Vishwas Mudagal speaks at CII Young Indians event at Jaipur

Vishwas Mudagal, CEO of GoodWorkLabs, was invited for an exclusive event by CII Young Indians Jaipur chapter to address the members and also students of ICG – IIS University at Jaipur. Vishwas address a large audience on key aspects of entrepreneurship, building path breaking products that can change the world, innovation, writing and so on, encouraging young women to dream big and take up entrepreneurship during the college time. According to him “College is the best time to experiment and understand what you are passionate about. This is when you can start your first company. Success or failure doesn’t matter, what matters is you take the first step.”

Vishwas who is also a best-selling author encouraged everyone to take up writing and storytelling, saying “The only way to live several lifespans in one lifetime is by writing stories.”

Young Indians team is doing a great job in encouraging youngsters and creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurship and business growth.

Here are a few pics from the event –

Vishwas Mudagal with CII – Young Indians leadership team – Jaipur co-chair Abhinav Bhantia, Jaipur chair Abhishek Mishra, Northern Region Chair Rohit, Ashish Maheshwari, Ashish Modi, Nivedita and everyone.

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Vishwas with students of ICG College, Jaipur. The future women entrepreneurs, authors, and game changers!

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Watch the video – “Ideas to Inception – Lean Startup Philosophy”

Watch the video of the session “Ideas to Inception – Lean Startup Philosophy” held at Nasscom Product Conclave 2014 at Kolkata, India. Vishwas Mudagal, CEO of GoodWorkLabs, shares insight into the practical implementation of the lean startup philosophy, tips on how to build customer focused B2B products/ applications, how pivots can help rejuvenate revenue models, importance of UX (user experience) in mobile apps and products, and so on.

 

Vishwas Mudagal’s talk on lean startups at Nasscom Product Conclave Kolkata

The Nasscom Product Conclave 2014 Kolkata, the mega event conducted by the IT-BPO body Nasscom, was a great success and has given a push to the IT industry in Kolkata, especially the startups from the region. Vishwas Mudagal, the CEO of GoodWorklabs, spoke about Lean Startups at the event. He highlighted the growing popularity of Lean Startup philosophy, the need to build products iteratively using the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) model, acquiring ‘validating learning’, experimenting with pivots and various other tricks entrepreneurs could use while starting up or scaling companies.

Below are few pics from the event –

Vishwas Mudagal in a panel discussion on Lean Startups.

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‘Losing My Religion,’ the best-selling novel written by Vishwas Mudagal was showcased at the event. It is now seen as a book that is a preamble to entrepreneurship and startups, as it exposes the reader to the life of entrepreneurs, and their struggles and glory.

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Top 5 Social Media Games On Facebook

Social media gaming is basically playing games online with your social media account with your friends and the community. This typically features multiplayer game play. Some of these games are highly addictive! At times, the sole reason people use their social media accounts may be to play these games. What made some these games so addictive? So today we take you back in time and bring to you the top 5 social media games till date.

Top 5 Social Media Game Applications on Facebook

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#1 – FarmVille

If you have not heard about this game, we are sure you must be living under a rock! For those who are not aware about this, it was launched in 2009 as an Adobe Flash Application on Facebook. FarmVille is a farming simulation game application developed by Zynga. The gameplay involves different kinds of farm management. Some may include as plowing the land, planting, growing, and harvesting crops, harvesting trees and raising livestock and many more. Nearly 100 million of all the users on Facebook back then played FarmVille. What made it so addictive was the fact that the users could play and compete with their friends.

#2 – Texas HoldEm Poker

Also developed by Zynga, it was launched in 2007. There were millions of players playing this game daily. It had a simple gameplay. Users join a casino lobby and are able to play at either at any table or join friends for a personal game. The leader board shows players how they compare in their chip ranking to the other players. It also allows players to send or receive gifts. As itself Texas Holdem Poker is a world famous gambling card game, what obviously made it so attractive was the fact that people could gamble without any actual money involved.

