vishnuera-08

ISSUE 08 APR 2015
3
finishing schools after 4 years but we know that all
the good guys are gone by then. They may get
through campus placements or they may get a job.
But the good thing is they will all get jobs. The not
so good thing is they will get into jobs in the
services industry where potentially once for all we
lock the best minds to a different kind of work. So
that's the reason why I knew we had to do
something. Even before I left Microsoft, I started
having ideas, I started writing some documents,
sharing them with people, and taking feedbacks.
After leaving Microsoft, I got more time to think
thoroughly about the various challenges. I used a
research organization at Hyderabad in order to
understand the mind set of students and their
thought process - how much awareness they
have with R&D versus non- R&D roles. It was very
insightful. We used that data before we actually
started the program.
Mission R&D is for students. There are two reasons
for that. One is, we have around 1 lakh plus people
in the once united Andhra Pradesh alone, doing
some form of Computer Science and at least 1% of
them, i.e., 1000 must be super smart. But why
aren't we able to find them ready for R&D roles?
We struggled to find good people who qualified for
a job in Microsoft. We were going all over India and
picking from IITs and RECs. Anna University is
good; PSG Coimbatore is good, but we struggled to
find people in AP. REC Warangal is okay. One thing
is that I know there is great talent and very smart
kids at present, but clearly they're not getting what
they need to get. The other thing is if there are
smart kids, they can pick up the core foundations
very quickly. So, combining these two, we thought
we have to create a program.
Next, we thought about the right time to start the
program. At the end of first year, students are not
learning much about the actual Computer
Science. It is more of general subjects. We thought
about it at the end of second year, but the problem
was, once we are done teaching, there is a long
gap for interview. So that is the reason why we
picked the end of 3rd year, summer, and by which
time they would have done some basic things like
one or two programming languages, at least have
theoretical knowledge about operating systems
and a few other things.
Both are good but the key differentiation is, in
service industry we have a specification defined by
somebody else and most of the time you have one
client and you solve the problem of the client. In
R&D role, you have many customers depending on
what you are talking about. If it is windows, you
have a billion customers; visual studio tools, you
have millions of customers. There is never one
customer. So building a product which is useful to
the whole wide audience is a complex engineering
process. Your mind set, the way you think, the way
you engineer, everything has to be different. You
cannot be saying like you can put this version out
and then I can fix it up later. You need to take an
approach like you need to create a scalable
platform on which you can build the features. We
are trying to communicate and articulate this
difference. Then the foundations have to be very
strong to be able to do this job. And that is what we
are trying to do in this program.
How hard is it to move from a service company
to a product -based company?
Relatively hard, in general services role you are
assigned to a customer project then you will be
trained for a few months specifically on those
technologies and not get the general foundational
learning. So you cannot be a good broad based
software engineer as it is completely driven by the
business requirements. You are basically getting
tunneled up putting up a stack that this is what you
are going to learn next versus you want to be a
good professional with broad foundation, and
thinking ability. Let's say you do this for two to
three years, your growth is around project
management and not as a technical guy. It is good
at management side but you will be going away
from what a professional would do. So there will
be pockets in the services companies where there
is innovation going on but those are isolated
pockets.
What is your take on the startup culture of the
Government at the Centre and in the State?
The current budget appears to be encouraging for
startups. Even the Telangana Government, for
example, is trying to create a startup hub where
to be there. So mentorship is a great challenge.
A lot a good engineers are there readily orienting
themselves about business strategies and are able
to figure out how to create and market the right
product. So as more and more people are coming
to startup fields, all it requires is right mentoring.
When you have many startups, mentors become a
bottleneck. This is where I go back to the students
who often say that they don't have good teachers,
and hence could do only this much. Now startups
cannot say that there aren't enough mentors so
that's why I'm like this. It is your baby, your
responsibility, so you have to take the initiative to
figure out ways and make it successful and not
blame somebody else. Success or failure, that is
yours. Mentors are there only to provide
information and at the end of the day it is for you to
filter it and take what is required for you.
And one more thing, as there is a lot of information
available globally, people shouldn't get
themselves overloaded with information. We
cannot continue to read and read and not do
anything. They should strike a right balance. You'll
have to make your own important judgment call. If
you are lucky you'll have 70% information, many a
time 50%, or you'll have the readable amount but
you'll never have 100% information. Then you
need to apply experience. If you are young you may
not have experience so you need to use your gut
feel. Based on whatever you know and based on
the vision and dream, you should think that this is
the bet and you are going to make it. And then
give everything that you got to make it a success.
Startup vs MNC. What do you think a fresh
graduate should begin with?
It all depends on what you want. In a big company,
we get good salary, reasonably stable job and
potentially an opportunity to learn from many
experienced people. You have to be proactive. On
the other hand, a startup is a great idea and huge
excitement, and a tremendous learning
opportunity. In big companies, you will be
assigned a task and scope of learning will be
limited to that. Whereas, in startups, you are
forced to broaden your scope as there are less
number of people working on it and there is a huge
problem to solve. You will learn a lot, but it might
the right time for a fresh graduate to approach
angel network?
