a very linear way. That is the nature of services—here we are trying to break away from it and create non-linearity, which needs the company to take risks. We feel we have reached a level of maturity to be able to take such risks.”

Smaat India: providing safe and affordable water solutions

Even as a child, Karunakara M Reddy understood the travails of rural India in getting safe drinking water.

 

He would see womenfolk in his village in Andhra Pradesh’s Mehbubnagar district trudge miles to fetch a pot of drinking water.

 

He also saw how people in his village frequently fell ill because of water-borne diseases.

He knew then that availability of safe drinking water would be a major problem in India for decades to come.

 

Biz opportunity

Many years later, in 1998, armed with an MBA and in his first job, he realised how drinking water offered a business opportunity.

 

Reddy, who had joined a soft-drink MNC in Hyderabad, had been asked to help launch the company’s first mineral-water plant.

 

That same year, the 23-year-old executive quit the job, which was paying him about ₹60,000 a month.

 

With an investment of ₹37,000, he set up an office to provide safe drinking water at an affordable price. “We started off with importing and later assembling water purifying units, which then cost ₹27,000 each. We sold 27 units in the first six months and ended the first year with ₹6 lakh revenue,” he recalls.

 

Today, the company, Smaat India, has annual sales of ₹120 crore, with about 900 employees and a factory that produces 300 water purifying units a month.

“For me, it is not business alone. Somehow the urge to provide safe and affordable drinking water to rural India has been there in me from my childhood,” the 39-year-old Chairman and Managing Director says.

 

Smaat sells water solutions to 33 countries, covering 18 innovative technologies developed in-house.

“These include reverse osmosis, ozone filtration, solar ozone evaporation and demineralisation.

“The objective of the innovation is to reduce filtration cost to ensure safe drinking water at affordable costs,” he says.

 

Innovative products

One of its innovative products is a mobile treatment unit to provide drinking water to the masses during floods or natural calamities.

The ₹1.3-crore unit is mounted on a specially designed truck that can be moved around to deliver 2,000 litres per hour.

“What is unique is that it packs the water in small pouches automatically. It can produce 5,000 pouches an hour.

“The pouches come out seamlessly. These units are doing well in West Bengal and Jharkhand,” says Reddy.

Govt plans billion-dollar fund to seed desi tech firms

 If the Government has its way, the next Apple or Ericsson could be from India. In a bid to encourage local technology in the manufacture of telecom equipment and devices, the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) has floated a plan to set up a venture capital fund with a billion-dollar war chest.

 

It proposes to rope in prominent Indian venture capitalists such as Vinod Khosla, Sam Pitroda and Gururaj Deshpande to be part of the investment committee of the fund.

 

“The fund will invite proposals in a transparent manner and select a few consortia, pre-dominantly comprising Indian-origin scientists and technologists. The full cost of the start-ups, from conception to proof of concept and then manufacturing, will be met through equity infusion,” stated the NMCC note, which is now under the consideration of the Department of Telecom.

 

According to the NMCC proposal, the fund will provide 85 per cent of the equity without management control and the remaining 15 per cent can be provided by the selected entrepreneurs in the form of sweat equity. The promoter of the company will have full control of management, subject to a review by the expert committee.

 

In case the start-up does not succeed in the venture, the money given will be written off. But if the venture becomes commercially viable then the proposed fund will maintain an equity holding above 51 per cent to prevent any foreign entity from gaining control over the firm. “The fund will look at breakthrough technology, and not return on capital, as a measure of success,” the note, seen by Business Line, said.

 

The move has been initiated in a bid to make India a global technology manufacturing hub. Despite being a major consumer of telecom network and device products, almost all of its requirements are imported at present.

 

Though the Government has brought in several policies to encourage local manufacturing, including the preferential market access policy, not much investment has come in till now. The mobile devices segment has seen some investments by the likes of Nokia and Motorola but this has also declined in the last one year.

