Tag Archives: startups

Startup Strategy Discussions with Sramana Mitra – 17th April

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Sramana Mitra, a serial entrepreneur with 2 successful exits, consultant with over 80 companies, and the founder of the 1M/1M is in town this weekend and, in association with Persistent Systems, will hold an event that every entrepreneur should probably visit.

The 1M/1M initiative, was started with the goal of helping one million entrepreneurs reach $1 million in revenues and beyond. The event on Sunday will have Sramana Mitra’s keynote address discussing the 1M/1M Methodology: Bootstrapping, Positioning and Lean Startups, followed by the opportunity to ask questions. Then entrepreneurs can participate in a public strategy roundtable with Sramana to receive some real time coaching and answers to questions about their startup ventures. Up to seven entrepreneurs will be able to pitch their businesses to Sramana Mitra during this session.

The schedule for this program is as follows:

  • 2:00 -2:30 pm : Dr. Anand Deshpande introduces Sramana Mitra.
  • 2:30 -3:00 pm : Keynote Address by Sramana Mitra, topics : bootstrapping, positioning, lean startups.
  • 3:00 – 3:30 pm : Q&A on the keynote address.
  • 3:30 – 4:30 pm : Live Strategy Roundtable with Pune startups.
  • 4:30 – 5:00 pm : Q&A with audience/Sramana discussing the EJ Methodology
  • 5:00 – 6:00 pm : Networking

If you’d like to pitch, send Maureen (maureen@sramanamitra.com) an email.

1M/1M will be working with Microsoft in helping entrepreneurs prepare for the Microsoft Bizspark’s India Startup Challenge. Girish Joshi from Microsoft will be attending the roundtable and scouting companies with Sramana Mitra for the challenge.You can find more about the challenge here

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here

A brief history of the Pune Open Coffee Club (Happy Birthday!)

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(This month marks the 3rd anniversary of the creation of the POCC (Pune Open Coffee Club). A few days back, POCC membership crossed 4000. We decided to mark the occasion by writing an article about the history of PuneTech, how it got started, and the various milestones along the way. If you have any good story/anecdote about your association with PuneTech, and how it affected you, we’d love to hear about it.)

The Pune Open Coffee Club is a community of all those interested in the startup ecosystem in Pune. With 4000+ members as I write this, including founders, entrepreneurs, early employees, wannabes, investors, lawyers, accountants and freelancers who work with startups, it is a huge and very active community. POCC usually meets on the 1st Saturday of every month in Shivajinagar and in Koregaon Park. Attendance is open to everyone and admission is free, and you can actually network and grow under the umbrella of experience and fellow-feeling.

The Pune Open Coffee Club was started by several individuals in their own ways. The Open Coffee Club movement had become fairly popular abroad before it reached its pioneers in Pune.

Harshal Vaidya was the first of the lot who attempted to get the OCC off the ground by organizing the first meet up in February 2008. The first meet up helped send out the first few sparks in the community.

The real start spark came a month later, in March 2008, Anjali Gupta and Santosh Dawara created http://punestartups.ning.com, an online social network for the POCC on ning.com. (This was later moved to http://punestartups.org the current home of the POCC.) On April 5th, they put together another POCC event, and they worked hard to invite all the movers and shakers of the start-up community in Pune to the BookEazy office terrace for tea, coffee and networking. The idea of the POCC was seeded in their mind by Vijay Anand.

Says Santosh:

“This time around, the conditions were right and the word about the Pune Open Coffee Club spread out quickly. Our first meeting was very well attended by over 75 individuals including some very well-known names in the Pune circle such as Anand Deshpande (Persistent Systems), Chetan Shah (Synygy), Jaspreet Singh (Druvaa) and more.

On June 7th, 2008, Nick Karnik an early member of the POCC (who has since moved out of Pune), created the Pune Startups mailing list.

