Syndicate
Perspecte in Campus
We will be going to campuses this year earlier and we hope to get better-than-first-time response. These days, hitting the campuses in March is like going to the petrol bunk at 11 PM on the night before the price hike. Unfortunately I have experienced both. Having said that I must proudly say that the students are much matured and ambitious these days than we were expecting. We did get 15 times more students applying than we wanted. And keep that in mind the fact that these kids are already placed in any one of the Indian IT Biggies, you can understand the scenario in India.
Days are not far when IT services companies will have to be contended with week 2 or Week 3 slots and guys joining start ups during the final year of course itself to do their internship!!
Welcome to the New India, the new land of opportunities!!
Does India buy RFID?
- What is the demand for RFID in India?
- Is India really a market for India?
- Do Indian companies really buy new technologies like RFID?
- Arent the Indian companies followers?
- Will Indian companies really pay for technologies like RFID?
These are few of the questions I am always asked. I always appreciate the questions for they have more of concern than curiousity. People are concerned with our plan to operate in Indian market for a new and high tech like RFID. I keep answering them not as an 'RFID Evangelist' which is one of my titles. I choose to answer from a business's point of view or to be precise, Perspecte's point of view.
So what is the answer? I can only say with a qualifier 'In our opinion'. And I am not responsible if my opinion is completely different from what you were expecting to here/read. Read on.
To start with, I do agree that all these questions are not just based on individual's perceptions. The perceptions are shaped by some simple economical and empirical reasonings. Some of them are,
1. Indian market and Indian companies are of smaller sizes compared to US or European corporations
2. Indian companies traditionally lag behind in technology adoption
3. India is a man power dependant country and we always felt manpower is cheaper than technology
4. Indian companies were operating in their own ways
5. The cost of RFID is very high for India
But here's our take on the same reasonings and I would like to hear more such questions to challenge our optimistic views.
1. Indian market and Indian companies are not going to remain smaller for long time. We can see the growth already happening
2. True that we lag behind in technology adoption. But can we remain so for long? Arent we seeing as much as the technologies as our friends in any other countries seeing in their lives. Businesses are not any different.
3. Check with anybody who is handling the responsibility to find people for his unit/businesss. He will tell you a different story
4. Makes a compelling value proposition for a local player like us
5. If it is high, it is high for any company in the world. Nobody throws out money on anything without ROI.
Having said that, we do see a very important difference which determines our Indian companies' attitude towards RFID. Indian companies are not used to running corporate sponsored initiatives to examine the technology trends. They are all more hapazardous attempts. They lack a vision. So in India, we see 10 times more executives from every company exploring RFID. Most of them will be doing without any top management support. India generates more enquiries than many other countries. India buys almost nill.
We have made two strategic adjustments in our game plan.
1. If the opportunity is a long term one and needs few rounds of adoption, we seek the top management intervention.
2. We go aggressively after the opportunities which are already ROI positive. A bird in the hand is worth the two in the bush.
I will continue to write more on Indian market as there are multiple aspects to it. And I can tell you one thing for sure. They are all very interesting.
Perspecte @ RFID Journal Live 2008
RFID Journal live is one of the annual events on RFID where you get to see most of the companies around the globe working on RFID, be it suppliers as well as customers. This time, RFID Journal Live 2008 was held in Las Vegas. I decided this time that Perspecte has to be a part of it in anyways for one prime objective i.e. to connect to hardware suppliers. The rationale behind that was pretty simple. India has very little of RFID hardware ecosystem and we always go through lots of struggle in executing our projects due to that. Though we directly establish connections with suppliers worldwide especially in USA i.e. suppliers of tags, labels, active tags, readers, antennas and other components, it is never an easy task to do that effectively from 15000 kms away. I felt that this event may make that task easier helping to establish strong relationships with the suppliers and wherever we already have conversations going on, to convert them into partnerships.
It was not an easy decision though. One for the high cost involved in making a trip to USA. And the other reason was the uncertainty in the usefulness of the event. I have gone to similar conferences in India with similar objectives and had come back with huge disappointment. Though the feedback I read in the websites on Journal Live were good, I could not be sure of the participation levels of the conference. I decided to take the risk and travel.
It turned out to be a very good decision at the end. The event not only delivered in establishing or strengthening partnerships with RFID suppliers, it delivered an invaluable and intangible benefit. The event confirmed our belief that Perspecte is a global player and we are working on applications which have potential for sales not only in India but worldwide. I always tell folks out here that we are silicon valley company operating in Chennai, not even in India's silicon valley Bangalore. It is true that it is not easy with the available ecosystem or the absence of it. Hopefully we will prove that Chennai, a highly traditional, conservative and service-minded city can also create a high tech start up!! With all the support from our champion customers, wellwishers and the team, I know the day is not far.
The first step of a long journey!
It has been a quite a while since we started thinking about having our own official blog. I feel there are three strong reasons for the same
1. To share our experiences and perspectives on RFID in India, an emerging technology in an emerging market
2. To update our progress to our strong base of well wishers, stakeholders and future stakeholders
3. To create a channel to receive feedback on 1 and 2
It is the first step of a long conversation! Thanks for reading and feedbacking!
Sankar