Somdutta Singh, an entrepreneur and angel investor has been appointed as co-chair of the Product Council for 2017 by The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom). This appointment has made Singh the first woman to head this role.
Singh is a woman of distinction, who held several successful positions in different companies over the years. After having completed her MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad and her Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she entered the sphere of marketing.
She worked in the Marketing divisions at Akamai and Red Hat for a few years initially before setting up her own marketing company known as the Unspun Consulting Group in December 2012, where she is currently the Founder and Chief of Marketing. Additionally, she has also been a Director at Digital Leadership Institute (India) since January 2015 and a Co-Trustee and Director at the Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence since April 2014.
Based out of Bangalore, Singh employs around 100 people in her different ventures and terms herself as a “tech-innovator, investor, mentor, and serial entrepreneur”.
Speaking of her new role in Nasscom, Singh was quoted saying,
In today’s age and time, Nasscom is letting young, talented and budding entrepreneurs and investors with the acumen to serve the product industry to come forward. The gender and age does not matter, what matters is talent and potential.
The Product Council intends to connect with enterprises, startups, and the government for cross collaboration and growth. By doing this, it hopes to ensure that the brain power of the country remains within India and there is economic stability.
In an attempt to help citizens of the country grow, Nasscom is also intending to launch its own University which would have courses, workshops, and webinars and will allow individuals to interact with mentors. Further, it will list the products and services offered by startups so enterprises can track these and connect with the startups if needed. Singh also added,
It will work like a CRM that will help all-size businesses close deals and track the closed deals on the platform. This is likely to be launched by October this year.
Nasscom has previously undertaken several initiatives in India to help startups and entrepreneurs across the nation. Just two months ago it launched a Leadership Resource Center (LRC) in association with IIM Bangalore to guide future entrepreneurs and industry leaders towards building teams and establishing businesses. The Center is expected to evolve into Nasscom Leadership Academy over the next few years.
In addition, Nasscom recently joined hands with TiE, Indian Angels Network (IAN) and Indian Venture Capital Association (IVCA) to form a startup coalition undertaking problems faced by startups in India. The aim of this collaboration is to help the government streamline the entire process that individuals undergo to launch their startups.
With product design c0-chairs such as Somdutta Singh and the new chairman for the year 2017-2018 Raman Roy at the head, Nasscom hopes to bring about a bigger change this year and help individual entrepreneurs to establish successful businesses in the industry.
