What it means to complete 11 years in the open source business

What if you are not a unicorn? What if you don’t have the backing of big time VCs as your investors? Can you still make an impact?

Before I start talking about the impact that we have been making, let me talk about our journey.

Year 2009 was certainly not a great year for businesses in general and definitely not for open source business in Southeast Asia and India. There was a strong skepticism fueled by Microsoft’s powerful FUD mechanism. The torchbearer of commercial open source software – Red Hat was still very small by revenue. Entire partner eco-system was under the spell of big proprietary software companies. Apart from Red Hat, no other major open source software companies had an appetite to enter the Southeast Asia market. To say that selling open source software required too much of heavy lifting would be an understatement. There were many hurdles in the path before actually carrying out any commercial transaction for open source software.

And under such divergent conditions, we started Ashnik with the aim of bringing some key commercial open source software technologies to this market. Unknown to us was the arduous journey but instilled in us was the passion for open source software, an abundance of confidence, and determination for walking on this path of the entrepreneur journey.

Fast forward to 11 years! Enterprise IT is powered by open source software! What we see is Southeast Asia and India are markets where every commercial open source software company wants to expand.

Apart from awareness and appreciation of open source model, adoption of open source software amongst the local enterprises is very high in the business-critical applications. Some of the local customers are global case studies for these open source companies. The skillset and local developer ecosystem are booming and vibrant. There are meetup and user groups for many open source technologies. There are hundreds of contributors and local open source projects on GitHub. Most local enterprises are leveraging open source technologies to attract talent pool. On the other hand, amongst the partner ecosystem, there is a great interest in partnering with open source technology principal companies. Partner ecosystem wants to take open source message more proactively to their customers. The use of open source technologies has become a differentiator for partners when competing for a business from customers.

Thus, we see an acceleration in the adoption of open source software amongst top enterprises and government sectors widely. Partners are eager to come forward and take the open source offerings to customers and local talents. Skills sets are also growing in a big way. This is the state of affairs in 2020.

Ashnik’s contribution to the region

In 2009, we started with the goal of enabling enterprises to adopt open source technologies for business-critical applications. In the last 11 years, Ashnik has contributed in making this happen in a big way.

Our team has conducted hundreds of workshops and events, towards awareness, appreciation, and adoption of open source technologies. Ashnik has created a solid base of over 200 large-scale customers in the region that gives confidence to all others to adopt open source technologies in a big way. Ashnik has reached out and educated over 50 local partners to take open source message to the customers and create a mindshare for themselves as well as for open source technologies. We have conducted over 50 training batches to create skill sets in the region. Our presence is now expanded thru teams based in Singapore, Mumbai, Jakarta, Delhi, and Bengaluru. Thanks to our collaborative team culture, we were amongst the first few organizations to adopt work-from-home during this pandemic starting February 2020.

We are very proud of our contributions and feel great to note the state of open source adoption amongst the enterprises in Southeast Asia and India. We continue to build on the momentum. We are moving further, helping our customers adopt the next level of challenges – automation, scale-out deployment, managing subscription procurement and renewal cycle, multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud platform enablement, etc.

Most importantly, we are very thankful to all the people – customers, local reseller partners, open source technology companies, our service providers, and the team members who helped create this impact in the region.

Paradox of COVID-19 or resilience of economy or shift in the economic landscape?

Time and again we have experienced that when any calamity strikes it brings enormous destruction. There is no exception to it – the calamity could be at personal level, family, city, state or at country level. COVID-19 pandemic has brought the entire world to a gridding halt. The globalized nature of our societies has made the impact of what started in Wuhan, China, a global pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, tens of millions are affected and worst of all entire world’s working activity has come to a standstill. Millions of people have lost jobs – from advanced economies to emerging ones no one is spared. The impact is not limited to just the economies, it has created enormous geo-political turbulence, too.

