Microsoft India’s Executive Director discusses start-up opportunities and growth

Hello everyone, I am Vasanth Shini Vasan and I have with me Ms. Sangita Bavi, who is Executive Director, Digital Natives, Microsoft India. Do listen as Ms. Sangita talks about the startup opportunity in India, the various startups that Microsoft has collaborated with and empowered to scale up, and Microsoft's dedicated programs for startups across space tech, health tech and agritac. Hi Sangita, time's so much time and we're all excited to have you with us today. Absolutely Vasanth and thanks for inviting me over. We should start this conversation by talking about the startup opportunity that exists in India today and our technology, the kind of technology that Microsoft is known for, could act as a backbone and catalyst for the growth of these startups. Can we talk something? I mean, can we start with that? I think just in India, right? I mean, we are talking about India being a land of opportunity and a land of startups, a third largest ecosystem in the world and on, but I'll go back a little bit back in history in terms of just India and its culture. We've been known to be traders. So this whole thing that we talk about, you know, India is a land of jughard and all. It's actually entrepreneurship in one sense or the other. I think the thought of starting your own business, it comes very naturally. There was a time, I think in the 80s, 90s, maybe early 2000 where folks were the ecosystem and a plus were not in the right shape and form for folks to actually start off on their own, right? And I was just recently reading an article where literally I think in 2015 or 2016, we had only about 400, 500 startups in the country. Today we are like at almost touching on 100,000, right? It's the kind of growth that has happened because across the entire ecosystem, viewed in terms of academia, government, enterprises, corporates leaning in and supporting startups and also now we have amazing success cases. There are people who are now a second time entrepreneurs, a third time entrepreneurs and they are also helping build the ecosystem. So I think this is a fabulous time in India, even in terms of if you look at, you know, fresh college graduates who are looking at, you know, what is it that they can do as they enter the professional career? A lot of folks from premium institutes are looking at starting off on their own so that culture basically is is changing towards, you know, starting your own business. Technology if you see, I'll first talk a little bit about technology and then about Microsoft. If you look at most of the disruptive startups, what are startups essentially doing wherever there is a lot of fragmentation in the market. Startups are bringing technology in the forefront to bridge that fragmentation, right? If you look at say for example, in Udan's business model or essentially what some of the other D2C companies have done like a flip-cut and so on and so forth, that's essentially what technology does technology basically helps bridge that fragmentation and information asymmetry for the business model that the startup basically is bringing to the market. If you look at Microsoft's tech portfolio, we pretty much can if you look at the entire technology fabric that is used within an organization, it could be a small SMB organization when a startup starts off the start off as a SMB and they very quickly grow into a large enterprise. So Microsoft's tech portfolio pretty much addresses the entire landscape of what we can provide from a technology perspective, be it the core IP which sits on a tech stack addressing the customers of the startup or security or solutions and productivity tools for the employees. So that's essentially what Microsoft provides. Maybe I'll just share a few examples with you that we have done in the recent past and we work across both early-state startups, growth startups and very, very large unicorns which are now becoming enterprises. Recent sort of work that we have done is make my trip, we have started powering up their bot services where they are providing essentially if you look at make my trip, they also get a lot of non-Engler speaking consumers who are trying to look at personalized travel recommendations, booking travels. We partnered with make my trip to create that entire services on make my trip where it is provided in Indian languages. Right now the voice assisted booking is live in Hindi and we are going to bring it up in different Indian languages. And this is all built on Microsoft Azure Open AI service and Azure cognitive services. The other sort of example, the work that we have done in the recent past is in the B2B space with a unicorn called Darwin box. So they provide end to end HRMS solution for all sizes of enterprises. Now HRMS itself is a very, very crowded space right. What Darwin box essentially has done is they have literally disrupted this space by creating HCM solution which is very millennial friendly because the kind of workforce that is coming I mean the generation that's coming into the workforce today, it's a very young audience. So they have created their experiences and applications which are very mobile friendly and which appeal to the millennial audience. So we are partnering with them their entire tech stack is powered by Microsoft and they are basically integrating their product into different offerings of Microsoft which will also enhance the Microsoft portfolio. So very interesting sort of partnerships happening across the board was sent in India with startups. Talking about startups and we should also talk about some of the admins that they are facing now such as access to the right talent, conserving and using the resources judiciously and