 India, what a power packed weekend this is going to be and what better way to boost it up rather than having the extreme rock star panel that we have for you. The next panel are going to be centered around design startups. So to introduce my first panelist, he's been the commissioner of industries and the managing director of TS IIC. Please put your hands together for IT Secretary, Telangana State, Mr Jayesh Ranjan. One of the management professionals over here, again a rock star, please put your hands together for the man behind NASCARM 10,000 initiatives for Andhra and Telangana, Mr Vijay Bhavra. A face that you've seen in all the Hedjabad startup world, please put your hands together for the godfather of Hedjabad startup ecosystem, Mr Amesh Lokanathan. Again a very talented doctor that we have amongst here, he owns the multimedia companies, please put your hands together for Dr Neeraj. The man behind the iconic building that we have here, the tea hub, Mr Ajay Jain. If we could just start up a little bit about yourself and what the startup ecosystem in Hedjabad has to offer and a little bit if you could throw light on initiatives such as UX India. How are they shaping up this space? So thanks, Vinita. See as I mentioned briefly in my earlier speech, Telangana is one of the few states in the country today, which is very, very optimistic about what startups can really achieve and we are really putting money where our mouth is. For example, we have spent 40 crores to create the largest incubator of the country, which is tea hub. And now on the fifth of November, that is in about 10 days from today or 15 days from today, we will be doing the groundbreaking ceremony of the second phase of tea hub, which will be five times bigger. See tea hub itself is the largest incubator in the country and the second phase of tea hub will be five times bigger than that. That will have a capacity to seat 4,000 people and will be having a built-up space of about 350,000 square feet. Now the other thing which we and as some of you would be aware, we have also brought out a policy to support startups innovation and in the morning when I was talking about procurement, how we bypass the conventional procurement process to take services from the startup. That is one of the ideas which has been enunciated in our startup policy. The other important thought is that as you know, Hyderabad has already some kind of a strong fast-mover advantage or a strong legacy in certain sectors. For example, the healthcare life sciences, biotechnology sector, the defense and aerospace sector, we also want to be one of the pioneers in the hardware, the information technology hardware sector, the gaming, animation, multimedia, VFX sectors and for each of these sectors, we want to have focused incubators with the attached ecosystem also developed very comprehensively. See many people talk about tea hub just as the building. See it is of course a very creatively designed building. The architecture is very interesting. The interiors are done in a very, very state-of-the-art way but what I tell always to the visitors who go to tea hub and that have that wow kind of expression after looking at the building is to focus on what goes inside the building. Anyone can construct such a building but what happens inside the building requires again very meticulous kind of efforts and in tea hub, we have tried this precisely how that entire ecosystem can be reflected. So we have a pool of mentors. We have three academic partners. Many of you would be aware that Silicon Valley what it is today is largely due to the efforts of some wonderful institutions like Stanford, like Berkeley and in Hyderabad we are very fortunate that we have equally competent premier academic institutions like the triple IT, the IIT, the Indian School of Business, the National Legal Law School, NALSAR as we call it and so on. So all of these have formal partnerships with tea hub. Their faculty serve as mentors. They also give lots of guidance as members of the board. So the directors of all these three premier institutions are board members in tea hub. They play a very active role in the governance of the incubator and so on and so forth. So the sectoral specific incubators which we will be developing on hardware, on defense and aerospace, on life sciences, on gaming and animation and multimedia would all be in a way replicating or they will be run on the same lines. The best of the market will run these incubators. And the other quick thing which I want to mention now is that we want to take the benefits of startups and innovation to the rural areas also. So in the morning also I spoke about it at length that eventually technology has to solve practical genuine pressing problems with people face in their day to day lives. So we are starting the first rural incubator which we are calling the sandbox in a district called Nizamabad. It is about 200 kilometers from here and the idea would be to give local talent the same opportunities which a startup in Hazrabad in tea hub or any of the other incubators outside tea hub also is doing. So this way we are very very welcoming and very positive about the role startups can play for our state and I do hope that tomorrow this becomes the national role model and every state becomes equally Gungho and supportive of startups. Mr. Vijay, if you'd like to add on to that. We are very fortunate to be in the city of Hyderabad and Telangana at large and with the kind of proactive the government we have here we have been given space inside tea hub to run our own program from NASCAR 10,000 startups which we select our own curate the startups and take them to a journey of six months and given by the like supported by the biggies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Digital Ocean. The startup scene in Hyderabad has been growing a lot and thanks to the Telangana government and all the industry experts out here. So we'll be very fortunate to be here and to have the startups out here. I think I mean just Jay said summarized very well what was happening. One thing I