The Startup Journey

Qualcomm Ventures, a division of Qualcomm, has announced a global business plan competition called QPrize, with the aim of help the winners with funding to translate their business plans into reality. The competition invites entries from India, China, Europe and North America for business plans that accelerate wireless technology development in any of the following business sectors: * Consumer/enterprise applications and services * Communication devices * Semiconductor and component technologies * Mobile platforms * Digital media and content * Healthcare technologies and services * CleanTech The deadline for submissions is July 31, 2009 . A winner will be selected from each region. These 4 winners will each receive US $100,000 of convertible note funding and will be invited to the Qualcomm Ventures CEO Summit in San Diego, California to compete for the Grand Prize in November. The Grand Prize winner will receive an additional US$150,000 of convertible note f...

The CEO was a highly qualified and experienced person. He had returned to India over 3 years ago to start a company with his own funds. For family reasons, he had set up his company in a town about 100 miles from Bangalore. He was now struggling to grow beyond the initial customer or two. Customers weren’t comfortable with doing business with a company located in that town; Payments from customers took more time than usual; it was hard to recruit talented people in the smaller town; Communication infrastructure wasn’t the best resulting in loss of efficiency and productivity. It was hard to find people in his town who were aware and knowledgeable about how things worked in national and international business. And that there was no PR firm in his city to help generate visibility for his company. In short, according to him, the reason he was struggling had everything to do with the location of his company. In the course of the conversation, he also mentioned that his company had built a ...

Last week, I wrote about the entrepreneurial mindset challenging status quo. Challenging status quo and embracing change can take many forms and operate at many levels; but the presence or lack of an entrepreneurial mindset is apparent in the smallest of things or in everyday operating situations. Here’re two real life examples regarding status quo. Some years ago, a well known and very experienced Silicon Valley VC was visiting a small and young business in Bangalore that was raising capital for funding its growth in India and overseas. The company was building a high-tech component for the telecom equipment sector. He met the US educated CEO and his team, visited customers and the manufacturing facilities. Everything seemed to be fine with the visit. However, the VC declined to invest. He had noticed that the CEO’s office had typewriters and not computers! He had also noticed and learnt that the CEO’s business card didn’t have an email id, that the secretary took printouts of emails ...

I came across this interesting question in an in-flight magazine: What would your life be like if you lived it without any fear? It started me thinking about fear and how the primal emotion impacted us humans. To be sure, fear has helped us survive as a species. Early man feared wild animals, for example, and that helped him stay away from them. Fear also played a role in early man’s migration as fear of a place or surroundings forced him to seek out more comfortable environs. Fear of death or harm also forces radical and unnatural behaviours (fight versus flight) that help ensure survival. Fear also forces our imagination to work overtime in fanciful ways. All of us, at one point or the other, have been afraid to enter dark, silent and secluded areas because of the fear of the unknown. It is the anticipation of a terrible act that causes us to react. Charles Darwin concluded that fear is an ancient instinct that helped propagate the human species. Fear of the unknown, of rejection and...

Startups thrive in an environment of chaos where multiple tasks are done, undone and re-done often times guided by just a leap of faith. Decisions are taken in quick time without long (boring?!) meetings typically by a small team of extremely committed and passionate people. Systems, processes and procedures are considered inhibitors to their competitive advantages of speed and innovation. But as the startup grows, the lack of systems and processes start inhibiting growth; indeed, the company can implode before long without adequate attention and focus on having and implementing systems and processes. These processes and procedures relate to every functional area of the startup and these functional areas cannot scale, operate efficiently and effectively without the right systems. And the management team cannot manage the growth of the company if they cannot measure and track activities, people, money, time, contracts and documents among other things. As the startup matures, expectation...

Private Equity and Venture Capital investors, who have invested over $2 billion into Healthcare & Life Sciences (HLS) companies in India over the last five years, are keen to step up the pace of investments in this industry. Over 42% of PE & VC investors surveyed by Venture Intelligence, a leading research firm focused on Private Equity and M&A deal activity, felt there was a strong opportunity to tap the market for healthcare services in semi-urban and rural areas. The investors also identified Diagnostic Services, Medical Devices / Equipment, Hospital Chains and Wellness Products and Services as their favorite sectors for investments within the HLS industry. The detailed results of the poll will feature in the Venture Intelligence “Private Equity Pulse on Healthcare & Life Sciences” report to be published next month. Click Here for more information.

Julius Caesar the great Roman emperor divorced his wife Pompeia as he considered his honour and position compromised because Pompeia was indirectly associated with a trial for sacrilege. He explained that his wife should not only be free from sin but from suspicion. Given the state of our political system, this kind of requirement seems laughably quaint. But if the system is to improve, keeping this principle in mind is crucial because it is a pre-requisite for good governance in the political as well as the business spheres. In the last Indipreneur column, I had talked about the need for more entrepreneurs to enter the political sphere. But, and there always are buts, this comes with a significant caveat. The caveat of suspicion of “conflict of interest” becomes therefore especially applicable to those entrepreneurs who’ve decided to be in public service. Our courts which enjoy enormous credibility amongst other institutions in India have a well established system in this regard. Rece...

