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Sudiip Goswami, Director and GM, South India and Startups, Dell Technologies, talks about his work in this interaction.
How do the strategies to help startups achieve growth, differ from those used for large enterprises?
Sudiip Goswami - India is the 3rd largest startup ecosystem in the world, where the needs and requirements of our diversified market are addressed by thousands of homegrown startups. The growth strategies for these start-ups are different from the ones in other countries and quite different from the large enterprise.
Early-stage startups are first looking for a product-market fit and thereafter are looking for market access to their customers, to scale rapidly. Large enterprises have passed that stage long ago and are looking for deeper engagement with their existing customer base. The leaders in each market segment also have the responsibility of market expansion through new products/solutions/customer bases, which is where we do see enterprises and startups collaborate to address this need.
At Dell Technologies, we offer tailored assistance to help startups attain their full potential. Our technology solutions help them create a scalable Tech Stack, in fact our Tech Tear Down sessions are sought after by startups. We also work with select startups to offer them joint go-to market platforms where they can build their solutions on Dell Technologies products and reach out to our customers.
What challenges do startups face in adopting the new-age tech and innovations? How is Dell helping them resolve these challenges?
Sudiip Goswami - Today, adoption of digital transformation is redesigning every existing customer interaction model and their business models. New technologies in market are able to generate a lot of insights from humongous data and create applications much faster and much more agile.
The challenge that comes from such rapidly changing tech landscape are many. For example, implementing the right scalable technology if the business hits 20X more traffic online and what would be the overall cost of choosing such technology over others. The root of such challenges is availability of good and sound advice on adopting the right tech stack for specific businesses.
Dell Technologies provides startups with expertise from dedicated technology advisors and scalable solutions to ensure their business is always ready to grow. One of our key programs to enable this is Project Ascend. This is designed to help startups thrive in the digital future. Ascend brings together innovative technologies, strategic guidance & mentoring, proven practical capabilities, expert consulting assistance & flexible financial models to consume technology – all under one unique program.
We aim to enable startups to solve some of the biggest challenges in the country.
Dell Technologies has set up a Center of Excellence under CII, the mission of Center for Digital Transformation (CDT) to evolve and leverage a Digital Transformation Movement that transforms India by building systems of intelligence, by bringing in more personal computing, helping an organization adopt the intelligent cloud and reinvent their productivity and business processes, thereby enhancing their effectiveness.
What are the specific traits of businesses in South India which differentiate them from the rest of India?
Sudiip Goswami - There is not much differences in the characteristics of startups in different parts of our country. Our entrepreneurs are extremely intelligent, with exceptional insight and tenacity. As a result, while Bangalore continues to be India's startup capital, NCR and Hyderabad are rapidly expanding as well. In a recent study conducted by Startup India, Meghalaya was ranked first among Tier 2 states in terms of fostering a startup ecosystem. It demonstrates how enterprising our country is in every area.
How investment intensive are the new-age technologies for startups to adopt?
Sudiip Goswami - New-age technology is free; it is open-sourced, community-developed, and expertly managed. From the days of Java as a language to now, Ruby on Rails as a platform, new era innovation arises and thrives from the community's brain bank. Certain aspects of new-age technologies mature to offer marketable IPs, such as the Linux operating system over open-source Unix.
The startups can certainly adopt new generation technologies at a much faster pace. This is majorly due to the XaaS model of consumption, currently encompassing everything in technology - application software, platforms, and infrastructure, and it does not have to be in the public domain, as Hyper-scalers are. New-age tech that are private and run on-premises are also equally and comfortably consumable in a cloud-like model. At Dell Technologies, we have introduced APEX solutions that offer our customers such models. We also provide clients with extended payment periods, lease, buy-back options, and renting.
It is safe to say that startups certainly consume and implement cost effective technology they require to scale and grow.