In the Indian entrepreneurial scenario, IIMs always play a strong role in connecting various groups in the entrepreneurial ecosytem. It sometimes builds a platform for entrepreneurs to showcase their b-plans and sometimes organizes events for like minded people to meet, grow and establish as entrepreneurs.
Where is all this going to....it is leading to a book called "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" written by Rashmi Bansal, an IIM-A alumni. She has taken time off and scripted this book with a lot of valuable inputs from different entrepreneurs (commanality is all the entrepreneurs belong to IIM-A alumni). It is a compendium of certainly 25 inspiring stories of entrepreneurs. It is not just their entrepreneurial journey but also what are their learnings out of it and what do they have to give as a lesson of the day for their fellow entrepreneurs. The layout is interesting and leaves a message behind for the reader.
Uh! this must be one of the articles on my blog which has the word "entrepreneur" repeated the maximum number of times. That is because the book is all about ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
I strongly recommend this book for people of all ages but, the most important thing they should have to read this book is "entrepreneurial spirit".
Showing posts with label Inspiring Entrepreneurs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inspiring Entrepreneurs. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
First online microfinance platform
I stumbled over an interesting student start up called KIVA.
This is a person-to-person micro lending online platform.
It has created great transperancy for the lenders to choose whom they wish to lend money. The website provides list of entrepreneurs all over the world, description of their business and loan amount they need.
Once the loan is made the lender can track the progress of the entrepreneur. He will receive his money back over time and can re-lend to the entrepreneurs on the website.
This starts from a small amount of $25 (~Rs.1000). Each $25 goes to a larger loan which helps the entrepreneurs in the developing economies to grow and establish their businesses. All the money crunch a developing economy experiences will be wiped out with this concept. It is very exciting for the entrepreneurs as well as the lenders.
This is a person-to-person micro lending online platform.
It has created great transperancy for the lenders to choose whom they wish to lend money. The website provides list of entrepreneurs all over the world, description of their business and loan amount they need.
Once the loan is made the lender can track the progress of the entrepreneur. He will receive his money back over time and can re-lend to the entrepreneurs on the website.
This starts from a small amount of $25 (~Rs.1000). Each $25 goes to a larger loan which helps the entrepreneurs in the developing economies to grow and establish their businesses. All the money crunch a developing economy experiences will be wiped out with this concept. It is very exciting for the entrepreneurs as well as the lenders.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
OUTLIERS
Dear Friends,
I am reading the book OUTLIERS written by Malcolm Gladwell. Here is an excerpt from the book that turned like a driller into my head. The head is filled with strong ideas which make us feel that we are great or that we are not so great.
Especially as successful entrepreneurs we need to be always alert to help the budding entrepreneurs. You will know why when you read this excerpt.
Malcolm Gladwell says "I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing. We do owe to something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.
Biologists often talk about the "ecology" of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warned them, the soil in which they put down the roots and the rabbits and lunberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?"
Hope the positive side of every entrepreneur is kindled.
I am reading the book OUTLIERS written by Malcolm Gladwell. Here is an excerpt from the book that turned like a driller into my head. The head is filled with strong ideas which make us feel that we are great or that we are not so great.
Especially as successful entrepreneurs we need to be always alert to help the budding entrepreneurs. You will know why when you read this excerpt.
Malcolm Gladwell says "I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing. We do owe to something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.
Biologists often talk about the "ecology" of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warned them, the soil in which they put down the roots and the rabbits and lunberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?"
Hope the positive side of every entrepreneur is kindled.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Critics Everywhere: Hurdle 1
This is going to be a series that will pop up as and when I face a hurdle as an entrepreneur. Today I faced my first hurdle of "critic views".
Critics are of two types, who I have faced in my journey;
1. Someone who adds value to the situation
2. Someone who actually doesn't like you or your idea or who is arrogant and prejudiced about their own ideas
Well I faced both of them. It is really nice to have critics of the first category but second ones are dangerous. They are like slow poison. Their words keep beeing in your heads and someday you will believe that they were right and you are wrong. Well don't worry, it is just hypnosis.
We face so many such people who have prejudiced ideas about a person and experiences. They are not ready to look at a better picture which they always would have faced the other way.
I find critics everywhere, whenever I take my business plan and put it on their table grrrrrrrrrr, uh enough.
I want some value inputs not what you think about me.
So entrepreneurs.......... who are feeling dejected and disoriented about yourselves, fasten your seat belts and stick to the throne..........you have a long way to go, to achieve your dream and to walk on this path.
Shake these criticisms and walk on.
Critics are of two types, who I have faced in my journey;
1. Someone who adds value to the situation
2. Someone who actually doesn't like you or your idea or who is arrogant and prejudiced about their own ideas
Well I faced both of them. It is really nice to have critics of the first category but second ones are dangerous. They are like slow poison. Their words keep beeing in your heads and someday you will believe that they were right and you are wrong. Well don't worry, it is just hypnosis.
We face so many such people who have prejudiced ideas about a person and experiences. They are not ready to look at a better picture which they always would have faced the other way.
I find critics everywhere, whenever I take my business plan and put it on their table grrrrrrrrrr, uh enough.
I want some value inputs not what you think about me.
So entrepreneurs.......... who are feeling dejected and disoriented about yourselves, fasten your seat belts and stick to the throne..........you have a long way to go, to achieve your dream and to walk on this path.
Shake these criticisms and walk on.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Passion
Just inspired by the first mail I read today that was written by my cousin Tara Kola, the following in being written.
I was just wondering what is the glamour that is hidden in "Entrepreneurship". Why is it so close to every person I meet, why do they say irrespective of practicalities "Hey I wish I could be an entrepreneur".
I realise that entrepreneurship is not just state of mind or an art a person pursues but a latent element existing is every person. It takes shape when the favourable circumstances trigger the person to take it up.