#3 – Mafia Wars

Again, a game developed by Zynga, Mafia Wars was one of the most famous games on Facebook. It won the Webby Award People’s Voice Winner in Games category in 2009.  The gameplay was set in New York City. Players had an option to travel between New York or Manhattan, Las Vegas (post level 18) and Italy (post level 6). The game consisted of fighting with other players, doing jobs to earn the cash, items and experience within the game. The goal of the game was establishing and taking forward one’s criminal empire. Players could create mafias by recruiting other players. The addictive angle to this game was the out of the box idea to rather play a villain than a hero, like in every other game.

#4 – Zuma Blitz

This was a simple and a cute game, which attracted people of all ages to it. Developed by PopCap, as Zuma Blitz, it went live on Facebook on December 2010. It was an easy ball matching game. The game could be played in long or short doses without getting bored. The graphics were attractive and colorful. In the year 2004, the first originally released game ‘Zuma’ was awarded it the ‘Game of the Year’ by RealArcade. The addiction of the game lied in its simplicity. Since the objective was nothing much except matching the right balls before you lose.

#5 – Diamond Dash

Diamond Dash is a puzzle game developed by Wooga. It is kind of a game which is somewhere in between Tetris and Bejeweled. The objective of the game is to clear same colored diamonds as quickly as you can in the allotted time to get a high score. In the process you level up too. The game turned to be quite addictive because of its similar characteristics as Tetris, which has always been famous. And also the ability to crack a high score and show it off to your Facebook friends through yours posts.

Today, the use of Facebook for playing games has lessened drastically. But the craze still continues through our mobile devices such as iOS games and Android games, which keep us hooked on.

Does your product outsourcing partner meet your Fit and Trust criteria? Part 3

Continuing the series ‘Choosing The Right Outsourced Product Development Partnerwe bring you the 3rd part of the series –

Does your product outsourcing partner meet your Fit and Trust criteria? 

Outsourced

Fit:

You want a partner who fills the gaps in your business, fulfils your outsourcing objective and easily becomes part of your business philosophies. Determining if the partner will fit can be tricky, because fit cannot be determined only by evaluating your partner. For determining good fit you need to introspect and evaluate yourself, evaluate the partner, and understand the market. To exemplify this point let’s consider a case on evaluating a partner on one critical point – the process used for developing a product.

What will be the best production process for collaborating on developing a product with an outsourced product development partner? Do you wish to go by planned, stringent way of developing a product or you wish to go agile? In a planned methodology of product development the process order of requirement, design, implementation, verification and maintenance is followed in very stringent manner. While agile methodologies embrace iterations. Small teams work together with stakeholders to define quick prototypes, proof of concepts, or other visual means to describe the problem to be solved[i].

1st step here is to determine your own requirement and then to evaluate the partners on the basis of how well prepared they are to implement projects on Agile or Planned methodologies depending on your requirements. For determining requirements consider,

  1. Markets (i.e if you are dealing with stable or highly erratic markets)
  2. Your own clarity on product (i.e you exactly know what product you want vis-à-vis you have a business problem and partner should help you come up with product specification to solve that particular business problem)

Following table provides framework to suggest what will work best in which situation.

 

Market ConditionsStable                                                                                       Erratic
                                       WellSpecified 

 

 

 

Product

 

 

Loosely

Specified

(i.e business problem statement provided)

 

Planned(A) Agile(B)
Agile(C) Extremely Agile(D)

 

  • Situation (A): If product is well defined and markets are stable go for    planned methodology and exercise governance over partners. However, this situation rarely exists in real life business scenarios
  • Situation (B): Even if products are well defined by you but market is highly erratic, Agile makes sense. As market demands adaptability.
  • Situation (C): When product is loosely defined but markets are stable, Agile will make sense. At any point in the product development life cycle, you may get an idea for improving the product, which needs to be incorporated.
  • Situation (D) : When product is loosely defined and market is highly erratic, you need extreme flexibility. So you need to go with partner which incorporates the best agile practices in developing the product.