Although the second meetup was a great success, there was a problem. Santosh called the next meeting in the Barista on Law College Road, expecting “maybe 15” people to attend. 40+ people showed, and there was a significant amount of chaos.

After this, Navin Kabra got in touch with Prof. Harshad Gune at SICSR, Model Colony, for permission to hold POCC meetings in one of their classsrooms. The first POCC meeting at SICSR happened on 23rd August, 2008. SICSR then became the ‘regular’ place for POCC meetings. With that the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. The next few set of events was a mix of exciting talks and discussions that resonated very well the start-up community in Pune and the movement began gathering momentum.

More recently POCC is attempting to go deeper into Pune by replicating the Open Coffee Club across Pune. This initiative is seeing a lot of initial success, with the creation of POCCs in Kothrud, PCMC, Aundh, Kalyani Nagar, Tilak Road, some of which have already announced their second meetings.

Santosh, who came up with the idea, says:

“I have my fingers crossed that these will be just as successful as the original, if not more so. They are all backed by a very impressive set of individuals who want it to succeed.”

Amruta Ranade now brings out a fortnightly newsletter to cover start-ups in detail for the benefit of the community. These are posted on the Pune Startups mailing list, and on her blog on PuneStartups.org

So is it all serious and work?

No, says Santosh,

“We also have a very “fun” side to the Open Coffee Club. In the past, we have had a group paintball competition, football games, dinners and movie nights where entrepreneurs and their families can relax, mingle and enjoy. Apart from this, we intend to meet regularly every month over the weekend.” POCC has been creating POCC subgroups in each region of Pune and Santosh says the team has high hopes about the new initiative.

“Anyone who has been an entrepreneur will tell you that entrepreneurship can be very rewarding and at the same time very unforgiving. For those who have quit their jobs to become entrepreneurs, the pressure to perform is fairly intense. Moreover, there is no going back to the same skill-based boxes as entrepreneurs are expected to excel at multiple roles.

By replicating the Open Coffee Club, we hope to encourage those who have been unable to participate actively due to distance to come forward and seed their own groups just as we have done so. In good time, we are certain that each of these groups will build their own camaraderie and dynamics locally and at the same time contribute to the overall development of start-ups in Pune.”

The Open Coffee Club was always intended to be a support group of entrepreneurs who get what each other are going through and can intervene to help each other out, share ideas and motivate each other. It looks like POCC is going in the right direction since day one.

Don’t all the books that matter to mankind advise just this?

Overview of KLISMA – Loyalty/Group buying startup incubated at Persistent

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So Customer is King; and the “loyal” King gets rewards. But how many of us really carry all the paper/plastic around or remember to redeem these? KLISMA, is a new customer loyalty program, that can be used via your mobile – which you always have with you.

KLISMA is primarily focused at providing group buying benefits to employees of corporate and institutional clusters for its services, but it also supports individual customers as well.

KLISMA offers a mobile based membership card. A corporate employee or an individual user can register (free) and get a mobile based ID across all participating retailers in the program. The user can even group family members under one ID. Once the account is setup, the user will be able to obtain digital receipts, return products, redeem m-coupons, and participate in retailers’ loyalty programs using mobile-based KLISMA ID. This service eliminates paper clutter, lost receipts for product returns, the frustration of keeping track of discount coupons and plastic loyalty cards in wallet, purse or key chain. So, you are now a “green shopper” as well.

KLISMA goes far beyond linking everything to the cards a user already carry in their wallet or purse. KLISMA constantly searches through promotions and offers to find the best deals on everything from clothing to groceries to electronics to restaurants. KLISMA’s suggestions are unique to the user, as they’re based on what you typically purchase. For example, if we like a certain store, it might offer us a m-coupon from them for “10% Off All Purchases of Rs.1000 or more”. Or, if we like a certain product, it might show us a “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” m-coupon.

