The Startup Journey

You have to be confident and shameless while crowdfunding. Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry shares on how to succeed in crowd funding with Venture Intelligence in this  interview. Priyanka also candidly shares how the team built Wishberry, raised funding from top angel investors like Rajan Anandan, on pivoting, and difficulties in raising capital for entrepreneurs operating in niche spaces not chased by VCs. Q: What does Wishberry do? Priyanka Agarwal : In its latest avatar, Wishberry has pivoted into crowd financing of low budget films (INR 1-5 Cr). We are essentially trying to create an internet platform for investment opportunities for HNIs in films including Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, or films targeting the global diaspora. L-R: Co-founders Anshulika Dubey & Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry Given that you are building a marketplace, how did Wishberry solve the Chicken and Egg problem? Beyond the “all or nothing” model what did Wishberry do to pull in more arti...

In a ET article , Ankur Singla, CEO of Helpchat shares where Indian Entrepreneurs are failing at building for Indian masses: "My hypothesis is that most Indian entrepreneurs and product managers build products for people like themselves - elite and westernized Indians who think and speak in English. This is also why almost all Internet companies fight it out for the first 10-20 million internet users. However, the honest truth of the Indian internet market is that to build a large Internet business, you need find a way to build for the 200 million common Indians ." How can Indian Entrepreneurs build for Indian masses ? 1. Go out, talk and relate to the COMMON MAN. "One weekend, I took all product managers in our team to Church Street in Bengaluru and we spent four hours talking to security guards, waitresses and small business owners. You need to see their phones, their home screens and understand their behaviour. All of them mooch off the Starbucks intern...

Writing in Founding Fuel , Baba Prasad, CEO of Vivekin Group who teaches entrepreneurship in B-Schools, bemoans the fact that a lot of the students would like to emulate the founders of companies like Facebook and Amazon and do not even bring up names like Narayana Murthy of Infosys or Azim Premji of Wipro, leave alone like Laxmanrao Kirloskar or Jamsetji Tata. "So, if business models for Indian entrepreneurs are fashioned in the West, and business heroes are not Indian, the question comes up: What is Indian about the Indian entrepreneur?," he asks. According to the article, the crux of an Indian Entrepreneur is: 1. Balancing profit-making with the burdens it is imposing on society and the benefits it can deliver to society 2.  The entrepreneur is solving problems, that are not uniquely Indian, but the scale is Indian.   Contrasting the Western/Capitalist model and a not-too-practical Gandhian/Socialist model, the author provides Aravind Eye Hospital as a bala...

1991 was when India achieved its second independence – that of economic liberalization. But, in retrospect, one has to say that it has been far more than just economic liberalization. It also liberated the mind of the baggage of self-doubt, low confidence and ignorance. It has therefore been my belief that those born around or after 1991 would be the change agents of India. Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking would be the vehicles of change. In the first column of Indipreneur published August 25th, 2006, I wrote: “For the first time, an entire generation of young people cutting across class lines is acutely aware of the opportunity ahead of them. They also recognize the inscription on the other side of the coin: RISK. And it’s not a four letter word anymore. While earlier generations were defensive and inward looking, this generation is aggressive, outward looking and not given to the self-doubts of the past. This is the “why not?” generation. This generation has the potentia...