can add to that is like I think there's a fantastic extremely network ecosystem just the fact that there's IIT, TRIP, IIT, BIT, I mean NASCAR and ISP is already a partner to this initiative. It's a testimony itself to when you go look at tea hub and a lot of people that have kind of supported that whole effort. It's an extremely well network ecosystem here. Just I mean as an extension to what you have is already doing. We're starting this thing to support external co-working spaces. There are about 25 well functioning co-working spaces incubators in the city, commercial and then there's the academic ones again which is probably equal number again, another 20, 25. We have about like eight or nine actually related incubators in the city and a lot of stuff happening in the city that is barely known even in the city much less outside. So at some level I think we are an extremely well kept secret unfortunately. But with all the efforts now happening since TRIP started I think the next year or two I feel like as all of these gets uncovered and some of those kind of initiatives bubble up good startups come out of it and I think there's going to be an explosion of awareness around what's happening in the city. There's already good amount that happened just in the last six nine months. I think more will happen in the next year. I think 2017 is probably a year where it's an year of reckoning for us. We will get kind of very squarely pegged in the national map just through results. The initiatives are very well recognized already. At the next year there will be results. I mean very few people know that the largest academic incubator in the country is sitting here, interpolating. I mean we have largest incubators sitting there at T-Hub and the largest academic incubators right in the next building just outside of T-Hub in the same campus and very few people know that. I mean at its peak TRIP had about 60, 65 startups. ISV enables a lot of, again they don't talk about numbers but ISV enables a lot of startups which nobody knows. So I think fantastic stuff happening fantastic momentum and a lot of the efforts are on seeding new startups which is I think that's the biggest not many think about startups. I mean even for all its fame and glory, Bangalore like a city that employs about a million decades almost right has barely 10,000 founders. It's a very small person with people even thinking about starting up and many of them can afford to. I mean financially and otherwise they can afford to startup and they're not even thinking about it because they're very happy in their comfortable jobs and for whatever reasons. I think I feel that's one place where we're making a big difference in this city through many initiatives academic government and otherwise. There's a lot of startups eating efforts and I think they'll all come to bear. 2017 we come. Dr. Neeraj and Ajay if you could add on to this that how do you think India as the startup ecosystem do you think is it justified to say that it is one of the world's fastest growing startup ecosystems or are we just surviving are we thriving or are we merely surviving? Well actually we are at a point in time where I think of the last five years the way that we have been doing things have been totally changing the way that we used to study for so many years like you know for about a hundred years the way that our curricula was designed the way that we are purchasing stuff the way that we are traveling everything is changing which is the entire world needs to be redesigned and there's a lot and lot of scope in every one of the areas that we can think of to be participating in that redesign process. So there is a lot of scope for startups to be coming up with newer ways of designing little things that we do but to bring in more convenience to bring in possibly not just the convenience but the but the whole experience of being able to do things seamlessly with how technologies entered our lives. So I see that there is a lot of scope for a lot of startups coming in but like you rightly said people are kind of comfortable doing what they are doing so there is a kind of an inertia but I also see a kind of a very creative restlessness which exists with people who have been in steady jobs I've seen a lot of and one of the other things that a kind of startup ecosystem requires to do is to actually mishmash lots of different types of people for example I have taken on projects to possibly digitize the entire human body and make it into ways in which we can virtually interact with human physiology with this thing from the point of view of being able to practice medicine so we have digitized the entire medical curriculum made it into something that truly democratizes the education system in medical for everyone to be able to take care of their own health which really matters but it's as a doctor I could contribute one part but we have engineers we have material managers we have a biochemist we have geneticists there's so many different kinds of people all trying to solve a kind of a design problem so one of the things that we ought to do perhaps and where India has a lot of bandwidth and scope to do so is to bring together ecosystems where different kind of people can come in and be part of one unified goal for example so in which case design thinking has to come in right from the beginning you know we have to necessarily now do things in ways that we have never done before and when you have never done something before there's no right or wrong way to do it so that's the entire creative and innovation kind of a process in which you know so can design thinking be taught learned that is it very intuitive as users we have we have become very intuitive we have been using various kinds of technologies interfaces spaces in ways that you know we adapt very quickly because we have been growing into it but when it actually comes to teaching learning there's a lot of scope for you know they're far too few design schools for example and the need as well as scope is large so we need to have certain other these things