Courtesy: Desi Critics.org
Shibani Jain is the CEO of Craftsbridge India Pvt. Ltd. A first generation woman entrepreneur, she has stuck through a lot of ups and downs to build a very unique and inspiring business - bringing India's traditional crafts and arts to a wider market, using the Internet and direct marketing as tools to ensure the craftsmen get their right recognition and dues. I interviewed her online a few weeks ago, and gained some significant insights into a woman's entrepreneurial journey.
1. Could you brief us about your company's main offerings?
Shibani: We offer designer and special skill products which map current corporate requirements. We work with special skill groups across the country and our sales help these small rural urban groups to generate income.
We offer corporate promotional and motivational products like desktop products and office accessories.
We arrived at this focus after a lot of trial and error. We tried many other things at first - home textiles which we were exporting; retail sales for domestic markets (garment apparels, etc). We even had our own stitching unit. But then, we realized it's not possible to do so much; especially since they were all virtually different businesses - with separate infrastructure requirements, different markets and different production bases. We decided to cut down and we focused on the business where we had the strongest market traction.
2. Since your website is one of the primary marketing channels, what strategies would you advise to promote one's website and make it more productive in terms of customers and revenues?
Shibani: Our website is only 7% of our total business today. I would advise the following for similar ventures:
Unique offerings
Decent strategic tie-ups/partner sites to ensure you get the eyeballs
Constant renewal of offerings and content
The web site is more a promotional tool for us, today than bringing in real business. But we find it useful to refer our customers to our site.
3. What prompted you to begin your current venture? What thought process led to this idea, and what initial challenges did you have to face?
Shibani: I was a web and multimedia designer and always interested in handicrafts. We thought that we could make a difference to this business (even if it was done in a small way to start with) with our ability to understand current market norms, design and bring in professional inputs.
We were also excited by the concept of "customized crafts". Being handmade product, it is relatively easier to customize a product with a special message or specification or color, even in small quantities. We thought of how a "grain of rice" can be packaged nicely with a hand written message and magnifying glass and sent off anywhere in the world.
And we were excited about the fact that we could be the one middle point between the end buyer and the end producer. It was exciting to visualize a situation where we could be the bridge between the rural/grass roots producer who has no market access and the end buyer who has no idea about the craft producer and their stories. It was interesting from a social and creative perspective.
We felt this was possible with a dot com model - with producers on one end and buyers on the other. In fact, we were incubated as a dot com. We made it through incubation funding, but were late in the dot com boom. The bust ensured that no one even heard us out as a dot come investment. The choice before us was either to shut down or change the model. We changed the model and started selling directly to corporate buyers.
4. When the chips are down, how do you deal with those kinds of situations?
Shibani: We have had many times when the chips were down. And we persevered. I did not give up. We evolved and sharpened our model in terms of cutting costs, reducing overheads, sharpening our focus, building systems and processes. We had to go through really tough transitions, like when I closed down the home textiles exports business - it was a harrowing time. We had to let go of trained staff, say no to customers who had started initiatives with us and manage all excess raw material fabric stock which was left over. At this time we simply stuck to our guns, gave ourselves a time line and swallowed our losses on this.
Another transition happened when my partner who headed the corporate business suddenly decided to quit after five years of managing this business. We then had to transition and learn many things afresh. The knowledge of the business went with him. We had a huge struggle just to re-educate ourselves about our customer requirements, vendor capabilities and issues and so many other things. But this transition actually resulted in us moving from a one man show into a 'team' approach. We built a team and dependence on one person is much reduced today. We also focused on more documentation, systems and processes at this stage.
5. What plans do you have for the future for your company?
Shibani: We have many dreams - of them one is that of having our brand recognized in the form of retail stores of our own. The other picture is to take our gifts offerings to foreign shores.
6. If you had to do it all over again, what would you differently?Shibani: We had very high costs when we started up - manpower, office, etc. I would now start like a garage operation if I had to restart. I would also focus, focus and focus from day one.
7. What drives you to work everyday?
Shibani: The thought that there is so much more to do, that we have only scratched the surface. The fact that I have something new to learn every day some new idea to pursue.
8. What three things would you advise aspiring women entrepreneurs?
Shibani:
Be courageous. Do not worry about the fact that you are a woman and chances are that others will not worry about it either. Very often the problem is not external if it's not internal.
Find and use external support. Today women entrepreneurs have a lot of external support- special funds, working capital loans, network groups- find them & use them well. Am not exactly aware of which ones, but banks like SIDBI, women's cooperative banks are women friendly. To be honest I have not had to find one myself- but they are there- on the net/banking community/funding groups.
Manage your guilt well. If you also have a family to look after. Guilt is not good for you/your family/your business. You might as well realize that this is what you love to do and your family might as well realize this too! Honesty is the best policy here in more ways than one!
9. What books or events have inspired you the most?Shibani:So many books! From Ayn Rand (We the living, The Fountainhead) at 16, to Herman Miller (Siddhart) at 20 to Celestine Prophecy (colin wilson?) to Conversations with God recently.
I was also influenced by books like All Paths Lead To Gold and Winning by Jack Welch.
On events - I did a course in Vipassana meditation in the mountains of Igatpuri- this is a 10 day silent course- and it changed my life. It taught me to view life in perspective- and the fact that mind control is the most important control to have. The mind must not dictate you, you must control your mind.
Also every time I see street children in India, I feel compelled to do something. Anything to alleviate the suffering that so much of mankind seems to have. I feel outraged that so little is done and about the unfairness of it all.
I feel sad when I see beautiful, skilled products, sold in a shabby way, at shabby prices and in a shabby manner. I feel bad that the artist who created such a beautiful product is not getting his/her due- neither price nor recognition. I just feel that it's all a criminal waste.
10. What advice would you have for aspiring entrepreneurs in general, and women entrepreneurs specifically?
Shibani:
Out of 10 start up businesses only 3/4 survive. The trick is to persevere and to believe in your picture.
Being at the right time and at the right place is important when you start- a good idea is not enough- a hard look at viability is a must.
Being an entrepreneur is very tough- it's even tougher if you are trying to do something different/not done before/charting a different path. I would advise all young people trying to start a business to go in with their eyes open, but also with dreams in their mind.
For women I would say- your job is even tougher- like it or not, the family looks at you to keep the home fires running-but the flip side is that you may not have to be the bread earner! Enjoy this freedom and do something that you truly want to do. This is not to say that your success is not important- it is just as important, but you may have the option to choose!
