Tag Archives: entrepreneurs

The next wave of entrepreneurship in India

In Depth, ,

Monish Darda, Director of Product Development at BMC BladeLogic and co-founder of WebSym, wrote an article on the next wave of entrepreneurship in India for CSI Pune’s quarterly newsletter Desktalk. Parts of that article have been reproduced here with permission. You should be able to download the the newsletter (contain the full article) from CSI Pune website’s download section. (It’s the July-Aug-Sept 2008 newsletter.)

So let us take a look at tomorrow’s entrepreneur – I tend to see him (or her – the masculine is just convenience) in two colors – Mr E the risk taker, and Mr E, the man with the plan. Tomorrow’s risk taker is a person fresh out of college, with a few like-minded close friends and a couple of mentors, who want to do the next cool thing. The man with the plan is a youngish guy, probably back from the USofA, his future secured, with a plan that will leverage India for his next successful startup. Is anyone building up a services company? Well, yes and no. What I see in the future is services sold as a product. One in three entrepreneurs are going to be thinking about leveraging the labor cost differential at the low end of the value chain along with innovation that takes the returns to the high end of the value chain.

I see social networking sites that will spawn with better ideas in India, quickly gaining eyeballs, cheaper and faster than anywhere else except China perhaps. I see quicker and richer integration of media, with infotainment at the core. Indian entrepreneurs will be driving mid range technology applications with a larger audience and higher success rates. You saw youtube and facebook become the rage and build value worth billions in a short span of time – hold your breath for the Indian versions; they are not too far away in the future.

I see mobile middle-ware and products – if every other Indian is going to have a mobile phone soon, the apps are not far away. Indian apps, in Indian languages, closer to the Indian psyche, driven by Indian technology entrepreneurs. And it is not far in the future that we will have our own Nokias and Sonys and Ericssons – hardware is sure to follow.

I am not a betting person, but if I were, I would be betting on small, consumer shareware coming out of India in the near future – apps for the phone, the iPhone and the PC, that makes practical use of the now ubiquitous personal computer. I see enterprise software being developed in India, owned in India, but still managed and sold principally outside India. The entrepreneurs are going to be eyeing the small, high volume software for cash market, where services coupled with technology vying to increase the quality of life.

How will Technology Entrepreneurship benefit India?

My bet on the man with the plan is that he will drive the “real” technology – high tech technology creation and adaptation for grand socio-economic experiments, for logistics and the growing manufacturing industry; selling to corporates, multi-nationals and governments. He will be the guy attracting large investments and innovation dependent on infrastructure.

We are culturally a very adaptable, and very tolerant, people – the technology infusion of the future is going to bring about sweeping social change; most of which has already started. Look at what we did with the mobile phone – with SMS and the “missed calls” syndrome. We adapted the technology to suit our way of working, and kept driving costs to the ground. We will keep doing that with automobiles, phones, software, nuclear power and any other technology that we adapt as our own. We are very good at converting luxuries to needs, and that to me is key – the future of the Indian entrepreneur is dependent on this one factor. And I think this mass market has the potential to make billionaires out of ordinary people, with the spark to adapt and profit. And I believe with all its perceived ineptness, corruption and mismanagement, the government is somehow going to be the catalyst to make this happen, believe it or not. Perhaps all the impossible traffic and the constant load-shedding is already starting an entrepreneur somewhere on the road to his empire …

About the Author – Monish Darda

Monish is Director, Product Development at BMC BladeLogic. He set up the India operations of Storability Software, an East coast storage startup and was heading the group at Sun Microsystems when Storability underwent two acquisitions.

Monish is also the cofounder and Director of Websym Technologies.

He did his Master’s at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. He has architected large systems in the areas of customer acquisition, manufacturing and finance on J2EE and Microsoft platforms. He has also shared his experience in leading technologies in implementation and design through mentoring programs for senior developers and designers in top national and international software houses. He has implemented innovative processes and tools for distributed design and development across the US and Europe

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Advice for entrepreneurs – Gireendra Kasmalkar

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Gireendra Kasmalkar (Giri), whose testing startup VeriSoft was recently acquired by SQS, was interviewed for CSI Pune’s quarterly newsletter Desktalk. Some quotes from that interview that should be especially inspirational are reproduced here with permission. You should be able to download the the newsletter (containing the full article) from CSI Pune website’s download section. (It’s the July-Aug-Sept 2008 newsletter.)

