Launching LinkedIn From a Living Room

The founder of Linkedin opens up in an interview here. From 350 personal invites to 4500 within one month, and 50 million users today, this is a story to read! Click here.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Entrepreneurship gains ground as a career choice on campuses

Campus incubation centers are filling a vital gap but must offer the right mix of seed money and mentorship.

Click here to view full story

Powered by ScribeFire.

Confidence Picks Up in Clean Tech Funding: Report

Full article on the CleanTechies Site : Credits: 

Brief Pointer: Thank billions in government funding for helping to lift clean technology investment in the third quarter, said the Cleantech Group and Deloitte in a report Wednesday.

The quarterly analysis reiterated that the recession has kicked but not killed investments in this sector, which remain... (Full article)

Powered by ScribeFire.

Clean Tech - SSB Aug 09

­­­­­­

My post on the Headstart Network Blog

The August edition of Startup Saturday showcased two of the finest efforts in the domain of clean tech. While the term clean tech is in a lot of discussion, these days, there are a number of concepts that need clarifications, and when it comes to start-ups in clean tech, SSB is always at the forefront with its showcase! In fact, we had rush not just in nominations, but also amongst speakers and the demos in Lightning Pitches - we had more than we could accomodate and till the last minute, this kept us on our toes! So finally, NextGen PMS and AutoBoxx Automation were the ones that comprised the main demos and we had a number of speakers that made us decide about having a panel discussion. The concept of a panel discussion during an SS event was one of the two 'firsts' that we had  - the second one being mentioned next.

One of the newest feather in our cap was the concept of live streaming of the event, thanks to mobisy.com. The idea sprung up from the fact that we needed online videos of the event for archiving and streaming over the Net. In fact, our media partners have always been interested in having a copy of the part they have sponsored and live streaming really served this purpose.

Since this was an experimental effort this time, we have further efforts to improve the quality, lighting, timing and other related aspects of the video. View videos

­The way the volunteers have been supported by the people who attend SSB events was so clear when we faced a hitch in the mobile camera used for live streaming (it's battery went off!) and immediately, one of the members of the audience offered his phone's battery to continue the recording. Thanks to this spirit that SSB events have been so successful in Bangalore.

         

View more pics 

­ NextGen PMS are involved in the entire green chain, and are involved in estimating carbon waste footprints, and providing energy and emission efficiency measures and implementation plan. It was really a crisp presentation and Abhishek, who is the co-founder of the startup, interacted very well with the audience. He seemed to present a number of complicated topics in a very simplified manner to the group.

Think about managing energy in offices and houses and you got to talk to Ramandeep from Autoboxx Automation. They are not just into this but also in monitoring and tracking of company personnel, outsourced vendors as wel as customers. Their clientele includes banks retailers and telecom companies.

InOutAds was the first one to come up for the Lightning Pitches and went to showcase their approach towards connecting the folks who have places to advertise with the folks who have things to advertise. This was followed by Narahari from Presiding Tech India (They are primarily into Carbon credit and related activities), and Freeman who talked about the iAccelerator program at IIMA. Alleway Info talked about grooming the students entering the job market, and how they are not a placement agency but a source of well qualified and more than normal freshers in to the industry. Daniel from Daniel Power Systems was on stage with his wife and 3 month old kid and showcased his efforts at minimizing power thefts from the supply lines (not from homes) and at optimizing smart grids (without the hassles of having expensive smart switches at home/grids). MASH from IIMB presented the Marketing club efforts by the students and how they are coming up with innovative methods to reach more relevant people. They also mentioned briefly about the upcoming events at IIMB during the networking sessions.

The panel discussion was a very warm one with biggies like Vasudev Avdhani from the Tata Group,  Karthee Madaswamy from Qualcomm Ventures, Elmar Stroomer and Pradeep from Enviu, and Shashidhara K from Blueray Solar joining together with the audience to understand deeper aspects of opportunities in Clean Tech in India, and part of the discussion involved topics such as solar power, rechargeable dance floor, and hybrid autorickshaw project in India.

        ­ 

View more pics 

­ We had a new concept of categorized business card collection and folks dropped their cards in to boxes with different labels such as web services, product based startups and so on. We also had a graffitti board up during the networking session for people to put in their thoughts about Startup Saturday events! Bangalore Mirror and StartupNews.in were present amongst the audience and did an excellent job of interacting with the audience. The audience enthu was brimming, and was visible during the networking session!

View more pics 

Powered by ScribeFire.

Alternative Startup Financing Schemes - Freeman Murray

I’ve seen a number of posts lately discussing the ‘changing face of venture capital’. Paul Graham talks about the change in dynamics caused by the low capital requirements of technology startups. Fred Wilson discusses the need for a market for privately held common stock. There seems to be a general consensus about the growing role angels play in the startup ecosystem, and sadly there also seems to be a general consensus indicating that angels should basically write off their investments the moment they make them.