For women I would also say, that consider the logistics of your life as a serious matter - like how far is your office from home? How much support do you have (family and otherwise), good help at home!!! These are small, practical and according to me imperative tips for the women entrepreneur. I could never have run Craftsbridge, if these logistics were not in my favor.
KK: Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into answering this long list of questions! Would it be OK, if readers of this blog wanted to get in touch with you?
Friday, July 11, 2008
The dream of change
Courtesy: Financial Express
Insurance, to most amongst us, would have seemed extremely complicated at some point in time. Now imagine explaining health insurance to, say, your vegetable vendor or maidservant who in most likelihood is also educationally deprived. Explaining the premiums and the benefits would still be relatively easier a task. Try convincing them to buy one. Think it would be difficult? Not for Mukti Bosco who has convinced 45,000 people to insure their health for less than a rupee a day. The promise: a health cover of Rs 20,000 for a family of five and personal accident benefits of Rs 25,000 each on member and spouse. If plans go well she would have extended insurance cover to 50,000 families by the end of the year. Commendable? But success hasn’t come easy to her. It took her two years to design a plan for them. The product, Parivar Suraksha Bima (Family Insurance Scheme), is recognised as the first of its kind by USAID and ILO. What makes it revolutionary is the state of healthcare in India. Nearly 90% of India’s population does not have any access to healthcare financing. 77% amongst them struggle to survive just above the inefficient measure called ‘poverty line’. Not to forget our rural brethren. Believe the estimates if you will — just 2% of them are insured. For a daily wage earner who earns just enough to survive the day, it is a difficult task to save. According to the World Bank, about one fourth of hospitalised Indians fall below the poverty line as a direct result of the hospital expenses. “It’s not just about creating awareness. It’s rather about creating an association. The community has to begin to trust you. Life insurance is simpler, micro health insurance far more complex,” says Bosco, the founder of Healing Fields Foundation. For a service fee of Rs 101 per policy, the Foundation is indeed doing credible work. “We wanted a revenue generation model that could make the project sustainable,” she reasons with complete conviction.
The concept of a social entrepreneur has been afloat in the US for a long time now. In India too it has been around for a while now. Dr Verghese Kurien (Amul) and Ela Bhatt (Sewa) can well be called the pioneers in India. They tested the waters way back in the early 1970s. “Eight years ago a mention of ‘social entrepreneur’ only drew blank stares. Today it has become a brand wagon that people want to ride, whether they are really social entrepreneurs or not,” says Sohini Bhattacharya, director, South Asia Partnerships, Ashoka Innovators for the Public. Ashoka, a global association of social entrepreneurs, has since 1981 encouraged over 1,800 entrepreneurs through fellowships. “Entrepreneurship has new frontiers of possibility. And this is just one of them,” feels Sushmita Ghosh. She leads the Global Academy of Social Entrepreneurs and is also the chairperson of Changemakers.net. “This is an extremely timely phenomenon for the business and the social sector to look at. Given the increasing potential of India in the global eyes, definitely,” Ghosh adds.
It is equally imperative to consider the different connotations of entrepreneurship. “At Ashoka we don’t just consider revenue models — we look at a range of systemic efforts for social change. Things are changing, but funding still remains a problem. We need to work closely with the mainstream financial sector. Until that happens, the challenge beckons,” says Sohini Bhattacharya, director, South Asia Partnerships, Ashoka Innovators for the Public.
Bosco is not the only one to subscribe to the philosophy of social entrepreneurship. There are several others who share her desire to bring change…they have the vision and also the entrepreneurial skills to achieve it. Like craft activist and industrial designer Neelam Chhiber. More than a decade back, in 1994, she decided to tap natural fibre crafts by setting up Industree. The turnover in the first year was non-existent and the labour largely made of unpaid voluntary workers. Today its turnover has touched Rs 40 million. Recently it turned down retail giant Ikea’s offer due to production issues. “We realised that our small business would have turned into a large scale factory in Bangalore city. This did not gel with our philosophy. We started to promote rural livelihood and wanted to continue doing it,” says Chhiber. The enterprise has tested Chhiber’s balancing skills a number of times — whether to have the product at 100% mark up price or more; whether to globalise completely or also cater to the booming domestic market; how to sell the products. “Typically, craft shops had the reputation of being government funded, with products collecting dust on shelves. By attracting contemporary furniture shoppers, we felt that we could catch clients in a different frame of mind and this selling strategy proved to be successful. And selling goods is an expensive venture. So, currently we sell our products in our own shops and also in partnership with an additional 50 retail points,” she adds. The perk of her job: to feel the difference created to 5,000 lives across India — right from Tamil Nadu to Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. Considering that artisans and craftspeople constitute the second largest employment group in India, Chhiber’s step comes across as extremely commendable.
Sumita Ghose has chosen a similar area of work but in a different place — largely western Rajasthan. Rangsutra, her project, is an extremely thought-provoking one. After lot of deliberation on different organisational models — cooperative, society, charitable trust, company — she decided to settle for the company format. And to ensure that the craftspeople get a substantial part of the wealth they create, she decided to make them shareholders. “The idea was to build up social capital with economic viability,” she says adding, “one can adopt a balanced approach. Empowerment of artisans and increase in sales can coexist.” Three-year-old Rangsutra has been able to achieve a three crore turnover — a gradual approach to Ghose’s 10-year vision which is to have at least 1,00,000 artisans as shareholders.
Anita Ahuja’s field of work is absolutely different from Ghose’s and Chhiber’s. She probably is one person in the capital who can afford not to feel guilty about indispensable plastic (the ‘menace’). Consider this: According to a study, recently released by the Canadian International Development Authority, New Delhi is imbued with solid waste. Of the 4,000-odd tonnes of waste, which the capital generates everyday, nearly 60 ton comprises plastic. To some extent Ahuja has been able to tame the plastic. Her entrepreneurial model, Conserve, is working with nearly 300 rag pickers to convert waste plastic into a range of commercially successful products — umbrellas, diaries, bags, raincoats... supplied to the likes of Benetton and Unicef. She noticed how the rag pickers were reduced to a mere footnote in the entire system and decided to mainstream them. The least her effort has done is to restore dignity to their job. The rag pickers now proudly take back a salary of Rs 3,000 every month. She even helps the rag pickers set up their own fabrication groups that use her patented technology to make plastic sheets. “Training them wasn’t an easy task,” she says. When she found that most rag pickers couldn’t identify colours, she used Bollywood to bridge the gap. So, Pink became Kareena and Shah Rukh became black. Five successful years of operation have made Conserve a social brand now. How successful exactly you may ask. Well, the brand that barely managed a breakeven in its first year of operation, registered a turnover of Rs 1.5 crore in the last fiscal.
