INDIAN START-UP ECOSYSTEM

Start-ups are defined as newly formed enterprises without any previous history of operation, predominantly technology based, knowledge intensive, helping wealth and employment creation, necessarily an economic growth engine for any nation, but with limited survival rate. All those multi-billion dollar global behemoths, be it Google, EBay, Amazon or Facebook; began as start-ups, with an innovative idea disrupting the way in which business is done or by creating a brand new product or solution, the type of which never existed until then.  

India too got caught up under the whirlwind of start-up revolution, having close to 10000 registered start-ups now of  which close to 25 of them had attained Unicorn status (valuation of US$1 Billion), some of them being M/s. Inmobi, Paytm, Flipkart, Oyorooms, Zomato, Byju’s, Ola, Big basket, swiggy, freshworks & Quicker. There are many more Indian start-ups poised to become unicorns and it is predicted that by 2025, the country will have around 100 unicorns, enjoying a cumulative valuation of about US$ 400 Billion. This is indeed great news for India! Indian start-ups had generated direct jobs in excess of 200,000 and in time to come, this is going to be much more. It is estimated that each direct job will facilitate 3 times the indirect jobs.

The country has over 335 active incubators and accelerators with a capacity to enable over 5,000 start-ups every year. 57 percent of these are active outside Tier- I cities which means there is entrepreneurship happening in different category of cities within India.

Not to be left behind, Kerala today boasts of being the third largest Start-up ecosystem of the country, having 17% of the start-ups of India being registered here. Some of these start-ups had gained good traction already to scale-up and come from different technology propositions such as Robotics, AI, Computer Vision, Block chain and Aggregated Market Places.

From the year 2017 till now, India, start-ups had received venture funds in excess of US$ 30 Billion with OYO and Swiggy receiving venture funds in excess of US$ 1 Billion each.  However, Kerala start-ups lagged behind in this area, with the total inflow of venture funds not exceeding US$ 100 million. There are many areas of improvement for Kerala start-ups. Incubation, Acceleration, Mentoring & Funding are the necessary ingredients for start-up growth which in Kerala is now slowly becoming part of the ecosystem.

As the examples of US & China show, start-ups will be the economic growth engine of nations and therein lies the Indian hope!

DESIGN THINKING & GRAND DESIGN

Over the last two and half decades, Design thinking as a philosophy had gone deep rooted in the annals of product development and many organisations had reaped rich benefit out of this methodology to come out in flying colours for the product engineering and development.  It had now come to being the de-facto standard in product development.  Design thinking approach to innovation was popularized by the design firm IDEO in the 1990s. Design thinking has been defined as a non-linear, iterative process which seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test.  This user-centric perspective has made design thinking hugely popular.

However, some consultants and academics felt that design thinking does not help to have great innovation, it is too structured &  prescriptive, and it results in incremental or conservative outputs only.

This is where Grand Design comes into play.  Grand design approach to innovation of a new product or service is fully-formed in the mind’s eye of the innovator before it is developed and commercialized. It is felt that it can be more effective than design thinking under certain circumstances, most notably when a market is in its early formative stage of development.

Grand Design, in comparison to deign thinking, offers four key components of innovation to be considered while developing product ideas.

1. Begins as creating a work of art

Design thinking seeks to create practical, user-oriented solutions: it is about pulling together what’s desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable.

Grand design starts with a concept, a vision in the mind’s eye of the creator, and it holds onto that concept for as long as possible. Since the focus is  truly not about creating a commercial product, there could be conflict  between artistic ideals and commercial realities. 

2.     Little consideration to user views & ideas   Design thinking is all about empathy – the ability to see the world through other people’s eyes, to see what they see, and experience things as they do.Grand design approach takes a very selective approach to the user views. It goes by the thought that if one does everything the users ask, the result would be of increased complexity and a loss of coherence. Thus, specific user requests are mostly deliberately ignored in grand design.

3.     Top down process

Design thinking is greatly about collaboration, it believes that good ideas emerge through a social process where people build on each other’s suggestions. Therefore, there is no place for big egos in design thinking.

There is very little freedom to the collective in grad design and it puts more faith in the views of a small number of people or maybe, just one person, at the top.  It is definite top-down process. Therefore, it is paternalistic in style and the attitude is, ‘you may share your ideas, but we won’t act on many of them, because believe we know what is best’.

Of course, this top-down approach brings challenges. It does not allow leadership to emerge from within the companies and it stifles fresh thinking. The leader here may have to work hard to assuage the team’s feelings. 