About how your attitude towards something makes all the difference:

Initially, testing was a new area and it was a tough to convince people about it. Even today testing is sometimes looked down upon. My response: “I am glad you think of testing that way. That is what creates the opportunities for us!”.

About how to deal with commoditization in your domain:

But the testing industry was maturing. Every company now had an ‘independent’ testing practice. To maintain our leadership, we had to specialize further. We did that horizontally in such specialized areas as automation, load / performance, security and usability testing, even publishing papers in international conferences.

But we also realized we had to develop a vertical. It had to be a vertical right for our size and where we could have a shot at global leadership. After due consideration, we decided that Games was that vertical. It was not at all easy to enter this vertical. But today we test for top 10 publishers in the video games industry and have authorization with all 3 major console manufacturers – Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. In the on-line games industry, we not only test for game developers / publishers, but also for regulatory bodies for their compliance.

On how a small startup can make an impact:

For an entrepreneur, focusing on a niche is crucially important. One can hope to compete and beat the bigger, already established players only in a niche of your strength. More often than not, this niche would be a new area, and the entrepreneur only has his / her own data and analysis to see the hidden potential in the new area.

On the importance of networking for success:

This is where networking plays a very important role. Networking in the industry can bring you data about the trends in the industry. And you can even get your analysis of that data, and your ideas validated using your network. I was lucky to have the IIT network, the Jnana Prabodhini network, the TCS network because of my earlier background. But I also actively worked to build new networks through forums such as SPIN, CSI and MCCIA. In fact, there was a group of 8-10 successful industry seniors, whom I met once a year, by formal appointment, specifically for discussing my activities and seeking their suggestions. To their credit, none of these people ever refused my request. I definitely became a better entrepreneur as a result of these meetings.

From my own experience, I strongly recommend active participation in forums such as CSI.

I particularly like the suggestion about meeting 8 to 10 successful industry seniors on an yearly basis. I had started doing this with about 2, and based on Giri’s suggestion, I plan on increasing that to 8 to 10.

And I certainly agree with active participation in forums. Giri suggests CSI-Pune. I would strongly suggest getting involved in the Pune OpenCoffee Club. There are a whole bunch of other groups and organizations where you could get involved. Check out the Groups and Organizations Page from the PuneTech wiki.

Final word from Giri:

To me, entrepreneurship is less about making money and more about making a difference. (There must be easier ways of making money .) An entrepreneur provides a viable solution to a problem (need). On the flip side, the entrepreneur’s capabilities are stretched to the maximum extent possible, which I find very satisfying.

About the Interviewee – Gireendra Kasmalkar

Gireendra Kasmalkar (Giri) is the Founder Director of Prabodhan and Verisoft InfoSystems, and after the recent acquisition of Verisoft, is the MD and CEO of SQS India InfoSystems Pvt. Ltd. Giri has been the Chairman of CSIPune chapter for 2007-2008 and is also actively associated with other relevant industry forums like SPIN and MCCIA.

Despite having his hands full, professionals working with Giri will vouch for the energy, responsiveness and maturity that he brings forth to any activity.

For a full profile and links, see Giri’s profile on the PuneTech wiki.

Reading list for startup-founders

In Depth, , ,

Earlier, we published a list of free web services that a company can use to better run their business. However, tools do not really make or break a company. Having the right attitude, and making the right decisions at the right time is much more important. If you are a startup founder, it is not necessary that you learn everything from your mistakes at the school of hard knocks. You can try to benefit from the experiences of countless others who have learnt from their own successes and failures, and have survived to write blog posts about them. 

To educate you, Sukshma.net (the blog of Santosh and Anjali, founders of Bookeazy and Lipikaar) have put together this list of articles and books that they found useful in their own journey. Here is a full list, shamelessly plagiarized from there, (to save my lazy readers from one extra click, I hope they don’t mind):

Think Big!

1st Month: Bullet-proof your idea.

2nd Month: Raise Money, or scrape some together.

3rd Month: Define your value proposition.

4th Month: Iterative Innovation.

5th Month: Advertising.

7th Month: Momentum

  • 7 months in to my 2nd stint as Startup CEO – Jason Goldberg. Sorry. This link has gone off the internet. It used to be at http://blog.socialmedian.com/2008/08/7_months_into_my_2nd_stint_as.html but the whole blog disappeared after Jason sold social|median to Xing. If you’re able to find a copy of this article, please let us know. Lot’s of Pune people want to read it.