For many of us it is difficult to leave a cozy job and go behind our passions (entrepreneurship), well I decided today that it takes a lot of courage to do that. I congratulate all those people up there who have managed to take up this adventure and also to all those who soon are going to...[me being one of them] :-)
I was just wondering what is the glamour that is hidden in "Entrepreneurship". Why is it so close to every person I meet, why do they say irrespective of practicalities "Hey I wish I could be an entrepreneur".
I realise that entrepreneurship is not just state of mind or an art a person pursues but a latent element existing is every person. It takes shape when the favourable circumstances trigger the person to take it up.
For many of us it is difficult to leave a cozy job and go behind our passions (entrepreneurship), well I decided today that it takes a lot of courage to do that. I congratulate all those people up there who have managed to take up this adventure and also to all those who soon are going to...[me being one of them] :-)
Monday, September 15, 2008
Chaiwala at IIM-Ahmedabad
Courtesy: The Telegraph
A humble chaiwala who inspired a website has been honoured with a case study at IIM-A on his business that has all the ingredients that go into a successful venture.
For the past 25 years, Ram Attar Kori has been selling student favourites such as tea, biscuits, egg bhujiya, buns, paan and cigarettes on the footpath outside the campus of the premier business school which has recognised him by “opening” a window through the border wall which allows easier access.
Today, Rambhai, 51, was in the classroom as an “observer”, listening to three management experts who presented a case study on his business model, which, as one of them said, was a humbling lesson on the untold success stories that abound on India’s dusty and bustling streets.
He keenly listened to the discussion on the case study presented by the three: Umesh Neelakantan of the DCMAT School of Media and Business, Kerala, Jaspreet Ahluwalia, assistant professor at the Centre for Management Training and Research, Mohali, and Sonal Katewa, assistant professor, Asia Pacific Institute of Management, Jaipur.
The trio are part of a batch of 38 business management teachers who are doing a faculty development programme at IIM.
“The reason why we chose Rambhai as our case study is that we noticed he had a huge clientele among the students. We learnt that he has been doing business at the same place for the last 25 years. As we have to do a case study as a part of our curriculum, we decided that instead of going to any corporate house, why not study this man who has blended various principles of management without undergoing any formal management training,” said Katewa.
Language was no barrier as Rambhai listened to the presentation on him and his business model.
“I was not supposed to say anything as I was there as a guest and observer,” said the man who had turned out for his big moment shorn of his patent stubble and smartly attired in a new olive green shirt and cream trousers.
Much like Pramod-da of Calcutta’s Presidency College and Arun-da of St Xavier’s, who has “retired”, Rambhai is a legend on campus. He has even inspired a website www.rambhai.com, which is a platform for free exchange of views, similar to the kiosk he runs where many ideas have been born.
The son of an agriculture labourer from Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh, Rambhai came to Ahmedabad at the age of four. After doing odd jobs, he started his teashop in the early eighties and has not looked back since.
And like any savvy entrepreneur, he isn’t willing to let out the numbers. “Let me say that I earn well enough to look after my needy relatives and educate my 20-year-old daughter, a student of fine arts at CN Vidyalaya,” he said, adding that the IIM experts had promised to help him expand his business. But students say his daily sale would be “at least” Rs 2,000.
Neelakantan said the rationale for doing a case study on the man was to show that “even an institute like IIM-A can learn a lesson from a street vendor”.
“Generally, street vendors are perceived to be tough and ill- mannered guys, but here is a man who is simple, loveable, light-hearted and yet has been successfully doing business outside an elite institute, stationing himself in one place for the last 25 years and maintaining a long-term customer relationship,” said Neelakantan.
Ahluwalia pointed out that even without formal management training, Rambhai was “practically executing all management principles”.
“Like every entrepreneur, he first saw an opportunity to start his own business outside the IIM-A campus, developed a strategy and maintained a system which ensured he got repeat customers,” said Ahluwalia.
Katewa said Rambhai mastered the concept of good customer relations: a popular management concept considered a cornerstone of success for any consumer product. “He has been observing customers. He realised the importance of location, right outside the IIM-A gate,” said Katewa.
A humble chaiwala who inspired a website has been honoured with a case study at IIM-A on his business that has all the ingredients that go into a successful venture.
For the past 25 years, Ram Attar Kori has been selling student favourites such as tea, biscuits, egg bhujiya, buns, paan and cigarettes on the footpath outside the campus of the premier business school which has recognised him by “opening” a window through the border wall which allows easier access.
Today, Rambhai, 51, was in the classroom as an “observer”, listening to three management experts who presented a case study on his business model, which, as one of them said, was a humbling lesson on the untold success stories that abound on India’s dusty and bustling streets.
He keenly listened to the discussion on the case study presented by the three: Umesh Neelakantan of the DCMAT School of Media and Business, Kerala, Jaspreet Ahluwalia, assistant professor at the Centre for Management Training and Research, Mohali, and Sonal Katewa, assistant professor, Asia Pacific Institute of Management, Jaipur.
The trio are part of a batch of 38 business management teachers who are doing a faculty development programme at IIM.
“The reason why we chose Rambhai as our case study is that we noticed he had a huge clientele among the students. We learnt that he has been doing business at the same place for the last 25 years. As we have to do a case study as a part of our curriculum, we decided that instead of going to any corporate house, why not study this man who has blended various principles of management without undergoing any formal management training,” said Katewa.
Language was no barrier as Rambhai listened to the presentation on him and his business model.
“I was not supposed to say anything as I was there as a guest and observer,” said the man who had turned out for his big moment shorn of his patent stubble and smartly attired in a new olive green shirt and cream trousers.
