“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
While thinking of a way to start the article on Innovation, I thought what better way to start than to quote the messiah of innovation- Late Mr. Steve Jobs. He has defined the way how a company’s fortune can be changed by following the mantra of Innovation. Looking at his example, one must agree innovation is present in every dept of business- Marketing, Product Development, HR, Finance, Production, etc.
Closer home, in India, the government also with the aim of promoting innovation in industry is planning the “India Inclusive Innovation Fund- IIIF”. The fund would be of Rs 5000 crore setup. However, in the initial stages a corpus of Rs. 500 crore would be set aside for the fund. Out of Rs. 500 crore, 100 crore would be provided by the government while the balance would be contributed by banks and financial institutions.
With the aim celebrating the spirit of Innovation in Information Technology sector, our team from this edition will be covering Innovative products or services offered by companies.
Zooming away to Glory 
Girnar Software has the word innovation in its mission statement. Emphasizing on the importance of Innovation for any entrepreneur, Mr. Amit Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, Girnar Software, says “Innovation is the backbone of Innovation of any company. In today’s cut-throat competition, innovation is the key for the survival of any company. Our company has always emphasized on the generating new ideas. “No doubt this has resulted in the creation of award winning product- cardekho.com which belongs to the family of similar ventures mobiledekho.com, bikedekho.com etc.
Cardekho.com deserves a special mention as it has won many awards ‘Best Automotive Website of 2009′, ‘Best Car Website 2012’, ‘Most Popular Website 2012’ and ‘Website of the Year India’ given twice in a row – in 2011 and 2012. On the idea behind the venture, Mr. Jain says” Cardekho was created with the idea of providing a legal platform for the buyers and sellers to buy/sell their cars. It is an innovative, user friendly website which has been giving value to the dealers and customers. This year we launched Cardekho.com awards as a means of identifying those cars that the people who ride them every day consider to be the best. “
Another web portal from GirnarSoft which deserves 
special mention here is BikeDekho.com. It is India’s no. 1 bike portal where one can find information on new bikes, used bikes, one can sell used bikes using this portal. At BikeDekho, one finds detailed information on bikes including specs, reviews, dealers, news, prices, news and more. The whole process of buying a bike by a consumer is made easy by BikeDekho.com with the comparison options and user reviews. Owing to the humungous response that the website has received, it was recently revamped to make it more user friendly and appealing. This has resulted in users spending 25% more time on the site than before and a 30% rise in page views per user.
The company believes in innovation which reflects in the company’s investment across multiple domains in India including Auto, Telecom & e-Commerce. With the company focusing more on developing IT solutions for financial, banking, i phone and social media for customers based worldwide, it would be investing $2 million to set up a development facility in SEZ of Mahindra World City’s IT zone.
Prevention is better than Cure 
Showing how innovation has been the guiding light behind the launches in healthcare, Mr. Gaurav Mundra, COO, Truworth Infotech says, “Innovation to us means creating something that makes life more productive, easier and meaningful for the customer, stake holders and society at large.”
With the aim of promoting preventive healthcare, Truworth Infotech made an attempt of bringing medical and IT together and make them work in a harmony. Owing to these attempts only, Truworth started with many initiatives like Make Me Healthy.com,NoExtrasugar.com, noextrabodyfat.com, etc.
Of these, makemehealthy.com is their flag bearer innovation. The initiative has been appreciated and applauded by all as is evident by the various awards won by the software. Regarding the difficulties faced while launching the service, Mr. Mundra adds “Customer acceptance was a big challenge. People go for periodic checkup of their bikes, cars, etc but the concept of periodic health checkups is still unheard of. Through this service we are trying to emphasize on the fact that proactive health checkup is of utmost importance in today’s fast-paced lifestyle.”
Talking about the need to start with their latest project, doctorsahab.com, he adds “We are deeply involved in the Healthcare IT industry and we realized that the most underserved market was practicing doctors. Doctor Sahab was designed keeping in mind the need for doctors to adopt technology but in a user-friendly and cost-efficient manner. The software is available over the web which means no expensive hardware needed, can be accessed anytime anywhere and to top it all it is FREE. Doctors can handwrite prescriptions or type to create actual Electronic Medical Records (EMR).”
It’s much easier said than done when we say that that company has innovated a unique technology or a better service, but only the innovator knows how much blood, sweat and tears has gone into making the dream come true. Every story has a silver lining and inside which lies the dark entangled clouds. But one must not demean these dark clouds as it is here that the real efforts lie. Ideas are generated every second, it is up to the leader how to make feasible innovation out of these ideas without fearing about failure.
—-
Shweta Sharma