managing expectations. What role do you think can technology play to kind of LPs startups face some of these challenges? Yeah, I mean a lot of the funding winter is still very much there. Then if the startups have the right business model and they're built on the right sort of tech stack right, they can actually overcome some of these admins that they are facing today in the market. I tell you a little bit up from Microsoft's perspective. What is it that we are doing and how we are supporting these startups from a technology perspective? We have two ends of the spectrum one for early state startups. We have a program called Founders Hub. So this is a startup program where the thesis of the program is that when a startup is basically setting up their business rate, conserving cost is supremely important for any startup. They need to basically optimize their bottom line as this literally like accelerate the top line. So what this program the founders have program does is one we don't look at funding as a criteria. If you look at everywhere across the world, every program that is there for startups, they do fun. I mean, they basically provide access to the startup only if the startup is funded. So Microsoft really is like living its mission by saying that empowering every person, every organization in this world to achieve more. This is valid for all startups as well. So we don't use funding as a criteria. We basically the program enable startups if a startup has a great idea. They have a LinkedIn page. We have certain benefits that we provide to the startup. If the startup basically has a MVP, there are certain benefits that we provide. So across the spectrum of our early state startup, we offer the entire Microsoft tech stack, whether it is the productivity speed, whether it is Azure, whether it is GitHub, LinkedIn, all of this technology is provided free of cost and the cumulative benefits that we provide to a startup in the form of credits, all of these basically we provide as credits. These amount to roughly about $330, 350,000. Essentially if I look at the trend line of a startup, this helps the startup conserve the cost line for about two years time free. And that's all the startup needs to scale their business. So we are saying that hey, startup, don't spend anything on technology. Microsoft will invest and help you set the business, right? That is one form of sort of optimization that we are providing through technology. But that's not enough. You also need right kind of mentors, both on the business side as well as on the technology side. So this program basically provides a network and a pool of export mentors, both on business as well as technology where these mentors come and support startups. The third form of support that we provide is as startups start using most of them are cloud need. Most of them build their tech stack on on a public cloud. Now what happens is that as the business grows, the whole idea is that the cloud costs should not be growing. There needs to be proper tech optimization that is provided to these startups, which means that specific cloud solution architects from Microsoft actually work with these startups, sit with them, help them model their tech architecture to say that, hey, you know, this is how you should be you should be having your tech stack so that, you know, the entire cloud spend is optimized. So that is one thesis of the program was optimization of the cost like the second part, which obviously is not available for all the startups, but specific B2B startups which sell into enterprises. We also take them to market and help them grow their top line. So Microsoft has this massive sales machinery. operate in 192 countries and the entire sales machinery in the hundred 192 countries more or less is the same, right? That's sort of the positive of working in a large multinational corporate. So what we do is say for example, there is I'll take the Darwin box example. They are a HRMS solution, who's sell to and it's a horizontal solution. They sell to a specific category of enterprise customers and Microsoft also has salespeople who sell to these enterprise customers. So we do the matchmaking and we get Darwin box sales team to work with Microsoft sales team and sell to those enterprise customers. Now you might ask what's the incentive for Microsoft to do this? We've also structured our sales programs such that the Microsoft salespeople get are able to retire their targets and quota by selling a startup solution. So this is massive benefit for a startup because think about it. A startup was a setup shop last two, three years, you know, they're still building their brand into the ecosystem and they partner with Microsoft to go and say to say the fortune 500,000 companies in the world or the BSE top 300 companies in India. Those are the kind of sort of support and sponsorship that we provide for the startups in India. So it's wonderful. I'm sure the startups find this very useful. In fact, after a point, it almost sounds altruistic. Yes, it makes definite business sense. And as I said, it is almost like you know, at some point of time, it almost sounds very selfless for a company to kind of making sure that everybody, all the players in the ecosystem, you know, grows along with it. Talking about your association with startups and you have said you had said and I quote startups, give us signals of what is going to go mainstream in technology and business. Any interesting concept that you've picked up from startups or through your engagements in recent times? See startups are basically they are far ahead in terms of decadoption, right? I mean, that's that's the model. They basically look at what is the disruption in either an existing category that they can