4.     The Courage of conviction. 

The style of leadership required for design thinking favours a coaching style of leadership, hand-holding when needed, and receding into the background when the team hits the glory.

The grand design logic puts leaders, not the team, on the top, as they embody the design they are pursuing, and they display an emotional conviction about why it is right.

This type of leadership may be charismatic or larger-than-life, and they maybe soft spoken and introverted.  It is not that leaders who adopt design thinking aren’t lacking in conviction, but their conviction is to a process, a way of working, rather than to any particular design.

Finding the right approach to innovation

How do want innovators go by, design thinking or grand design?  To begin with, one needs to understand the key principles underlying the approach for innovation and product development. Design thinking is now so well established that many people don’t question whether it is the right methodology.  But it builds on the underlying assumptions of empathy with user needs and collaborative development.  Some successful examples of products which evolved through design thinking are Facebook, Airbnb, Uber Eats etc.            

Design thinking may not be right for all circumstances. By laying out the alternative set of assumptions underlying a grand design logic, one can engage in a more critical and constructive discussion about why one is using own chosen model. One should be thoughtful about the specific circumstances in which one is operating, and choose the innovation approach on that basis. Design thinking works well in established and mature markets where user needs are properly understood and innovation tends to be incremental. The grand design approach has greater scope to succeed under conditions of high uncertainty, and where user needs are unknown and the market is potentially shape-able. Some of successful products that had come through grand design are Walkman from Masaru Ibuka, iPod and the iPhone from Steve Jobs, and WeChat of Allen Zhang. There are failures too here, for example, Segway personal transportation vehicle invented by Dean Kamen        

Innovation is the lifeblood of any successful company, but many companies could get it wrong, may be by falling into the trap of ‘me-too’ incrementalism, or by relying on risky new offerings that fail. Better understanding of the conditions in which we are operating will help us make better choices about the approach to innovation that we may decide.

THE WAY TO QUALITY LIFE

The adage goes, “your body is what you eat”. All of us agree with that. If we eat healthy food, we will have a healthy body and if we are eating contaminated food, it is only natural that our body and health will be affected badly. Diseases such as Cancer, Stomach ailments etc. are directly related to the water we drink and the food we eat. Our focus, therefore, must be to consume non-contaminated, unadulterated, fresh, clean food. 

However, if anyone observe the ‘food chain’, he will realise that food come from far and wide. For e.g;  apple from Kashmir and HP takes weeks to reach South India, fish from coastal areas takes days to reach interior India, Processed food take its own time to reach from the factories to consumer. And then there are storage issues. If food viz; fruits, vegetables, meat and fish is stored in an inappropriate manner, it will all start rotting and if such items are bought and consumed, they will bring in the dreadful health challenges such as cancer and organ failure, on the continuous use of the same, for sure. We had heard of businessman using deadly poisonous formaldehyde etc. to keep the fish from decaying while moving it. Yes, they become rich but the consumers of it are guaranteed to suffer huge health issues which also result in financial trouble for families. 

Developed nations have well set regulations  and processes for transportation and storage of food items. They mandate storage  and transportation at specific temperature  and atmospheric condition, which varies from food food. These countries are extremely strict on such matters. Not only that, even the retail stores that keep these items to sell are ordered to maintain the atmospheric specifications, failing which huge penalties including imprisonment is slammed on to the seller. 

So, the ‘food chain’ needs a ‘cold chain’ for preserving and moving it. India is just on the brink of practising these regulations. We slowly see cold storages coming up in cultivation / production centres and refrigerated containers carrying the same across the nation to similar setups in urban centres. All said and done, we are just on the tip of the iceberg here. 

Good life means quality living. Our health is an important indicator of quality living. Good health results from unadulterated, clean food habits. Fresh, non-contaminated food transportation and storage is a MUST for this to happen lest, we will become a nation of patients. It is time consumers became truly alert, because,  our health is our responsibility. 

THE PASSING OF THE JEWISH ERA IN KERALA

The death of Sarah Cohen, the grand old dame of the Jewish community, at her home, opposite to the Synagogue in Mattancherry, Kochi, at the ripe age of 96, brings an end to an era of a community that came to be known as ‘Pardesi Jews’, a journey of exile of people of a community that started from Portugal, Spain, Syria and Iran; to be welcomed and allowed to settle down in one of the oldest of trading posts on this side of Arabian Sea. 

