1. Learn MS Excel

Yes, Excel is the most underrated tool in the history of software. There are basics you should be aware of like formats, formula and advance areas like graphs, vlookup, pivot table and macros. All this will help you whether you work for others or for yourself!

2. Learn to take a print out

Often in your daily activity, you will have to take print outs. And it will be embarrassing to hear (plus time wasting) – “Oh, you don’t know how to take a print out or install a printer?”

3. Operate a photocopy machine

Photocopy machine operators are the people who go missing when you need them! Best is to learn the basics of operating a photocopier – insert paper, press 1, and pull paper out (don’t forget to switch on the power plug)

4. Book a travel ticket

Booking a travel ticket seems a simple task – till you are assigned to it. In the last 6 months, I traveled more than 50 cities, and had back to back entrepreneurship workshops. I had to use all my IIT and IIM training on subjects like Operations Research, Supply Chain Management and Traveling Salesman Problem etc. to be able to reach my venues on time at the lowest costs.

5. Make a newsletter

Email can be the most powerful tool for marketing to your customers, and not everyone can afford a creative agency for designing your campaigns. So practice a bit on how to make a HTML mailer, text mail and make sure it passes spam filters.

6. Write 1-page article

Whether it is to introduce to media a new service you have launched or state of affairs letter to your employees, you will need to come up with ways to express yourself in a 1-page format. Write articles on areas of your interest, as you will have to write lots of them in future – including your acceptance speech of Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

7. Write a proposal

Sales is like a bicycle – you have to keep pedaling or you will fall down. In any business, you will have to write infinite sales proposals, follow up proposals, and reply for customer requests.

8. Call an unknown person

This is another important inhibition you should try to come over with – talking to unknown person and making them into friends, business partners or potential customers.

9. Respond to email

I never sleep till I have replied, acknowledged or taken action on my emails. In business, this is critical as work keeps increasing and things are getting more cluttered rather than simple.

10. Learn online marketing

Social media marketing, search marketing, mobile marketing – these are no longer alien terms for MBAs, event those from non-engineering background like CA, commerce etc. You don’t need to be Zuckerberg, but get your basics right.

Author – Amit Grover, Founder, Nurture Talent Academy

What is Square?

Square is an electronic payment service which allows users to accept credit card payments through their mobile devices by swiping the card on the square device attached to the phone (wiki). The idea for the square device was put forward by Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter.

It consists of a small, rectangular card swiper (a square) that plugs into the audio jack of mobile devices. It also offers super simple software that helps businesses track sales, taxes, and other financial data. The Square App is available free of cost for iOS and Android and can be downloaded from the App Store and the Android Market respectively.

Square doesn’t ask its customers to set up a merchant account, pay monthly fees, or sign a multiyear contract. It offers the following augmentations:

• 2.75% per swipe for all cards – One simple rate, for all major credit cards.
• Next-day pay out – Automatic direct deposits to your bank account.
• Free reader delivery, free app – For iPhone, iPad and Android.
• Fast setup – Take your first credit card payment in minutes. (Courtesy: https://squareup.com/)

This service will come as a great benefit to smaller businesses who can carry their transactions with ease and is also ideal  for  personal use.

Square Rollout Strategy:

The launch of Square is driven by popularity of mobile phones on a global scale, availability of Internet in almost all nook and corners and rising trend of electronic payment systems in everyday transactions. Also the new-age smartphones which has all the sophisticated software applications allows us to carry out any complex task on the go. All this makes square a new-gen disruptive technology.

What Square Offers and What it can offer :

Square increases the prospect of closing a sale then and there. It can save paper receipt for a credit card by providing all transaction data as an online receipt. With the ease of an electronic commerce system, Square can provide an analytics & referencing  system to vendors so they can track buying patterns and use the information to make adjustments that benefit their businesses.

As for customers, the Square digital card they carry on their phones should allow them to track their entire history with the businesses they frequent. And since the new Square system enables some vendor content to appear on customers’ phones, the logical next step would seem to be to enable vendors to advertise deals to their customers through the Square system.

When they sell in person (e.g. E-tickets) the receipt will be sent directly to their phone via SMS, shortly followed by their e-ticket, which contains a barcode. The guests can then turn up and flood into the venue by having their phone screens scanned. This is the final piece of the jigsaw for seamless promotion, sales and operation of events we’ve been striving for.(As said by jack-dorsey-on-square-why-it-is-disruptive)

On the Downside

Square transactions are dependent upon the net connectivity. Also the need of a smartphone and pricing are other concerns. The challenge for square is that it is attempting to penetrate a well-established market. Potential for Fraud still remains high and security issues are being raised against it.

Potential Versions:

Potential advancement in this product could see the complete disappearance of the Square card and mobile may come with an inbuilt slot whereby we can ditch the plastic card and transact with one’s phone alone. As we move forward, even square device will become outdated once we step into the future of complete card-less transactions.