Here are people who did not wait for things to change on their own. They knew that would not happen ever — someone had to take the initiative to change them. And they decided to become that ‘someone’. Chetna Gala Sinha, the founder of Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank is mention worthy in the same breath. Social Entrepreneur ‘07 finalist for Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, Sinha’s is an interesting story. Reserve Bank of India rejected her application for a bank because there were more thumb impressions than signatures on the proposal note. The rural women, determined, attended adult literacy classes and approached the chief general manager soon after. They were technically literate now. But they drew their real confidence from their level of social intelligence: “we can calculate the interest for any amount without using a calculator. Can any of your employees do that?” Gala-Sinha, an economist-activist herself, humbly shares the Bank’s genesis. “You need to understand how it works at the grassroots. Why do people approach moneylenders but not banks despite the significant difference in the rates of interest? We tried to understand what they really needed and took banking to their doorstep. These people are bankable too. We gave loans to street vendors for sun umbrellas when we found that due to sunstroke they were losing their daily income,”she adds. In less than 10 years the Bank has been able to earn 72,000 women clients. It has four branches in Satara district (Maharashtra) alone. Credit Gala-Sinha, also for setting up Udyogini, a rural business school for women. “We learn from these women. They tell us what they need…like when they told us that selling prepaid vouchers for cell phones can help them earn, we taught them to do that,” she says. In the last fiscal, it posted net profits of Rs 2,31,000 and reported a loan recovery rate of 97%.
Vineet Rai couldn’t have agreed more. He found his calling in helping rural innovators set up their enterprise. That led to the creation of Aavishkaar India, a social micro venture capital fund. “The banks weren’t interested in giving loans to them because they found it too risky. But there was definitely a need, and a market. And I don’t see any problem with the for-profit format,” says Rai. Eight of the 14 investments he has made so far are making profit.
However, the above instances are in no way an attempt to be hypercritical about NGOs. They too have managed to sustain themselves economically. Like the Sesame Workshop of the Galli Galli Sim Sim fame (the multi platform education initiative.) “We have been non-profit for 40 years in the US and in India too we run on the same format. “We primarily sustain ourselves through philanthropic grants, corporate social responsibility funds, donations, licensing of our products across toys, publishing, home videos, broadcast fees, content development and training,” says Sashwati Banerjee, executive director, Sesame Workshop India. Sustainability, she feels, is not just about being economically viable. It is defined by capacities we build for the development process to continue.”
Insurance, to most amongst us, would have seemed extremely complicated at some point in time. Now imagine explaining health insurance to, say, your vegetable vendor or maidservant who in most likelihood is also educationally deprived. Explaining the premiums and the benefits would still be relatively easier a task. Try convincing them to buy one. Think it would be difficult? Not for Mukti Bosco who has convinced 45,000 people to insure their health for less than a rupee a day. The promise: a health cover of Rs 20,000 for a family of five and personal accident benefits of Rs 25,000 each on member and spouse. If plans go well she would have extended insurance cover to 50,000 families by the end of the year. Commendable? But success hasn’t come easy to her. It took her two years to design a plan for them. The product, Parivar Suraksha Bima (Family Insurance Scheme), is recognised as the first of its kind by USAID and ILO. What makes it revolutionary is the state of healthcare in India. Nearly 90% of India’s population does not have any access to healthcare financing. 77% amongst them struggle to survive just above the inefficient measure called ‘poverty line’. Not to forget our rural brethren. Believe the estimates if you will — just 2% of them are insured. For a daily wage earner who earns just enough to survive the day, it is a difficult task to save. According to the World Bank, about one fourth of hospitalised Indians fall below the poverty line as a direct result of the hospital expenses. “It’s not just about creating awareness. It’s rather about creating an association. The community has to begin to trust you. Life insurance is simpler, micro health insurance far more complex,” says Bosco, the founder of Healing Fields Foundation. For a service fee of Rs 101 per policy, the Foundation is indeed doing credible work. “We wanted a revenue generation model that could make the project sustainable,” she reasons with complete conviction.
The concept of a social entrepreneur has been afloat in the US for a long time now. In India too it has been around for a while now. Dr Verghese Kurien (Amul) and Ela Bhatt (Sewa) can well be called the pioneers in India. They tested the waters way back in the early 1970s. “Eight years ago a mention of ‘social entrepreneur’ only drew blank stares. Today it has become a brand wagon that people want to ride, whether they are really social entrepreneurs or not,” says Sohini Bhattacharya, director, South Asia Partnerships, Ashoka Innovators for the Public. Ashoka, a global association of social entrepreneurs, has since 1981 encouraged over 1,800 entrepreneurs through fellowships. “Entrepreneurship has new frontiers of possibility. And this is just one of them,” feels Sushmita Ghosh. She leads the Global Academy of Social Entrepreneurs and is also the chairperson of Changemakers.net. “This is an extremely timely phenomenon for the business and the social sector to look at. Given the increasing potential of India in the global eyes, definitely,” Ghosh adds.
It is equally imperative to consider the different connotations of entrepreneurship. “At Ashoka we don’t just consider revenue models — we look at a range of systemic efforts for social change. Things are changing, but funding still remains a problem. We need to work closely with the mainstream financial sector. Until that happens, the challenge beckons,” says Sohini Bhattacharya, director, South Asia Partnerships, Ashoka Innovators for the Public.
Bosco is not the only one to subscribe to the philosophy of social entrepreneurship. There are several others who share her desire to bring change…they have the vision and also the entrepreneurial skills to achieve it. Like craft activist and industrial designer Neelam Chhiber. More than a decade back, in 1994, she decided to tap natural fibre crafts by setting up Industree. The turnover in the first year was non-existent and the labour largely made of unpaid voluntary workers. Today its turnover has touched Rs 40 million. Recently it turned down retail giant Ikea’s offer due to production issues. “We realised that our small business would have turned into a large scale factory in Bangalore city. This did not gel with our philosophy. We started to promote rural livelihood and wanted to continue doing it,” says Chhiber. The enterprise has tested Chhiber’s balancing skills a number of times — whether to have the product at 100% mark up price or more; whether to globalise completely or also cater to the booming domestic market; how to sell the products. “Typically, craft shops had the reputation of being government funded, with products collecting dust on shelves. By attracting contemporary furniture shoppers, we felt that we could catch clients in a different frame of mind and this selling strategy proved to be successful. And selling goods is an expensive venture. So, currently we sell our products in our own shops and also in partnership with an additional 50 retail points,” she adds. The perk of her job: to feel the difference created to 5,000 lives across India — right from Tamil Nadu to Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. Considering that artisans and craftspeople constitute the second largest employment group in India, Chhiber’s step comes across as extremely commendable.