It is said that of the pardesi Jews, now resettled predominantly in Israel, Canada and Britain; amounting  to only a few hundred now, has only just two people left here at Mattancherry. It was  five people about six months ago of which two migrated to Israel and now with Sarah gone, practically ceased to exist in the historical land of Mattancherry of 6x4 kilometres dimension, which even today hosts around 35 plus different communities drawn from all over from India and abroad such as Gujratis, Marwaris, Banyas, Kutchis, Saraswat Brahmins, Angola Indians, Jains, Jews, Tamil Brahmins, Muslims of Arab descendants, local Muslims, Hindus and of course, Christians. Whereas in places of high migration such a USA, the melting of culture happens, it is a matter of an unique culture here in Mattancherry where every community, even toady, follows its distinctive traditions, lifestyle and rituals that was being followed for centuries by their forefathers. Such places seldom exist in the world today  and one would urge travelers from across the planet to visit this anthropological wonder called Mattancherry which adjoins another heritage place called Fort Cochin, thus  deriving a double treat of an experience. 

Coming back to the Jews, they retained their exclusivity and did not do any admixture. Very fair and Europeanish, they had made immense  contributions to the state of Kerala particularly on its economy, as most of them were in business of export, import and distribution. All Pardesi Jews could read write and speak Malayalam, the local language and some of them even got employed in government services, for instance, Sarah’s late husband Jacob Cohen worked for the Income tax department. Later, there came in Jews  from other parts of the world and got settled in northern part of Kerala, thus, coming to be known as Malabar Jews (almost all of them had left Kerala by now, mostly migrating to the promised land, Israel. 

History may not  be of much value to the generation today and the end of Jewish culture in Kerala may not be of much consequences to the polity of the state, particularly  when majoritarian culture is swallowing everything. However, this milestone must be viewed as very significant on social and cultural terms, for, it indeed is passing of an era!

THE LONELY BOAT IN GOLDEN TWILIGHT

Twilight sun, filtering through

Dense black rain-clouds

Salty water turning golden

Dancing before the eyes

There floated the lonely boat

Beyond the waves, swaying

Tied to the anchor, going up and

Down, awaiting another travel

Calmly, knowing the job

The responsibility of linking

Man to the sea, the means

To his livelihood, eternal

Taking him far, deep into the sea

Netting, fishing, taking rest in between

Lonely nights, only stars to protect

From the open sky, showing the way

And then bringing him ashore

With bounty plenty, enriching him

Making him dear to family and friends

A proud man, beaming with joy

The glory of fisherman, his life

His dwelling, happiness, all due to me

The boat knew, will it ever break it

Leaving him asunder

Even for a lovely great evening this

With golden rays and dancing waves

The lonely boat, stuck to the anchor, cosily

Knowing the job, awaiting another busy day.

A PATIENT'S IMPRESSION ON HIS CATARACT SURGERY

Though the average life expectancy of a male Keralite is 75 years, it is only when you hit your 60s that you feel to have reached the right side of your life span. It is now a few months left for me to hit that milestone to be officially callled a ‘senior citizen’. 

Generally it is observed that people in their late 60s or mid 70s will have the occasion to undergo cataract surgery of the eye but for me, it happened right at 59. Therefore, am l so lucky to do the cataract surgery this early? “Just don’t worry”, my ophthalmologist said when I was consulting him. “There had been many cases where people in their late 40s and early 50s getting the cataract surgery done. So, I don’t see anything exceptional in your case. Besides you are undergoing the surgery when you are healthy. So, it is good to get it done early”. His expert comments were reassuring. One way I have been lucky to undergo the surgery by the hands of Dr Sony George, a very knowledgeable, experienced and reputed eye specialist in Cochin, now heading ophthalmology department in Medical Trust Hospital, who also is my club member and a great fan of my oratory skills. So, we are a mutual admiration society!

During consultancy, Dr Sony enthusiastically advised me to go for a multi-focal lens than the normal mono-focal one,  describing its advantages for a person like me who read a lot, also saying that with a multi-focal lens, one could even do away with spectacles. Because the doctor was was my reliable friend, I purposely didn’t go online/google to fetch more details of the types of lenses and agreed to go for a multi-focal one. Was he disappointed because I did not go for the latest and best lens but decided on a medium multi-focal one? I cannot tell and I do believe that he was okay with my call. 

It was the right eye and we fixed the D day on 6th February, my 30th wedding anniversary day! Why did I chose the anniversary day for surgery? May be, doing a milestone surgery on a rememberable day, will turn the drudgery of surgery into a celebration! Why not?