Ajay Aggarwal, the Chief Customer Experience Officer at KLISMA says ‘KLISMA is a comprehensive platform for modern consumers to plan, shop and manage their entire consumption cycle and it also enables modern retailers to deliver desired shopping experience to these consumers.” To say it in a simpler way, KLISMA works more like the “armed forces canteen service” for corporate employees. In a way it engages with corporate customers to deliver its services to its employees.

I bet you are now reminded of Groupon or Snapdeal. But KLISMA begs to differ. KLISMA enables its members to buy anything ranging from a car to a cinema ticket at the time they wish to buy, the price they wish to buy and retailer they to buy from. Since KLISMA is completely member driven and not retailer driven it is truly a pull platform which is the core difference whereas all others are push models. Apart from that, it offers deals to its members. There is a unified loyalty program across all retailers, personalised promotions based on individual shopping pattern and behaviour, very wide products & services range (unlike Groupon and Snapdeal) and mixed channel experience over internet, mobile and phone support.

Ajay Aggarwal has been associated with retail industry since 1993 and post 2006 he tracked the consumer challenges in this industry when he felt the need to have a platform to push for shopping experience advocacy. “I firmly think this will be the future need of matured modern consumers”, assures Ajay.

KLISMA comes from Persistent, and Ajay Aggarwal waxes eloquent when he is asked about his experience of being incubated in Persistent.

“I started working on KLISMA in June 2009 and its basic framework comprises of Cloud, BI, Mobile and Collaboration technologies. This is where I shared the concept with Dr. Anand Deshpande in November 2010 and he invited KLISMA to be part of Persistent and committed his support to make it happen. We worked out a unique innovative model of incubating this within Persistent and it has been a great experience of working as an entrepreneur within a corporate. Very soon KLISMA shall be spun out as a separate entity, jointly owned by Persistent, founders, employees and other investors. I must say large amount of credit for the success goes to Persistent to allow us to operate independently and objectively without any bias.”

We asked Anand Deshpande, CEO of Persistent about how and why Persistent, traditionally a software product outsourcing company, is getting into incubating technology startups. Anand says:

“I am a great believer in the Indian consumer story. KLISMA is a technology based Company for the Indian consumers and we are excited to have built the platform. Persistent has funded and participated in other technology platforms another example would be Parasharplus (http://www.parasharplus.com).

“In addition to incubating products within Persistent we have also announced a partnership to connect entrepreneurs to customers. Recently, we have partnered with 1M/1M an initiative setup by Sramana Mitra who has a goal to help a million entrepreneurs reach $1 million in revenue. Persistent as a technology partner will be reselling and also be a channel for products from select 1M/1M entrepreneurs. In addition, Persistent Systems will also provide outsourced product development services to these companies. In this way, we look forward to help entrepreneurs succeed by bringing new technologies to market.”

In short, other Pune startups that are targeting Indian consumers, and would like some help in reaching the market could approach Persistent for some sort of a partnership, similar to Ajay & KLISMA’s incubation in Persistent.

Ajay is of the opinion that this is the decade of e-commerce in India. Consumer maturity, internet and mobile penetration, 3-G and maturity of supply chain infrastructure in India will give a huge push to this channel in the next 10 years. Like the traditional retail e-commerce growth will also be controlled and limited by government policies, especially FDI in retail. He has no doubt that post 2020 e-retailing space in India will not be different than anywhere else in the world. So if going green and paperless and intelligent is something you like, check out KLISMA’s website

Overview of Sokrati – Online Ads Optimization Startup

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(A few days back, Pune-based startup Sokrati announced that it has received an undisclosed amount of Series-A funding from Inventus Capital Partners, a company that has also invested in such companies as RedBus.in, TeliBrahma, and FundsIndia.

PuneTech chatted with co-founder and CEO Ashish Mehta to get more details of the Sokrati story.)