This last point rings true for me. Before coming to India I made a number of investments in tech companies. During my chapter... [Read full article]

Powered by ScribeFire.

Venture Capital in India - Sramana Mitra

     Sramana Mitra's views on Venture Capital in India. Please click here to be taken to Sramana's website.

India is flushed with investment commitments from the giants of technology. Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, SAP, Intel, and AMD have each committed over a billion to further develop their India presence.

So have many of the leading venture capital firms from Silicon Valley. For the longest time, Valley VCs would only invest in their backyard. No more. India, China, Israel are fair game today. This month, Matrix Partners has announced a $150 Million India fund. Sequoia has acquired Westbridge Capital, an India focused fund that has been around for five years. Several other major VCs are playing the space – Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Norwest, Battery, Sierra, Canaan Partners.

Yahoo has started investing in Consumer Internet startups, the first of which was announced recently (Bharatmatrimony.com), playing the corporate venture capital game.

Together, the committed capital chasing India is abundant.

Business Week writes cover stories on how the new billion dollar companies will emerge from India. Some have, already. Infosys, Wipro, TCS. No doubt, the lure of India for VCs is legitimate. These new darlings of Wall Street were built without their money. They want to make sure the next wave is built with.

In today’s India, the commodity in short supply is good entrepreneurs. In VC parlance, fundable deals are few and far between. Why?

Historically, India has been the world’s back-office. Consequently, the skill-set that has developed in India is that of engineering management and coding. The specifications are provided by teams elsewhere. Elsewhere, the market studies get done. Indian managers do not understand global technology markets. They have hardly had opportunity to learn this aspect of business. Entrepreneurs try to position products without knowledge of the product marketing discipline.

The natural instinct for Indian entrepreneurs is to build outsourcing services companies. BPO. Software Development. Chip Design. Those ventures take less capital, and become revenue generating fast. None of the Operating Loss period of a pure play product company is necessary, and hence, venture capital is also unnecessary.

VCs typically do not like this business model. It has low entry barrier. But those who have invested in India in the last five years have also invested in this model and made money off it. It was the only thing that was available. It is, however, becoming less appealing, since those markets are also maturing, and behemoths start to rule.

The next stop for VCs, the most recent wave, has been Consumer Internet and Mobile offerings. India’s growing mass of connected consumer population is the target wallet. Travel, Matrimonials, Jobs, Games, Mobile Payments are all segments getting substantial capital infusion. This trend is likely to continue for the next 18 months. The engineering required in building these sites is marginal, marketing being the big differentiator.

But it will still not consume the available capital. Those who understand the subtleties of these dynamics have started diversifying their portfolios with Retail, Bio Tech, Real Estate. Sequoia’s Royal Orchid Hotels is a case in point. Oak Investment Partners has set up a $200 Million venture fund to focus on the retail boom in India. Veteran retail investor Jerry Gallagher visited India and was astounded by the revenue per square feet in the malls and stores. He came back and convinced his partners to commit capital.

Bio Tech has produced one of the flagship entrepreneurs for India, Kiran Majumdar-Shaw, who is now pulling her weight to drag the entire industry up. India has a better opportunity in this field for the same reason as Retail: domestic producer, domestic consumer. Tests can leverage a gene pool that is perhaps one of the most diverse and universal in the world. If Indian policy-makers can get their act together, then India could even lead a stem cell research effort that is so far faltering in the US. VCs would be delighted to play.

Real Estate, however, is a different animal. For the longest time, the old money in India had only one legitimate investment vehicle. That was buying properties. Indians know a lot more about Real Estate entrepreneurship than any other kind of entrepreneurship. There is a financial eco-system around Real Estate that works, and by and large, venture capital is unnecessary, even unwelcome. Private Equity investors, however, are playing this market.

Conspicuous by its absence in the above discussion is traditional technology venture investing, the game that VCs know best. The reason being, it is almost absent from the technology firmament of India.

Intriguing, but entirely logical. Technology innovation takes intense domain knowledge. Be it in software, hardware, chips or communications, the engineers capable of innovation of this nature are inside the multinationals, harvesting unthinkable salaries, enjoying unbound luxury and lifestyle with servants, chauffeurs, maids, nannies, and cooks coming out of their ears. A $200,000 salary in India effortlessly affords a grand lifestyle that even multi-millionaires in the US cannot dream of.

People become entrepreneurs for two reasons: either they have a chip on their shoulder, and have something to prove to themselves and to the world around them. Or, they want to afford a lifestyle that is substantially above their current means. India is banking on the motivation of the former category alone, to find its technology entrepreneurs.

The onus, I am afraid, comes back to Silicon Valley to come up with technology innovation, which Indian back-offices can then implement and scale.

Venture capitalists will continue to go on their eco-tourism trips to India, then return. In the words of Marcel Proust, The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Powered by ScribeFire.