CNBC-TV18's Enterprise Inc. show has an interesting Reality TV-type video of an first-time entrepreneur pitching to an angel investor. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the Private Equity and Venture Capital ecosystem in India. Click here to learn about Venture Intelligence's products and services for entrepreneurs.

Startup Journey is happy to invite you to nominate companies you are associated with in India to The World Economic Forum's 'Technology Pioneers' Program 2010. The Program, started in 2000, with the goal of identifying new technologies that will have a dramatic and sustainable impact on business and society, has achieved the distinction of being the most prestigious recognition in the world of technology. Last year, Bangalore-based mobile payments company JiGrahak Mobility Solutions was selected as one of the 34 "Technology Pioneers" for 2009. Another tech firm that does a lot of its development out of India - Nivio - was also named. To be selected as a Technology Pioneer, a company must be involved in the development of "life-changing technology". In addition, it must demonstrate visionary leadership, show signs of being a long-standing market leader and its technology must be proven. WEF solicits nominations for the Technology Pioneers program from Tec...

Jason Nazar, founder CEO of DocStoc.com, has a great post on the "The Unintended Consequences of Startups" that a lot of entrepreneurs can definitely empathize with (and hopefully learn from). Hat tip: StartupDunia It took me a while to admit that I was stressed out, and even longer to realize I would turn to food to compensate for that stress. Over the past year, I’ve become a more solitary person with my thoughts and emotions than I’ve ever been, while increasingly becoming a public figure who’s known as an outgoing social networker and showman. It’s a strange dichotomy. My family has been both incredibly supportive but also upset that I’ve seemingly disappeared. I have three (quite) older siblings, and we’re undeniably close. But while they’re all proud of me, they disapprove of my unbalanced lifestyle. My brother and I share opposing sides of duplex, he’s literally a wall away from me. But I can often go 2 weeks without seeing or talking to him. My sisters are ...

As the cliché goes, the world’s largest exercise in democracy kicks off yet again this week in our country. Hope, hopelessness and cynicism are the constant emotions accompanying this exercise. The political class appears determined to demonstrate new lows in venality, criminalization, corruption and crassness. Competitive one-upmanship in making empty, patronizing, platitudinous, parochial, narrow and sanctimonious statements of intent is the order of the day. Civil society is battling away slowly and doggedly. But change is very frustratingly slow to come by thanks to the twin deadweights of our fossilized justice (viz. police, courts, laws and legal procedures) and administrative (eg. defence procurements to social project implementations to securing a driving license) systems. Social and political change has always been brought about by visionary and charismatic leaders (Gandhi, for example) who could articulate that vision such that it mobilized vast numbers of people towards achi...

Press Release Over 80% of Private Equity and Venture Capital investors surveyed by Venture Intelligence in its newly released “Private Equity Pulse – Education” report, plan to make an investment in Education companies during the next 6-8 months. With an estimated $40 billion market for private institutions and a CAGR of 8.6%, it is no surprise that PE & VC investors are looking to ramp up the 30 investments (worth over $300 million) they have already made in Education-related companies, the Venture Intelligence report indicates. “In the current uncertain economic environment, the attractive and predictable rates of return of the Education industry, is serving as a magnet for PE investors,” points out Arun Natarajan, CEO of Venture Intelligence. “In fact, in another poll which we had done in end 2008 among PE investors, Education had received thrice as many votes as the next favorite sector in terms of attractiveness for investments in 2009,” Mr. Natarajan added. Despite the overa...

An increasing number of universities and colleges are offering courses in “Entrepreneurship” as part of their business education. Around the world, business plan competitions are held by academic institutions at regular intervals. The wide publicity given to “entrepreneurship” in recent times has resulted in entrepreneurs gaining respect and being acknowledged as critical participants in a country’s economy, wealth and job creation. But does taking a course or two in entrepreneurship while pursuing a business degree make one a better entrepreneur? My own view conditioned by many years of experience is that a business degree, with or without courses in entrepreneurship, is not material at all. Then are all these courses useless? Well, no they’re not! They’re useful for learning and understanding multiple aspects of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship but don’t, in any way, make one a better and successful entrepreneur. A small percentage of any population become entrepreneurs while the...