through which possibly we can get a fantastic leadership status for India as a design thinking process to your question right I think if I look at the S curve right for startups India is right at the cusp right so we are we are ready to thrive and Hyderabad from a Hyderabad perspective I think we are laying the foundation thanks to the government thanks to initiatives such as these which can take us through the growth path something like design things something like data mining etc I think are critical for startups and they need to embrace it much more I was speaking to Kaladar Bapu I was saying that the economics of design thing for startups need to be embraced better today corporates afford them because of the cost that the corporates can pay and and today you know design thing needs to come at a cost where startups can afford them as well so I think we're we're at the cusp and if we set things right I guess we can take the growth forward so actually what you are talking about is my next question the theme for today's or the next three days conscience is design and innovation so how important do you think is design thinking in startups and how has it been changing over the years if you could yeah yeah so I think it is critical I'm I'm a great proponent of it and most of the big ways and we have seen the examples also being shown has have shown the impact that design thing can can get to them now the impact from a startup perspective the impact from a case study of startups I still believe are lacking and that is something that we would like the design world to showcase us much more again in the west I think there has been employment of it we need to embrace it much more and one of the reasons might be that the the education level itself we are lacking for that but having said that I see and and you know the crowd here shows that that there is enough interest right and I think startups can really benefit from from such a such a forum and I guess the the difference between the growth for startups to me is something like like a design thing is it all right if you cross talk so I think as arson representing tea hub you should take this as a responsibility to offer this also as a service to the startups there see in tea hub we offer lots of services to the startups as a matter of our responsibility so guiding them on design principles organizing expert talks bringing some domain experts there and eventually not just confining it to the startups within tea hub but offering this as a service to everyone and so in fact I totally agree in fact it's one of my top priorities I've spoken to the guys here already about that and because you are also a part of not just here but the larger ecosystem how can all the startups regardless of wherever they are those who need to benefit from design interventions how is that accessible to them and what role can we play I think we all need to brainstorm collectively absolutely sir so we've done something but not enough I think with ux india now since they've also started and they want to help I think we can get an access to larger pool of designers so we can do but some models replicate like they had a product leaders forum which is a forum of all product managers very active forum and they've already offered to help you pm one-on-one pm office hours they do it in tea hub it's a community of product managers working in emergency product companies so which is a it's a community it's independent forum just anchored in high s here so they're already helping so that's kind of happening the hide-and-seekers other group which is also a group of community of hackers they are going to help with the lab 33 program we're talking about so to deliver the program which is the extended kind of acceleration for startups outside of t-hub now likewise we'll work with the with ux india we'll do it we've done a few things in the past we did something called doctor design because design office hours so they get one hour with the designers one-on-one and just like we couldn't sustain it we started this about a year a year and a half back and a little bit of it happened in the academic institutions happening like for instance like in my own course I teach I take a technology product entrepreneurship course at reply team this week one of my colleagues is sitting here he helped deliver this week we are spending two weeks in the 17 weeks on the whole design thinking and as far as they kind of come up with their idea conceptualize their idea and kind of work towards making their first prototype both market and product prototype so in those structured interventions design thinking is already a very key part of it but like you said to the startups that are kind of on the journey by themselves we have to make some very structured support available precisely and since you mentioned that you started something which could not sustain so now if we try it again we have to ensure that all the elements of sustainability are built in so if there are some commercials we need to figure it out how does it happen do you want government to kind of put some extra support in that area and which group will really offer that services and how everyone will be able to access it in a very very streamlined way so please work on that yeah at here we are actively looking at to it and you will see the results in the next few months when you're talking of things like 10 000 startups how many of them are going to survive is really based on how well they integrate design itself into their own DNA you might be able to inculcate some external help consulting and this thing to see that but when everyone is designing products and products to differentiate and products to help the world work in a different way unless the the thing about and even if I'm I have seen developing for my customer I think I know my customer very well but the thing is the way the what the customer gives as feedback what they say and what they do is totally different so sometimes we get totally diverted into so unless there is the weaving of design DNA within each one of those