List of Business Incubators in India

List of a few Business Incubators in India

Name	Contact Person	Address	Contact Information
Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE)	Mr. Kunal Upadhyay - CEO	Indian Institute of Management, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad- 380015	91-79-26324203 / 079 - 26308357 kunal@iimahd.ernet.in www.iimahd.ernet.in/ciie
Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE)	Prof. N.L. Sarda- Professor in Charge	IIT Bombay, Powai, Mumbai - 400076	91- 22- 25767072 Direct: 25767710 nls@csc.iitb.ac.in www.sineiitb.org
TBI ON EMBEDDED SYSTEMS AND VLSI DESIGN	Prof.S, Gurunarayanan Co-ordinator, TBI	Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani - 333031 Rajasthan.	91-1596-245073 Extn: 252 sguru@bits-pilani.ac.in www.bits-pilani.ac.in
TBI for Composites	Dr.R. Gopalan, Executive Director	Composites Technology Park, 205, Bande Mutt, Kengeri Satellite Township Bangalore-560060	91-80-56997605, 56681005 drgopal@blr.vsnl.net.in
Centre for Biotechnology	Dr. S. Meenakshisundaram- Business Manager	Centre for Biotechnology, Anna University Chennai - 600025	91-44-22350772, 9840348173 meenakshi@annauniv.edu www.annauniv.edu/biotech
MITCON Biotechnology Centre	Mr. Kulkarni - Chief Executive	MITCON Biotechnology Centre, BAIF Campus Mr. Manibhai Desai Nagar Pune - 411052	91-20-66289451 kulkarni@mitconbt.com www.mitconindia.com
National Design Business Incubator	Mr. Mahesh. K Rovvidi - Chief Operating Officer	National Institute of Design (NID), Paldi, Ahmedabad - 380007	91-79-2662 3692 Extn 5001 ndbi@nid.edu www.ndbiindia.org
Vellore Institute of Technology	Mr. A. Balachandran, Manager- TBI	VITTBI, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore-632014	91-416-2243097 - Direct vittbi@vit.ac.in www.vittbi.com
National Institute of Technology, Calicut	Mr. A.V. Francis, Officer on Special Duty, TBI	National Institute of Technology, Calicut - 673601 kerala	91-0495-2286162,Direct - 2286604 avf@nitc.ac.in
J.S.S. Mahavidyapeetha	Prof. R. Raghunanadan - Chief Executive	J.S.S. Academy of Technical Education, C-20/1, Sector -62 Noida 201301	91-120-2401442 ce@jssstepnoida.org www.jssstepnoida.org
ICRISAT	Mr. S. Karuppanchetty - Deputy COO, Mr. Abdul Rahman Ilyas - COO	ICRISAT, 303 Bldg, Patancheru 5023224	91-040-30713222 karuppanchetty@cgiar.org
Kongu Engineering College	Prof. S. Balamurugan- Executive Director - TBI	Kongu Engineering College, Perundurai -638052, Erode, Tamil Nadu.	91- 4294 220562, 220171, Direct 226650 balamurugan@kongu.ac.in
Advance Materials Technology Incubator	Mr. Sanjay Bharadwaj - Co-ordinator	International Advance Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy & New Materials RCI Road, Opp. Ballapur Village, Hyderabad - 500005	91-40-24457104-7
Center for Entrepreneurship - SPJIMR	Prof. M. Suresh Rao - Program Co-ordinator	S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Munshi Nagar, Dadabhai Road, Andheri (West), Mumbai - 400 058.	+91-22-2623 7454 / 0396 / 2401 Ext: 211 msrao@spjimr.org www.spjimr.org/cen tre_entrepreneurship/hom e.asp

Where angels fear to 'trade'

India: Where Angels Fear to Trade (click here) discusses the seed investment problem and offers a solution, perhaps the most pragmatic solution under current circumstances.
All rights reserved for site content.
Visit Jeev's Homepage

Indian VCs

I got this comparison while talking to the CEO of a successful startup, who has arranged funds for his dream company mostly from his own sources. Venture capitalists in India have been traditionally funding a lot of 'me too' ideas than really original ones. We have been observing that if your idea is very original, in all probability, you have to have some self-fund. This is explained by the CEO in question, in a really imaginative way:

You start the stuff on your own and keep up your spirits till you reach a huge pit. This pit is the point at which you have to prove that your startup has power, by overcoming and jumping to the other side. This is the place at which you will be needing the most help, particularly in the financial part. When you search for a VC, he will be smiling at the other side of the pit! He'd say, Show me 'that your Idea works for one customer' and I will lead it to success! In his words, this means, jump over this pit in front of you and I have a limo waiting on the other side to take to to our goal. In what way are these 'early stage' VCs? They are not ready to put money in un-tested ideas and just 'me too' approach can not take us real ahead.

If you are an original thinker, better save some money and get your friends together to help you out as VCs here seem to be not ready to wet their feet! Any thoughts?!

All rights reserved for site content.
Visit Jeev's Homepage