Courtesy: Economic Times
Back in 2005, Ashwin Damera, a student at Harvard Business School (HBS), had a bright idea. What India’s booming e-commerce industry lacked, he believed, was a comprehensive travel portal. His idea won him second place in the classroom business plan contest; the winner of which was a proposed plus size lingerie company. He doesn’t think that one came through, but a year later Travelguru did, thanks partly to generous cheques from three unexpected investors - Damera’s own classmates. Meet Ankur Daga, one of Damera’s angel investors, and himself an entrepreneur. Fresh out of HBS he founded Angara, an online jewellery company that emerged from watching friends struggle with purchasing jewellery. Despite his family background in jewellery, Daga wasn’t expected to follow suit. “The question was always ‘You’re highly educated, shouldn’t you be working for a private equity or a consulting firm’ ?” he says. But Daga doesn’t feel deprived. “I’ve done the McKinsey stint; I wanted to start something on my own, and the earlier the better.” Daga and Damera aren’t the only ones to go against the grain. More and more Indian graduates from HBS are rocking the boat by ditching traditionally espoused careers on wall street or in consulting for entrepreneurship , ending up with cross-border businesses and bifurcated lives. They include people like Naveen Tewari (Class of 05), a McKinsey consultant who returned to India to start mKhoj, a mobile advertising network . “When I went in to HBS all I wanted to be was a partner in McKinsey . That disappeared in exactly three months,” he says. According to William Sahlman, Senior Associate Dean at HBS who teaches a second year course on Entrepreneurial Finance, after 10-15 years, almost 50% of graduates are involved in entrepreneurial settings. India has seen its share of successful HBS entrepreneurs from Ashish Dhawan of ChrysCapital to Avnish Bajaj and Suvir Sujan of Bazee (later gobbled by eBay). Lately, though, they are jumping into the water and getting their feet wet earlier, sometimes , while still in school. Kapil Vishwanathan’s was a case of campus entrepreneurship. He floated Pre-Media Global, a Chennai-based leading vendor providing content services to the US publishing industry , while still at HBS, along with his sister Kami, also an HBS alum. He’s wanted to become entrepreneur as long as he can remember. “It had to be a cross-border enterprise . It was just a question of when,” he says. He even tried to support other young business leaders pursue their entrepreneurial dreams by starting the Entrepreneurship Club at HBS. “Of course, the investing and banking clubs were larger,” he jokes. Entrepreneurship has never been more in vogue than now. Paresh Vaish, a partner with Boston Consulting group and HBS Class of ‘86, says, “The top quartile of the class got jobs in investment banking and the rest aimed for corporate jobs.” Since his time, the number of electives in entrepreneurship has gone from three to 20, and number of dedicated faculty from five to 32, the largest faculty contingent focused on entrepreneurship at any business school in the world. “In the 70s, 80s and even the 90s, HBS was all about propelling you the quickest to make partner in McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. It’s no longer the case,” says Sumeet Narang, batch of 06, who rejected an offer from Goldman to start Samara Capital, an India-focused private equity firm. For Narang, this was his second management degree; he’s also an alumnus of IIM Lucknow. His second stab at it was largely driven by the fact that HBS offers one of the most “international and diverse candidature among business schools” . With a history in private equity and investment banking in his six-year career with Citibank, Narang says the tug to turn entrepreneur was always there, but HBS intensified it. Like Narang’s , many of these startups were based on business plan entries in the second year business plan contest. Georgia-born , Gujarat-raised Abhi Shah, founder of Clutch — voted top Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) company from among 80 LPOs worldwide — says he and a classmate came up with 38 different business ideas during Think Week, a concept they borrowed from Bill Gates. A part of the plan generating process was to have them be thrown out the window. Anshul Arora (MBA 04) followed neither of the two plans he submitted for the contest. Instead, with an “atypical” career at McKinsey with exposure in developmental work, Arora pursued his dream of a business with a “clear social mandate and a commercial motive” . The result was Edvance Learning, an inventive education model that spots gaps in the education and training landscape, and designs products to fill the lacuna. For Arora the choice was between Harvard and Stanford which, he says, also has a great entrepreneurial flavour to it, along with physical proximity to Silicon Valley, the birthplace of aggressive entrepreneurship. A key Harvard advantage, he says, lay in its international leaning. “HBS with its general management perspective naturally has a strength in entrepreneurship vis-à-vis business schools like Wharton or Stanford that have strengths in finance and strategy ,” says Ashish Singh, MD Bain Consulting and HBS alum. Another trump card for the school, according to Tewari, is its famed case study methodology. “The case study method means there is no structure and no formula. Life is like that. You’ll never get a situation that is a replica of what you learn,” he says. Every week, he recalls, the class was introduced to the case of a thriving entrepreneur, ranging from Narayana Murthy (Infosys) to Jeff Taylor (Monster) and Andrew Viterbi (Qualcomm). “I began to realise that I could be just like them and it didn’t involve rocket science,” he says. That’s a sentiment everyone felt at some point in the course of two years , says Daga: “In a class of 900, at least 200 think seriously about entrepreneurship .” Those that do act upon it have a common starting point — the HBS alumni network — deemed one of the world’s most powerful networks with over 70,000 members. “The best part about graduating from HBS is that you can get a meeting with anyone