- Jagadeesh (IIT Madras), One of the 4 entries chosen for being published on the blog in the article writing competition

Angel investments

When a venture starts, there are 3 Fs that really believe and invest in the idea – friends, family and fools. Once this inception stage is over, the venture may need more money to take first few steps in business. This is the stage angel investor comes in – you are neither too small nor too big! Angel investors are usually are people who have the money and time to invest and help the venture through early stages.  Angels typically invest their personal money and take a minority equity stake in the company. They come in to invest and use their experiences and connections to bring the idea into a better shape. They can invest individually or as a group, for example, Mumbai Angels – which is India’s premier group of angel investors. Generally, angels do not have a timeframe for exiting the ventures.

Venture Capital

Venture capital fund is like mutual funds that take money from investors (large financial institutions, banks, insurance firms, hedge funds, family offices), manages it by investing in entrepreneurs’ ventures and take a fee for doing the investments (carry). The VCs are general partners who manage the money and investors are limited partners who give the money to be invested in startups. VCs generally invest for a specific time period which maybe 8-10 years depending on the life of the fund. VCs usually come in at a later stage of company growth after the angel investments, and have specific investment criteria in mind – maybe sector focus or stage focus or the size of investments. They are more involved than individual angels in the company operations – either by taking board seats or key management positions.

If you are an early stage entrepreneur or just have an idea, it will not make sense to go to a VC, who will like to see some traction in your business before he invests in the venture. An angel may take that risk and may come in before the VC.  Angels exit the business by selling their stake to VCs or back to promoters. As an entrepreneur, you should do your research on the angels and VCs before choosing which one to take money from – because you need smart money not just money!

1. In long term, entrepreneurship will pay more than any job

Lot of our decision making is influenced by the amount of money we can make – so students chose to get into areas where they get more money but little satisfaction. In the long term, entrepreneurship will always make you more money than any job in the world. Being on your own gives you a chance for an unlimited upside, with a risk on the downside; while a job may give limited upside with less downside risk. So if you chose to be an entrepreneur, make sure you learn from your MBA program the key ingredients of how organizations are started and build, not how they are ‘managed’.

2. MBA is not only about degree, but also about the attitude

MBA degree is generally the 2^nd degree in your life, and you are expected to be more mature while taking this program. The curriculum and way of learning in a MBA program is lots dependent on you as an individual, your positive attitude, your participation in the industry interactions, organizing college festivals, networking etc. So do not join MBA to get another degree, but to get the right attitude and mindset to struggle and succeed.

3. Chose the best college for your MBA degree

There are 1000s of colleges which have recently come up with zero focus on quality, lack of faculty and other support – that thrive on expensive marketing campaigns. And then there are well known names like IIMs which provide quality management education. So do not compromise on the college that you chose – you can wait for a few years before going into the best MBA colleges as there is no age bar to education.

Considering the above factors gives you a chance whether you can learn and have the right attitude to entrepreneurship – with the right inputs, you can be your own boss rather than a manager in a large company!

Innovation is a key driver of growth in this day and age where ‘stagnancy’, as a word and a concept, can be categorised as a curse in business; and it is incumbent on every business person to explicitly lead and manage it. Leading strategic thinkers are moving beyond a focus on traditional product and service categories to pioneer innovations in business processes, distribution, value chains, business models, and even the functions of management. Businesses are no longer caged by geographical and cultural boundaries; every other establishment has the potential to become a formidable growth machine.

This is where innovation at an individual level comes into play. For which purpose, an employee or a worker at an organisation, irrespective of designation, should be made aware of what the concept actually means. ‘Innovation is combining existing elements in new ways to create value for customers’ says David Wittenberg, CEO, The Innovation Workgroup.

According to Wittenberg, there are three key traits that needed to be developed into part of your personality as the first step towards innovative thought:

1. Curiosity – If you are curious you will have more elements in your toolbox and hence more exploitation of new combinations. Your customer base will increase because you understand what value to them is and you begin to finally give them that.
2. Independent thought – Make changes, on whatever scale. When you think different, you learn and apply a great deal more than you would have otherwise.
3. A Sense of humour – The definition of innovation is one that talks about new, untried combinations. ‘What is humour? Humour is a sudden recognition of an unexpected relationship.’ Innovation in business comes naturally to such people because they unconsciously practice it every day of their lives.

Middle-class India, as an ecosystem, discourages innovation. And thus follows the importance of having manageable processes in place to establish a culture of innovation in a business. Holding leaders accountable for encouraging innovation makes a tangible difference. According to Mckinsey research reports, 30% percent of the senior executives surveyed were accountable for it, through formal targets or metrics, in their performance reviews. They were more likely than the broader group of respondents to view innovation as one of the primary growth drivers, to manage it formally as part of the leadership team or through an innovation council, and to learn from their failures to achieve it.