You’re delighted to have successfully raised capital. You can now execute the plan and grow the business. One of the first things you do is hire senior sales and marketing people. You negotiate their compensation with them and are about to issue an employment contract. Then you remember that you’re supposed to get the approval of the board before hiring certain categories of people. The board does not approve the hiring. You feel humiliated, dejected and angry. The board is upset that you didn’t consult them before taking the decision to hire. Soon, the relationship sours. You get irritated and annoyed with some board members because of the enormous micro-managing that they do. It seems that every little decision needs to be run past the board leading to frustratingly long decision making. In addition, you feel upset that you are no longer the driver of the company but just enacting someone else’s decisions. Not a conducive environment for a company to blossom in. First and foremost, i...

The current economic environment is naturally forcing companies to watch every paisa of their cash-flows and pounce on any and every opportunity to either save money, defer payments and/or increase inflows. Often times, such hawkish behaviour can lead to a situation where commitments are reneged. For example sample this question from the CEO of a young company “Should we trim or stop the variable payments to our employees during the current downturn?” At the time of joining the company, employees had been promised variable payouts based on their performance. Accordingly, all of them were expecting some payouts as no one believed they weren’t deserving of any performance payout! Now, the company was struggling to make ends meet and wanting to make the cash in the bank extend many more months. The employees clearly were aware of the situation not just in the company but outside as well. What should employees do in such circumstances? In addition, given the environment all around, perform...

One of the things that intrigued me when I visited a startup recently was the amazing conformity and homogeneity on display. Most of the team members were from a particular community, from a particular part of the country, had studied in the same set of colleges and had worked in similar roles in similar companies prior to this startup. Only two of the more than 15 members I met did not conform to the profile of the majority. The CEO subsequently mentioned that one of them had resigned and was on his way out soon while they were looking for a replacement for the other. The above may not be a very typical case but it is also not atypical. Companies are started by people who share a certain set of common bonds and vision. These common bonds are a function of backgrounds, gender, age, education and prior experiences. In addition to these bonds, there are other bonds e.g. of community. The bonds of community are generally perceived to provide something that the other bonds don’t. Namely, t...

When I was asked to write an article on the broad topic of attracting and retaining talent for the Journal of the National HRD Network I became anxious and nervous (of course I displayed nonchalance!). What could a layperson like me write about on the topic that the experts already didn’t know? It would be presumptuous of me to suggest tools and techniques to those who practiced the difficult and thankless jobs of “HR”. So I decided to write about the issue straight from the heart and head on because I believe it needs to be said. So here goes. “I want to join this company. I believe it is an exciting opportunity for me, I’ve researched the space the company is in and its value proposition resonates with me. I’m not looking for short term gains; in fact, I’m willing to take a significant pay cut to join the company and to make money only through stock if the company does well. I think this is a great chance for me and I just have to work for this company.” The above is not out of any c...

In the tough economic times such as the one we’re currently facing, the pervasive and prudent mantra is to conserve cash, hunker down, reduce expenses and somehow survive till better times arrive. But then what expenses should one cut? Where should the costs be reduced? Should investments be stopped? I’ve received mails from entrepreneurs asking the above questions. In order to answer these questions, it is important to understand the differences between the terms. Semantics aside, understanding of the terms will also help decide where to save and where not to. Lets take a simple example. Your company decides to participate in a day long event for which 500 samples of your product are procured for Rs 5L. However, only 400 samples were handed out, since only 400 customers showed up, leaving 100 samples that could be used for another event next month. The costs incurred by your company is therefore Rs 5L while Rs 4L were the expenses for the event and the 100 unused samples worth Rs 1L a...

I received am email from the CEO of a company that had just lost a few employees. These ex-employees had apparently started a competing company. Here’s an extract from the CEO’s mail: “ Why does this happen? Another example is Wipro… there are so many ex-Wiproites with their own companies now. I also know of an education institute called Vignan in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. Today there are at least 10 similar sized institutes, which are started by ex-Vignan staff. • Does it happen because employees don’t get to grow in their companies? But this may not be true in Wipro? • Does it happen because employees have seen the 360 degree of running a company and are now confident? • Is it good for the companies? • Should we take measures to stop this happen to us?” Well, people leave their jobs for multiple reasons – emotional, professional, social and economic. What do employees seek in a job in the first place? Various studies have been conducted that generally converge on the following needs of...

Business Today recently had an interesting cover story featuring various entrepreneurs, CEOs and other prominent personalities on the best career advice they have received. I liked the following a lot: Venu Srinivasan, TVS Motor Company Take risks but one at a time “I have received much advice that has had a profound impact on me both as a person and as a leader. My personal friend and philosopher, Prof. Lord S.K. Bhattacharyya, Head of Warwick Manufacturing Group, has had an enormous influence on my growth as a business leader. His advice: never take more than one risk at a time. He typically classifies risks into people, markets and money—three legs of a tripod. If you take more than one risk, the tripod loses balance. For instance, he would say only when you have a strong team and a stable market, can a financial risk such as an acquisition be attempted successfully. In the early part of my life, my father and uncles played an important role in teaching me the TVS values—trust, int...