Once this is done you know what works best for you. If I am a company which is facing situation D, I know that I need to see if my partner will provide the efficient product development through agile practices.

Besides process (agile or planned), fit needs to be evaluated on various aspects like,

  1. If the partner is filling gap in terms of capabilities? What kind of innovations they are capable of making? Will you benefit from the same?
  2.  They should have better know-how and resources in the domains in which you lack expertise.
  3. Are they good problem solvers with specific business problem that you are outsourcing to them? They should be able to act as your consultant and be proactive with solving the business problem.
  4. Do they have same level of passion that you have for a particular project? As a company you have a better clarity of the overall outcome the project. Most of the partners will see the work as a onetime assignment. Few will understand the end-to-end processes and repercussion of the project’s performance.
  5. Does your outsourcing partner understand the positioning of your brand? Your outsourced partner plays as critical role as employees when it comes to delivering the brand promise to the market.
  6. Do they understand the new product impact on the internal aspects of your organization? They should not only be able to develop a product but should also be able to guide you on training your people and adjusting your processes as per the changes that the particular product development project will bring to the organization once it is complete and running.

These are some of the major aspects where you will evaluate the partner’s fit with your business goals. Use a framework to evaluate yourself and market on these various critical aspects and then match the capabilities of the partners to determine the fit.

Trust:

Trust is built overtime. It is difficult to have trust and faith in new partner right away. But trust is critical in this business relationship, as you share critical internal information with your partner. You want to make sure that your business processes, internal knowledge, resources, etc. are safe with this partner. You also want to have trust in them, from the very initial level, on their capability to deliver the project at par with or beyond your expectations.

How can you trust someone with whom you are working with for the very first time? Let’s look a few parameters that will help you decide a right partner.

1. Past projects:

Look into the past projects that the firm you are planning to partner with has delivered. If possible, talk to the organizations with which the firm in question has partnered with on an outsourcing project in the past. Also, look at the market performance of the past projects. This will provide you insights on people, work style, commitment, quality, etc.

2. Product Development Experience:

Most companies in IT outsourcing services space do not possess the end-to-end knowledge and expertise of developing and deploying a product. A product requires high-end design, coding, testing and UI skills. Look for a partner who specializes in building end-to-end products and not plain vanilla IT outsourcing companies. Further, if the partner understands steps that need to be taken to launch a product, it’s a great benefit.

3. People:

If possible meet all the people who will be involved on the project before making the final decision. Not only the decision makers but also the team involved on project is important element of your decision. Make sure that they understand the new product impact on the internal aspects of your organization.

Meeting with people also gives you a fair idea of how passionate your partner is for the project. Passion to deliver and excel can be the best clue for you to have trust in your partner.

If possible, interview developers and employees who will work on your product.

4. Strong communication flow:

How good is the organization with its internal and external communications? They should be efficient with sharing and discussing all the information and know-how, freely and systematically, within and between the organizations.

In the next and final part, you will read a case study of a product built by GoodWorkLabs for ST Dupont.

You can access the complete series here –

Series: Choosing The Right Outsourced Product Development Partner – Part 1

Strategic Advantage of the Outsourcing Partner – Part 2

Strategic Advantage of the Outsourcing Partner – Part 2

In continuation of our Series ‘Choosing The Right Outsourced Product Development Partner – Part 1‘, here’s the Part 2 where we will try to understand what is the strategic advantage one should seek before choosing an outsourced-product-development partner.

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Part 2 – 

Today, if I am outsourcing a function of my business I am looking forward to reap much greater benefits than the cost advantages. I want “Strategic Advantage” out of my outsourcing partners. What do I mean by “Strategic Advantage”? As a modern business when I think about Outsourcing Partners, I am thinking about all of the following aspects and many more depending on my business context.