Sumita Ghose has chosen a similar area of work but in a different place — largely western Rajasthan. Rangsutra, her project, is an extremely thought-provoking one. After lot of deliberation on different organisational models — cooperative, society, charitable trust, company — she decided to settle for the company format. And to ensure that the craftspeople get a substantial part of the wealth they create, she decided to make them shareholders. “The idea was to build up social capital with economic viability,” she says adding, “one can adopt a balanced approach. Empowerment of artisans and increase in sales can coexist.” Three-year-old Rangsutra has been able to achieve a three crore turnover — a gradual approach to Ghose’s 10-year vision which is to have at least 1,00,000 artisans as shareholders.
Anita Ahuja’s field of work is absolutely different from Ghose’s and Chhiber’s. She probably is one person in the capital who can afford not to feel guilty about indispensable plastic (the ‘menace’). Consider this: According to a study, recently released by the Canadian International Development Authority, New Delhi is imbued with solid waste. Of the 4,000-odd tonnes of waste, which the capital generates everyday, nearly 60 ton comprises plastic. To some extent Ahuja has been able to tame the plastic. Her entrepreneurial model, Conserve, is working with nearly 300 rag pickers to convert waste plastic into a range of commercially successful products — umbrellas, diaries, bags, raincoats... supplied to the likes of Benetton and Unicef. She noticed how the rag pickers were reduced to a mere footnote in the entire system and decided to mainstream them. The least her effort has done is to restore dignity to their job. The rag pickers now proudly take back a salary of Rs 3,000 every month. She even helps the rag pickers set up their own fabrication groups that use her patented technology to make plastic sheets. “Training them wasn’t an easy task,” she says. When she found that most rag pickers couldn’t identify colours, she used Bollywood to bridge the gap. So, Pink became Kareena and Shah Rukh became black. Five successful years of operation have made Conserve a social brand now. How successful exactly you may ask. Well, the brand that barely managed a breakeven in its first year of operation, registered a turnover of Rs 1.5 crore in the last fiscal.
Here are people who did not wait for things to change on their own. They knew that would not happen ever — someone had to take the initiative to change them. And they decided to become that ‘someone’. Chetna Gala Sinha, the founder of Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank is mention worthy in the same breath. Social Entrepreneur ‘07 finalist for Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, Sinha’s is an interesting story. Reserve Bank of India rejected her application for a bank because there were more thumb impressions than signatures on the proposal note. The rural women, determined, attended adult literacy classes and approached the chief general manager soon after. They were technically literate now. But they drew their real confidence from their level of social intelligence: “we can calculate the interest for any amount without using a calculator. Can any of your employees do that?” Gala-Sinha, an economist-activist herself, humbly shares the Bank’s genesis. “You need to understand how it works at the grassroots. Why do people approach moneylenders but not banks despite the significant difference in the rates of interest? We tried to understand what they really needed and took banking to their doorstep. These people are bankable too. We gave loans to street vendors for sun umbrellas when we found that due to sunstroke they were losing their daily income,”she adds. In less than 10 years the Bank has been able to earn 72,000 women clients. It has four branches in Satara district (Maharashtra) alone. Credit Gala-Sinha, also for setting up Udyogini, a rural business school for women. “We learn from these women. They tell us what they need…like when they told us that selling prepaid vouchers for cell phones can help them earn, we taught them to do that,” she says. In the last fiscal, it posted net profits of Rs 2,31,000 and reported a loan recovery rate of 97%.
Vineet Rai couldn’t have agreed more. He found his calling in helping rural innovators set up their enterprise. That led to the creation of Aavishkaar India, a social micro venture capital fund. “The banks weren’t interested in giving loans to them because they found it too risky. But there was definitely a need, and a market. And I don’t see any problem with the for-profit format,” says Rai. Eight of the 14 investments he has made so far are making profit.
However, the above instances are in no way an attempt to be hypercritical about NGOs. They too have managed to sustain themselves economically. Like the Sesame Workshop of the Galli Galli Sim Sim fame (the multi platform education initiative.) “We have been non-profit for 40 years in the US and in India too we run on the same format. “We primarily sustain ourselves through philanthropic grants, corporate social responsibility funds, donations, licensing of our products across toys, publishing, home videos, broadcast fees, content development and training,” says Sashwati Banerjee, executive director, Sesame Workshop India. Sustainability, she feels, is not just about being economically viable. It is defined by capacities we build for the development process to continue.”
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Startup Saturday_12_07_08
The schedule of July edition of Startup Saturday is as follows:
Date: July 12th, 2008 (Saturday)
Time: 10:30 AM - 1 PM
Venue: Indian Institute of BangaloreThe agenda for the meet is as follows
10:30 AM - 11 AM : *DEMO* by Yusuf Motiwala on Tring Me Enterprise Solutions
11 AM -12 pm: *TALK* by Bharti Jacob of Seedfund
12 PM - 1 PM: Networking with Bharti Jacob
Its is a free event hosted by NSRCEL, IIMPlease register at http://startupsaturday.in/index.php?title=Registration
Date: July 12th, 2008 (Saturday)
Time: 10:30 AM - 1 PM
Venue: Indian Institute of BangaloreThe agenda for the meet is as follows
10:30 AM - 11 AM : *DEMO* by Yusuf Motiwala on Tring Me Enterprise Solutions
11 AM -12 pm: *TALK* by Bharti Jacob of Seedfund
12 PM - 1 PM: Networking with Bharti Jacob
Its is a free event hosted by NSRCEL, IIMPlease register at http://startupsaturday.in/index.php?title=Registration
No Clan, No Ilk, No Limits
Entrepreneurship has become viral now a days. I see no limits with the industry, space or scale.
I am talking about today's Indian youth who dont flaunt away their enterprises but just run behind their passion. The Unstoppable.