9th Month: Profit for sustainability.

Raising serious money from Professional Investors/Venture Capitalists.

Master your disruptive contribution.

Managing up and down.

Other books worth reading.

The Economics of Media and E-Commerce businesses.

I need inspiration. I need to know this has happened to others. It’s never too late to start over.

Read Founders@Work. Just turn to any story, any page and start reading. This is not to be read in one go, it’s most useful when you think you’re a complete idiot. Also, don’t forget to read Guy Kawasaki’s list of best pages from the book. Make your own list. We both have our list that we’ll put on the blog someday.

Startup Resources from around the web.

Remember to check the source, as they are promising to keep updating that list based on your suggestions (leave a comment).

Liveblogging CSI Pune’s Entrepreneurship Seminar

Events, Live Blogging, , , ,

I’m at CSI Pune‘s Entrepreneurship Seminar. Please forgive the haphazardness and lack of flow/organization. I’m liveblogging. Hopefully, better structured articles will emerge after a few days.

Arrived late and missed Anand Deshpande’s Keynote address.

What do VCs look for

Manik Arora, Founder and Managing Director of IDG Ventures India is talking about how to approach a VC. How they decide who to fund.

How to contact a VC.
Don’t call or send email without any introduction. VCs like to hear about you from someone they trust. A customer, ideally. Or a known successful entrepreneur, seed investor, etc. Otherwise they have no idea how seriously to take you.

Also, ideally, a VC who is going to invest a huge amount of money in you, likes to feel that he knows you. So, he would be much more comfortable investing if he’s known you for an year or two. Which means that you should meet and interact with VCs even if you are not looking for funding. You don’t want funding right now, but an year from now, when you are looking, and if you’ve been “hanging out” with that VC for a while, he will feel much more comfortable.

The Business Plan
Is important. It’s main purpose is to ensure that VC wants to meet you. Should contain the:

  • Elevator pitch
  • Vision and Mission statement
  • Market and Industry Environment – Size, Segment, Growth, Issues/Trends
  • Value Proposition, Key Products/Services and Sustainable Differentiation
  • Competition strengths and weaknesses and Entry Barriers
    • Most Indian Business Plans don’t have this.
    • If this section is done really well, VC gets quickly interested.
    • Shows that you are a sophisticated business person, as opposed to a techie.
  • Business Model and Sales/Marketing Strategy
    • What is the revenue driver, and what is the cost drivers
  • Market Traction Achieved so far
    • This is hard for early stage investors
    • So you probably don’t have much, but important to show speed with which you got there
  • Management Team Bios/Details
  • Organization Structure
  • Financials – Historical Actuals, Forecasts; Cash Flow + P&L
  • Exit Options – Names, Comparables, Price Paid, Multiples
  • Capital Required – How much, for what, over what timeframe
  • Risks and Gaps – What could go wrong, what don’t you have

Details available at http://idgvcindia.com

Do you need experience? Yes.
Start in a large company, so you know what business is about, what process is about, and also what are weaknesses of a big business, that you can exploit.

The Pitch/First Meeting: “Credibility”

Preparation before the meeting

  • Show up a little early. (You’ll be surprised at how many people come late.)
  • Dress appropriately. 
  • Have practiced your pitch a couple of times. 
  • Have a presentation ready / bring a couple of print-outs

During the meeting

  • Don’t try to only make your points – listen to them too
  • Answer questions directly
  • Ask the VC questions – gauge the VCs knowledge and style. It is fine to decide that you don’t like the VC and would not want to work with him
  • Discuss the deal briefly, don’t worry about valuation/dilution just yet
  • Towards the end, ask the VC the process going forward 
  • Towards the end, ask the VC how he can add value
  • Leave with next-steps clear and follow-up if you think this is a VC you want to take money from

Panel Discussion

Moderator is Madhukar Bhatia of nFactorial Software. Panelists are Manik Arora of IDG Ventures (whose talk forms the top half of this article), Yoshima Somvanshi of NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network), Sandeep Kumar, MD of Product Dossier, Vishwas Mahajan, CEO of CompuLink, Ajay Phatak, MD of Jopasana, Rajeevlochan Phadke (CEO of Image Point Technologies, a very interesting company that I hope to write about in a separate post). 

