Digitally native startups well placed to serve consumers: Survey

A new breed of connected consumers is placing new demands on how businesses operate and digitally native startups are well-positioned to address their needs, according to a survey commissioned by EMC India. The study, conducted by Greyhound Research ‘The Startup Approach to Information in India’ and released here on Tuesday, found that business agility is the key business attribute allowing startups to disrupt traditional industries. But they could also draw a few lessons from traditional organisations in scaling and putting in the right processes in place. “The world has rapidly evolved. The people who we are catering to are no longer the same. Our lives have been transformed. The expectations people have of IT or technology is very different and they are governing the consumption of IT. They are governing how IT is deployed,” said Amit Mehta, country manager, Isilon Storage Division at EMC India. He added traditional companies are threatened by disruptive startups which are agile enough to meet the changing consumer expectations. “The digital revolution happening in India is an opportunity. But what it also means that traditional companies have made capital expenditure and they have processes in place which will not allow them to move very quickly.” “Startups do not have legacy so they can innovate but can they scale up,” he said while pointing out top business attributes for a business to be successful, including ability to proactively spot new opportunities, deliver personal experiences to customers, innovate in an agile way, operate in real time and demonstrate transparency and trust. Highlighting key findings of the survey, Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and chief executive officer of Greyhound Research, said of the 100 startups covered under the study, 36 percent agreed to be existing because of innovating in an agile way. He added 80 percent B2C (business-to-consumer) startups said they were leveraging public cloud to manage their workload, even as 47 percent of the startups admitted having data but no access to data scientists. The survey found access on multiple platforms across web and mobile (82 percent), 24x7 support and connectivity (65 percent) and personalised experiences (62 percent) are the top customer demands that startups are facing. “Delivering consistent customer experiences is not a matter of choice anymore. This research study and our ongoing tracking of the market confirm that the startups are taking a clear lead in delivering consistent customer experiences,” Gogia said. Half of the B2B (business-to-business) startups questioned feel that their customers will expect proactive rather than reactive service delivery in two years with over 85 percent citing that mobile devices have changed the way they do business. Majority of respondents (59 percent) said adaptability was the core of their technology strategy, while 55 percent were focused on connectivity. He said the startups do not have process orientation and they can draw lessons from traditional businesses in this area, while traditional companies need to find solutions to the challenge of multiple views of same dataset and develop agility to innovate quickly. IANS