Here are a few of them:
Name: Galeej Gurus
Space: Music - Concerts
The team comprises of folks from 21 year old to 28 year old Ananth Menon. They are a team of five who came together to start Galeej Gurus in 2000. Now this team has a bag of achievements which includes a performance at Dubai Desert Rock Festival.
Achievements: > Playing alongside the Rasmus in 2005 > Opening for Deep Purple concert in 2006 > Headlining the popular national talent hunt campus Rock Idols South zone in 2006 and 2007........phew you got to google to know the rest of their acievements.
Name: Abhishek Mazumdar
Space: Arts - Theatre
Here is our 27 year old hero who finished his engineering and MBA and started discovering himself in theatre after achieving financial independence.
Achievements: > In 2006, he won the Charles Wallace Fellowship and continued to learn more about theatre and performing arts from then on...
Name: Vishal Talreja
Space: NGO - Empowering Underprevileged children
Vishal is 29 who set his foot as a social entrepreneur as the managing trustee of Drea a Dream (DAD). He gave up a lucrative job when he was 24 and involved himself in the social sector.
Achievements: > Regional finalists in the India NGO Awards 2007 > Received Ashoka Fellowship.
Courtesy: India Today
I am talking about today's Indian youth who dont flaunt away their enterprises but just run behind their passion. The Unstoppable.
Here are a few of them:
Name: Galeej Gurus
Space: Music - Concerts
The team comprises of folks from 21 year old to 28 year old Ananth Menon. They are a team of five who came together to start Galeej Gurus in 2000. Now this team has a bag of achievements which includes a performance at Dubai Desert Rock Festival.
Achievements: > Playing alongside the Rasmus in 2005 > Opening for Deep Purple concert in 2006 > Headlining the popular national talent hunt campus Rock Idols South zone in 2006 and 2007........phew you got to google to know the rest of their acievements.
Name: Abhishek Mazumdar
Space: Arts - Theatre
Here is our 27 year old hero who finished his engineering and MBA and started discovering himself in theatre after achieving financial independence.
Achievements: > In 2006, he won the Charles Wallace Fellowship and continued to learn more about theatre and performing arts from then on...
Name: Vishal Talreja
Space: NGO - Empowering Underprevileged children
Vishal is 29 who set his foot as a social entrepreneur as the managing trustee of Drea a Dream (DAD). He gave up a lucrative job when he was 24 and involved himself in the social sector.
Achievements: > Regional finalists in the India NGO Awards 2007 > Received Ashoka Fellowship.
Courtesy: India Today
Monday, July 7, 2008
Interview with Vinod Dham, father of the Pentium, on a life in technology and venture investing
Courtesy: Venture Beat
Dean Takahashi July 3rd, 2008
Vinod Dham has lived the quintessential Silicon Valley rags to riches immigrant story. Born in Pune, India, he came to the U.S. in 1975 as an engineering student with just $8 in his pocket. He became a chip engineer and helped invent Intel’s first flash memory chip. He went on to manage Intel’s microprocessor projects, including the breakaway Pentium chip that debuted in 1993 and cemented the company’s position as the world’s biggest chip maker. He handled the bad press on the Pentium’s bug and later joined Intel rivals NexGen and Advanced Micro Devices. He became the CEO of Silicon Spice, which he sold to Broadcom for $1.2 billion in 2000. Then he became a venture capitalist, first at NewPath Ventures and now at NEA-IndoUS Ventures, where his aim is to give something back to his native India.
VB: What inspired you get into electronics when you were growing up in India?
VD: When I graduated in 1971, at 21, I ended up at the only semiconductor company that existed in India. It was a start-up that spun out of Teradyne Semiconductor and it happened to be in New Delhi. My home was seven kilometers away. It was perfect for me to live at home with my parents and work. It wasn’t until I worked at this company that my love for semiconductors bloomed. I found it to be a very exciting field because it brought in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and mechanical drawing. I moved to the U.S. and studied for a master’s degree in solid-state sciences at the University of Cincinnati, where I studied silicon germanium and compound transistors. I was doing that back in 1975.
VB: You came with very little money?
VD: I came with $8. In the 1970s, the government of India had little money to spare for foreign travel. They gave $8 to foreign tourists. As a student, I could get an additional $20. You had to go to the reserve bank of India. You had to apply. But it was such a corrupt country at the time; you had to bribe somebody to get the $20. I refused to do that. I said I’ll just go with $8.
VB: How did you get off the ground in the U.S. with just $8?
VD: That was the most amazing part. I kept it with me. There were many distractions. Even on the plane, they would sell cartons of cigarettes. People used to smoke. I used to smoke. The carton cost about as much as I had. The hostess offered me just one. I said I could live without smoking for a day. I went to the foreign student office. There was a lady named Mary Campbell. She had been corresponding with me for a year. She asked what she could do for me. I asked about my research assistant job. That was supposed to pay $325. She said I don’t get that money until I did a month of work. I told her I needed $75 to get into an efficiency and $15 for health insurance. I needed $90 to survive, and I needed more for food. She went to a room and came back with $125 in cash. She said it was a distress fund. I paid it back at zero percent interest at about $25 a month. She saved my butt.
VB: You got work in semiconductors after school?
VD: I went to work for NCR. I had some experience from India. I worked on non-volatile memory (which stores data when the power is off). I had a mentor there, Murray Trudel, who was my boss, my friend. I was like the apprentice. We created some fundamental work. He sent me to present a paper, which was where I met Bill Johnson, a director at Intel. He stole me away to work at Intel. I worked with Stefan Lai and a new college grad from Berkeley. The three of us invented Intel’s flash memory business.
VB: How big is that business now?
VD: It’s billions of dollars. I remember at the beginning I had a guy who was telling me to justify my existence. We had to make projections of the revenue we would generate. We were so wrong it’s embarrassing to talk about it. We never envisioned this whole market that has come about with memory in cell phones. We were only looking to replace an existing chip. That’s the way we thought. It was a linear extension. You don’t think about the things that can be created with it.
VB: Tell us how you became the father of the Pentium?