Much like Pramod-da of Calcutta’s Presidency College and Arun-da of St Xavier’s, who has “retired”, Rambhai is a legend on campus. He has even inspired a website www.rambhai.com, which is a platform for free exchange of views, similar to the kiosk he runs where many ideas have been born.
The son of an agriculture labourer from Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh, Rambhai came to Ahmedabad at the age of four. After doing odd jobs, he started his teashop in the early eighties and has not looked back since.
And like any savvy entrepreneur, he isn’t willing to let out the numbers. “Let me say that I earn well enough to look after my needy relatives and educate my 20-year-old daughter, a student of fine arts at CN Vidyalaya,” he said, adding that the IIM experts had promised to help him expand his business. But students say his daily sale would be “at least” Rs 2,000.
Neelakantan said the rationale for doing a case study on the man was to show that “even an institute like IIM-A can learn a lesson from a street vendor”.
“Generally, street vendors are perceived to be tough and ill- mannered guys, but here is a man who is simple, loveable, light-hearted and yet has been successfully doing business outside an elite institute, stationing himself in one place for the last 25 years and maintaining a long-term customer relationship,” said Neelakantan.
Ahluwalia pointed out that even without formal management training, Rambhai was “practically executing all management principles”.
“Like every entrepreneur, he first saw an opportunity to start his own business outside the IIM-A campus, developed a strategy and maintained a system which ensured he got repeat customers,” said Ahluwalia.
Katewa said Rambhai mastered the concept of good customer relations: a popular management concept considered a cornerstone of success for any consumer product. “He has been observing customers. He realised the importance of location, right outside the IIM-A gate,” said Katewa.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Nayana Karunaratne Woman Entrepreneur of the Year
Courtesy: Dailymirror
Nayana Karunaratne, one of the most well known faces in the Asian hair and beauty industry was recognized as the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year 2007, at the awards ceremony organized by the Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce on August 26, 2008. She was also the winner of a gold medal for the Business category - large.
The Woman Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 awards ceremony takes place on an annual basis, with a focus on evaluating the performance of women in business. The winners were selected from four categories – Large, Small, Medium and Micro, along with an overall award to outstanding professional women from the large category.
Speaking on her achievement, Karunaratne said, “I am greatly appreciative of winning this award but in perspective I am more overjoyed that someone from my industry has been recognized for the hard work and dedication put in to become a success story. I am essentially a hairdresser, and have been a businesswoman for the past 28 years. It has been long road to get to where I am today but I have perservered, because I knew at a very young age that this was what I wanted in life.”
Adding on, she said, “The key to my success is because I am very focused, goal oriented, hard working, disciplined and extremely organized in what I endeavor in. This has been a progressive growth for me, starting with the opening of my salon, and its expansion within Sri Lanka as well as into India. What has driven so far has been my passionate sense of personal commitment to the services offered at Salon Nayana. This goes hand in hand with the fact that I have dedicated my career in helping both men and women to look their best and to elevate the profession of hairdressing in Asia to global standards.”
Nayana Karunaratne has been instrumental in revolutionizing the concepts of beauty culture among Sri Lankans for over two decades. The success of Salon Nayana is attributed to a team of over 150 dedicated professionals comprising of cosmetologists, stylists and nutritionists who bring in their uniqueness and expertise, with an unrivalled, passionate sense of personal commitment to the services offered by Nayana and her reputed network of salons.
Established in 1980, Salon Nayana has come along, becoming an enterprise has evolved and positioned itself as a contemporary leader in the hair industry with a chain of 12 salons in Sri Lanka and India, and has produced many winners at both nation and international hair and make up competitions.
In addition to her chain of unisex hair and beauty salons in Sri Lanka and India, she is the founder of the Image Academy of Hair and Beauty as well as the Image Academy of Personality Development. The professional hairdressing and beauty therapy courses conducted by the academy are recognized by the Immigration authorities of Australia and Canada.
It also works in association with Pivot Point International, issuing certificated recognized by the European Union. The Image Academy of Personality Development provides personal development programmes for corporates and individuals on self worth, grooming, corporate dress sense, team work and stress management among others.
She is also the founder of the Sri Lanka Association for Hairdressers and Beauticians (SLAHAB) in 1996. Reflective of her commitment to elevate the profession of hairdressing in Sri Lanka to international standards, today the organization has a 3000 strong membership and represents Sri Lanka in the Organization Modiale de la Coiffure (OMC), also known as the World Federation of Hairdressers to represent Sri Lanka. She has also organized the Hair Asia Pacific, the international Hair and Make up competition for ten years to develop the Asian industry.
At present she is a board member of the World Federation of Hairdressers (OMC) and the President of the OMC Asia Zone. This position enables her yearly access to attend and host six training events all over the world.
Her working partnership with the best creative talent in the world and the experience gained judging OMC Zone and the World Championships has widened her creative and teaching horizons immensely. Today she is one of the most respected and experienced hairdressers in the world.
She is also an international trainer, in her capacity as OMC Asia President, where she travels extensively nationally and internationally, inspiring future stylists and make up artists.
Her vast experience includes training programmes in Hair and Beauty, Chennai, Hair India People, Mumbai, Hair and Beauty Association of Thailand as well as Sino Beauty, China.
Nayana Karunaratne, one of the most well known faces in the Asian hair and beauty industry was recognized as the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year 2007, at the awards ceremony organized by the Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce on August 26, 2008. She was also the winner of a gold medal for the Business category - large.
The Woman Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 awards ceremony takes place on an annual basis, with a focus on evaluating the performance of women in business. The winners were selected from four categories – Large, Small, Medium and Micro, along with an overall award to outstanding professional women from the large category.
Speaking on her achievement, Karunaratne said, “I am greatly appreciative of winning this award but in perspective I am more overjoyed that someone from my industry has been recognized for the hard work and dedication put in to become a success story. I am essentially a hairdresser, and have been a businesswoman for the past 28 years. It has been long road to get to where I am today but I have perservered, because I knew at a very young age that this was what I wanted in life.”