  • Will the partner bring the product, markets, and technology know-how related knowledge on table? Especially, knowledge related to the domains where I possess limited understanding.
  • Will I be strongly positioned against the competition after this partnership?
  • What is the labor cost arbitrage? How much can I save while keeping my quality and time line goals intact?
  • Does this partner understand user-experience and creating beautiful yet meaningful user interfaces?
  • Can I change or enhance my requirements mid-way when the partner is building my product with minimal impact?
  • Am I improving my supply chain through this partnership?
  • Will this partnership help me enter new markets?
  • Will I be able to pacify factors like geographic recessions, seasonality in product life cycle, etc.?
  • Will this partnership help me innovate and stay ahead in market?
  • Will this partner provide great tech support, maintenance and enhancements in our growth phase?

When you outsource a function of your business, especially a product, you are not deploying tasks. You are letting an outside organization enter into your overall vision of how you want to grow.  You have to trust them enough to be a part of your value delivery system.

Undoubtedly, in outsourcing a lot rides on the partner you choose to develop the outsourced product.

Choosing a Right Outsourcing Partner:

Clearly there are two major yardsticks to choose the right outsourcing partner: Fit and Trust. No partnership can be formed without the foundation of trust and you also need a partner who fits your outsourcing related business objectives and philosophies.

In the next part, we will get into a detailed analysis of Fit and Trust factors. Read Part 3 here.

 

Series: Choosing The Right Outsourced Product Development Partner – Part 1

We are glad to publish a short series on ‘Choosing The Right Outsourced Product Development Partner‘ which will act as a guide in helping companies, entrepreneurs and individuals choose product dev partners wisely. It will also be published as a whitepaper shortly.

Part 1.

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It may have started as a cost saving business proposition, but outsourcing today is a business decision that requires profound strategic thinking.  A research by Harvard Business Review estimates offshore centers can deliver an additional 4-6x value above labor arbitrage[i]. This means besides cost advantage due to lower wages, there are several other advantages for the companies opting for outsourcing. Obviously, the value multiplier for these advantages depends on how smartly the outsourcing related decisions are made and implemented. One of the most critical decisions in outsourcing related matters, especially for building software and mobile products / apps, would be that of choosing a right partner for outsourced product development.

Choice of partners for developing outsourced products has always been one of the most critical outsourcing related decisions for the companies. If the partner fails to deliver the product quite as per the expectations, the development of the product has to be reassigned to the in house unit or re-outsource to yet another product development partner, resulting in loss of time and opportunity, and increased costs. Therefore, choice of a partner becomes a critical decision for the companies.

Let’s consider a couple of scenarios to understand how the outsourcing over the years has changed and how it is impacting the role of outsourced product development partners.

Consider scenario 1. This is a typical traditional outsourcing arrangement, where objective is no more than to save time and cost.  For example, an IT company outsourcing one of its current function to another IT company with the objective of saving cost and time. In this arrangement the company outsourcing the product possesses good knowledge of outsourced function and hence it has,

  • More clarity on time lines required for the project
  • Clarity on processes and know-how the partner should possess
  • A system to review the work in-process by partner and closer quality checks

In a nutshell in this arrangement companies have greater governance over the partners.

Now consider scenario 2. This is a modern outsourcing scenario where objective for outsourcing is business problem-solving. As a company, in this sort of outsourcing requirement, you will first segregate all the business functions, identify the function(s) in which you lack expertise or managerial bandwidth and outsource that function(s). You will rely on your partner to solve this functional business problem for you. In this arrangement,

  • Outsource partner is provided with a business problem and not product specification. Product specification are developed in collaboration
  • There is high reliance on partner to come up with innovative suggestions.
  • Partner is expected to have flexibility to accommodate changed requirements.
  • Partner must align itself to other business functions.

Though partner selection is critical in both the scenarios, clearly in scenario 2 partner selection is backbone of entire outsourcing arrangement and success of the business. Scenario 2 requires greater amount of trust in partner at lower level of governance.

In the next part, we will evaluate the questions and attribute a business needs to consider before outsourcing the end-to-end development of a product.

[i] http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/offshore-centers-can-offer-more/

image source – http://depositphotos.com/

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