VD: I left R&D to get involved in Intel’s business with customers. I wanted to be a general manager instead of staying with a white coat in a lab. My first foray there was working on the 386 microprocessor. It was on its 15th or so rev through the factory. A guy named Gene Hill used to run it. They didn’t know why the yield was half a chip per wafer. (Normally, it’s around 100 good chips per wafer). Intel had a lot of pressure because Motorola had its 32-bit chip out already. I got into a task force with Craig Barrett. [Intel co-founder] Gordon Moore got it together because this was a disaster for the company. I was a manufacturing technologist, not a chip designer. We found that a coupling in the chip was not properly designed. Within nine months, we got to 21 chips per wafer. That was a big boost for me within Intel.
In return for doing that, they let me learn about microprocessors. I started with the new versions of the 386. Then we moved on to 486s. I had to try to build a multi-billion dollar business. Once we succeeded, Andy Grove asked me to do the next one, Pentium. I got associated with this chip.
VB: It was the breakaway chip for Intel?
VD: It was big. But it caught attention because it was the chip that used different branding instead of the numbers. Pentium was where we wanted to breakaway from the crowd: Sun Microsystems and MIPS Computer and Motorola. The pressure was enormous.
VB: There was a bug that led to embarrassment for Intel and a $425 million write-off. What did you take away from the Pentium bug experience?
VD: The reality never really got told. In my mind, when you are in that position of responsibility, then you have to acknowledge it. There was a paranoia inside that this admission would cause the company to fold and disappear. That was blown way out of proportion. If you own 80 percent of the market, you have to be honest and acknowledge it.
VB: You left Intel in 1995 after 16 years there. Was it a tough decision?VD: One of the best decisions I ever made was joining Intel. And the next-best decision was to leave Intel. This entire world of venture capital that I am now in – I didn’t know it. You build something when everything is stacked up against you. It’s not the way life is inside a big company. I would have never experienced this start-up life and it is far more fulfilling and learning.
VB: Then you went to the microprocessor start-up NexGen and they got acquired by Advanced Micro Devices.
VD: I knew nothing about the start-up. I’m embarrassed to say I went to NexGen without doing any due diligence. Within a month, I found the company was broken. They would have never gotten through it if I hadn’t told them they needed to put an [Intel-compatible data pathway] on the chip. AMD CEO Jerry Sanders told me many times that he would never have bought that company (for $800 million in 1995) if it had proprietary technologies. That’s what NexGen was doing when I went there. They would have continued to do it. I told Mike Yamamura, the NexGen engineering head, that it was a disaster and they had to put a Pentium bus on it. Mike’s first reaction was: impossible. That very day, he came back in the evening and said he thought we could do it with just 4 percent penalty on performance. For me, AMD was a total culture shock. It was run by someone who ruled it absolutely. He loved and hated that I challenged him all the time. He was surrounded by yes men. I knew I would not last in the AMD culture. It was very different from Intel.
VB: It had to be exhilarating to grow it and sell Silicon Spice to Broadcom for $1.2 billion in stock.
VD: It was a blessing. In normal times, it would have been hard to sell the company for $120 million. We rode the wave. I don’t want to come across as some smart ass guy who knew how to do a $1.2 billion start-up. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you are unlucky, like with the Pentium bug.
VB: You got your shot at venture capital after that?
VD: Yes, thanks to Dick Kramlich and Mark Perry at New Enterprise Associates. They wrote the first check for Silicon Spice. We started NewPath Ventures. I wanted to do something in venture capital and something in India. It was payback time for me. India in 2001 wasn’t on the map. People were afraid to set up in India, so all of my investments at NewPath were in companies set up here that could utilize labor in India. India had capital efficiency. After the dotcom crash, it was clear you couldn’t sell companies for $1.2 billion anymore. It will be sold for $100 million or $200 million. You had to reduce the capital going into the startup to get a healthy return. That was why we went to India.
VB: Were you able to extract your own holdings from Silicon Spice and put it directly into NewPath?
VD: No. I rode it enough to lead a comfortable life but nowhere near close to what could have happened. As a principal at Broadcom, I could only trade during certain windows and only so much. I felt blessed to get what I did. You only get in life what is due to you.
VB: So NewPath Ventures was raised from a group of investors?
VD: I put a little of my own money but it was mostly outside. I also put some of my own money into the follow-up fund, NEA-IndoUS Ventures.
VB: NewPath Ventures invested only in India-related startups?
VD: All of the companies had sales and marketing in the U.S. and engineering in India. One company, Telsima, also does sales and marketing India because it is a WiMax company and its market is in India. Insilica, a chip design play, has markets around the world but it has engineering in Bangalore. The same thing with Nevis Networks. The chip design and networking software is done in India and the marketing here. It was more of an incubator with a few big plays with a $130 million fund. But we are doing subsequent rounds with a lot of capital that came from other VC firms.
VB: And how is NEA-IndoUS Ventures different?
VD: It is my first true VC fund where the money has not come from people I knew as VCs. It has come from limited partners. It’s a $189 million fund. I felt with this one that India was ready to do companies based in India. I needed people who could be in India. The new name reflects the new partners and the change. NEA wanted to partner with us. We can do big bulky investments, dubbed venture growth equity. We have invested in 16 companies already and next year we will hopefully go for a new fund.
VB: How is your scorecard?
VD: The exits aren’t what they used to be. It’s not three or four years and is more like seven or eight years. Through the rounds of funding, we can judge the valuations of the companies and they are looking healthy.
VB: You had a setback with Montalvo Systems, the company that tried to take on Intel. (see our story on Montalvo).
VD: It’s OK. The rule of thumb in the VC world is that you have to do dozens of companies to get one or two right. We know that is going to happen and it was a good attempt.
VB: For the future, you expect cell phones will be the engine of the future, not PCs?
VD: Absolutely. I’ve had that view for many years and I’m glad to see that Intel has that view now. Paul Otellini has said that and it’s a major acknowledgment.
VB: What sort of usage of cell phones will happen?
VD: There is nothing except maybe Excel spreadsheets that you can’t do on a cell phone. You can do mails, SMS, MMS. You can do photo sharing. You can find the nearest restaurant. You can’t do the latter on a laptop. It’s a far richer medium. You will see a lot of big screens in the home and a cell phone won’t compete with that. But the ubiquitous device that you won’t leave home without is the cell phone. In India, when they’re fishing, they call back and say how many pounds of fish they caught and when they will be back. That creates a real-time market with buyers.
VB: What’s your view of the venture business?
VD: I think it’s one of the most exciting businesses in the world. You can nurture entrepreneurs, invest, and make a difference in areas like energy and biotech. Semiconductors is running out of steam and nanotechnology has backfired. It hasn’t produced anything worthwhile. India, China and emerging nations will have tremendous opportunities to create applications and services to enable new technologies and their populations will benefit from that.