Medical Trust is an old but reliable hospital, originally started by Dr Verghese Pulikkan, with financial, moral and administrative support from the great MKK Nayar IAS, then Chairman of FACT Ltd., the doyen in the field of Administration an Management in Kerala who shaped up FACT into the country’s top fertilizer manufacturing company. He was a visionary leader and a philanthropist too. Dr Pulikkan, a very nice, charming doctor caught the attention of MKK to be helped, to set up the state’s first corporate hospital! 

But being the first and therefore old, has its own disadvantages too. Its culture and legacy doesn’t match up with the 21st century new-gen hospitals. Everyone, from top to bottom behaves in the ‘giver’ mode and so you can’t expect behavioural niceties and courtesies like the one you get from a modern day institutions. However, MTH has an efficient working system and some of the doctors here such as Saji Kuruttukulam, Sony George etc are top notch in their field. And, I am safely in the hands of one such doctor. 

On the 6th morning my daughter from Bangalore wished me on WhatsApp with a graphics greeting saying, “keep calm and trust your ophthalmologist” and I duly forwarded it to the doctor. After an early breakfast at home Shali, my dear wife celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary with me, and I left for MTH and at 7 AM reported at the hospital and took the room. The nurses there took my measurements and gave me a tetanus injection and after changing into sterile OT clothes, I was wheeled into the OT at close to 10 AM. To go to the ophthalmology OT one has to pass through the Transplant ICU and there I saw an anesthetized patient spreadeagled alone on a slanted bed with all sorts of equipments and sensors connected to him. It was definitely not a reassuring view. 

We (the nurse and I on the wheel chair) reached the ante room of OT. Already there were two eye surgery patients and a orthopaedic one waiting in the room. Ortho OT is adjacent to the eye OT. I didn’t like it being there. Very insipid room with multi diseases patient on the queue having unimpressive chatter box nurses in very insipid green OT clothes frequenting it up and down. The nurses were efficient but not that empathetic and their conversation were businesslike (“acha, etha kannu, tetanus injection edutho? etc). The thoughts that splashed through my was the mobile phone alert “you are on the queue, please wait”. It was a good wait (my turn was second) and I dozed off. In between while sleeping, and I hazely remember Dr Sony walking in and wishing me before going to the OT.

My turn came and I was taken to the OT. A beaming Dr Sony welcomed me on to the OT bed. I didn’t have any fear or apprehension. But what came into my thoughts at that time was of Professor M Krishnan Nair, my son in law’s grand father, (someone whom I had read plenty and therefore revered) the renowned Malayalam critic and writer, seeking reassurance from his eye surgeon again and again of getting back his eyesight, even while on the OT table. Because, for him, a voracious reader, eyesight was everything and if he lost it that would have been the end! Though I thought of it, I wasn’t worried at all. 

The topical anaesthesia (something of a rarity that could only be performed by an experienced, skillful surgeon, otherwise it is local anesthesia which calls for a dangerous injection on the eye)  took the sensations away and doctor Sony went into work. I was asked to focus on the 3 lights coming from the lamps above my eyes. Then it was all the vroom sounds of the motors and different types of alarms. Occasionally, Dr Sony talked to me to be steady and not to move my head much. Frankly, I didn’t feel any incision happening or the multifocal lens being put inside. The lights, the frequently falling water on my right eye from the device above through the tube and instructions of Dr Sony to his team were all I remember of the operation. Some ten minutes later, Dr Sony said that it was over and I was aske sit and then get up. He got a photo of me made with him on the mobile phone camera with the V sign, I was asked to return to my room saying that he will meet me in the afternoon and he went back to preparing for the third operation of the day. I walked out with the nurse to the anteroom from where after a little wait, the ward nurse came over and took me to my room at the hospital. 

Actually, surgeries these days are hitech affairs. With anaesthesia on, a patient will hardly know what is happening. The equipment and the experience of the doctor using it are things that matter. In the end you hear that it is over and that is it. Since the doctor was known to me and the equipments were world class, why worry at all?

The first post operative phase is what I am on now. I wear a plastic transparent frame over my eyes so that my hands will not unnecessarily touch my eyes that could lead to infection. Actually the medication (5 or six different eye drops periodically being applied every 15/30 minutes have been a big challenge (notwithstanding the fact that I did nothing and it was all done by my dear wife). Still, lying on the bed, always being inside the home the with the eye sight slowly returning to normal, with all precautions taken to avoid infection (no head bath, no sleeping on the right side, always wearing the frame etc) need real discipline (that I do not have) and that was not all that enjoyable. These are the challenges of getting aged, you better take it in and undergo  it positively so that it will help you go through the phase better