Adding on, she said, “The key to my success is because I am very focused, goal oriented, hard working, disciplined and extremely organized in what I endeavor in. This has been a progressive growth for me, starting with the opening of my salon, and its expansion within Sri Lanka as well as into India. What has driven so far has been my passionate sense of personal commitment to the services offered at Salon Nayana. This goes hand in hand with the fact that I have dedicated my career in helping both men and women to look their best and to elevate the profession of hairdressing in Asia to global standards.”
Nayana Karunaratne has been instrumental in revolutionizing the concepts of beauty culture among Sri Lankans for over two decades. The success of Salon Nayana is attributed to a team of over 150 dedicated professionals comprising of cosmetologists, stylists and nutritionists who bring in their uniqueness and expertise, with an unrivalled, passionate sense of personal commitment to the services offered by Nayana and her reputed network of salons.
Established in 1980, Salon Nayana has come along, becoming an enterprise has evolved and positioned itself as a contemporary leader in the hair industry with a chain of 12 salons in Sri Lanka and India, and has produced many winners at both nation and international hair and make up competitions.
In addition to her chain of unisex hair and beauty salons in Sri Lanka and India, she is the founder of the Image Academy of Hair and Beauty as well as the Image Academy of Personality Development. The professional hairdressing and beauty therapy courses conducted by the academy are recognized by the Immigration authorities of Australia and Canada.
It also works in association with Pivot Point International, issuing certificated recognized by the European Union. The Image Academy of Personality Development provides personal development programmes for corporates and individuals on self worth, grooming, corporate dress sense, team work and stress management among others.
She is also the founder of the Sri Lanka Association for Hairdressers and Beauticians (SLAHAB) in 1996. Reflective of her commitment to elevate the profession of hairdressing in Sri Lanka to international standards, today the organization has a 3000 strong membership and represents Sri Lanka in the Organization Modiale de la Coiffure (OMC), also known as the World Federation of Hairdressers to represent Sri Lanka. She has also organized the Hair Asia Pacific, the international Hair and Make up competition for ten years to develop the Asian industry.
At present she is a board member of the World Federation of Hairdressers (OMC) and the President of the OMC Asia Zone. This position enables her yearly access to attend and host six training events all over the world.
Her working partnership with the best creative talent in the world and the experience gained judging OMC Zone and the World Championships has widened her creative and teaching horizons immensely. Today she is one of the most respected and experienced hairdressers in the world.
She is also an international trainer, in her capacity as OMC Asia President, where she travels extensively nationally and internationally, inspiring future stylists and make up artists.
Her vast experience includes training programmes in Hair and Beauty, Chennai, Hair India People, Mumbai, Hair and Beauty Association of Thailand as well as Sino Beauty, China.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Indian Harvard grads turning biz plans into success stories
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-Ã -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.
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-Ã -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.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Inspiring conversation for aspiring women entrepreneurs
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?
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?
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
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.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Raghu B Viswanath: Championing the cause of brands
Courtesy: The Economic Times
He’s an engineer from IIT and an MBA from IIM. Having worked in blue-chip brand-savvy companies like Titan Watches and Smith Kline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, he realised the significance of branding as a strategy. So Raghu B Viswanath vacated his lush seat on the corporate bandwagon and climbed aboard the vehicle of entrepreneurship in end-1999. That was the beginning of Vertebrand, India’s first integrated brand strategy consulting firm. “I believed the fast-growing Indian SME brands essentially suffered from a lack of in-house managerial talent, coupled with inadequate financial muscle to take on the biggies in terms of advertising spends,” Mr Viswanath says as he recalls the beginning of Vertebrand’s journey.
Vertebrand was started with a deep desire to assist lesser-known brands in transforming them into valuable powerhouses. Most importantly, the market presented an opportunity since no advertising agency or consulting firm offered specialised brand-building solutions or services. The scientific approach to brand-building was missing. Moreover, branding was often equated with physical identity and advertising. “Hardly anyone was paying attention to their internal business as a whole and therefore its implications on the equity of the brand. Therein, I believe, lay a huge opportunity,” states Mr Viswanath, who’s today the MD of Vertebrand. What came in as an opportunity also brought along a challenge.
Branding was then greatly confined to the advertising industry and brand assignments were primarily awarded to Ad agencies and/or creative design shops. “The market was not willing to easily accept a brand consulting firm which was left-brained in its approach, run predominantly by Engineer-MBAs and who had no Cannes Awards to their credit,” remarks Mr Viswanath. It was certainly an uphill task but Mr Viswanath was able to overcome it. “Sheer perseverance and a belief in the cause of strategic branding have helped me achieve my pride of place today,” he says. One of the key reasons behind the success of Vertebrand has been an exceptionally good team. In fact, Mr Viswanath believes that every member of his champion team is a top-notch entrepreneur! “All of them decided to throw up the trappings of corporate luxury, to work towards the cause,” he asserts.
Vertebrand is undoubtedly doing well today having served a wide range of clients including MNCs, large Indian corporates as well as many progressive SMEs. The concept of scientific branding is today receiving huge attention and Mr Viswanath acknowledges that it is having a positive impact on Vertebrand’s success. People are realising that true branding can impart business revenues and valuations. Today, Vertebrand has carved a niche for itself in the market. In fact, having successfully tried and tested in India, its processes can be replicated across all developing economies. “Vertebrand is poised to become a truly, pan-Asian brand consultancy of repute,” says Mr Viswanath. Of course, the success so far hasn’t come easily. There have been sacrifices on family fronts and huge obstacles in the professional journey. But his family always stood by him through all the thick and thin. Mr Viswanath strongly believes that entrepreneurship should not be equated with a means of becoming rich. Entrepreneurship implies never giving up. That’s his simple message.