VB: Your son went to India. That’s full circle, right?
VD: Yes. Ankush Dham. He’s a venture capitalist. He’s working for Reliance Technology Ventures. He has been there almost a year. It’s not an easy place to live but he wanted to experience it. I would come home from these trips and say it’s not companies being built, but a country being built. That’s a once in a lifetime phenomenon. Everywhere you look, something is under construction. He wanted to be part of that. Life is tough and demanding there. Kids who grow up in a bubble life don’t realize what it’s like. My youngest son, Rajeev, is an analyst at Goldman Sachs and next year he will join Silver Lake Partners in private equity work.
VB: And you have strong feelings about the immigration laws that enabled you to come here?
VD: India and the U.S. should look at each other as natural allies. They’re democracies that depend on each other for geopolitical safety and the talent both need to continue to innovate and grow. There aren’t enough students going into engineering here. Ultimately, having a good relationship with a country like India is a win-win. It shouldn’t be at the expense of people here.
VB: Well, it’s your fault and the Pentium’s fault that everybody wants to play Guitar Hero now instead of study math.
VD: We had no clue that it would lead to that and the Internet and this whole idea of Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat.” There was no way to let the intelligence flow back and forth across the world so easily. Now it is possible.
Dean Takahashi July 3rd, 2008
Vinod Dham has lived the quintessential Silicon Valley rags to riches immigrant story. Born in Pune, India, he came to the U.S. in 1975 as an engineering student with just $8 in his pocket. He became a chip engineer and helped invent Intel’s first flash memory chip. He went on to manage Intel’s microprocessor projects, including the breakaway Pentium chip that debuted in 1993 and cemented the company’s position as the world’s biggest chip maker. He handled the bad press on the Pentium’s bug and later joined Intel rivals NexGen and Advanced Micro Devices. He became the CEO of Silicon Spice, which he sold to Broadcom for $1.2 billion in 2000. Then he became a venture capitalist, first at NewPath Ventures and now at NEA-IndoUS Ventures, where his aim is to give something back to his native India.
VB: What inspired you get into electronics when you were growing up in India?
VD: When I graduated in 1971, at 21, I ended up at the only semiconductor company that existed in India. It was a start-up that spun out of Teradyne Semiconductor and it happened to be in New Delhi. My home was seven kilometers away. It was perfect for me to live at home with my parents and work. It wasn’t until I worked at this company that my love for semiconductors bloomed. I found it to be a very exciting field because it brought in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and mechanical drawing. I moved to the U.S. and studied for a master’s degree in solid-state sciences at the University of Cincinnati, where I studied silicon germanium and compound transistors. I was doing that back in 1975.
VB: You came with very little money?
VD: I came with $8. In the 1970s, the government of India had little money to spare for foreign travel. They gave $8 to foreign tourists. As a student, I could get an additional $20. You had to go to the reserve bank of India. You had to apply. But it was such a corrupt country at the time; you had to bribe somebody to get the $20. I refused to do that. I said I’ll just go with $8.
VB: How did you get off the ground in the U.S. with just $8?
VD: That was the most amazing part. I kept it with me. There were many distractions. Even on the plane, they would sell cartons of cigarettes. People used to smoke. I used to smoke. The carton cost about as much as I had. The hostess offered me just one. I said I could live without smoking for a day. I went to the foreign student office. There was a lady named Mary Campbell. She had been corresponding with me for a year. She asked what she could do for me. I asked about my research assistant job. That was supposed to pay $325. She said I don’t get that money until I did a month of work. I told her I needed $75 to get into an efficiency and $15 for health insurance. I needed $90 to survive, and I needed more for food. She went to a room and came back with $125 in cash. She said it was a distress fund. I paid it back at zero percent interest at about $25 a month. She saved my butt.
VB: You got work in semiconductors after school?
VD: I went to work for NCR. I had some experience from India. I worked on non-volatile memory (which stores data when the power is off). I had a mentor there, Murray Trudel, who was my boss, my friend. I was like the apprentice. We created some fundamental work. He sent me to present a paper, which was where I met Bill Johnson, a director at Intel. He stole me away to work at Intel. I worked with Stefan Lai and a new college grad from Berkeley. The three of us invented Intel’s flash memory business.
VB: How big is that business now?
VD: It’s billions of dollars. I remember at the beginning I had a guy who was telling me to justify my existence. We had to make projections of the revenue we would generate. We were so wrong it’s embarrassing to talk about it. We never envisioned this whole market that has come about with memory in cell phones. We were only looking to replace an existing chip. That’s the way we thought. It was a linear extension. You don’t think about the things that can be created with it.
VB: Tell us how you became the father of the Pentium?
VD: I left R&D to get involved in Intel’s business with customers. I wanted to be a general manager instead of staying with a white coat in a lab. My first foray there was working on the 386 microprocessor. It was on its 15th or so rev through the factory. A guy named Gene Hill used to run it. They didn’t know why the yield was half a chip per wafer. (Normally, it’s around 100 good chips per wafer). Intel had a lot of pressure because Motorola had its 32-bit chip out already. I got into a task force with Craig Barrett. [Intel co-founder] Gordon Moore got it together because this was a disaster for the company. I was a manufacturing technologist, not a chip designer. We found that a coupling in the chip was not properly designed. Within nine months, we got to 21 chips per wafer. That was a big boost for me within Intel.
In return for doing that, they let me learn about microprocessors. I started with the new versions of the 386. Then we moved on to 486s. I had to try to build a multi-billion dollar business. Once we succeeded, Andy Grove asked me to do the next one, Pentium. I got associated with this chip.
VB: It was the breakaway chip for Intel?
VD: It was big. But it caught attention because it was the chip that used different branding instead of the numbers. Pentium was where we wanted to breakaway from the crowd: Sun Microsystems and MIPS Computer and Motorola. The pressure was enormous.
VB: There was a bug that led to embarrassment for Intel and a $425 million write-off. What did you take away from the Pentium bug experience?
VD: The reality never really got told. In my mind, when you are in that position of responsibility, then you have to acknowledge it. There was a paranoia inside that this admission would cause the company to fold and disappear. That was blown way out of proportion. If you own 80 percent of the market, you have to be honest and acknowledge it.