About Sokrati

Sokrati is a company that provides technology and services to merchants on the web for automated optimization of the placements of their online ads. For example, if you’re an e-commerce company, you probably spend a lot of money on buying Google AdWords, and other ads on various websites around the world. As the competition in your market heats up, it becomes more and more difficult to figure out where exactly to place ads, and what kinds of ads to get maximum conversions (in this domain, a “conversion” is when a person who sees your ad clicks on it and becomes a customer.)

On Founders and How Sokrati was Founded

Sokrati was founded by Ashish Mehta, Santosh Gannavarapu, and Anubhav Sonthalia, who were previously working for Amazon in Seattle, USA, but then quit to form Sokrati, and moved to India about 3 years ago.

The founders managed the Paid Marketing for Amazon from business & technology perspective. They saw that Paid Search Marketing (and Online Marketing in general) is very challenging for advertisers with dynamic content on their website – typically catalog based Advertisers in Shopping, Travel or Classifieds domain. And none of the established players like Marin Software, Efficient Frontier or Kenshoo provided an apt solution. They had some ideas on how to make it work for advertisers in these domains and started moon-lighting in November 2007. They signed up as one of the Amazon Affiliates, and spent weekends and after-work hours to build a proof-of-concept model. Within a year, they drove an incremental revenue of $20 million to Amazon – purely from the rudimentary PoC that they built on the side! It was easy then to quit their jobs in Dec 2008 and came to Pune to build a more production ready, more intelligent and sophisticated technology.

The idea & focus overall has still remained the same; though they are constantly taking feedback from clients and building product extensions to entail a larger piece of a more unified Digital Marketing & Analytics.

For more information about the founders see the Sokrati management team page.

Case Study to Illustrate Sokrati Offerings and Technology

To get an idea of what exactly Sokrati does, and how, consider this case study with a client who is a prominent jobs portal in India.

The client was managing Paid Search Campaigns (i.e. buying of search ads on Google and other search engines) in-house, incurring heavy spends. The key issue was – for the trailing 1 year or so, performance had started to plateau and there wasn’t much momentum in the campaigns. Scaling the campaigns with a controlled Cost-per-Action was getting very challenging & difficult for the client. And while experimenting various ways (mostly manual), the campaign structure + quality of keywords were just getting worse by the time.

Sokrati helped the advertiser ramp up their volumes by almost 2x within 8 weeks of campaign management by Sokrati.

The basic approach Sokrati took was to use Sokrati’s proprietary data mining & clustering algorithms to generate extensive set of keywords (from about 68000 to roughly 1.5 million) & very targeted ads. This allowed a lowering of CPCs (cost-per-click) & improved relevancy – eventually leading to better CPAs (cost-per-action) & higher volumes. This combined with real-time optimizations leveraging decay-rate algorithms has helped lower the overall CPA by 25% without sacrificing on any of the volumes. In other words, to get exactly the same amount of resumes, it cost the client 25% less in ad spending using Sokrati’s algorithms.

The other critical improvement provided was the ability to track beyond “binary” conversion flag. Sokrati’s proprietary tracking system is able to capture several more conversion parameters. For example, before Sokrati, the client was measuring only the number of resumes and the amount incurred to acquire them. Now, with Sokrati tracking, they are able to track the quality of the resume – whether it was an IT or Bank related; whether its a Fresher or had 5+ years experience. Not only that, the advertiser is now able to provide differential ROI targets for different “mix” of conversions; and Sokrati is able to optimize the mix in real-time.

About Their Technology Stack

Sokrati technology is built using Ruby-on-Rails for the front end and has Linux + MySQL + Java on the backend. They are using the cloud quite extensively have close to 50 servers now, all hosted on Amazon EC2 (US & Singapore). They did evaluate a few vendors in India – but didn’t find anything interesting or as reliable.

We asked Ashish whether it was difficult to hire developers with the required knowledge in Pune.