The wide-ranging destruction that has fallen upon the mankind is very sad, it makes one’s heart go out for those who have lost their loved ones, it goes out for the people who have undergone tremendous suffering. It is absolutely heart wrenching calamity for the entire humankind.

While on one hand, we are pained to see such large suffering, on the other hand, we see news about wealth creation in some pockets and that makes me wonder about this paradox.

We have read about how wealth of richest of the riches have actually increased in last 3 months, how some large organizations have grown their profits. We are experiencing that the stock indexes all over the world have soared. One of the other indicators of wealth creation – the housing prices is going north! Recent WSJ news tells that median housing prices in the US have gone by 8%.  Jim Cramer in his recent post on June 4th says that his pandemic has seen biggest wealth transfer – from poor to wealthiest.

To most of the human being, this pandemic brought in nothing but stress, anxiety, a big question mark on basic livelihood and sustenance, but to some select few this has been an opportunity to create wealth! This makes one feel very sad, makes one ponder about this paradox.

There is no denying the fact that we want to see the return of normal and happier life for all humankind. For that we definitely need economic activities to go up, we need livelihood opportunities to be created and we want to see some semblance of equitable growth. However, we need to understand some developments in different perspective. On one hand small, select group of people and companies have made opportunity out of this situation while for a large group of people and small companies this has been a very challenging time. Are these just the anomalies, are these cruel jokes or are these silver linings to the dark cloud?

Some economists are referring to the factors such as – new addition to employment data in the USA, growth in some companies’ business, 40% rise in US stock indexes over March 2020 dip – as resilience of economies as compared to 2008. Many companies have talked about how they are better prepared as compared to 2001 or 2008 economic crises. So, do we call it as resilience? Or, thinking more positively, do we consider it as silver lining to dark clouds and hope for the clearer skies sooner?

Some of the silver lining to the dark clouds is being attributed to the shift in the economic landscapes. The businesses that depended heavily on in-store traffic are affected badly whereas, digital platform-oriented businesses have grown in big ways, for example, most e-commerce and e-tailers have done better than brick-and-mortar models. Many digital solutions companies such as Zoom have seen huge demand and businesses have increased many folds. Similarly, most the software companies have done better than expected.

This is too early to analyze and draw conclusion, but it is clear that COVID-19 has given a new direction to the economic landscape as well as to human and healthcare activity. Let us pray for the well-being of all the humankind.

Originally published on : https://www.ashnik.com/paradox-of-covid-19-or-resilience-of-economy-or-shift-in-the-economic-landscape/

Reliance – Facebook deal : Not in the interest of entrepreneurs and innovators

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/facebook-buys-9-99-stake-in-reliance-jio-for-5-7-billion/articleshow/75283735.cms

I have been thinking about this deal.

I feel this deal is a real waste of great opportunity. You would ask what is that opportunity?

This deal is more about just an opportunistic business transaction and not about innovation nor about entrepreneurship. Reliance needed the money urgently. It has huge debt of around $43Billion. The deal with Aramco is not going thru yet and Reliance needs money. They are good at deal making and they played that part very well in getting a valuation of over $60B for Reliance Jio! Even Reliance’s oil business was valued at $75B when Saudi Armco had agreed to buy 20% stake. A $60B valuation of Jio is unrealistic. This is not about the value of Jio, but this is to raise stakes very high to make it difficult for other players.

This deal also has high chances of compromising India’s strategic interest in safeguarding its digital space, after all Facebook is known to use the data to influence national elections in country after country through highly questionable methods.

Now, what was the opportunity?

For an entrepreneur, when you have such huge customer base, have access to good talent and have a brand equity, the opportunity lies in pushing the envelope further by going global. Creating a truly competitive, innovative alternatives to WhatsApp, Facebook and make a mark on the world was a clear opportunity. Reliance had an opportunity to be a leader, instill confidence in aspiring entrepreneurs and Indian talent that one can take on global brands if you apply innovation and entrepreneurship.

