Indian firms ape U.S. products: Guy Kawasaki

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Indian firms ape U.S. products: Guy Kawasaki
Bangalore: Despite evolving as the world's back-office and building an over $50-billion software exports industry, product ideas emerging out of India are still a far cry from what the industry would like to see. Guy Kawasaki, the marketing brain behind Apple's legendary Macintosh system and Managing Director of Garage Ventures, says that many Indian product companies tend to ape American products, which is not such a great idea. "The Indian software industry is primarily business-to-business. What I feel is that most local product firms are trying to copy what is being developed by American firms, and that's shooting too low. I am waiting for the day when U.S. firms will be vying to copy what Indian firms create. Budding entrepreneurs should focus on building something unique, something that you want to use," said Kawasaki to Economic Times. According to NASSCOM President Som Mittal, with consolidation among hardware majors, most have become infrastructure solution firms. This provides local product firms with a lot of opportunity if they can offer niche solutions, software that can interact with infrastructure. Moreover, large system integrators want to work with software product companies to add value to their offerings. "Product companies can use such partnerships to reach global customers. In the Indian market, a lot of business-to-government projects are coming up, creating opportunities," said Mittal. However, talking about the future of Indian engineers and whether they will make successful entrepreneurs, Kawasaki said, "Absolutely. If I had the chance, I would allow full brain drain from India, Estonia, Israel into the U.S. I feel that an engineer at IIT has as much chance of setting up a start-up as one from Stanford. Management education, especially B-schools like Harvard and Yale, do not help entrepreneurs. In fact, I would warn against 'Bozos,' who discourage entrepreneurs from pursuing their dreams."