Hiring has always been a challenge & I don’t think, its a function of Pune specifically, but India overall. Though we’ve been very fortunate to get the key senior members of the team that are like-minded and truly start-up oriented, it has been lot slower than we would have liked. For example getting talent with data mining or machine learning skill-set is a struggle. We have interviewed over 100+ candidates but still haven’t been able to fulfill the positions; and have a long list of open head-counts in the company.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to founders of other technology companies in Pune – something you learnt during your journey so far and you wish you had known earlier.

Our start-up stint has just begun and there will be many things that we will learn either upfront or by failing over the next few years. But I’d like to share 2 learnings that we’ve gained from our stint so far –

1) One key learning that I’d like to share is to not procrastinate on raising funds. Once a start-up feels they are ready to raise funds or think they “need” to raise funds to grow faster (and only IF they feel so) – then the founders should not delay this process. As the funds will provide the stimulus to exponentially grow faster. I think we could have raised funds about 6 months back by being more aggressive but we let it take its own sweet time. In the internet world, where competition is so cut-throat & landscape so dynamic, even a small delay or a few missed opportunities could prove to be very fatal.

2) Customer Servicing & listening to their feedback is ultra-important. Coming from Amazon, we ingrained this idea directly & indirectly, on how to value each and every feedback from customer (big or small). But we’ve experienced that several start-ups, especially in India, are so obsessed with their product / services that they tend to overlook this aspect of the business. Its very vital to put yourselves into the customers’ shoes while building the product.

myEshala – an eLearning package oriented towards SSC board students

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Technology pervades all aspects of our lives, and now even educational institutions are actively adopting technology based systems. Pune’s Millenium School, Pune after scouring the market for an e-learning tool and unable to find a suitable one, decided to develop one on its own, and it is now available for all children at http://myEshala.com.

Basically, myEshala has video lectures, which they try to make interesting for the children, and quizzes/testing after every small segment to get an idea of whether the child has understood the lecture. Parents get a detailed report of what the child has studied, whether s/he has understood it, and whether they need to repeat any segments.

Why build myEshala when so many eLearning software packages already exist? This is the reasoning:

We have observed that there are lots of e-learning software product which sell “concepts”. Children are expected to use these concepts as and when necessary. We, on the other hand, have developed a product specifically targeting the Maharashtra State Board (SSC) for now. We provide a chapter by chapter tutorial for every subject (Hindi and Marathi excluded for now). We also do the same for quizzes. This makes it very tedious for us to make the content, but, the children get a huge benefit of seeing a monolithic lesson rather than picking up broken pieces here and there. This is especially true for the SSC Board, which is the most under-rated and the most neglected board in the country, for no apparent reason (there is an in-depth explanation of the same on our sister site)

This innovative tool – myEshala has thus been created people who have the software skills as well as hands-on experience in education and teaching. Nikhil Karkare, coordinator at Millennium National School, (and a very active member of CSI Pune and Pune Open Coffee Club) says, “Many of the e-learning tools in the market now, seem to have been developed by persons who do not have much experience in the education sector. Concepts are not set down in a child friendly manner and lectures tend to be long and boring – they don’t seem to really know what will or will not work in a classroom environment. So as engineers who could teach, we decided to combine our software and teaching skills to build this tool on our own.”

Once they developed and started using myEshala, the school found that parents and children benefited greatly from it. Students could take tests, view lectures (more than once), and play with widgets on the tool. Student performance and progress could now be accurately monitored and teachers too had more time to develop creative methods of delivery. “After implementing myEshala we have seen a significant improvement in the performance of students with the overall percentage increasing from 65% to 75%.” Nikhil Karkare happily adds.

The news spread and students from other schools as well requested to try out the tool. “This drove us to think that other children could also benefit from myEshala and we decided to put it on the retail market. Now other schools have started implementing myeshala as well.” Says Nikhil. Another goal in mind is to take myEshala to the rural areas as well where educational infrastructure is poor and challenges exist in imparting even basic education. “We want to make sure basic education reaches non-urban areas at a very low price.” Says Nikhil.