startups which is somewhere where possibly yes external help to see that it's there because sometimes they have to blend between what working on the product and working on the business and that's for a startup that's really a confusing thing so by the time you focus on product you lose out on the business and the other way around so unless this entire thing of design comes bottom up so I think there's a lot of challenges in that as well actually this is again something very interesting we this is of course a very emerging idea a very nascent idea the coffee break a while ago Kalada Ranjit and I spoke about it that should the state government promote a D hub design hub just as we have a D hub and I see lots of merit in this idea and we should do that maybe when the second phase of the hub is formally up and running it'll be a huge facility in any case but we need not wait till then we can think of creating a small D somewhere appropriate in the city now itself and the hub can have this responsibility apart from encouraging design startups also how the as Neeraj is mentioning how every how it how everyone else also imbibes that as a part of their DNA anyway we need that design hub just as we have a tea hub and I see lots of merit in this idea and we should do that maybe when the second phase of tea hub is formally up and running it'll be a huge facility in in any case, but we need not wait till then. We can think of creating a small D somewhere appropriate in the city, now itself. And DHAP can have this responsibility, apart from encouraging design startups. Also, as Neeraj is mentioning, how everyone else also imbibes that as a part of their DNA. Anyway, Vinita must be feeling left out. So please join the conversation. So Anu, I'm happy to learn from you all. And the D-HUB idea is definitely something which gets us all thinking. So we've… Can we claim that as an announcement, sir, today? IT Secretary announces D-HUB. I mean, that should go into the precedence. Actually, frankly speaking, all announcements are made by our minister. So he will be happy to make that announcement. So what we'll do is I'm organizing a small meeting between him and the organizers on Sunday. So let he announce it on Sunday. Let it come out formally for myself. But Vijay, you were saying something. Yeah, I mean, thanks, sir, for bringing that up. I mean, when we interact very closely with startups, they might be very good with product. They might be very good with technology. But we have seen very closely the vacuum which lies in the ecosystem in terms of design thinking. We have done a couple of workshops in Hyderabad in other parts of AP and Telangana. But we saw that the awareness about design thinking is where we are lacking a lot. So we would invite talent from the pool which is here and from the UX India so that they come forward and help the startups in understanding how design can make a difference in terms of improving their product and marketability. The next question I would like to put light on is how can we bring in this from a founder's perspective? Why do we have such less design founders? In fact, when I was talking to Mr. Kaladhar Babu, he said that I want to see a lot more design founders. So what can we do about it? I'm sure these initiatives will definitely be the foundation of it. But adding to that, if you have anything more to say. I was just going to pull the mic because I want to ask the design founders, likely founders are most of them are sitting in this room. So how many of you want to become founders? Because very good. How many of you are founders today? Design founders or design startup or startup founders? So four, five, six, maybe around eight, nine. So pretty good. It's much more than I was expecting. So which is very nice. I'm sure there's all this in the last. How many of you were founders two years back? OK, there you go. So most of them in the last two years. So which is a nice trend. I think it goes back to the same reason as why are there not enough founders, like I said, even amongst the techies. Like just in the city, 400,000 plus 40,000 industry employees, of which around 200,000 to 300,000 are engineers. And still, we have very, very few, maybe a few thousand, 5,000 pushing it, founders in the city. And so I think the same reason. It's just one of those things where we have to come out of what we are comfortable with and then just try to explore something different. I think it will happen. And it's very important. I think a design perspective, especially as we push towards product startups. The service startups also need designers, but product startups need more emphasis on design, both design thinking, user-centric thinking, as well as the functional product design. I think it makes sense to have designers. I know a few startups that have designers as founders. I know a few startups that are only designers, but very few. I think as we get more and more, like I'm sure we'll get much better products. Mr. Bhavra. As I said, it's more important that people understand what's going on in the ecosystem. As of now, all these years, I mean, yes, T-Hub was here and Ascom was here. But the interface between the biggies and the people who want to really make a difference has been missing. So I think it's a very great initiative by the government that the doors have opened up now. And I think it's the right time to come forward. And all the people who have raised hands now, I think you should all visit and interact with the startups who are based out of T-Hub and understand how you can offer your services and also be a part of the ecosystem. So another question that I'd like to ask is, what are the recent challenges that you have seen in the startup ecosystem concern more towards designing and how are we doing any initiatives to kind of revolutionize the status quo? Mr. Ranjan, if you could give it from a government's perspective. See, I'll give a slightly elaborate answer. See, when digital became important globally, say, three decades ago or two and a half decades ago, India unfortunately got positioned as