 

DoT officials, however, said that while the NMCC proposal is right in intent, it has to be seen whether it overlaps with other schemes being implemented.

IIM-A study suggests 'brick and click' model for retail growth

With the growing real estate prices hampering the penetration of large format retailing, a study at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) suggests a combination of online and kirana (mom-and-pop) stores.

Terming it as 'brick and click' model, the study suggests retailers should innovate to increase business by going in for a combination of e-commerce and small brick-and-mortar stores.

Titled 'Online Retailing Paired with Kirana - A Formidable Combination for emerging Markets', the study has been authored by IIM-A faculty member Prof. Piyush Sinha, along with Prof. Srikant Gokhale and Saurabh Rawal.

The study argues that there are four factors that advocate a combined model of e-commerce and small kirana stores including rapid penetration of technology, growing consumer preferences, growing adoption of online medium by stores and brands and growing real estate prices.

The study highlights several hurdles that the organised retailing needs to overcome, such as rise real estate prices, lack of viable store locations, overhead costs, pilferage, lack of trained manpower and many more. On the other hand internet retailing is accessible even through a smartphone, saves time and fuel for the consumers and demands no expensive real estate investment for expansion.

"The growth story will be that such a growth will not remain confined to the urban centers of any nation but will rather spread more rapidly in the rural areas, where both organized retail have found difficulty in serving this base of the pyramid.

The inability of organized retail to make a strong presence in these countries will be tapped by the growing number of internet users who will largely prefer to either shop through the internet and or shop from nearby traditional store.

A firm with an omni retail strategy that merges the two formats may prove to be formidable in service a diverse and large country like India and China," the study states.

Quoting a Mckinsey report, the study estimates that the number of internet users in India will rise to 370 million, surpassing all developed countries by 2015.

Moreover, admitting that a majority of the Indian population is not very savvy when it comes to buying from the internet., the study states that e-commerce companies have acknowledged this hurdle and therefore are innovating business models to suit the needs of the typical India consumer.

For instance, discount and other promotional offers are strongly believed to have led customers from the physical stores to virtual stores.

The study also gives examples retailers like Big Bazaar, Shoppers Stop and Tata's Croma to suggest that brick and mortar retailers are identifying the opportunities offered by electronic commerce in India.

Further, the study attributes steep rise in real estate prices as the reason for retailers being discouraged from opening more and more stores.

As per the study, real estate costs comprise upto 10, and sometime more, of sales in India and this same component is about 3-4% in the case of the developed economies.

"In 2012, the store based retailing contributed to about Rs. 20,000 billion whereas non-store retailers stood at about 175 billion. This signifies a growth of 74% in store-based and 223% growth in non-store between 2007 and 2012. There are more than 14 million physical stores, of which 12 million alone are small grocery outlets. The smaller stores are also very high value formats. The ubiquitous Kirana store provided adequate merchandise mix, home delivery credit and personalised services. Consumers do not find the prices very high as they sell at the price printed on the pack and do not give discounts unless offered by the manufacturers. Their merchandise mix is also localised, especially with regard to food and edible products," it states.

Meanwhile, the study also argues the difficulty in funding as one of the reason for opting for a combination of e-commerce and small mom-and-pop store.

"More than 50 e-commerce companies having received over $700 million in funding since 2010 establishing that e-commerce happens to be one of the most sought after investment sectors in the industry today. On the other hand the physical retailers are finding it difficult to raise money. Only large corporations find it a little easy," the study states.

Transforming young lives

Bhagwan Sahay Khatik from Amaranar village in Rajasthan’s Jaipur district is 50 but looks 60. Years of grazing his goats in the rocky terrain have left his face deeply wrinkled. “But now that my son Vikky has got a good job, I will retire,” he smiles. Vikky, all of 19, completed a 12-week course at the ICICI Academy of Skills in Jaipur last month, and has got a job that pays ₹7,000 a month.