He’s an engineer from IIT and an MBA from IIM. Having worked in blue-chip brand-savvy companies like Titan Watches and Smith Kline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, he realised the significance of branding as a strategy. So Raghu B Viswanath vacated his lush seat on the corporate bandwagon and climbed aboard the vehicle of entrepreneurship in end-1999. That was the beginning of Vertebrand, India’s first integrated brand strategy consulting firm. “I believed the fast-growing Indian SME brands essentially suffered from a lack of in-house managerial talent, coupled with inadequate financial muscle to take on the biggies in terms of advertising spends,” Mr Viswanath says as he recalls the beginning of Vertebrand’s journey.
Vertebrand was started with a deep desire to assist lesser-known brands in transforming them into valuable powerhouses. Most importantly, the market presented an opportunity since no advertising agency or consulting firm offered specialised brand-building solutions or services. The scientific approach to brand-building was missing. Moreover, branding was often equated with physical identity and advertising. “Hardly anyone was paying attention to their internal business as a whole and therefore its implications on the equity of the brand. Therein, I believe, lay a huge opportunity,” states Mr Viswanath, who’s today the MD of Vertebrand. What came in as an opportunity also brought along a challenge.
Branding was then greatly confined to the advertising industry and brand assignments were primarily awarded to Ad agencies and/or creative design shops. “The market was not willing to easily accept a brand consulting firm which was left-brained in its approach, run predominantly by Engineer-MBAs and who had no Cannes Awards to their credit,” remarks Mr Viswanath. It was certainly an uphill task but Mr Viswanath was able to overcome it. “Sheer perseverance and a belief in the cause of strategic branding have helped me achieve my pride of place today,” he says. One of the key reasons behind the success of Vertebrand has been an exceptionally good team. In fact, Mr Viswanath believes that every member of his champion team is a top-notch entrepreneur! “All of them decided to throw up the trappings of corporate luxury, to work towards the cause,” he asserts.
Vertebrand is undoubtedly doing well today having served a wide range of clients including MNCs, large Indian corporates as well as many progressive SMEs. The concept of scientific branding is today receiving huge attention and Mr Viswanath acknowledges that it is having a positive impact on Vertebrand’s success. People are realising that true branding can impart business revenues and valuations. Today, Vertebrand has carved a niche for itself in the market. In fact, having successfully tried and tested in India, its processes can be replicated across all developing economies. “Vertebrand is poised to become a truly, pan-Asian brand consultancy of repute,” says Mr Viswanath. Of course, the success so far hasn’t come easily. There have been sacrifices on family fronts and huge obstacles in the professional journey. But his family always stood by him through all the thick and thin. Mr Viswanath strongly believes that entrepreneurship should not be equated with a means of becoming rich. Entrepreneurship implies never giving up. That’s his simple message.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Entrepreneur Population growing
Courtesy: TOI
With a great job at Infosys that offered a long-term relocation to the UK, life couldn’t have gotten rosi
er for Santosh Rao. But Rao (29) gave it all up for an idea that caught his fancy while at B-school — to offer cost effective web portals for educational institutions. He quit Infosys last October to set up Vrixx Education Solutions in February and was soon joined by fellow Infoscian Arvind Singh (27). Today, they have a basement office in Indiranagar with three employees — all in th
eir 20s. “We’re not very cash rich and projects are trickling in by and by. But it doesn’t seem like work to Arvind or me. This is what we enjoy doing,” says the IIM-Kolkata grad. Like Rao, there are an increasing number of young professionals — mostly in their 20s — who’re quitting cushy jobs for the challenge of entrepreneurship. “There is no official record of the number of entrepreneurs in the country, so there is no way one can get exact figures on the increase of entrepreneurs. However, there are many indicators that one can look at to see the increase in entrepreneurs,” says Laura Parkin, executive director of National Entrepreneurship Network, a body that seeks to promote entrepreneurship by bringing together students and entrepreneurs. “For one, there has been a heightened participation of students in NEN — from 500 five years ago to 55,000 today. Another is the number of entrepreneurship societies that have been formed.” Clubs like Kickstart, Mobile Mondays, Proto.in and Open Coffee Club (OCC) have opened in the past five years across the country and the membership numbers in each city run into hundreds. “Out of the 50 core entrepreneurial members in our club, at least 40% are below or around 30,” says Amarinder Singh, co-ordinator of OCC Bangalore. “There is also great interest from students and professionals who come in wondering if they’re up to taking the plunge.” Venture capital companies too have noticed a marked increase in projects that flow in. “From about 10 projects in a month, we now look at around 50 every month. And although there has been a marked interest in entrepreneurship across board, there is certainly much more buzz from the age group of people in their early 30s,” says Kanwaljit Singh, MD of Helion Venture Partners. VC companies estimate that there has been almost 40% increase in young professionals who have quit their jobs to be their own bosses. “I met an IIT-Delhi grad a couple of weeks ago who came to me with a project. He told me that 80% of his batchmates are now entrepreneurs,” says Anjana Vivek, founder of VentureBean Consulting. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore are leading the entrepreneur brat pack, with Pune and Hyderabad catching up. In Bangalore, most of the entrepreneurs are in the technology, internet, mobile and telecom space, while Chennai sees more action in the service and software product segment. Mumbai’s entrepreneurs gravitate towards internet companies and non-technology ventures like retail, particularly F&B retail. “At least 40% of today’s entrepreneurs in the mobile and internet space is dominated by people in their late 20s and early 30s. Mobile related applications see huge interest in India because of the enormous market size,” says T C Meenakshisundaram, MD of venture capital firm IDG Ventures India. “The quality of deals has gone up. We now see more organized projects, greater products and better business models.” It’s mostly corporate executives — with average experience of eight to ten years — from IT services companies like Infosys, Wipro and TCS who are turning into entrepreneurs. “But I would like to see more people from companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Nokia. We need more product-based companies rather than service companies,” says Meenakshisundaram. Yet to mature However, entrepreneurship and the venture capital (VC) community in India is not a mature segment. “Most start ups lack organizational and managerial skills. They want to start their business but lack professional management. When a VC comes in, the young guys find it hard to share their space with someone senior from the industry,” says Harish Gandhi, executive director of Canaan Partners. “Along with our funding we bring in professional management, which the start ups can’t always handle.” Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO of Consim Info (formerly Bharat Matrimony), reminisces his initial days of VC participation in 2006 with a smile. “I was not used to answering anyone for the eight years that I ran the company alone. And suddenly you find yourself facing a board of directors,” he recalls. “It’s not easy. But you learn to appreciate their experience, which enables them to give you great advice in times of crisis.” The network and contact base of the more experienced members too is an advantage that young entrepreneurs take time to appreciate. VCs feel that most start up teams are either an all-techie bunch without much business acumen or are a marketing team without much knowledge or understanding of technology. “To find a complete team is the biggest challenge with new companies. I would rather fund a great team with a good idea than a good team with a great idea. A great team can quickly learn the market nuances that make a successful venture,” says Meenakshisundaram. When Sunil Maheshwari (33) and his partner Lekh Joshi (32) floated Mango Technologies two years ago, the biggest challenge was to get funds to start their venture. The company provides mobile applications platform for low cost devices targeting emerging markets. “Most of the venture capital firms are US-based. Their mindset is different so while funding they think in terms of the US business environment,” says Maheshwari. “They need to understand that the way business functions here is totally different. Entrepreneurs who have only lived in India and not in the US, display a cultural difference in their estimation of money required for a venture and utilisation of funds. Getting angel funding is not difficult in the US but in India it’s not easy to get even Rs 20 lakh to 30 lakh.” Maheshwari faced challenges in accessing seed money to start the company and do the initial setup. “The product market is a longterm game and you need to understand that every product may not be successful but returns are also very high for a successful product,” he says. “Seed money was a constraint, but all of us at Mango have really enjoyed going through this phase. It gave us the strength to save every rupee and give our best in a constrained environment.” At the end, nothing succeeds like success. “The concept of entrepreneurship has been romanticised a lot. A lot of people jump in thinking it’s ‘cool’. But it’s a lot of hard work and it takes a strong team to stick it out,” says Rao. MORE STORIES 1 Praveen Jain (29) quit KPMG to start E-Media Genie — a retail marketing firm to install LCD screens in pharmacies — in August 2007 with childhood friend Naresh Kothari (29) and already has 100 pharmacies as clients. 2 Anand (30) quit Amazon to join hands with Aparna Sharma (28) and Prashant Gyan (25), both of whom quit Oracle, to start Kuliza Technologies, an offshore product development firm in September 2006. Today, they have 40 people on payroll and generate profits. 3 Jay Gupta (33) plunged straight into retail after college and four years ago started discount store The Loot on banker support. Today he runs 30 stores in 15 cities. 4 Prodipto Ghosh (35) quit KPMG and started Math sQuotient, an operation consulting services firm, in 2004 and has Tata Tele Services and Siemens on his client list.
With a great job at Infosys that offered a long-term relocation to the UK, life couldn’t have gotten rosi
er for Santosh Rao. But Rao (29) gave it all up for an idea that caught his fancy while at B-school — to offer cost effective web portals for educational institutions. He quit Infosys last October to set up Vrixx Education Solutions in February and was soon joined by fellow Infoscian Arvind Singh (27). Today, they have a basement office in Indiranagar with three employees — all in th
eir 20s. “We’re not very cash rich and projects are trickling in by and by. But it doesn’t seem like work to Arvind or me. This is what we enjoy doing,” says the IIM-Kolkata grad. Like Rao, there are an increasing number of young professionals — mostly in their 20s — who’re quitting cushy jobs for the challenge of entrepreneurship. “There is no official record of the number of entrepreneurs in the country, so there is no way one can get exact figures on the increase of entrepreneurs. However, there are many indicators that one can look at to see the increase in entrepreneurs,” says Laura Parkin, executive director of National Entrepreneurship Network, a body that seeks to promote entrepreneurship by bringing together students and entrepreneurs. “For one, there has been a heightened participation of students in NEN — from 500 five years ago to 55,000 today. Another is the number of entrepreneurship societies that have been formed.” Clubs like Kickstart, Mobile Mondays, Proto.in and Open Coffee Club (OCC) have opened in the past five years across the country and the membership numbers in each city run into hundreds. “Out of the 50 core entrepreneurial members in our club, at least 40% are below or around 30,” says Amarinder Singh, co-ordinator of OCC Bangalore. “There is also great interest from students and professionals who come in wondering if they’re up to taking the plunge.” Venture capital companies too have noticed a marked increase in projects that flow in. “From about 10 projects in a month, we now look at around 50 every month. And although there has been a marked interest in entrepreneurship across board, there is certainly much more buzz from the age group of people in their early 30s,” says Kanwaljit Singh, MD of Helion Venture Partners. VC companies estimate that there has been almost 40% increase in young professionals who have quit their jobs to be their own bosses. “I met an IIT-Delhi grad a couple of weeks ago who came to me with a project. He told me that 80% of his batchmates are now entrepreneurs,” says Anjana Vivek, founder of VentureBean Consulting. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore are leading the entrepreneur brat pack, with Pune and Hyderabad catching up. In Bangalore, most of the entrepreneurs are in the technology, internet, mobile and telecom space, while Chennai sees more action in the service and software product segment. Mumbai’s entrepreneurs gravitate towards internet companies and non-technology ventures like retail, particularly F&B retail. “At least 40% of today’s entrepreneurs in the mobile and internet space is dominated by people in their late 20s and early 30s. Mobile related applications see huge interest in India because of the enormous market size,” says T C Meenakshisundaram, MD of venture capital firm IDG Ventures India. “The quality of deals has gone up. We now see more organized projects, greater products and better business models.” It’s mostly corporate executives — with average experience of eight to ten years — from IT services companies like Infosys, Wipro and TCS who are turning into entrepreneurs. “But I would like to see more people from companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Nokia. We need more product-based companies rather than service companies,” says Meenakshisundaram. Yet to mature However, entrepreneurship and the venture capital (VC) community in India is not a mature segment. “Most start ups lack organizational and managerial skills. They want to start their business but lack professional management. When a VC comes in, the young guys find it hard to share their space with someone senior from the industry,” says Harish Gandhi, executive director of Canaan Partners. “Along with our funding we bring in professional management, which the start ups can’t always handle.” Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO of Consim Info (formerly Bharat Matrimony), reminisces his initial days of VC participation in 2006 with a smile. “I was not used to answering anyone for the eight years that I ran the company alone. And suddenly you find yourself facing a board of directors,” he recalls. “It’s not easy. But you learn to appreciate their experience, which enables them to give you great advice in times of crisis.” The network and contact base of the more experienced members too is an advantage that young entrepreneurs take time to appreciate. VCs feel that most start up teams are either an all-techie bunch without much business acumen or are a marketing team without much knowledge or understanding of technology. “To find a complete team is the biggest challenge with new companies. I would rather fund a great team with a good idea than a good team with a great idea. A great team can quickly learn the market nuances that make a successful venture,” says Meenakshisundaram. When Sunil Maheshwari (33) and his partner Lekh Joshi (32) floated Mango Technologies two years ago, the biggest challenge was to get funds to start their venture. The company provides mobile applications platform for low cost devices targeting emerging markets. “Most of the venture capital firms are US-based. Their mindset is different so while funding they think in terms of the US business environment,” says Maheshwari. “They need to understand that the way business functions here is totally different. Entrepreneurs who have only lived in India and not in the US, display a cultural difference in their estimation of money required for a venture and utilisation of funds. Getting angel funding is not difficult in the US but in India it’s not easy to get even Rs 20 lakh to 30 lakh.” Maheshwari faced challenges in accessing seed money to start the company and do the initial setup. “The product market is a longterm game and you need to understand that every product may not be successful but returns are also very high for a successful product,” he says. “Seed money was a constraint, but all of us at Mango have really enjoyed going through this phase. It gave us the strength to save every rupee and give our best in a constrained environment.” At the end, nothing succeeds like success. “The concept of entrepreneurship has been romanticised a lot. A lot of people jump in thinking it’s ‘cool’. But it’s a lot of hard work and it takes a strong team to stick it out,” says Rao. MORE STORIES 1 Praveen Jain (29) quit KPMG to start E-Media Genie — a retail marketing firm to install LCD screens in pharmacies — in August 2007 with childhood friend Naresh Kothari (29) and already has 100 pharmacies as clients. 2 Anand (30) quit Amazon to join hands with Aparna Sharma (28) and Prashant Gyan (25), both of whom quit Oracle, to start Kuliza Technologies, an offshore product development firm in September 2006. Today, they have 40 people on payroll and generate profits. 3 Jay Gupta (33) plunged straight into retail after college and four years ago started discount store The Loot on banker support. Today he runs 30 stores in 15 cities. 4 Prodipto Ghosh (35) quit KPMG and started Math sQuotient, an operation consulting services firm, in 2004 and has Tata Tele Services and Siemens on his client list.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Independent Computer Security and Digital Intelligence Consultant
Now I have started to envy all the young entrepreneurs.
Here is Ankit Fadia, 19 years old, an independent Computer Security and Digital Intelligence Consultant and has definitive experience in the field of computers. He has authored several best-selling books on Computer Security, which have been appreciated by both professionals and industry leaders, the world over. His books have sold a record 80,000 copies across the globe. Fadia is also a widely recognized Cyber terrorism expert.
To know more look at his lengthy resume.
Here is Ankit Fadia, 19 years old, an independent Computer Security and Digital Intelligence Consultant and has definitive experience in the field of computers. He has authored several best-selling books on Computer Security, which have been appreciated by both professionals and industry leaders, the world over. His books have sold a record 80,000 copies across the globe. Fadia is also a widely recognized Cyber terrorism expert.
To know more look at his lengthy resume.
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/
Friday, November 2, 2007
Wada-Pav King
Here is another interesting story about an entrepreneur who is called the Wada-Pav king.
He started a company called JumboKing based on the most popular franchise model. He spot that there is immense demand for Wada-Pav in Mumbai and started this venture at Malad.
Where did he receive funding from?
He took a bank loan Rs. 2 lakh and proved all the pessimists wrong, who say business is risky!!
Where did he derive the Inspiration from? Mc Donald
Hope he would see much more success.
He started a company called JumboKing based on the most popular franchise model. He spot that there is immense demand for Wada-Pav in Mumbai and started this venture at Malad.
Where did he receive funding from?
He took a bank loan Rs. 2 lakh and proved all the pessimists wrong, who say business is risky!!
Where did he derive the Inspiration from? Mc Donald
Hope he would see much more success.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Teen Entrepreneurship
We have heard of early entrepreneurs and teen entrepreneurs are the earliest of this kind.Here are a few interesting stories from India...........