VB: You left Intel in 1995 after 16 years there. Was it a tough decision?VD: One of the best decisions I ever made was joining Intel. And the next-best decision was to leave Intel. This entire world of venture capital that I am now in – I didn’t know it. You build something when everything is stacked up against you. It’s not the way life is inside a big company. I would have never experienced this start-up life and it is far more fulfilling and learning.
VB: Then you went to the microprocessor start-up NexGen and they got acquired by Advanced Micro Devices.
VD: I knew nothing about the start-up. I’m embarrassed to say I went to NexGen without doing any due diligence. Within a month, I found the company was broken. They would have never gotten through it if I hadn’t told them they needed to put an [Intel-compatible data pathway] on the chip. AMD CEO Jerry Sanders told me many times that he would never have bought that company (for $800 million in 1995) if it had proprietary technologies. That’s what NexGen was doing when I went there. They would have continued to do it. I told Mike Yamamura, the NexGen engineering head, that it was a disaster and they had to put a Pentium bus on it. Mike’s first reaction was: impossible. That very day, he came back in the evening and said he thought we could do it with just 4 percent penalty on performance. For me, AMD was a total culture shock. It was run by someone who ruled it absolutely. He loved and hated that I challenged him all the time. He was surrounded by yes men. I knew I would not last in the AMD culture. It was very different from Intel.
VB: It had to be exhilarating to grow it and sell Silicon Spice to Broadcom for $1.2 billion in stock.
VD: It was a blessing. In normal times, it would have been hard to sell the company for $120 million. We rode the wave. I don’t want to come across as some smart ass guy who knew how to do a $1.2 billion start-up. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you are unlucky, like with the Pentium bug.
VB: You got your shot at venture capital after that?
VD: Yes, thanks to Dick Kramlich and Mark Perry at New Enterprise Associates. They wrote the first check for Silicon Spice. We started NewPath Ventures. I wanted to do something in venture capital and something in India. It was payback time for me. India in 2001 wasn’t on the map. People were afraid to set up in India, so all of my investments at NewPath were in companies set up here that could utilize labor in India. India had capital efficiency. After the dotcom crash, it was clear you couldn’t sell companies for $1.2 billion anymore. It will be sold for $100 million or $200 million. You had to reduce the capital going into the startup to get a healthy return. That was why we went to India.
VB: Were you able to extract your own holdings from Silicon Spice and put it directly into NewPath?
VD: No. I rode it enough to lead a comfortable life but nowhere near close to what could have happened. As a principal at Broadcom, I could only trade during certain windows and only so much. I felt blessed to get what I did. You only get in life what is due to you.
VB: So NewPath Ventures was raised from a group of investors?
VD: I put a little of my own money but it was mostly outside. I also put some of my own money into the follow-up fund, NEA-IndoUS Ventures.
VB: NewPath Ventures invested only in India-related startups?
VD: All of the companies had sales and marketing in the U.S. and engineering in India. One company, Telsima, also does sales and marketing India because it is a WiMax company and its market is in India. Insilica, a chip design play, has markets around the world but it has engineering in Bangalore. The same thing with Nevis Networks. The chip design and networking software is done in India and the marketing here. It was more of an incubator with a few big plays with a $130 million fund. But we are doing subsequent rounds with a lot of capital that came from other VC firms.
VB: And how is NEA-IndoUS Ventures different?
VD: It is my first true VC fund where the money has not come from people I knew as VCs. It has come from limited partners. It’s a $189 million fund. I felt with this one that India was ready to do companies based in India. I needed people who could be in India. The new name reflects the new partners and the change. NEA wanted to partner with us. We can do big bulky investments, dubbed venture growth equity. We have invested in 16 companies already and next year we will hopefully go for a new fund.
VB: How is your scorecard?
VD: The exits aren’t what they used to be. It’s not three or four years and is more like seven or eight years. Through the rounds of funding, we can judge the valuations of the companies and they are looking healthy.
VB: You had a setback with Montalvo Systems, the company that tried to take on Intel. (see our story on Montalvo).
VD: It’s OK. The rule of thumb in the VC world is that you have to do dozens of companies to get one or two right. We know that is going to happen and it was a good attempt.
VB: For the future, you expect cell phones will be the engine of the future, not PCs?
VD: Absolutely. I’ve had that view for many years and I’m glad to see that Intel has that view now. Paul Otellini has said that and it’s a major acknowledgment.
VB: What sort of usage of cell phones will happen?
VD: There is nothing except maybe Excel spreadsheets that you can’t do on a cell phone. You can do mails, SMS, MMS. You can do photo sharing. You can find the nearest restaurant. You can’t do the latter on a laptop. It’s a far richer medium. You will see a lot of big screens in the home and a cell phone won’t compete with that. But the ubiquitous device that you won’t leave home without is the cell phone. In India, when they’re fishing, they call back and say how many pounds of fish they caught and when they will be back. That creates a real-time market with buyers.
VB: What’s your view of the venture business?
VD: I think it’s one of the most exciting businesses in the world. You can nurture entrepreneurs, invest, and make a difference in areas like energy and biotech. Semiconductors is running out of steam and nanotechnology has backfired. It hasn’t produced anything worthwhile. India, China and emerging nations will have tremendous opportunities to create applications and services to enable new technologies and their populations will benefit from that.
VB: Your son went to India. That’s full circle, right?
VD: Yes. Ankush Dham. He’s a venture capitalist. He’s working for Reliance Technology Ventures. He has been there almost a year. It’s not an easy place to live but he wanted to experience it. I would come home from these trips and say it’s not companies being built, but a country being built. That’s a once in a lifetime phenomenon. Everywhere you look, something is under construction. He wanted to be part of that. Life is tough and demanding there. Kids who grow up in a bubble life don’t realize what it’s like. My youngest son, Rajeev, is an analyst at Goldman Sachs and next year he will join Silver Lake Partners in private equity work.
VB: And you have strong feelings about the immigration laws that enabled you to come here?
VD: India and the U.S. should look at each other as natural allies. They’re democracies that depend on each other for geopolitical safety and the talent both need to continue to innovate and grow. There aren’t enough students going into engineering here. Ultimately, having a good relationship with a country like India is a win-win. It shouldn’t be at the expense of people here.
VB: Well, it’s your fault and the Pentium’s fault that everybody wants to play Guitar Hero now instead of study math.
VD: We had no clue that it would lead to that and the Internet and this whole idea of Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat.” There was no way to let the intelligence flow back and forth across the world so easily. Now it is possible.
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