For his mother, more important was the fact that for the 12 weeks Vikky “never slept on a hungry stomach”. At home the staple diet was roti and chillies.

 

Wholesome food

The 150-odd youngsters get much more than food at the Academy which aims to find sustainable livelihood for the youth. After opening in 2013 in Jaipur, the Academy has six branches in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Pune, Kolhapur while two more, at Patna and Guwahati, will be ready by March. Together they will train about 5,000 youth every year.

The curriculum has been designed with NIIT, Blue Star, Schneider Electrical, Tally and Crompton Greaves, which have also helped set up classrooms and labs. The technical stream students get hostel facility. The 12-week course offers six skills — electrical, motor and pump repair; refrigeration and AC (RAC) maintenance; selling/marketing skills; web designing, and office administration (this covers basics of accounting, banking, filing papers, etc). The last is in great demand in the SME sector.

 

Focus on grooming, discipline

Along with the training in their chosen vocation, there is also focus on teaching them discipline and grooming. “In the first two weeks, we train them in good behaviour, how to talk to the customer and respect what he/she says. Because you come from deprivation, it does not give you the right to talk rudely to anybody, we tell them,” says a teacher. The resident children have to get up by 6 am, bathe, shave, dress neatly, go for breakfast by 7 and report to class at 8.

The wholesome vegetarian food served in the hostel provides youngsters from poorer families the much required nutrition. Within a week they look healthier, and the grooming brings about a metamorphosis. Some elementary English is taught too.

Nobody is refused admission; the mantra is that given the right environment and opportunity, everybody can be an achiever. The poorer students seek technical skills, the better off office administration and web designing. The latter, day scholars from Jaipur, have degree which have failed to get them jobs.

 

Gender divide

The gender divide is along expected lines; the boys prefer technical courses, the girls opt for web designing, office administration. But in Coimbatore, six girls have broken the gender barrier. R Kavya, from nearby Pollachi, loved changing bulbs and doing small electrical repairs from childhood and “wanted to do electrical engineering, but my family couldn’t afford the fees.” Now she is a budding electrician.

Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank, says she was heartened by the fact that the girls from the first batch have all taken up jobs and are “participating in the economic process.” Training youth and making them employable “is the only way to take advantage of our demographic dividend,” she says.

For ICICI Bank, this venture is that of being a responsible corporate citizen and ensuring that “opportunities and an enabling environment are created for our youth; that is the only way to take advantage of our demographic dividend.”

 

Placement

All 146 from the first batch in Jaipur have been placed. Both ICICI Bank and its partners leverage their goodwill and dealer networks to find jobs for them. The minimum wage is ₹6,000; those with technical skills get ₹8,000-10,000. RK Sharma, a Blue Star consultant and an RAC instructor, says his distributors have employed seven “and are asking for more. RAC is in demand, and will explode as the cold chains for fruits and vegetables expand. I see these boys earning around Rs 20-25,000 in a few years. Hotels and restaurants also need AC mechanics; an AC restaurant is the norm today."

Manoj Sharma from Shyam Aircon Services, a dealer of Blue Star in Jaipur, confirms this. “We have employed six trainees, and though they have more theoretical than practical knowledge, we don’t have to train them from scratch. Also, they know how to talk politely to customers, which is bonus for us.”

 

Surprisingly, 13 from the first batch of 146 refused to take up jobs; they had experience in their fields and came to the ICICI Academy to hone their skills. The Bank may fund their own ventures.

Hanuman Sahib Bhairwan from Ramjipura village, 40 km from Jaipur, is 19, but on his shoulders rest the responsibility of paying his father’s debts. A marginal farmer with two acres of land, the father doubles up as a daily wage labourer to feed his large family. “The income from land is meagre; there is always water shortage. And I have two brothers and five sisters,” says Hanuman who is training to be an electrician. Four of his sisters are married; the dowry for each was ₹2-3 lakh. “Pitaji ke sar par bahut karz hai (father is heavily in debt). I came here thinking karza utrega toh Pitaji khush hoge.(He will be happy),” he says and wants to help clear the debts.