Story One: In Bangalore, Suhas Gopinath is getting ready to address his Korean, Swiss, German and American employees who are here on an exchange programme.Employees are routinely sent to overseas offices so that they get a better understanding of operations. Gopinath founded his company Globals seven years ago when he wasjust 14. Coming from a modest background,failing was simply not an option."I got Rs 30 as pocket money at atime when an hour at the cyber cafe cost Rs 120. I requested the cafe owner to allow me to work for him during lunch time and let me use the Internet for free," he says. He may not be articulate,but he is determined. Today,the company which implements Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions for educational institutions and web and software solutions for corporates,has around 250 clients.Gopinath's India office-he won't disclose his turnover as he is about to divest a stake to a London-based company-alone brings in revenues of around $2.5 million (Rs 9.8 crore). It kick started last year. Askhim to count his achievements and Gopinath lists his entry into the Limca Book of Records in 2006 as the world's youngest executive. "It made my family proud."
Story two: When brothers Bhavin and Divyank Thrakhia were 15 and13, respectively, they made money by finishing their classmates' computer projects. They also started a job portal, did consultancy for companies like Orion softand set up intranets for many a corporates. In 1998,they borrowed Rs 25,000 from their parents to pay for server lease fees. Within a month, they had not only repaid the loan but ploys close to 400 people across 230 countries. They have traded the Santro they had bought in 1999 for a Mercedes C200and Porsche BoxsterS.Their sights are now set on the skies.They want a private jet. The good Gujarati boys (mention that and they squeal in unison "we don't want to bebranded that") get little time to party- "we work till nearly 4 a.m. everyday"-but are into extreme adventure sports like hot air ballooning. Indian entrepreneurs are on the rise,teenage entrepreneurs are a rarity. "In the US,kids are enterprising right from their early days. They do summer jobs and part-time jobs. How many youngsters here do that?" asks Professor V.Chandrashekhar, executive director,Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development at the IndianSchool of Business, Hyderabad.
Courtesy: India Today
Story One: In Bangalore, Suhas Gopinath is getting ready to address his Korean, Swiss, German and American employees who are here on an exchange programme.Employees are routinely sent to overseas offices so that they get a better understanding of operations. Gopinath founded his company Globals seven years ago when he wasjust 14. Coming from a modest background,failing was simply not an option."I got Rs 30 as pocket money at atime when an hour at the cyber cafe cost Rs 120. I requested the cafe owner to allow me to work for him during lunch time and let me use the Internet for free," he says. He may not be articulate,but he is determined. Today,the company which implements Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions for educational institutions and web and software solutions for corporates,has around 250 clients.Gopinath's India office-he won't disclose his turnover as he is about to divest a stake to a London-based company-alone brings in revenues of around $2.5 million (Rs 9.8 crore). It kick started last year. Askhim to count his achievements and Gopinath lists his entry into the Limca Book of Records in 2006 as the world's youngest executive. "It made my family proud."
Story two: When brothers Bhavin and Divyank Thrakhia were 15 and13, respectively, they made money by finishing their classmates' computer projects. They also started a job portal, did consultancy for companies like Orion softand set up intranets for many a corporates. In 1998,they borrowed Rs 25,000 from their parents to pay for server lease fees. Within a month, they had not only repaid the loan but ploys close to 400 people across 230 countries. They have traded the Santro they had bought in 1999 for a Mercedes C200and Porsche BoxsterS.Their sights are now set on the skies.They want a private jet. The good Gujarati boys (mention that and they squeal in unison "we don't want to bebranded that") get little time to party- "we work till nearly 4 a.m. everyday"-but are into extreme adventure sports like hot air ballooning. Indian entrepreneurs are on the rise,teenage entrepreneurs are a rarity. "In the US,kids are enterprising right from their early days. They do summer jobs and part-time jobs. How many youngsters here do that?" asks Professor V.Chandrashekhar, executive director,Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development at the IndianSchool of Business, Hyderabad.
Courtesy: India Today
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Old people give no chance to lose.
Many of the rural Indians were and are unable to get educated in a formal way.
Their childhood runs through many meloncholic stories.
Here is one such man who was unable to finish his schooling.
This was because he walked out of the examination hall in 1967 due to lack of confidence.
He pooled all his confidence and entered the arena of examination again at the age of 69 and finished his higher secondary exams.
Age is no bar for knowledge.
Ramanimohan Pal who achieved this is a senior citizen based out of Agartala.
Their childhood runs through many meloncholic stories.
Here is one such man who was unable to finish his schooling.
This was because he walked out of the examination hall in 1967 due to lack of confidence.
He pooled all his confidence and entered the arena of examination again at the age of 69 and finished his higher secondary exams.
Age is no bar for knowledge.
Ramanimohan Pal who achieved this is a senior citizen based out of Agartala.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Entrepreneur at 20.
Rajiv Dhingra another early entrepreneur who started a recruitment firm and a website called jobs4freshers.com at the age of 20 in 2005. He started this when he realized that there was a market by providing career solutions to freshers. Within months the company had 36,000 registered freshers and 1,000 employers, and he managed to raise about Rs 1.5 lakh within a year. This is not the end of the story.
He started a blog called WATconsult.com in 2006. It helps companies engage with their audience using Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, podcasts and wikis. Just after seven months, it has earned Rs 5Olakh.
He started a blog called WATconsult.com in 2006. It helps companies engage with their audience using Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, podcasts and wikis. Just after seven months, it has earned Rs 5Olakh.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Guruji.com - Indian search engine
IITans pave way to an Indian search engine that is completely indigenous. It has been built to serve to the Hindustan minds (with more relevance). The search clicks published on this search engine may solve the problem faced by most people who bump into unessecary links with less relvance rate. Anurag and Gaurav have understood the tastes of India but, the challenge is how far will they keep up with the other engines raging with new innovations and expansions........
These guys were funded by Sequioa Capital for this innovation.
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