bring and that's how a startup grows or they also look at can they create a category? Can they basically look at, you know, building or category? Maybe two examples which come to my mind one are if you look at about three four years back in the enterprise space, right? Everybody was talking about conversational bots and conversational AI. It was just starting to take off a bunch of startups in India. We used to we partner with yellow.ai btonic technologies. So taking them to some of the PFSI customers or wherever there are enterprises which run large contact support centers taking these solutions there and enabling and enabling and integrating these solutions as part of the support center. This was not it was a very manual process about you know, five six years back, but today if you see most of this is hybrid. A part of it is automated through these conversational AI's and then conversational AI bots and then you know, the handover happens to actually a physical human body, right? So this is the kind of traction that folks see the other one is we've been talking about low code no code platform. We are saying that buy should basically coding be restricted only to developers who have learned coding as a stream. There are a lot of tools today in the market where you literally drag and drop and you're able to create applications. This is a very interesting startup called build.ai where they are creating a new category for low code no code. They are not saying that you know, hey, you need to basically do some stuff. Even if you don't know coding, you do drag and drop and you create applications, they're saying no that space already is there for citizen developers. What if I just want to order applications just like how you know, I order a pizza or I do online shopping. Can I do online shopping for applications? So very interesting, very disruptive and now if you see some of the other startups, they must be when they started, they were amongst literally a handful. Now a lot of organizations itself are talking about where they don't have core developers or their tech basically IT team doesn't have capacity. They are talking about can I basically partner with some of these folks to create shadow IT and literally order applications quickly internally for my use. So you see some signals that come through the startup ecosystem. In a few years, they pretty much become mainstream either in the consumer world or in the enterprise world. Can you tell us something about your dedicated platform for space that startups, particularly your association with this room? So one is Microsoft itself has been pivoted into while you know you talk about providing technology stack and all which is essentially our public cloud infrastructure, which is Azure. A lot of this is now getting specific around industries. So far, FSI industry, there are specific requirements. Similarly, when we look at retail even sustainability. So Microsoft is pivoting around creating solutions for the entire Microsoft cloud stack, which is around industry. So one of the areas that we've been also looking at investing in terms of technology is the entire space stick. So Microsoft has its own bunch of services called Azure, Orbital, ground, we provide ground stations as a service. So we have brought all the engineering assets that we have together as part of this program and who better than to partner with isro because isro also is working with very interesting space tech startups in India. So what we do as part of that program, was on this we partner with isro and we provide one the right kind of you know support for the space tech startups via the founders of program that I mentioned about and just coming to your point on being altruistic. We have one of the ecosystem enablers for startups right eventually startups become customers of Microsoft and that's what that's how we basically support. So this is not pure altruism itself that we are looking at. See any altruism without the vision. I don't think it kind of lands correctly. So it has to be the business sense has to be kind of combined with the vision to have its desired results. So that's the that's the sense in which I use about altruism. Absolutely no. In terms of immediate immediate results, I mean I do something today, I expect the rewards tomorrow it may or may not come but in the long term interest of the both the company and the industry it serves you good. So that's what I mean. Absolutely no and and that's also our philosophy for the all the startup sort of programs that we have that we invest in a startup early on we partner with them. We provide support and when they grow they continue to grow on the Microsoft tech stack right they become customers and partners of Microsoft but just coming back to the space tech program we provide everything that I mentioned about founders have but over and above that we have a space program from Microsoft. So there are expert engineers and domain space domain experts in Microsoft who also come and become mentors for these startups one of the partnerships that we have as a startup called pixel. We are working directly our engineering teams are working directly with them in terms of helping them build their entire tech stack on Microsoft. So that's those are the kind of partnerships that we have and then some of these space tech startups also most of them they have a B2B model. So taking these to the right sort of government departments both in India as well as in US some of the US defense folks also use these startups and the insights that they are providing right. So Microsoft and it's very difficult to work with some of these departments because they need that credentials credibility and all of that. So that's how Microsoft is looking at