To mark the first UK show of artist Herni Brande, developers ThemesCamp and German studio schultzschultz have created the Ledge Wooden at Berlin city.
PEOPLE LEAP FORWARD TO START VENTURES AND TO PURSUE THEIR PASSION WHILST DOING A REGULAR JOB. TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS MAKE ENTREPRENEURSHIP MORE ACCESSIBLE TO A WIDER SWATH OF PEOPLE.
India is growing to be one among the top global centers for entrepreneurship. People’s perception on starting their own venture or moving away from a steady income job to investing in their own idea, has changed drastically in the past few years. From the major acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart or Byju’s growth to become the global leader in the edutech sector fuelled these changes along with the changing job dynamics in IT sector. Also, many professionals who is passionate about arts, cooking or any other creative work, start their ventures as a hobby and later on establish a business brand. The industry has eagerly watched such changes in the past two to three years where many IT/management professionals have taken a great risk to get out of the comfort zones of their hierarchical designations and to be up and about building their own businesses.
Few major reasons for such changes are cumulated below;
Changing Industry Dynamics
Industry, irrespective of the sectors, have seen tremendous changes in terms of business model, resource efficiency and technology innovations. All these dynamic changes brought forward a very competitive environment and further change in market leadership of various sectors that were never thought of a few years back in time. This has forced many industries to think differently and bring changes across the organization. Rather than the experience, employers value the competitiveness and creativity as key factors in the selection of resources. Hence forth reducing the career span from 60 years to 45 years in private sectors were the retirement age for a government employee is 60 years. Thus the private sector’s employees lose their job or are forced to quit the job due to high competition or frustration.
Technology Disruptions/Innovations
From Uber to Ola, Amazon to Flipkart, consumers expect the product or services to be delivered at their doorstep irrespective of the time or holidays. Major example is the changes in the banking sector; Google Pay and Phone Pe are the most accepted payment platforms among the payment options where more than 50 banks have been leading the financial sector since the inception of digital payment. Consumers believe in and seek the instant, convenient and affordable options and compare what is more suitable rather than what is available, whereas availability was the factor that mainly impacted the consumer decision in the past. Technology has played a major role in creating the customer segment that forced industries to revise or revamp their business model to compete against startups that gained acceptance in a short time amongst end users.
Passion to Pursue the interest
The perception of pursuing one’s interest has changed in recent years and have marked significant growth in the number of professionals who have left their job to commence their own business. For the past few years the number of women entrepreneurs is growing exponentially. Women, today prefers being a business owner who has the freedom to their own career and financial destiny rather than being limited in the old conservative societal thinking and it is admirable to note that most of them have been successfully managing their business and family. The entrepreneurship platforms that help creative businesses, conducted across various cities; like flea markets, handicraft exhibitions, homemade products etc. help these creative business owners to create visibility among end consumers and earn more by being their own boss. The success of the social e-commerce platform Meeso is an exemplary example in this category and they keep growing with the support of technology.
Access to more Users
Growth of social media has enabled the ventures and entrepreneurs to reach out more to the masses within a short span. Also, the involvement of social media has tremendously reduced the cost of investment in marketing and infrastructure. Many of the ventures depend on social media platforms and have validated the business model before investing money to be an established entity. Social media factors like user engagement and immediate feedback/responses enable the entrepreneurs to work on their business model, product/services and hence forth bringing in value additions to engage their end users.
Technology plays a major role in creating the infrastructure for these trends in entrepreneurship. Social media and changing technology, influences and creates the thrive inside those who want to get into entrepreneurship. IT and enabled systems can support and accelerate the growth of such entrepreneurship by providing the right solutions. It is ideal for every startup/entrepreneurship to boost their digital presence so as to reach out to the targeted crowd. Web/mobile solution is the most sought after requirement to ensure best end user experience and then also to engage the user with the business. Since it’s not necessary that all entrepreneurs have the technical skills to work around the IT needs of their business; IT solution providers, software companies can act as the interpreters to bring them on digital platforms.
Product Development and Management
Most IT firms are involved to serve as the product support system or product management team if the customer is not technically sound. This can create a considerable delay in the product development process and create further conflict in the project as well. We have seen the client change the overall project scope in the project run as he/she gets influenced by competitor projects or by other complementary products in the market. It may even force the customer to leave the project as he loses the confidence in their own idea. Only an IT team with the right experience can help entrepreneurs to understand and validate their ideas and further create feasible product solutions that enables customers to reach out to the market with minimum available features. It will help the entrepreneurs to identify the initial traction and then develop the product with better insights from the market.