On the same lines, innovation that goes unnoticed makes clear how important a professional network really is. You might just have the most revolutionary insight but lack the resources to implement it.  There are a number of ways to grow in the business world; each of them requires you to put in the requisite effort yourself. You need to work hard to get to know the right people that would help you employ your capabilities in the right avenues that provide a scope for growth and an undistorted visibility. ‘Hope is not a strategy.’ Of course, networking does have its own ground rule – Make sure you are a value creator to the opposite party, not a value taker.

How sustainable should your innovations be? Is sustainability a smart option for businesses? Executives behave as though they have to choose between the largely social benefits of developing sustainable products or processes and the financial costs of doing so. But that’s simply not true.  It is essential to realise that almost all businesses are looking only to increase profit under the guise of development of technologies that are intrinsically sustainable – in actuality, the intention behind doing so is that such technologies improve the bottom and top line returns as well. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. Companies that talk about zero-waste are entering such an arena to cut costs and create goodwill – ultimately both of which add to the purpose of the company’s existence: profit. Waste management is evidently climbing up not just the political agenda for a reason different from environmental benefit.

So what is the moral of the story? If you haven’t gotten to it yet, it’s never too late to begin, simply because you can’t afford to not do so. All that is needed to get started is an insight, which is nothing but a discovery that comes after seeing what everyone else sees but thinking what no one else has thought. The procedure is not as tricky as it seems. Reliance Communications, for example, was born from an insight as simple as could be: people like to talk to their family and friends. One cannot stress enough on the criticality of being observant. Indian customers cannot be expected to be honest about your product if their opinion is not favourable, because of their cultural norms that do not advocate displeasing anybody. Observation is therefore the best bet to figure what creates value for that very customer. Value is, after all, the ratio of Benefits to Price: people pay for benefits, neither a product nor a service.

By: Ragini Kate, NMIMS, Mumbai

Crowdsourcing: if we look at the word and break into two parts CROWD would be the general public and SOURCING would be giving out work or delegating work to others.

In totality, crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call.

The answer to effective crowdsourcing may lie somewhere in the middle of professional expertise and public opinion. Companies can interpret and create certain results and then ask the public to make a choice out of them.

SOME INTERESTING EXAMPLES AND THEIR VALUABLE INSIGHTS

Being a movie freak the first example that crosses my mind is that of the youth favorite JAB WE MET. The makers of the movie crowdsourced the task of giving an enticing name to the flick and conducted popular voting. Three options were given:

1. Ishq Via Bhatinda
2. Jab We Met
3. Punjab Mail

The three alternatives reduced the effort needed to enter the contest & the participants just had to send an SMS. The catchy and contemporary Hinglish (a mix of English and Hindi words) acted as an unshown trailer depicting the kind of movie Jab We Met was: A mix of traditional and modern, witty and young. This promotional crowdsourcing campaign created much needed buzz before the release of the movie.

Insight: A flavor of the actual ice cream can be given subtly through crowdsourcing.

• The most “in” thing of today’s times Facebook has used crowdsourcing since 2008 to create different language versions of its site. The company claims this method offers the advantage of providing site versions that are more compatible with local culture.

Insight: The concept of crowdsourcing has an inherent advantage that “what is created by people would enjoy greater acceptability by them.”

• The most loved cola, Pepsi, launched a marketing campaign in early 2007 which allowed consumers to design the look of a Pepsi can. The winners would receive a $10,000 prize, and their artwork would be featured on 500 million Pepsi cans around the United States.

Insight: Crowdsourcing brings about customer involvement towards the brand which in turn shoots up brand loyalty.

• Procter & Gamble has used crowdsourcing with their research-based product development, reaching out to scientists outside their own R&D departments.

Insight: Crowdsourcing can be useful not just with simple, repetitive tasks but also with complex research and development.

The above mentioned few examples are just indicator of the kind of magic tricks that are in the pocket of a marketeer through the tool of crowdsourcing.

With growing competition marketeers need to pilot new ideas for gaining the attention of the commoner. Crowdsourcing is one such tool which eases the task of the crowdsourcing party and gives an invitation to the interested people to reflect their infatuation towards the brand, product, concept, idea etc through getting involved.

Like every other thing, even a seemingly perfect tool called crowdsourcing has a tint of grey side to it. The company should undertake the act of crowdsourcing considering all the minute nuances of the activity. Sometimes the initiative could fall flat because of lack of interest creation in the minds of those targeted. Here, a very essential thing is to gauge beforehand what exactly could make the people targeted get up and get going to be a part of the crowdsourcing. As the monetary aspect is less attractive in this case, the people should be touched emotionally.

Marketeers are, now, bringing up new ideas in relation to this concept to attract and engage customers. They get a firsthand insight of what exactly customers desire, which can help in taking strategic decisions. The people involved may feel a brand-building kinship with the crowdsourcing organization, which is the result of an earned sense of ownership through contribution and collaboration. When the work is outsourced to a particular group of employees the ideas generated may be confined to a few brains, whereas crowdsourcing leads to a pooling of ideas of people of varied demographics, thereby increasing the chances of a EUREKA!!!

Written By:  Nikita Agarwal, NM Dalmia, Mumbai