ISEC Talks: Sector Talk On Entrepreneurship in Technology Industry

With the continual advancements in Technology industry, new avenues are opening up for young entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and business spirit. We have come a long way from touch screen phones to devices that listen to the user requirements – Artificial intelligence. If you want to be a businessman you need to be innovative rather than inventive. Entrepreneurs should keep a keen eye for the technological advancements happening globally, in order to explore the business opportunities veiled beneath them. One such Indian Entrepreneur, who has made his country proud by gaining recognition at the global level, was invited to GNIMS as a part of the ISEC Talks series. Mr. Rushabh Vasa, a technology entrepreneur, associated with world’s biggest tech-business pioneers like Google and Amazon, was welcomed by the institute to share his entrepreneurial journey with the students, as an inspiration to them.

Agency of Year awarded to Agrahyah Technologies by Amazon Alexa

Mr. Vasa started his address by narrating his entry into the technology business, via JK Instinct Media, his first company in 2009. Being a computer engineer with an innovative mindset, he always challenges himself and his team to build technology enabled solutions that can solve problems at scale. At the time when there were just 50 million internet users, he ventured into the digital marketing and web technology business with JK Instinct Media, which today ranks among top 50 Google certified digital agency in India. He also started his second company ‘Ruggedian Lifestyle’, an adventure sports company, with the motto to enable the fun that sports offer to everyone and not just athletes!

Talking about his recent venture – Agrahya Technologies, he explained that the idea behind this start-up was to make technology accessible to everyone. He believes that India is lacking in making the optimum utilization of the advancements in technology happening globally, due to lack of information and knowledge in people’s preferred (regional) languages. Therefore, their company has come up with a suite of products and content ground up in Indian vernacular languages and English to be culturally and contextually relevant to the region they operate. He advised the exuberant crowd of MBA Students present, to focus on adaptability with the dynamic business environment, especially in the Tech-business. When the world was busy with developing their presence online via websites to stay in the Digital era race, some people had gone ahead to develop the Voice Technology. Agrahya Technologies was India’s first voice agency who grabbed the opportunity and was accredited by Amazon this year as “Agency of the Year, Top influencer” at their Alexa Agency Summit held at Bangalore. They have partnered with Google Home and Amazon Alexa in providing them assistance with voice content. Mr. Rushabh Vasa believed,

“Voice is going to change the way we use technology, whether we like it or not.”

Students and faculty alike were curious to know about the Voice technology and Alexa’s impact in our daily life. He explained that just like we create websites for internet, apps for mobile; we create Skills or Actions for Voice Assistants like Alexa. A Voice Agency is a combination of software development and content creation team, continually developing and providing improvements for the voice assistants. He said that research is in progress to develop Net Banking through Alexa and developing Alexa on Phone, which will be another step towards the future of this technology. Prof. Kiran Yadav and Prof. Unmesh B. Alwani had an interesting discussion with Mr. Vasa about the challenges for using such technology in education sector.

Mr. Rushabh Vasa addressing the students and faculty at GNIMS

The session went on further with discussions regarding various industries which have been impacted by technology, viz. Telemedicine, Agriculture (Vakrangi Kiosk), Hotel Booking Apps, Dating websites, Finance, etc. Students, Professors and the Guest speaker, all were engaged into a knowledge sharing discussion about various avenues opening with the assistance of technology. Telemedicine is a new concept wherein people will be given elementary medical check-up training and will be sent to remote areas where they will be guided by doctors via video conferencing.

He forewarned the students about Internet based businesses taking almost 10 years (Amazon took almost 12 years) to break-even. Also, he gave a very useful business suggestion that,

“India is not DIY (Do it Yourself) Market, it is DIM (Do it for Me) Market. So, try to catch the pulse of the changing needs and expectations of consumers from technology today, and come up with a business plan to cater those needs.”

He informed the students about GBG Mumbai (Google Business Group) – a community that loves startups, have always been around to help entrepreneurs grow their business through every feasible means possible by us – 1on1 Mentoring, Knowledge sharing, Networking, help in hiring, UI/UX review, Market Testing, free seminars, workshops, etc. He has been core team member of it since last 5 years. He urged them to be a part of GBG Mumbai and participate in the various seminars & activities conducted by it. He motivated students to find internships at Agrahya Technologies, stating that they were constantly in search of enthusiastic and curious students like the ones present in the audience to be a part of their team. Something to quote from his LinkedIn profile: – Besides being a busy entrepreneur, Rushabh always finds time to give back. As the maxim goes, ‘To teach a man fishing’, Rushabh believes giving back knowledge is more important than merely distributing wealth.