What environment is needed for successful startups?

Manik: A risk-taking society is a must. A person must be willing to take a risk. His in-laws must be OK with this decision. People must be willing to fund him – angel, seed, VC. Another problem with startups in India is that biggest market, US is too far away. Having a large domestic market is key – and that is slowly growing. CIOs in India are now willing to buy locally. Must have large feeder companies, where people can be part of growth and experience it, and learn from it, and find co-founders at. 

Ajay: In the “risk taking society” an important ingredient is also risk taking customers.

Sandeep: Customers are not willing to trust Indian startups. Can’t be sure the company will be around after 10 years. And this isn’t just the customer’s problem, because success stories are not there.

Vishwas: Early advice he got: He had an idea, and went to someone for funding. Was told: don’t come to me until you have 5 customers. That will teach you a whole bunch of things. And you will be taken more seriously. You don’t know all the real requirements and complexities until you have real customers.

What are the trends?

Manik: I don’t look at trends anymore. Look at the team. For example, everybody thinks web is hot in India now. But the last time the web was hot, about 25 to 30 companies got funded, and only 4 or 5 are still around. And now if you see, most of the top 15 websites in the world are actually platform companies. What can you do that would really be new and interesting?

Students in Startups (How to attract people to startups, and retain them)

Yoshima: NEN just had a startup jobs program. In some college in Delhi they had a placement day just for startups. 25 jobs where offered and 18 were accepted. One of the things that worked well is the fact that students did internships with startups, and got an idea that the work is interesting.

(Very cool, I think we should try something like this in Pune -navin)

Manik: I see lots of people in Wipro who work 14-15 hour days. And salary is less than what the market pays. So why do they all stick around? Apparently, the answer lies in Premji’s philosophy – whenever a guy is 60 to 70% ready for the next level in the job, he is pushed into that responsibility. They are too busy with their responsibilities to worry about leaving.

Pune’s too expensive, outsource to Nashik – Interview of Sushrut Bidwai (StartupForStartups)

In Depth, Interview, , ,

Nashik based StartupForStartups (SFS) is marketing itself as a “facility to help early stage companies with limited resources to build first cut of the product (V0.5/V1.0)”. Founder Sushrut Bidwai is a regular fixture at Pune startup events, and is trying to convince Pune-based startups to outsource work to his programmers in Nashik, promising that it will be cheaper than doing it themselves. PuneTech interviewed Sushrut to get a first-hand take on SFS’ value proposition.

Can you give an overview of StartupForStartups?
Many times people have good ideas, but dont have guts OR are shouldering family responsibilities, which does not allow them to pursue these ideas further. In some cases none of the founding team members are from tech background, so even getting a good CTO is difficult for them (salary wise as well skill wise) . StartupForStartups (SFS for short) is meant for such teams. Its better to have something ready before taking the risk of quitting (high paying) jobs. It gives you more insight into product you are building as well domain you are targeting.
What SFS does is, it provides you resources required to build that beta version which you will show to investors (if its a big product) or will launch to limited audience and see how market reacts to it. After having this beta ready and some reactions from market or investors it becomes easier to take the risk and pursue it further full time.

Why are you doing this in Nashik? I would have thought that being in Pune or Bangalore (near all the startups, who are your customers) would make more sense for you?
Problems with Pune and Banglore are operational costs and resource costs. Also Nasik will have lower attrition rates and keeping people happy is easier. With technologies pushing the boundaries, we have so many tools available which makes working in distributed teams far easier. We even can do pair programming with two people sitting 5000 miles away from each other using WebEx/dimdim/Skype. Also it provides lot of cost advantages to startups we are working with.

As a customer, one of the worries I would have with StartupForStartups, is the availability of quality talent in Nashik. How are you tackling this?
We have developed a unique training program called “Implementing Concepts” which all our engineers go through before joining any startup team. So even if a particular engineer has gone through it once for a particular project, he/she will go through it again using the technologies which are going to be used in new project. This kind of a very elaborate HelloWorld for a project. Also, my experience in working on tech products is 80% of work is trivial and 20% is core work which is complex. So even if a startup is working on a product which is complex, they can take help of our resource in rest of 80% work. Though this does not mean we do not have expertise to take up complex work, it just means we are flexible and are okay with working as part of larger team. Also this is not outsourcing model, it is collaboration model. So you know who is working on your product and what that persons skills are and you can choose from the pool available. Also, to keep high availability of quality talent we are in process of collaborating with colleges here in Nasik. In this we will take the training program to colleges and have students go through them while working on final year projects. Please note that we do not assign interns on the projects.

