#productidea

Discover how to validate your product idea effectively with an MVP and make smarter development decisions.

The creation of an MVP is done with the intent to attract early adopters, enabling faster time to market, and achieve a product-market fit.

Often I feel like I’m the only one on a one man team. If it weren’t for me, the sidelined bench warmer, goading the opposing batters up to bat; I would swear I had lost my edge to win. I’m the one player on every team who’s only chance at being first, was to show up to practice before anyone else did. Over the decades of being benched I’ve developed a confidence in my ability at spotting out winners that are bound to become champions. 

It really isn’t hard to find winning ideas, just search media for new ideas you've come up with, which after exhaustive search, will confirm, most likely, you have an original idea not thought up yet.  Over the years I’ve continued to search for clues as to which new idea to pursue, which might become mainstream and which one’s I can no longer pursue. It usually took a couple of years to find confirmation that an idea no longer was original and that other’s had already clued into the emerging trend. However, today the idea cycle has shortened because of the internet and the lack of online privacy.

We need revolution, not disruption

- Jack Dorsey

I have been following Startup World & Technology Companies (aka Silicon Valley) for almost two years now. I started my career working with Tech Company, after sometime I got frustrated because my role was into back end operations. I quit. Joined another product company, but this time it is Tangible Manufactured Product, not a tech product. Somehow this passion for technologies is leading me to think about new product ideas, and also feeling guilty that I cannot built a product on my own. I am not a programmer, so I cannot churn out / play with code. But, I feel ideas are worth, and thought to write a post on my latest product idea. 

Recently, I was on 2 week long vacation, was enjoying my days off with family. Most of my Under Grad buddies are local merchants who act as a middlemen to sell goods.  Here I refer to goods like hardware industrial equipment, garments or something tangible in nature. They deal with huge data - sales, inventory, sales turnover, credit sales etc. One of my friend asked details about how he can get one software to deal with this huge data? On the spot I asked him to get in touch with low tier IT service firm, those are the guys who can build this kinda software.

Then after I came back home, I started to dig deeply into this idea. In India there are millions of local merchants like him who deal with huge data. They have started to face one problem "Where do I stand end of the day?". Because of their over dependency on manual work, they don't know where they stand. They are not sure how much stock he/she sold, at what discounts, either credit sales or cash sales.

Am talking about local merchants who are fairly educated to operate a computer, they have Facebook Profiles, they own smartphones also they do chat on Whats App. These merchants are hunger to implement automation in their business. But, there is no product in the market which will fulfill these merchants requirement. 

Product Should Be

Universal small / medium enterprise product which can eliminate manual work.

Easy to use, as these merchants don't like complex software (keep clean design, more work per click)

Equipped with hardware and software - one complete package

Pricing - this is crucial part of the Business. Price of the product be within 300$. Merchants don't want to spend money on things from which they cant make profit

Software & Hardware should be built in such a way that it can be changed depending on the nature of business, to which it is being used. 

With this product - Merchants must be able to track their day to day business records, sales turnover, inventory status etc

Distribution is God in India

Distributing this product in a vast country like India is a conundrum . Convincing merchants to buy this product, when they are used to write their day sales on a piece of paper. Local problems exist as initial people who use this product will play crucial role, because in India words flown from mouth to mouth are more powerful than TimesSquare electronic boards.