But with this deal, the combination of Reliance’s might, its leading position in telecom, retail and digital platform and Facebook’s ruthless business practices would stifle the innovation, would increase the barriers for upcoming players. Facebook is not known to encourage startup eco-system outside its own business empire, Facebook is not known to be good to the strategic interest of nations (other than USA), Facebook is known for ‘who cares’ attitude towards privacy policies. When such a player is joining hands with another business behemoth, it is certainly not good news for innovation and startup community.

But I am very optimistic that there would be other players who would come forward to challenge these companies. Like many business models were disrupted by technology companies, I am very sure, 5G would shake up the digital behemoths and throw up new players.

Let us keep innovating!

COVID-19: An opportunity to ACT

The way to address challenges created by COVD-19 is to ACT. I’ll explain what is ACT (I don’t mean just an act). Let us first see the challenges it has created :

Fear

This pandemic has created too much fear – fear of its spread, fear about its deadly nature and most importantly fear that there is no formulated cure available at the moment. There is a fear of potential job loss, there is fear about incurring financial hardship.

Uncertainties

It has created immense uncertainties in everyone’s mind. Uncertainties as to when would this pandemic get over, how would it end, what would really help end to this pandemic. There are uncertainties about local and global economic condition; uncertainties about the impending situation – if things would get better or would get worse before getting better, when local and international travel would start, when would we have normal life.

Mistrust

The way this situation has unfolded, and the way local and global leader have responded to it, has created lot of mistrust. There are many situations and statements that are playing on people’s mind. There is a mistrust at a fundamental level itself – if we are being told the truth or not and there are many examples to quote.

As late as March 1st week, WHO was giving message that COVID-19 is localized to China, Hongkong. Even if its intentions were to  keep things under control, people are questioning why it did not nudge countries to take action faster.

Some of the global political leaders right from USA too scoffed at COVID-19 as ‘China only situation’ and did not take actions in time or enough aggressively.

Italy’s leadership, in the initial days looked at it totally differently and actually celebrated CNY in a big way in some parts.

When it comes to business leaders, we have mixed results. Some companies acted well in time and took measures such as advising teams to work from home. I am happy to mention here that at Ashnik we were one of the early companies to start working from home. But there were many businesses who tried to underplay the threat and took risks.

Also, there is a big variation in the initial narratives and present-day situation about what causes of the spread, how to avoid etc.

These kinds of issues have created mistrust and have destabilized emotional level of people.

How do you overcome these challenges?

There are three things that are required in such situations and they can be summarized as ACT

A – Assurance

C – Communication

T – Trust

Assurance

As a leader, it has become important to re-assure people that ‘this too shall pass away’ Most people understand that there are always challenges at personal level, national level, global level and in businesses. But they want to know that there is a plan, there is a resolve, there are means of addressing these challenges. People just want to be reassured that leadership team is working hard, even though they might not have a solution on hand at that point of time.

Communication

Continuous communication assumes great significance during such challenging times. During this period, people are working remotely for extended period of time. The remoteness, at times, creates insecurities. The usual work-from-office environment create lots of opportunities to meet and interact with the team face to face, there are lot of things discussed and clarified through informal discussions. A simple high-five and words of appreciation like ‘well done’ communicated in person go a long way in creating positive environment. Now, working remotely, such opportunities are reduced and chances of team feeling left out or insecure are higher.

The only way to keep teams positively engaged is through continuous communication. It is important to create opportunities to communicate company status, team’s progress, key wins, market environment, company’s plans etc.

Trust

Establishing trust has assumed a sense of great urgency besides being important aspect of building teams, organizations and nations. As a leader, it is important that your people have trust in your intentions and capabilities. Given that challenges posed by COVID-19 have created additional skepticism, mistrust, fear and uncertainties, the task of creating or retaining this trust has become difficult than earlier times. There are many ways leaders can establish trust factor, but most importantly actions speak louder than words.

Hence, if you are in leadership position, in these challenging times, you have to ACT!