Considering that most of your customers are early-stage startups who are strapped for cash, how do you plan on charging them for your services?
Charging is transparent. We send details about salaries we are paying to engineers assgined assigned to work on a particular startup and plus typically 20% operational costs. Now if you consider Nasik and typical salaries engineers expect and are more than happy with are much lesser than in Pune/Banglore. We already have the infrastructure and are building team. We are planning to build a team of 12-15 people by Dec end.

Could you give us an idea of what kind of savings I can expect compared to outsourcing to a company in Pune? (Where are the savings coming from: lower salaries, or other factors too?)
Lower costs for resources.
Lower operational costs. Just to give you indicator of savings, an Entry level GWT/J2EE programmer will draw salaries in the range of 17-22K in Pune/Banglore same programmer if he/she is from Nasik will be more than content to work on a good startup team if given around 9-10K salary. Plus you have to keep him/her happy so there is no attrition. Spend money on infrastructure like office space/ furniture/ hardware/ software / electricity / lunch facilities and many non-tangible costs like FBTs/Mediclaim facilities etc etc. you save these costs by almost 70%.

What do you see as your key competencies?

  • Experience of working in large scale product companies as well as early stage startups.
  • Top management has excellent problems solving and product designing skills.
  • Understand working on an Idea and processes involved in the same.
  • We are young, enthu, full of energy and love working on good ideas. (This is probably the most important quality.)

In the context of StartupForStartups, I’ve heard you talk about having a startup ecosystem. Can you elaborate on that?
This eco system is for people who are still in jobs and want pursue ideas. Though part of it can be used by full time entrepreneurs.

  • We are signing an MoU with a financial and legal service provider company having experienced in handling these services for startups.
  • We are creating pool of consultants (Architects, Performance engineering, Marketing/Advertising, HR, Viral Video creators etc).
  • We are collaborating with engineering colleges here in Nasik. We have designed an unique training program “Implementing Concepts” which is focused on training engineering students with latest technology and early stage product engineering.
  • We are talking to people who have the expertise of providing mentoring to early stage companies even before product is built OR evolved. Though we are in early stages of discussions with these people, but hopefully it will happen.
  • We are building a tool (looking to raise funds for this tool) which is designed around a process called Super-Agile, which I will be publishing shortly. This tool and process are targeted for early stage product development. The tool will make writing code almost a trivial thing and even non-tech background people after a little training can build the products first cut on their own.
  • Network. Not all startup founders are well connected. It takes lot of time to connect with people who can provide you help in building the startup. We can help there by connecting you with people we know, so its some starting point.
  • Knowledge-base. Startup entrepreneurs does not have time to go through lengthy tax stuff etc. Or does not have time to design their documents like Offer letters, seperation letters, NDAs. Over a period of time we will collect such documents and put them in an inventory. This inventory can be very valuable to startups.

Note that all the services mentioned above does not necessarily come with a price tag. Some are out of goodwill some are for money 🙂 . Our main problem is we are young, have the skillsets necessary to pursue an idea and make it to successful business. But we do not have the idea. So we want to work with people who do have it.

For those interested in meeting, Sushrut is in Pune today (25th September 2008) and is likely to attend the CSI Pune Seminar on Entrepreneurship. I know that there are a bunch of PuneTech readers who have an idea for a startup but haven’t made much progress yet because they haven’t been able to quit their job and take the plunge. If you are one of those, would you be willing to outsource some of this development to StartupForStartups or a similar company? Do you think this model will work? Let us know in the comments section below.

Related Links

Startups: Enter contests, make friends, win prizes

Events, , ,

There is a spate of competitions for startups and wannabe startups that are all running currently. You should consider submitting an entry (or nominating yourself) since that doesn’t take up too much time, and can in some cases, get you some good publicity / visibility. And if you actually win, then that’s even better.

SIBM’s Endeavor 2008 Business Plan Competition

SIBM is proud to present Pitch Perfect 480 contest. This event seeks to provide an opportunity for the working professionals/start ups to gather momentum through Seed Funding.