The use of technology however, is not new at Millennium National School. In fact they have always put it to use in a number of ways. Software was used to map each student’s home address on Google Maps, and then bus routes were planned accordingly. “This means saving of fuel and time, which is not only good for us, but for the environment as well.” Says Nikhil. They also predict the quantity of food to be prepared depending on the number of students present and certain other factors, by means of software. But, there are challenges too. “The end users are children of ages from Kindergarten to Std. 10. So usability sometimes becomes a big challenge. Again spending on technology is always limited, which is why we use Open Source technologies in most places.” Says Nikhil.

You can see the myEshala FAQ for more details.

Economic Times wants to know the stories of Pune Entrepreneurs

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The Economic Times, writes articles about entrepreneurship on its page Emerging India, and they want to increase their coverage of entrepreneurship from Pune and bring the city’s entrepreneurs to the forefront. Omkar Sapre, Senior Correspondent, of The Economic Times in Pune is keen to interact with entrepreneurs in Pune and know more about their businesses. The newspaper wants to focus on trend stories about various developments in entrepreneurship.

Omkar is interested in hearing form readers of PuneTech – please write to him at omkar.sapre@timesgroup.com, with an introduction of yourself and what business or startup you are in. Even if you are not entrepreneurs, you are requested to write in to him, with an introduction, where you work, what work you do, and whether you’re involved in anything apart your work. Please write the work PuneTech as the first word in your email subjectline, for easy management.

Any publicity is good for an entrepreneur, and more generally, publicity for Pune’s entrepreneurs is good for Pune as a whole. Hence, this is a great opportunity for the tech community in Pune to raise its collective profile. Hence, I would suggest, get in touch with Omkar, and talk to him not only about what you are doing, but if you happen to know somebody else who is doing exciting/interesting work, then talk about that too.

For more information about Omkar see his linked in Profile. And click here to email him: omkar.sapre@timesgroup.com.

Create a Startups Forum (“Open Coffee Club”) in your locality

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Santosh Dawara, one of the founders of (and the primary driver behind) Pune Open Coffee Club, the very successful forum for Pune Startups, is challenging the entrepreneurs of Pune to create smaller Open Coffee Clubs for each region of the City. The idea being that Pune’s startup ecosystem is big enough that it can support independent events for Aundh/Baner, or Koregaon Park (which is already active), or Kothrud.

The Pune Open Coffee Club (and PuneTech) will support and publicize your initiative, and hopefully this will be the start of something big. This is your chance to strengthen the startups ecosystem in your area, and in the process help yourself by helping others.

Here is Santosh’s message:

The Pune Startup eco-system has taken on a new life and has been growing in leaps and bounds. Startup events have been drawing record audiences of 100+ entrepreneurs and enthusiasts every time. I believe this is a story unique to amchi Pune and credit is really due to those supporting the eco-system by attending events, making useful contributions by speaking, organizing and making monetary donations. A special word goes out to the Startup Saturday folks who are putting together great events besides the POCC.

Here’s an opportunity for all of us to jumpstart an Open Coffee Club in our own way and share in this phenomenon.

For the month of March I would like to invite you to create an Open Coffee Club in your own locality.

Why do this? Originally, the Open Coffee Club was really a small group of entrepreneurs who met up regularly at a coffee shop to network, get to know each other and help each other out. The Pune Open Coffee Club is now just too big to ever meet at a single cafe, or for one person to run. However, the need for a local support group of entrepreneurs has not gone away.

To make it easy for you to get the group started, I am offering to collect all the local OCC’s and spread the word to all the entrepreneurs on PuneStartups.org informing them about the local groups, when and where they plan to meet so that they can select the most convenient or interesting group.

If you are interested in getting an OCC up and running, all you need to do is the following:

  • Select a date + time + coffee shop in your area
  • Add the event on PuneStartups.org
  • Ensure that you have enabled RSVP’s on the event to collect the contact information of all those interested in your OCC
  • E-mail me at [sdawara at gmail dot com] with the link to the new event
  • I’ll make sure the word gets out
  • Just show up at the appointed date and time and be yourself
  • Make sure your personal profile has a clear photograph so people can recognize you!

