Transcript of a lecture delivered at The NorthCap University Gurgaon to American Society for Quality (ASQ) participants. It starts with definitions of startups and their common pitfalls.Then underscores the importance of quality for entrepreneurial ventures with Indian success stories who made it big.

1. Entrepreneurship &
Quality Management
- Shekhar Dasgupta
Founder, GreenField Software (P) Ltd
18th Nov 2016: The NorthCap University, Gurgaon

2. Tale of Two Costly Recalls
Boeing 787 Dreamliner Samsung Galaxy7

3. Why Startups Fail?

4. What’s a Start-Up
- “A startup is a company working to solve a problem where
the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed.”
- Neil Blumenthal, cofounder and co-CEO, Warby Parker.
- “A startup is always significantly resource-constrained. If you are no
longer resource-constrained, then you are no longer a startup.”
- Ayah Bdeir, Founder of littleBits
- “A startup is a company designed to scale very quickly. It is this
focus on growth unconstrained by geography which differentiates
startups from small businesses.”
- Paul Graham, CEO, Ycombinator Accelerator

5. Characteristics of an Entrepreneurial Startup
- Owners lack necessary professional knowledge and skills
- Lower professional levels of management
- Usually short-term operative planning
- Flexibility, flexible reactions to new market impulses
- High degree of multiple hatting, or shared responsibilities
- Operating on shoestring budgets
(Exceptions: those with early seed-funding or VC-backed)
- Mutative nature of a startup
Startup makes multiple course corrections to solve the puzzle: right
product, right target segment & right GTM plan

6. Impact on Quality
- Importance of quality and customer satisfaction not imbibed at lower levels
- Absence of professionally trained Quality Manager & staff
- Compromise on Quality due to need for early market launch & earning
revenues
- Flexibility to quickly address changing demands  Innovation
Tendency towards trade-off to Quality Processes
- While Development Head responsible for product quality & Support Head
responsible for service quality, absence of independent quality organization
- Fund utilization on basic product, marketing & sales
- Independent Directors can force Quality Processes to be followed
- Mutative nature inhibits following rigorous quality processes
Quality is a subject of discussion only when there is a crisis

7. Effective QMS in Startups
• When Startup is Supplier to a larger organization:
- Ability to retain this relationship imposes building an effective QMS
- Principal is hands-off; evaluation is based on quality of
products/services received
- If poor quality, principal cuts off order supply
• Franchise Relationship
- Principal helps to build effective QMS for the franchisee
- Owner owns premises, employs people, runs operations
- Quality is responsibility of Principal
• Independent Business
- Competing against a global giant
- Owner/key employee comes from a large Company with QMS exposure
- Comes from either supplier or franchisee categories
- Understands importance of Quality; builds it as cost of doing business
- VC-backed company where independent director imposes QMS

8. Once Upon a Time Indian Startups
• Supplier Relationships:
- TVS
- Sona
• Franchise Relationship
- Coca Bottlers
- Car Dealers (PASCO)
- Domino Pizza (Jubilant Foodworks) Franchisees
• Independent Business
- Competing against global giant Nirma versus HLL
- Parle Group (now Bisleri)
- Infosys

9. Startup Stories to Follow
• Supplier Relationships:
- Hidesign (Amazon supplier)
- GreenField Software (supplier to two global IT majors)
• Independent Business
Competing against global giants
- Ola versus Uber
- Patanjali versus Unilever
- Flipkart versus Amazon

10. Thank You
Contact Detail:
shekhar.dasgupta@greenfieldsoft.com