 

Ashok, 19, is the son of a potter from a village 20 km from Jaipur. Unlike other happy faces, his eyes are sad. He tells his story only after much coaxing. His father makes pots that his mother tries to sell in the nearby villages. The daily income is uncertain, and so is the meal. The story is related dispassionately in a resigned monotone.

 

Divesh Kumar, 20, hails from a Haryana village. His father is a barber and earns less than ₹5,000 a month. Divesh has three siblings and made it to Class 12 with great difficulty. “Khana badiya hai,” he beams, reflecting his circumstances.

 

Most have completed Class 12, but many are in third year of college. Others surprise me by saying they are in third year of college. Captain Amar Singh, who has retired from the Army Aviation wing and trains students on electrical skills, explains: “After their Plus Two, these students enrol for correspondence courses by paying Rs 300. they somehow get a degree, but no education and are hence unemployable.”

 

He also doubles as the hostel warden; sari zindagi machine ke saath guzari, (my whole life was spend with machines), I now love training these children."

But teaching them about circuits is a challenge. “They may pass Class 12, but the standard is much lower. Many can’t even write their names. But hailing from this region, I know how to put things in their heads”.

 

So when explaining resistance, Singh gives the example of the world’s fastest runner Usain Bolt. “I tell them, if we give him a proper track he will run superbly. But if we bring him to the sand dunes of Bikaner, his speed will reduce dramatically because of the uneven surface. So they understand!”

I love most the body language of Gaurav Sharma, seated with his father Hemraj, a carpenter. He has got a job as electrician at a salary of Rs 10,000. “The job is great, but this is only the beginning; I know I will earn much more in the future," he beams.

How 3 Indians turned SAP into a cloud computing major

Six years ago, $23-billion (Rs 1.42 lakh crore) German software major SAP, best known for its business software products (enterprise resource planning or ERP in geekspeak), faced a problem: it was still king in ERP but didn’t have a strong presence on the cloud, which was seen as the future of computing.

Cloud computing is a system of “renting” software over the internet instead of buying it on license. It is cheaper than buying software and, so, is preferred by many firms.

After several brainstorming sessions among senior SAP executives, the company’s chairman H. Plattner and its chief technology officer Vishal Sikka (46), who grew up in Vadodara, decided to venture into the cloud with a database management system (which tracks and analyses massive volumes of data), where SAP had little presence, but with a small twist that proved to be a masterstroke.

The new product was called HANA or high performance analytic appliance, which for a variety of technical innovations, speeded up real-time data analysis by up to 100 times.

Analysts, rivals and even some insiders predicted failure. As recently as September 30, 2012, Oracle CEO and co-founder Larry Ellisson took a dig at HANA, calling it a “small thing.” He had earlier dismissed SAP’s innovation as “wacko”.

But Sikka, who is now being called the father of HANA, had the last laugh. At the end of 2013, the product had about 3,000 customers worldwide, making it the bestseller in its class. Oracle, too, has now adopted this new technology. According to company grapevine, Sikka is now a frontrunner for the post of SAP CEO.

“HANA was the right product, at the right time, at the right price,” said Milan Sheth, an analyst at consultancy firm EY.

Several SAP executives around the world contributed to HANA but the ones who stand out are IIT-Kharagpur alumnus Anirban Dey (41), MD of SAP Labs India and a golf enthusiast, whose team developed the system that programs the database that is to be analysed. And his colleague, Ganapathy Subramanian (36), VP, SAP Labs India, builds applications to make the HANA and other tech platforms more versatile and user-friendly.

Not everyone, however, is impressed. “We cannot term HANA as an exceptional technology,” said an analyst requesting anonymity, as his firm has dealings with SAP.

But for now, Sikka and his team are basking in the glory of HANA’s success