I have been looking at software startups in India over the past weeks, and came to some interesting conclusions. India surprisingly, has not produced good domestic focused startup companies. I wasn't expecting this. The Indian software industry, at some $40B or so is widely recognized as a leader the world over, and indeed talent originating from India dominate key positions in the US software industry. And with the 8 to 11% economic growth of recent years, domestic IT spend is dramatically accelerating. So given all this innovation and momentum, why such poor showing for Indian companies in the domestic markets ? I found two reasons. One the corporate tax structures have all but killed any distribution innovation for domestic markets. In essence, domestic revenue based earnings are subjected to the 33% corporate tax rates, but export oriented earnings get away free. Second, despite the world class showing on development methodology, product management as a discipline is scaringly underdeveloped in India. It makes sense that in the offshore development business, all product management and design got held back and never left the shore. This has left the average startup in India short of key leadership talent around product innovation to apply around domestic markets. Naturally this will change as the STPI tax heaven gets phased out starting next year, and differential growth in domestic over worldwide IT spend drives better capital allocation behavior, but meanwhile there are no interesting assets ....
From checkin to boarding
Whats in a blog name ?
Most of these posts are written from airports between check in and flight boarding times. I fly about two airplane flights a week with at least 30 mins of wasted time in the checkin to board process. That's more than two full days per year in time that could be put to better use. This is written in reclaiming some of that time. Enjoy