Every product requires continuous development and value addition and that is what engages the end users to stick on to the product. Most of the time entrepreneurs wait to get all features together and delay in launching products in the market, the market dynamics can change in these timelines or competitors may introduce their product in the meantime. Working with entrepreneurs as their product support team, is made much easier and valid with previous experience. This will help team to manage hurdles and develop products that suit the market in phase by phase approach and validate the product at each phase for better value addition for its customers.
Data Management and Analytics
Data is the fuel that every industry now looks for and hence understanding and managing data is very important in the growth of every business. Many of the traditional businesses failed in the recent past due to lack of understanding of consumer behaviour and purchasing trends, that were not prioritised or captured with traditional business models. As consumer moved from availability mode (means consumer used to purchase or order what is available to him) to demanding mode (means consumer prefers to have customised or personalised experience while availing the service or purchasing a product), customer data management became very critical for every type of business.
According to University of Exeter Business School, Customers are demanding personalised experience at every stage to have an easier and relevant purchase and hence having a very deep understanding of the audience, the business trying to capture, is how to stay ahead of the curve. That is why startups and corporates actively invest in latest technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain etc that enables them to deliver better customer experiences.
Digital Presence
It is indeed the first step in building the IT solution for the venture. The venture must be visible to end consumers or the entities in your supply chain. It is done by developing a website that communicates the very purpose of the venture, what the business offers, how the venture is different from that of it’s competitors and how the partners are being benefited from the business. The presence can be further increased by devoloping further social media presence like official pages on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Recently Whatsapp has come out with Business profile that has catalogue options where businesses can share the product/service they offer, that can be sent to the end consumer directly from the profile which details the business and its offerings. This also helps businesses to create awareness about the product offerings and later engage their users via various campaigns and ads. Vloggers, Digital media Channels, Social media pages, celebrity endorsements, etc are few of the most accepted digital preferences adopted by startup ventures these days.
It is suggested to invest in mobile based solutions if customer engagement seems frequent and grows at a rapid pace. A strategic plan for digital presence with the help of experienced product management firms is very useful in making such decisions. Growth of the mobile industry influences the new ventures to blindly invest in mobile based solutions without understanding the market requirements and without having done a proper user case study. Many of the ventures who do not have the technical capability misinterpret this scenario and invest in mobile application solutions. A mobile compatible web solution will justify the need for the mobile solution at the initial stage of the venture. The first priority should be to deliver the right experience to the user and make them engaged with the offerings. Analysis of the data captured can be used to make a decision on investing in mobile solutions. Growth in user base, frequency of use, location based service delivery is some of the definite factors supporting the decision when venture plans to move to mobile based solutions.
Cost Optimization
It is very important to optimize the cost at all stages of the business for ventures and especially when the venture is bootstrapped. There are many incubators and accelerators that provide space and credits to user services to reduce the operational cost as well. Introduction of cloud services has tremendously cut down the cost of server, reduced the downtime, infrastructure cost and network related costs for startups. Amazon Web services, Google Cloud, Azure and other major players provide credits to startups in association with various accelerators to reduce the cost of running the services. Identification of such services will help ventures to manage their cost initially.
Outsourcing non-core services or technology development to third-parties will reduce the cost of in-house resources and enable them to focus on the core business strength. A good technology partnership will help in identifying suitable technology and will also optimise the cost of investment. As a technology partner Serville Technologies prefer to grow with its customers and provide a phase by phase product development strategy, immediate basic version launch to capture market, improvement based on supply chain feedback and value addition at each version, so as to avoid one time investment and spend based on market feedback.
Virtual Incubators/Accelerators
Many of the technology based associations and government supported agencies provide virtual or physical incubation centers and acceleration programmes for new ventures. They not only provide the infrastructure but train the entrepreneurs to grow the business and get investments, avail credits and other benefits to run technology and operations and create a space for networking and collaborations. Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) from Kerala is awarded as one of the best incubation centers at a global level enabling the startup ecosystem at international standards. Also, these incubators build more application oriented approach in the venture, supporting both technical and non-technical entrepreneurs to overcome their weaknesses and stand amongst the best solution providers at par with global standards. Whether it is a product or service, all entrepreneurs get the opportunity to interact with experts from various sectors.
From various surveys, it is very evident that the gig economy is growing at a fast pace bringing more people out of the structured system and creating the ecosystem for entrepreneurship or freelancing. According to Naco.org “The share of the U.S. workforce in the gig economy rose from 10.1 percent in 2005 to 15.8 percent in 2015. In 2016, 24 percent of Americans reported earning some money from the “digital platform economy ‘ during 2015. The number of self-employed individuals (many of whom are independent workers in the gig economy) soared by over 19 percent from 2005 to 2015”. These trends will soon spread to other top countries and India would soon be among the top for the number of gig workers or entrepreneurs.
