Speed is key to surviving competition

HYDERABAD: Every year 178 million tech companies are born, and according laws of probability, at least a handful of them leave digital disruption in their wake —which is the change caused by new digital technologies affecting the value of existing goods and services. Digital disruption brings with it new opportunities but also has the potential to cause widespread harm. So, how do companies—young and old—tackle the same?

“Speed”, was the one-word answer given by Rajeev Banduni, the founder and CEO of Growth Enabler Research, who was asked the above question Wednesday at ‘The Talk: Big Ideas to scale SME and Startups’. Banduni, opined that speed would be the deciding factor if a startup shall stand the test of time.
“You have to work at breakneck speed. If someone tells you to put up a five-year strategy, tell them that you may not have that much time. Instead plan on six months because it is highly likely that something disruptive will take place in just those six months,” he said.

Classifying the startup ecosystem into disruptors, followers and laggards, Banduni said that the likes of disruptors included Facebook and Amazon. While followers, as the name suggests, were the ones who adopted the technologies introduced by the disruptors to remain afloat. And the laggards, were the ones who did not stand the test of time.

Citing the example of Kodak, Banduni said, “Kodak was the first company to launch digital cameras. But what happened,” he asked referring to the company’s downfall after it missed major opportunities in digital photography -- its home-grown technology. The failure was a direct cause of its decades-long decline as digital medium destroyed its film-based business, said a Forbes report.

‘Govt needs to step up game in women entrepreneurship’

Speaking at the The Talk: Big Ideas to scale SME and Startups, an event of which The New Indian Express was a media partner, Deepthi Reddy Madugula, founder of Womenergy India said that T-HUB and We-Hub need to do more to encourage and appeal to women entrepreneurs. She  added that the two government-backed startup incubators need to do more brainstorming in order to reach more women entrepreneurs at the grassroot level.  Responding to a question by the moderator, Manjulatha Kalinidhi, Editor of Indulge-Hyderabad, New Indian Express Group, Madugula said, “Government should work together with the woman associations, women entrepreneurs and with woman incubators. There is a lot of gap.” On the availability of mentors, she also said that there was a lack of it in on the ground.  For encouraging the startup culture among women, Dr Nandita Sethi, founder of The Entrepreneur Zone recommended that startup workshops should be started from schools.