The Startup Journey

A July 2002 Business Week article had this to say about Amazon: “after seven years and more than US $1 billion in losses, Amazon is still a work in progress.” The company posted $5m in profits, it’s first ever, in the last quarter of 2001 on sales of $1.12 billion. Amazon is the poster boy of e-commerce around the world, the incredible survivor of the 2001 dotcom meltdown - when naysayers said that Amazon with over $2 billion in debt (largely used to fund warehouses) would become insolvent - and naturally enough inspires Indian entrepreneurs as well. There are a great many lessons to be learnt from amazing Amazon. Founded in 1994 as Cadabra, Amazon.com went online in 1995 raising about $300K from friends and family. In June 1996, KPCB invested $8m and it went public in May 1997. It had sales of $15.7m in 1996, did $16m in the quarter ending March 1997 before the IPO, raised $54m in the IPO at a market capitalization of $438m on the first day. The company had gone international, had a w...

The Venture Intelligence APEX’12 Private Equity & Venture Capital Summit, scheduled for February 14 at Mumbai, is to feature a special panel discussion on the Internet & Mobile sector. Speakers on the panel, which will include a mix of Angel & VC investors, Entrepreneurs from the sector and Advisory Firms, will provide their outlook on investments in the sector for the next 3-5 years. Speakers confirmed for the Internet & Mobile panel discussion include Mahesh Murthy, Founding Partner, Seedfund - one of the most prolific investors in startup IT companies in the country - and Alok Kejriwal, Founder, 2Win Group - an entrepreneur who has created several Internet- and Mobile-based businesses (like Contests2win, Mobile2win, Games2win, etc), raised VC funding for them and also successfully sold Mobile2win's China arm to Disney. Also confirmed to speak on the panel is former Bharti TeleTech CEO Sunil Goyal, an active angel investor and founder of early stage VC fund Yo...