the back office of the world. So while that was good in the sense that lots of IT services started emanating from India, lots of people got employment, hundreds and thousands of jobs were created, lots of people got opportunities to work abroad. Prosperity was brought into many homes, but there was also a flipside to it. In fact, India still today in many circles is very in a very derogatory way called as the land of cyber-coolies. I mean, there's no difference between a coolly and let us say a programmer or a tester or an integrator who is working in an Indian service company. So that ridicule is still there, even though our talent, our kind of brain power rules the world today, but this kind of a branding that India is nothing better than the land of cyber-coolies unfortunately has stuck. Now I do not want the same to happen when we make further progress in the world of innovation and startups. See, already many of you would be aware that in terms of numbers, India has today become the third largest country in terms of new startups getting registered, the amount of funding which startups are getting and now that UK is outside, I mean, after this Brexit and all, I won't be surprised if India is able to surpass UK and become number two, but at the same time, we do not want this to happen with again some kind of an attached ridicule that India is nothing else than a me too country. I mean, something is done in the US and you just kind of blindly copy and paste it. So we have, as I was mentioning in the morning, enough number of local challenges, enough number of pressing problems. So my real worry is that how quickly should we get out of this me too kind of thinking and how quickly should we start focusing on our own homegrown felt needs, genuine needs, pressing needs, which will be very, very important if technology has to make a social impact. Eventually as I was telling, the billions of potential customers, the large market in India is available, but that will be better served if you focus on their real problems instead of offering a kind of a me too solution. So this is a challenge that how do you motivate the startups to think original, find original problems to solve and so on and so forth. Just at one point what Sir said, once we motivate the youngsters especially, a lot of ideas come. We do this thing called Excite. It's a summer product entrepreneurship workshop which is done by jointly government and industry, high-seer task and J&TU. And we get about 300 kids, we're picked from about 30, 40 colleges and it's a five week workshop. They come with nothing. They just come with just kind of an excitement to do something. And then the kind of most naturally, they're all 20, 20, 30 of students mostly, 20, 21 year olds. So their problems that they come up with are mostly social. I mean, from what they see in their life around them and the kind of problems they try to solve are very interesting. We just sort of push them, nerds them and then provide some hand holding and now even if none of them become startups, like we had about 22 finalists from the total of 90 teams and some may become, none of them may become startups but all of them have got that whole process planted into them to look for, because they've been kind of that whole workshop taught them on how to look at it as a product. There has to be a market, there should be a need, there should be a customer that's willing to use it, pay for it and then you have a differentiated solution and differentiated using technology and like the whole kind of in five weeks they've kind of lived in a very short time frame, a typical startup journey and hopefully it'll stay with them and it'll come back and I think we should create more of these, seed these kind of, what do you call it? Plant those ideas, thought into that, people, yes. Thought incubators. I would like you all to just leave the audience with one message. What is the future of design thinking as strategy for startups, Hedgebad as a startup ecosystem or anything motivating for the audience? I think clearly design think is the differentiator and Hedgebad is also the differentiator today in the country ecosystem startup. Yeah, I think starting young, building it from within your system because for a long time we've been, you know, we grow up being asked not to do this, don't do this, this is the way to do things. So we have lost by the time we come to a particular stage the ability to be different, think different. In fact, it's not just the ability somewhere we are inhibited to do that. So one of the things to break free, think of ways in which things have not been done before and the entire thought, because it's all about thought leadership, so that's what we have to kind of build into our own, this thing saying there's a lot of unlearning of, so sometimes that's the challenge of, you know, having to do a lot of unlearning before you do, but you should be open to having such unlearning and get together with different types of people. So the whole idea of having a kind of a design hub where most of design, because it's not, there's no one right answer. That's the... The doors of the hub are going to open shortly. So you are most welcome to join them. The last takeaway which I would like to say is let's get started. Come and let's get started. Whoever wants to do anything, let's get started. Just building on Nearest's point, I think like not only do we not encourage free thinking, we make it worse. I mean like they are free thinking kids until they're in sixth or seventh, but then they come to eighth or ninth week and completely in four years convert them into exam-taking missions. I think so the unlearning is much more than just being able to think. We should just shake them out of their exam mode, which is the reason we started this J&U Excite workshop also. It's okay, let there be some small intervention that I think we need more of it. I think if they start thinking about trying to solve problems, I'm sure design will naturally follow but getting them excited about solving problems by themselves is the key.