The structure of the event is:

Registration opens and Invite Business Pitch Presentations: 10th September 2008 to 5nd October 2008

Short listing of best 12 Business Pitch Presentations: 05th November 2008

8 minute (that’s 480 seconds, hence the name of the contest) presentations by the selected teams at SIBM Campus:  15th November 2008

The top 2 teams would get an opportunity to compete for funding of Rs. 50 million.

We are pleased to inform you that Venture Capitalists like SEEDFund,  NEA-IndoUS Ventures, IndiaCo Ventures Ltd. have confirmed their participation in the event.

For registration: www.sibm.edu/endeavour08 or 
Contact organizing team: pitchperfect@sibm.net

IIT-Bombay’s EUREKA! Business Plan Contest

The Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT-Bombay is organizing EUREKA! The
Biggest International Business Plan Competition in Asia.

Prizes worth USD 50,000 are to be won with finalists getting a chance
to pitch in front of Mumbai Angels.

Teams will get a chance to represent India at the Intel-UC Berkeley
Innovation Challenge. Special Category this year is cleantech. Its simple to participate,
just log on to www.eureka.ecell.in

The Tata NEN startup popularity contest

Tata and NEN announce the first ever people’s choice Awards for great young companies, the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards launched on Aug 27!

Be part of this action!

Who’s involved?
TATA has joined with NEN to bring you the Awards, with support from Major Partners Helion, Seedfund, Mint and Wadhwani Foundation and from the entire entrepreneurial community to make this a great success. 
>> Check out the great list of partners and their participation.

A better world for Startups

We’re hoping to get more than 500 Nominations, and reach over 5,00,000 people. With this, Hottest Startups will be the largest, most comprehensive Awards recognizing and supporting high-growth startups in India. Let’s help make the world a better place for startups!

Know a great startup? Nominate.
This is a great opportunity for us to showcase the startups in our community.
The startups should be 5 years or younger, headquartered in India, and poised 
to shape their industries. Do you know any? Did we just describe your startup? >>Please go online and nominate.

Hot or not? You decide.
In this competition, you are one of the decision makers. As soon as a Nominee goes online, the voting opens for that company. You can vote once for every single Nominee. You can vote either online or by sms.

>>Please go online, and vote: Help your favorite nominees win!


Hottest Stuff: Voter Lucky Draw
Everyone gets a chance to win at TATA NEN Hottest Startups! 
As soon as you vote, you are automatically entered into the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Voter Contests. Every week, 100 voters are randomly selected to get their fun prizes.


Contest: deadlines
Nominations and Voting open August 27. Winners are chosen through combination of Expert Reviews and voting. Voting for Phase 1 closes Nov 5, and the shortlist of 30 companies is announced Nov 6. Phase 2 begins Nov 6. The 5 Winners will be announced Dec 23.  
>> Details on contest rules.
What do the TATA NEN Hottest Startup Winners get?
Winners receive a powerful combination of tailored business development support, access to funding and incubation, and lots of great publicity, including profiles in a special supplement of Mint. Business support will be provided by Knowledge Partners, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and the Startup Accelerator at Microsoft.

Innovations 2009

The IIT-Bombay Alumni Association of Pune has an annual event to celebrate innovation in India. This is usually quite good, although it is not restricted purely to infotech or even tech, so the focus is rather broad – which is a good thing or a bad thing depending upon your point of view. But in any case, it is an event that you should try to get into. For details see PuneTech’s previous post about Innovations 2009.

Do these help?

Question for you: do events like these help? If you have been a startup that went through an event like this, did you find it worth it? I’d like to hear from both, winners as well as those who did not. Please leave a comment  below so the rest of the community can get an idea of how much time to spend on such activities.

CSI Pune Seminar on Entrepreneurship (Thu, 25th Sept)

Events, , ,

What: CSI-Pune‘s seminar on entrepreneurship

Date and Time: 2 pm to 6 pm on 25-Sep-2008  

Where: Hall No. 4, A Wing, MCCIA Trade Tower, 5th Floor, ICC  Complex, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune 411 016

Registration: This event is free for all, but please register at www.csi–pune.org.