at anytime. And as an entrepreneur that’s the hardest part,” says Daga. “We have more than a 20% share of the global venture capital business with examples like John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins and Tim Draper at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. That kind of network is hard to replicate ,” says Sahlman. A significant part of mKhoj’s $7 million Series A investment was landed through the HBS connection. “There is immediately a connection and the first question is, ‘Which section are you from’ ?” says Tewari. In fact, HBS has made such a success out of institutionalising its network that Vishwanathan didn’t require an investment banker when he raised $18 million for PreMedia ; he knew exactly who to call. For Shah, on the other hand, the HBS advantage wasn’t just about fund-raising . Having built a political advocacy group for the Indian American community with 65,000 members , and a successful summer internship with Jerry Rao at Mphasis, meant his network of influence was fairly extensive and with deep pockets. “For me the choice was going the Bobby Jindal way or coming to India and making an impact as an entrepreneur ,” he jokes. Where the HBS connection did come to play was in his endeavour to recruit the best and the brightest. “It’s the credibility that comes from a school with pedigree,” he says.
Opening doors If there is one thing the school doesn’t provide, it is in first-hand startup operational exposure, but that is acquired by candidates over their summer internships, typically spent shadowing first generation entrepreneurs. When Damera was torn between BoozAllen, London and assisting the CEO at Jet Blue in New York, he chose the latter. “I realised I want to be this guy, taking all the decisions,” he says. Daga got a bird’s eye view of mining operations, manufacturing and wholesale when he interned with the CEO of Rosy Blu. The CEO promised he would be the first investor in Daga’s venture, and Rosy Blu emerged the largest of four. There’s something also to be said of affluent classmates. Narang wangled a $1000 cheque from a classmate as well as the use of his father’s office in New York for the few months before setting up office in Mumbai. Daga himself “successfully” invested in more than one friend’s venture; in some cases followon rounds have come from top-tier VCs or have received substantial offers for acquisition. And where chequebooks didn’t count, the collective intellect in the classroom certainly did. Vishwanathan recalls a classmate who, at 26, sold his first company — an auction site — to eBay for 75 million and he wasn’t the exception. “It really helps to have a peer group with such varied perspectives. HBS is very focused on that in its selection process,” says Nandu Madhava (Class of 06), who himself deferred a job with Goldman Sachs after his undergraduate degree to volunteer with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic as a medical and teaching assistant . He saw the transformation in the city of Bangalore while on a vacation and chose it to launch mDhil, a medicare information portal. Sometimes, as those same classmates start giving in to the trappings of a job in consulting and i-banking, even the bravest of resolves waver. Vishwanathan recalls hanging out in shorts and loafers while friends attended recruitment day. “When they were talking about their signing bonuses, it wasn’t always easy,” he says. Most graduates exit HBS with substantial debt and the economics of rejecting a $175,000 job with a $50,000 debt doesn’t always work out. People like Shah chose to skip recruitment entirely so that he “wouldn’t have a back-up to tempt him to cop out”. Rahul Aggarwal, class of 05 and ex-Bayers , did the same because his heart was in returning to India. He started Red Earth, a hospitality company that turns around underperforming assets and converts them into branded two and three star properties . According to Madhava, this trend of US-raised HBS grads of Indian origin coming to India to start ventures coincides with macro factors. “Our year (2004) was the tipping point. Not only has the number of students coming directly from India gone up but the HBS India research center has come to life bringing richer case studies to the school and world class executive education to India,” says Arora. Still, with all the conviction they had, some say there was nothing that prepared them for start-up growing pains. The hit they have to take on their lifestyles often comes as a shock. “Conceptually one knows what entrepreneurship is about, but living it is a whole different ballgame,” says Daga. Shah recalls how his first employee landed up in the emergency room before finalising his contract and his first client passed away one day before signing the contract. He’s not especially unhappy to have to take a hit in lifestyle — flying economy and taking rickshaws is not a problem, maybe because he understands he may not have to do that for long, given his ambitions to take Clutch public for a billion dollars in five years. And if that doesn’t go according to plan, he says Harvard is the best insurance policy you can get. “I know that at the end of the day if I don’t succeed, I’ll get a $200,000 job,” says Damera, who admits that it might just be thanks to the safety net of HBS that he took the leap. Luckily, nobody believes they’ll ever need it. “Harvard forces you to think big, which unfortunately is not part of the Indian middle class mentality. You just realise that just working for a large company is not making full use of your resources,” says Tewari. Madhava believes that the most important lesson learnt at HBS is not how to cope with failure but a strong moral code. He recalls how an entrepreneurial professor once told him - “You’re so fortunate to be at Harvard, the only thing that you can ever do to jeopardize your future is something unethical or illegal”. Those futures are being written. For most going back to consulting or banking would be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. “I think most of my section wishes they had done what I had done,” says Daga. For Tewari nothing could top being summoned to the entrepreneurship class of 2020 as a case in point.