For example,

Grubshup Cafe Open Coffee Club,

Law College Road,

co-ordinator: “Your Name”

“Date / Time”

Sounds interesting? Look forward to getting in touch with you!

I would add the following tips:

  • Use the Pune Startups mailing list to find other founders in your vicinity, and publicize your event.
  • Use the PuneTech Calendar to ensure that your event does not clash with another important event
  • In my experience, establishing a regular venue is one of the most important things you can do. That allows you and other people to schedule an event with a minimum of fuss. The venue could be a coffee shop as Santosh suggests, or it could be a meeting room in some startup or company that is generous enough to allow their premises to be used. Or you can use an old school or a college.
  • Coffee/snacks/tea etc. are not a requirement for an event. Somehow, I’ve noticed that many people feel that organizing snacks, and creating posters, and other paraphernalia is necessary for holding an event. These things add significant overhead, not to mention expenses, and don’t really add that much value to events. I’ve found that for sustaining volunteer driven forums like open coffee clubs, doing away with all these overheads is the best thing, and reduces the effort it takes to organize the event.
  • Don’t give up too early. The first few events will have only a few people attending. Keep at it, and as long as you’re having meaningful conversations at the events, you will succeed eventually.

Updates: The following POCC branches have been created so far. They’re listed below with the date of the first meeting and the person who took the initiative to start the branch.

MARCH 19th:
Aundh Open Coffee Club
to RSVP and to see who is attending: http://punestartups.org/events/pocc-aundh
Pimpri-Chinchwad Open Coffee Club
18 are attending
to RSVP and to see who is attending: http://punestartups.org/events/poccpimprichinchwad-1
MARCH 26th:
Kothrud Open Coffee Club
31 are attending
to RSVP and to see who is attending: http://punestartups.org/events/pocckothrud-meetup
APRIL 2nd:
Tilak Road Open Coffee Club
to RSVP and to see who is attending: http://punestartups.org/events/pocctilakroad-1
Yet to meet:
Kalyani Nagar Open Coffee Club
To join the group and fix up a meeting: http://punestartups.org/group/pocckalyaninagar
Pashan-Sus Road Open Coffee Club
To join the group and fix up a meeting: http://punestartups.org/group/poccpashansusroad

Rescheduled: POCC event “Termsheet Basics #2” moved to 12th Feb

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A few hours back we published information about the Pune Open Coffee Club event Termsheet Basics #2: Negotiating with Angel Investors which was supposed to be on 5th Feb. However, a few hours later comes news that this event has been rescheduled to Saturday 12th feb; the venue has shifted to Persistent. So the final details are: Date: Sat, 12th Feb, 4pm, Place = Bhageerath, Persistent Systems, SB Road, Time = 4pm-8pm).

Please check out the updated event.

Termsheet Basics #2: Negotiating with Angel Investors – POCC Event – 12th Feb

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Update: This event has been re-scheduled for 12th Feb. All other details remain the same

Santosh Dawara writes:

The Pune Open Coffee Club is hosting an informative session on “Term Sheet Basics II: Negotiating with Angel Investors”.

Date: 12th February, 2011, 4pm (Saturday)
Venue: Bhageerath, Persistent, SB Road.

Entrepreneurs who are preparing to raise money from Angels can benefit immensely from a direct one-on-one interaction with attending Angels and experienced Entrepreneurs. The session will cover basic concepts that are unique to Angel investing such as ‘Convertible Debt’, common concepts such as ‘Valuation’, what preparation can help you increase your effectiveness and what to expect when you begin negotiations with an Angel.

This should be an exciting session as Angel Investing has subtle nuances as compared to other forms of institutional finance.