Details:

Today many professionals are aspiring to be entrepreneurs – mainly to get more job satisfaction, a sense of great accomplishment and personal financial gain. Entrepreneurship is often a difficult undertaking – especially so in IT business because there are rapid technological advances and significant competition. This seminar is aimed at featuring some “high-profile” entrepreneurs to share their experiences and provide valuable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, provide inputs regarding raising of venture capital and discuss on how to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

 

Time

Event

Participant(s)
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Registration  
2:30 pm – 2:40 pm Inauguration and release of CSINewsletter  
2:40 pm – 3:20 pm Keynote address Dr. Anand Deshpande (MD & CEO, Persistent Systems) / Dr. Srikanth Sundarrajan (COO, Persistent Systems)
3:20 pm – 4:00 pm Approaching VCs – How they decide who to fund Manik Arora (Founder and Managing Director, IDG Ventures)
4:00 pm – 4:15 pm Tea Break  
4:15 pm – 4:55 pm “Scaling Company successfully -> from Automated Securities to SunGard India” Harsh Barve (Vice Chairman, SunGard India)
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Panel discussion – building an entrepreneurial ecosystem and helping bridge the perceived gaps as brought out by the VC ·                      Manik Arora (Founder and Managing Director, IDG Ventures)   

·                      Yoshima Somvanshi, Sr. Associate Consultant, National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN)

Entrepreneurs:

·                      Vishwas Mahajan (CEO – Compulink)

·                      Rajeevlochan Phadke (CEO – Image Point Technologies)

·                      Sandeep Kumar (MD, ProductDossier)

·                      Ajay Phatak (MD, Jopasana, a CoreObjects company)

·      Panel coordinator: Madhukar Bhatia (nFactorial Software, formerly VP at Symphony Services and Founder of In-Reality Software)

 

Related links:

How (and why) to bootstrap your own startup

Live Blogging, , , ,

I am liveblogging the Pune OpenCoffee Club saturday meetup, where we are discussing how to bootstrap your startup. We have invited three speakers who have experience with both bootstrapping a startup and VC funding: Anand Soman, Tarun Malaviya,  and Shridhar Shukla.  The following is a quick-n-dirty capture of some of the discussion that happened.

This is not intended to be a well thought out, well structured article – hopefully that will happen after a few days, when hopefully someone blogs about this event.

Update: The hope has come true. Here are two other blog posts on that event: A post by Santosh (or maybe Anjali) of Bookeazy, and one by Rishi from Thinking Space Technologies (ActiveCiti and EventAZoo)

Getting funded vs. bootstrapping your own startup:

Anand: Take funding when you want to do something that you cannot do without funds. This can be VC funds, or any other source of funds. But make sure that the goals of the financer are the same as your goals, otherwise you’ll get into trouble.

Tarun: Most of you will not get funded. Officially there are 45 million businesses in India. Unofficially, 85% of 350 million people are in the unorganized sector – so they are businesspeople.

I don’t want to be a mom-and-pop show in a corner. I want to be a big business. But remember Reliance is a bootstrapped company. Finance is a good thing at a certain time, not always. I’ve seen too many people fixated on getting funded. It is better to be fixated on running your business well – keeping customers happy.

Shridhar: You get funding only if you’ve proved that you have a viable business. Which means that you have to bootstrap until you reach that point. So you need to figure out how to do this in any case.

What are the disadvantages of VC funding?

Tarun: You have to build a bridge across a river. You need a million dollars. You get funds for only 50k. What do you do? Fold the business? That’s what a financial investor will suggest. An entrepreneur will do anything to keep the business running. Buy boats to get across. Run a boating service. Change tactics to make some progress.

VCs insist on big returns. Leave you with no choice.

Q: If someone wants to build a lifestyle business, then you don’t need VC funding. But if you want to build a product, there are many people across the world with the same idea. If they are funded and you are not, then you are at a major disadvantate.

Lifestyle business = this is a lifestyle choice for the founders. They are doing this just because they enjoy doing this, and they are making a little money. They are not interested in giving a huge exit to their investors.

Don’t worry about lifestyle or not. Focus on building value for customers. As long as you can do that, and create significant value, you will do fine, and you will attract investors. If the value created is not significant, you’ll find out soon enough, and you’ll change your strategy.

There is a major trade-off involved here. You must believe in yourself. But not to such an extent that you are blind to realities and are not listening to anybody at all. So you need to balance this – believing in yourself vs. listening to feedback. That is difficult.