I need to explain to you the various levels that exist
today with regard to investment. There is seed
fund or seed stage where people invest at a very
early stage. In this stage, you will get small amount
of money. Then comes angel investors or angel
network where you have an idea, and you translate
that idea into an implementation, and test it
against the customer segment. Next, learn from
the process and tweak your ideas and know what
the reaction is. That is the right time to come to
angel network after you had enough learning.
Here you have taken it to next level. Say, you tried
implementing it and have some learning and you
also know about the competition in the area. You
cannot say that you are the only one doing it. Very
rarely you will find things where you are the only
one doing it. Hence, you need to show that you're
slightly different from them. Some differentiation
has to be there.
In angel networks people will give from 50lakhs
upto 2 crores. You can use that money when you
actually need to expand your business where the
model is completely proven in reasonable size
locality. For instance, Hyderabad city is
completely done and proved in AP or TG, then you
want to scale across India and you need extra
money which is when angel networks come into
picture. As the model is proven, they will provide
the necessary amount, so that you can grow across
the country.
What is the difference between IIT and tier 2
colleges?
A lot of people are competing but only a few get
into IITs. There are two reasons for this. One is
they are highly motivated and hard working. Two is
their IQ level is high. In IIT environment, we have
ample number of good professors teaching and
they have smart people around them in super
competitive environment, working hard and are
motivated continuously. At IITs, they learn from
teachers and other students as well. On the other
side, there is exactly opposite environment. If you
are smart, you top the batch and you relax, nobody
We cannot continue to read and read and not do anything. They should strike a right balance. You'll have to make your own important judgment call.
If you are lucky you'll have 70% information, many a time 50%, or you'll have the readable amount but you'll never have 100% information. Then you
need to apply experience. If you are young you may not have experience so you need to use your gut feel. Based on whatever you know and based on
the vision and dream, you should think that this is the bet and you are going to make it. And then give everything that you got to make it a success.
Then, we pick students with good IQ, passion, and
motivation. So we know that they have some basic
foundation, and then we put them through an
intense program and we are very confident that
they will pick it up. It turned out to be true too. Each
year about 100 students can easily do it. We are
trying to do the same thing, the way we built
Microsoft. This is not to make money. We don't
want to run and start all over India and fail
miserably. Instead, we want to do it right by
figuring out all the nuances of the program.
Somebody following Mission R&D would know
that each year we are tweaking it. The latest tweak
is, at the end of second year, we want to offer them
online training programs, and at the end of third
year is the classroom program. So that's the final
stage we reached, which will be the best way to
prepare them really well for R&D. I think from next
year we can scale across a few other places like
Bangalore and Chennai. But these are the key
drivers. There are two points - there are very
smart kids and smart kids can learn very quickly if
we teach them the right way.
What does it mean to have an R&D job versus a
services job?
they provide infrastructure for startup companies
to come and set up their operations. If you have a
hub like that it can bring people together. You can
be mentors, investors and other potential partners.
So that kind of initiative is good. Andhra
Government is also trying to do something on
similar lines.
For the past 2-3 years, there has been a lot of
awareness in the Government about startups, and
how they can be potential growth for the country,
how employment is generated for the country and
how the startups can be innovation engines for the
country. Because of this development, a
reasonable number of good angel networks
sprung up like the one at Hyderabad for which I
was the first President. Then there is Mumbai
angel network and India angel network .Multiple
angel networks are coming up. And people are
hearing about the success stories of entrepreneurs
starting their companies and this information is
helping in creating excitement among startups. So
overall as far as the ecosystem is concerned every
player of the ecosystem - the government,
entrepreneur, bureaucrat, investors -all are
actively taking part in growing and nurturing the
startups. So that way great things are happening
in the country right now. The momentum is going
go down six months down the lane to one year, this
is the risk we have. The reward is if you are
successful you will have good number of options
and returns will be much higher than what you get
from a big company. So the key is that you have to
understand that the failure rate is very high in
startups. There is 70% failure, be aware of that.
But if we have amazing ideas and super smart guys
are already there in startups, then the risk is
comparatively low.
If you have an idea then the ideal place to start
with is at incubators and most of the colleges
these days have their own incubators. Startup is
not like Masters. If you think that you are done
with your graduation, and now you have to start a
start up, it doesn't work that way. If some one is
going to do a startup then he should be thinking
about it right from second or third year of their
course. They should be actually talking to people
about their idea, getting advice, brain storming
and finally getting to a stage six months before
they graduate. They should say that these are my
strengths, ideas, and I'm going to give it my best
shot. So one needs to be in this stage at least
before comparing it to a good job.
As you're an angel investor, what do you think is
there pushing you around.
We have examples of Bill Gates, Premji, etc.,
who aren't trained in top institutes yet they are
successful. Then why does the industry
differentiate between the IITians and others
during recruitment?
We always take the example of Bill Gates. But
according to the law of average among all the
successful people, these people will be only
0.0001%. And the other people are doing good
because of their motivation, hard work and the
right environment. Most of the big companies
give first preference to IITians just as we go for
good quality while buying a product and go right
there. The companies also know that most of the
other people are there outside, so they conduct an
exam every year and take them. It is a question of
how efficiently the interview process is done. The
flip side is students can say that they are from tier
2 or tier 3 colleges but they have learnt much and
have the capability to demonstrate their skills then
people just come and pick them up. They give
highest priority to such candidates as they have
been through all the odds despite many
challenges.