partnering with space tech understanding how these folks are growing what is it that they need from Microsoft and once we find the right connect between the two between Microsoft's priorities and the startup priority. We help them go and scale quickly also a couple maybe about a year two years ago this was growing space right. So we invested ahead and we said that there is a great connect between what Microsoft can bring to the table from engineering assets as well as you know the space that we are operating in and we identified about 15 20 set startups in India and now we are going deep with them in partnership with this. So given now deeply embedded yourself in the startup ecosystem any insights or words of wisdom for them so that they could co-s correct if they have to do that assuming that they have to do that any words of wisdom or insights that you would like to offer them. Unfortunately I'm not a founders I won't be able to give insights in terms of what they should be doing from setting up a startup but I have the vantage point of looking at if it is a say for example a B2B startup right. How do they need to set up their entire sales machinery? How do they leverage ecosystem partners like Microsoft and other enterprises who are now in India that openness is there to go and partner with the startup? There are about 64 startup programs hosted in enterprises and I'm not talking about tech enterprises these are banks, automotive's even some of the mining companies they have startup programs. So one thing that I think startups and founders need to figure is that what is the top priority for them and finding the right partner in the ecosystem to go faster because the whole idea of a startup is how do they go to market faster from a business perspective. So that is one. Second is that building the right tech stack because how do you basically prioritize between going to market faster and basically having an idealistic tech stack rate. There is always a balance that is required. At times what happens is that there is not a scalable architecture which is considered because you start ups need to put their product out in the market really quickly. It is a very fast sort of focused go to market. But having that balance is very important because if the startup starts scaling then the team doesn't have time to again come back and revisit the tech architecture then it becomes basically a banded solution. So investing early on in tech and in terms of looking at how does tech marry the business growth very very important. The third thing is in terms of you mentioned this earlier also was investing in tech talent in startups because that's the most scarce resource. How do you basically have the right tools technology and also of course the culture to make sure that you know you are investing in talent. For example, Microsoft now has a product called GitHub co-pilot which is helping developers become more product appropriate. So equipping the talent with the right kind of tools for them to do better work and more productive work is what's the key thing. And I think the fourth and the last thing that I would say is first startups because it is such a hustling culture and it is such a fast-paced environment just having taking care of well-being of yourself as a founder and a leader and also of your entire team. I think that is the most important thing for everyone but I would say these are sort of the top four things that I can think of from all the interactions that I've had with various startups across different stages. So I was just talking about Microsoft's own plans for the next year or two. How does the agenda look like? From a startup perspective. Yeah, what do you think that you would like to see happening as far as your division is kind of your verticalist concept. What are your terms of plans for the next year or two? So one is like I said earlier, right? India is a land of opportunities for startups, the kind of disruption that's happening very fast-paced and also surprisingly a lot of teenagers are starting off on their own. So for us to address the needs of the startup ecosystem is very important. So we'll continue to scale our programs like founders have that's priority one. Second is startups are no longer in the metro cities. If you look at Teavan Jeppur as becoming a center for clean tech startups. So how do we basically also partner with startups and entrepreneurs in Teavan towns, two or two towns that's going to be the focus for us. And the third and the most important thing is that generative AI is no longer just a nice to have thing or a thing which basically only the early adopters are doing right. Every single startup is thinking of how do they leverage generative AI for either bettering their operations or adding more customers, retaining customers or basically enhancing productivity of their developers. So for us, everything that we will do will be led with the work that Microsoft is doing in the generative AI space. And the last thing is we'll continue to look at creating industry-specific programs. So we have space tech, we've launched the space tech program, we also had launched the AgriTech program. So we'll continue to look at these sort of niche industries and niche startups which are coming up and how do we create a custom program for these, those I would say would be the top priorities for us. Okay, ready action-based action-packed agenda, I would say that you have for yourself. Good to hear that. But I think we have run out of time, so it's time to sign off. Once again, I would like to thank you for your time and some fascinating insights and updates on both the startup industry and Microsoft. Absolutely, thank you, Thank you very much. I will see you in the next video. Bye.