Showing posts with label Ecosystem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ecosystem. Show all posts
Monday, August 4, 2008
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.”
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.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Funding, IP & Commercialisation
This is a key topic of discussion for the technology entrepreneurs. Though a technology has been created, the credit of the creation is not always given to the inventor; sometimes it is given to the owner.
Sounds confusing!!!
The inventor of a technology is not always the owner of it, who gains profits out of it. It is the person who patents it.
This was the discussion at IIIT Bangalore which held a one day free workshop on May 8th, 2008 focusing on the topic “Govt Initiatives for Industry Academia Collaboration – Funding, Intellectual Property and Collaboration”.
The workshop opened with the first session on “ GOI Initiatives in Academia Industry Collaboration including entrepreneurship and patent support”, which was addressed by Dr. Garg, Joint Director from Ministry of Communications and Information technology.
Focus points for entrepreneurs while addressing IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights).
1.Require a written IP policy for any process or product to protect innovation within your company.
2.Create an IP Audit before you start a R&D project.
Example: Sasken Communications conducted an IP audit after the R&D project of an anonymous product (which took 2 years to create and incurred Rs.2 crore) and realized that they had infringed 20 patents due to which the product commercialization had to be dismissed.
3.Do IP due diligence – have a checklist.
4.Prioritize patenting needs for budget purpose (cost effective)
5.Look into parameters such as velocity of patenting and patent mapping process.
Challenges faced by entrepreneurs in Patent process
1.Cost involved in IP due diligence is high.
2.IP Infrastructure unavailable.
3.No effective Search system.
GOI Initiatives
1.IPR Promotion Program
2.Trademark Tool: to avoid names with verbal similarities.
3.SIP-EIT for SMEs & Technology Start ups
4.Tide Program
5.Multiplier brand scheme
To know more about these initiatives visit http://www.mit.gov.in/
Session 2 was presented by Mr. Meenakshi Sundaram and Ranjith Menon from IDG Ventures. http://www.idgventures.com/
As VCs they focused on the challenges faced by their entrepreneurs, and how patents helped them.
Note to the entrepreneurs: Find a lawyer who can write your IP covering a broader spectrum to create monopoly.
Do not encourage people as employees to carry IP from one company to another; it is unethical. Have a strong written IP policy in the employee contract.
Later Sunil Maheswari, CEO of Mango Technologies (Incubated out of IIM-B) spoke his journey as an entrepreneur and the importance of patents. He emphasized on the support and encouragement received from the GOI.
http://www.mangotechno.com/
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Thanks to Google
Google has joined the Indian Angel Network and invested in Ventureast TeNet Fund II.It is a fund run by the Tenet Group of IIT, Madras, and Ventureast Fund Advisors.
The Indian Angel Network is an organisation of professionals and companies dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship in India.
The Ventureast TeNet II fund invests in technology that enables early stage entrepreneurs to get their businesses off the ground. Emphasis is placed on technologies and solutions focused on small and medium-sized enterprises. “The early stages of venture capital financing are underserved in the Indian market, despite their critical importance to the innovation chain,” said Samir Sood, Google’s Head of Corporate Development for South Asia, in a release.
Courtesy: SifyBusiness.com
The Indian Angel Network is an organisation of professionals and companies dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship in India.
The Ventureast TeNet II fund invests in technology that enables early stage entrepreneurs to get their businesses off the ground. Emphasis is placed on technologies and solutions focused on small and medium-sized enterprises. “The early stages of venture capital financing are underserved in the Indian market, despite their critical importance to the innovation chain,” said Samir Sood, Google’s Head of Corporate Development for South Asia, in a release.
Courtesy: SifyBusiness.com
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Who says what?
Executive Director of Wadhwani Foundation Laura A.Parkin says: "Youngsters' expectations for their own futures are broader today.They have grown up with much wider exposure, through cableTV,the Internet and travel."
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
What do investors say about entrepreneurs?
"Earlier,people didn't have role models to emulate,
but now, if you just look at IT, there
are thousands who have made it big," says
Saurabh Srivastava, chairman, Indian
Venture Capital Association.
but now, if you just look at IT, there
are thousands who have made it big," says
Saurabh Srivastava, chairman, Indian
Venture Capital Association.
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