As an entrepreneur – will you prefer an equity round or a convertible note round – which is preferred by whom and why? What does participating preferred mean, and how does the math work in an exit scenario? What kind of anti-dilution protections are there and what are the differences? Do VC’s prefer to offer exits to early Angel Investors?

These and many other questions are encountered by investors and entrepreneurs alike every day. The session will introduce these concepts and considerations in order for you.

Presented by dynamic speakers and active angel investors, with extensive experience in venture creation, this session is a must for those focused on building or investing in new ventures.

The high level agenda will be as follows:

  • 1600 to 1630 Introduction to attending Angels
  • 1630 to 1715 Walk-through an actual term sheet template or memorandum of understanding
  • 1715 to 1730 break for tea / coffee
  • 1730 to 1830 Discussion, QnA between attending entrepreneurs and angel investors
  • 1830 to 1930 Networking

Here are some of the high level topics we can cover:

  • equity types and convertible loans
  • how much should be raised
  • pre-money, post-money, price per share – valuation vs. other incentives, pre and post cap tables
  • liquidation preferences
  • anti dilution provisions
  • protective provisions
  • post funding board composition
  • setting up the option pool
  • some key tips to entrepreneurs and to investors (not necessarily the same tips!)
  • negotiation tips and a mock negotiation if time permits

Note:

TiE Pune Event: My Story with Lila Poonawala

Events, ,

TiE Pune invites everyone to a “My Story” session with Lila Poonawala, where she will share her insights, experiences and opinions on her climb up the corporate ladder, the challenges she met and what it takes to be successful.

The event is on 28th January at 6:30pm, on the 5th floor, Wing A, of the MCCIA Trade Towers, SB Road. The event is open for everyone to attend, and there are no charges for participation. However, please register with:

  • Mrs. Vinaya Ingale (email: vinayai@mcciapune.com, tel: 25709180)/
  • Mrs. Madhura Chipade (email : madhurac@mcciapune.com, tel : 25709213)/
  • Mr. S. H. Kopardekar (email : sudhanwak@mcciapune.com, tel: 25709211) or
  • Ms. Namita Shibad, TiE (email : namita.shibad@gmail.com)

About Lila Poonawala

As the country’s first female CEO of a Multinational, Lila Poonawalla didn’t just break the glass ceiling, but trailed several new, unchartered paths to take her company, Alfa Laval to success. Lila’s tenure at Alfa Laval was marked by progress on all the business fronts – production, marketing and expansion. But her focus on the areas of industrial relations, employees’ welfare and customer service were what made the difference.

Apart from winning international awards, she procured global recognition for the company by showing progress in exports to Russia, Germany, USA, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Turkey, and many others. Internally she was the architect of a unique labor agreement that was a five-year agreement, the first of its kind in industrial world. Breaking the barriers of protocol was her forte and she utilized this modus operandi to the maximum – in forging better ties with customers, employees and their families and the parent company as well.

She was able to motivate the workers to better their performance and participate in the company as a family. Some of the many social activities she took up were Family Circles and welfare schemes like the Parivar (Family) Development Center and scholarships for employees’ children, in-house magazines, sports club for workers; as well as the concept of work improvement teams and quality circles, which were introduced not only to improve performance but also relations.

Her efforts towards social welfare have already made her the driving spirit behind the Lila Poonawalla Foundation, which is her private initiative and not a CSR activity and the Quality Circle Forum of India, to further the cause of education among women and contribute to People development. She has won several awards, among the many being The Lady of the Decade (1978-1988) the President’s Best Lady Executive, and above all being awarded Padmashree by the President of India way back in 1989 and an International recognition from the King of Sweden, honoring her with a Polar Star and naming her as the OFFICER of the Royal Order in 2003.But resting on her laurels is impossible. Lila, who is open to new challenges is on the boards of IDBI Bank, IDBI Intech, KPIT Cummins Infosystems, NobleTek PLM Solutions, Blossom Breweries to name a few and plays the role of Corporate Advisor, Mentor to many companies.