So why take VC funding?

Tarun: Family businesses get ruined by all the informal/unprofessional structure. VC funding is a great way of getting a professional corporate structure that is necessary for success.

VCs have wisdom, if you select wisely. They open doors to contacts. They are advisors. Some of them can be given a stake without being given money. So that is important.

Every VC that I’ve talked to has helped me in some way. So even if you don’t take funding, take advice from them. Go through the process.

Anand: VCs are not the only source. Many other sources.
One good source is raising money from your first customer. Win-win situation. He invests because he can direct you to build a product he wants. This is good because the understands your product and understands the business requirements. And he is happier giving you a contract because he actually has control over you 9since he funded you).

Bootstrapping your product through services.

Shridhar: Do services. Charge high. Don’t worry about good quality work. Do boring work because it doesn’t take up too much of your time (so you have time to work on your product). Don’t have qualms about doing this. Even when you do your product, keep the structure in place for keeping the flow of money from services. Money from any source is good. Don’t give up on that.

Another possibility for bootstrapping is to moonlight. Work somewhere. Have a day job. Work at night. Don’t create pressure on your own savings or your friends savings. Many businesses got started that way. Many people are worried about being fast, and first to market. That is not so important. But be ethical. Don’t do your current employer in

Anand: 14 of the top 15 companies in the world were started by part-timers.

Tarun:
Q: Why do you want to do product?
A: Exponential returns. Build once, and sell many times. Product encapsulates a service. You can bootstrap this. Sell your product as a service to the first few customers. Or maybe, start by selling your expertise.

Shridhar:
Don’t tell your customer that you are going to build a product in the space that you are doing a project in. Be smart. Don’t sign a contract that gives away your IP.

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POCC Meetup – How to bootstrap your startup

Events, , , , , ,

What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together. Discussion on “How to bootstrap your startup”, followed by presentation / demo by ActiveCiti, and general networking

When: Saturday, 13 September, 4pm – 7pm

Where: SICSR, Model Colony. Here is the map.

Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone, but you must register at http://www.activeciti.com/public/display_event.aspx?id=150878bd-cc32-102b-a8dc-e4e2bf193de6

Details:

Agenda:
4pm-5pm: Discussion: How to Bootstrap your startup
5pm-6pm: Startup Spotlight: ThinkingSpace Technologies (ActiveCiti & EventAZoo)
6pm-7pm: General Networking

Bootstrapping your startup:
We will talk about the pros and cons of bootstrapping vs. venture funding a startup. Tips and techniques on how to bootstrap. We have invited three successful Pune-based entrepreneurs who have gone through this and will guide the discussion and share their experience. The panelists have over 50 years of combined experience and about 8 startup avatars. Details of the invited panelists are given below.

Startup Spotlight:
Pune-based startup ThinkingSpace Technologies will talk about their two products, ActiveCiti (which is already up and running) and EventAZoo (which is in a pre-launch phase). They will be looking for feedback, suggestions, collaborators, etc. In addition, they will also share some experiences they had regarding copyright (somebody copied their entire product), which should be instructive for other startups.

About the invited panelists:
Anand Soman, founder of Infinishare Technologies, after having two successful startups in the past, one of which was bootstrapped, and the other one was VC-funded. His current startup is again bootstrapped.

Tarun Malaviya, CEO of Mithi, has also seen both sides of the issue, initially having presided over a successful bootstrapped phase of Mithi, and then a later VC-funded re-incarnation.

Shridhar Shukla, founder and MD of GSLab, and has used a services business to successfully bootstrap their products business.

See the PuneTech calendar for a comprehensive list of all upcoming tech events in Pune

SeedFund.in wants to meet Pune entrepreneurs

External Visitors, ,

Anand Lunia, Executive Director & CFO, Seedfund is visiting Pune this week, and is interested in meeting Pune entrepreneurs in one-on-one meetings. If you fit that description, you can send him an email at anand AT NOSPAM seedfund dot in.

Seedfund believes in investing small amounts (1 crore to 5 crore) in early stage startups and they are mainly interested in the following sectors: internet or media or mobile or telecom or retail or consumer-facing plays, and also for things that aren’t yet “sectors”.

This message brought to you by the Pune OpenCoffee Club, which you should join if you are a Pune entrepreneur, or you are interested in the Pune startup ecosystem.

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