Resources for Entrepreneurs

I found a very comprehensive and resourceful website that has loads of articles for entrepreneurs. I generally believe in having face to face interaction with entrepreneurs, which is perhaps the best way to learn. But every now and then there should also be some self analysis.

here’s the web link http://www.gaebler.com/

They have inserted google ads in a very offensive way, but that is not a problem as long as the place is resourceful. I hope you benefit out of it.

Proto.in – The Startup Event

Proto.in is a startup event. It provides a platform for startups from within and around the Indian subcontinent to participate, share, discuss and draw strength from the growing entrepreneurial community, in an effort to create world-class products and product leaders from the region.

Proto.in Goals

1.  To Showcase Innovative technology products borne out of India

2.  To Encourage, grow and create entrepreneurial awareness

3.  To create a community of startup entrepreneurs, who can grow in strength and numbers, drawing wisdom from each other.

4.  To act as a bridge between well-established companies, veteran entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, analysts, journalists, professionals and grass-root entrepreneurs.

Event Dates : 23, 24 January 2009 at Bangalore

Register for the event at http://www.proto.in/register/

Interview with Mr. Arun Kr Jain, Vice President, UP Chamber of Commerce

Mr. Arun Kr. Jain is a first generation entrepreneur apart from being the Vice President of the Uttar Pradesh Chamber of Commerce. He is in the business of applied materials and development of dome structures. His company has installed dome structures in a large number of cities in India. I decided to quiz him on issues related to conduciveness of doing business in Uttar Pradesh.

Here’s what I rememeber

me: What is the role of Chamber of Commerce in India ?

Mr. Jain: The CCI acts as an intermediate between the government and various agencies which are into providing land, development of land, development of industries, financial bodies and other related things. We try to solve problems faced by them. The Chamber also takes decisions to reform and suggest the government as to what changes are required for the development of the state. For an entrepreneur, CCI puts you across various bodies at different stages of development, provides information, gives an idea about the procedures and solves bottlenecks if any.

me: What is the general mindset of foreign investors regarding Uttar Pradesh ?

Mr. Jain: They are NOT happy. There is a lot of red tapism and even sanctions. Sometimes the systems here are not responsive. They expect the system to deliver efficiently in the shortest time, which does not happen here. The number of procedures also needs to be simplified. For certain purposes there are as many as 139 forms which needs to be filled for getting the work done.

me: Is the Chamber of Commerce influential enough in negotiating with the government to drive reforms ?

Mr. Jain: It is not influential as it can be. Most of the members like me are involved in their own businesses. Its only when something big happens, do organizations like ours really rise up and force the government to drive reforms. Today, if we have to change the system we need a lot of individual initiative to drive reforms. The best way for growth is to put pressure on the political system to perform.

me: What do you suggest for the India growth story ?

Mr. Jain: Reforms is the way to go. Unfortunately, the second generation of reforms did not come since 1991-92. Infact, this is the time for 3rd generation of reforms. We can’t just live in the age of 1991 which was almost 20 years back. Entrepreneurs need to be nurtured. There has to be a support system for them. Whenever the government is involved, it is usually the large enterprises who benefit. Small and Medium enterprises do not benefit as much. I believe we have to device a system where politicians are accountable. As an example, I know of a wonderful bridge project which got sanctioned for 300 crores. The same project was later done by a major construction company for 36 crores. So someone has to be responsible for bad decision making. Afterall, its the tax payers money.

P.S. I was able to take only a short interview of his as we travelled to his place in a car. He was full of disdain for the government of UP and its policies and leaders. I have left the issues related to Mayawati and her government out of the interview.

Farewell to George W. Bush

I hereby say farewell to George W. Bush, who I believe in his own right has been a great leader. I don’t say “great leader” because I want to justify some of the decisions he took. He, in his term, has made some horrendous mistakes. I say “great leader” because of his ability to push tough decisions. I say “great leader” because of his ability to get those people along with him, who were his most vehement opposers. I say “great leader” because of the sheer charisma with which he speaks and implements decisions.

President Bush was greeted by the 9/11 attacks when his term began. Thats when he stood up to the occasion and vowed to crush Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden. The sheer determination by which the rescue work was carried out was a reflection of the American attitude. There has not been a single act of terrorism in America henceforth.

The Iraq war began before Bush renominated himself for the next election. At that time Americans didn’t know that the intelligence report regarding weapons of mass destruction was wrong and the fact that America didn’t have any post war solutions in Iraq. It was George W. Bush’s charisma which got him re-elected. Americans felt safe in his leadership. But then, everything went wrong, and now there are talks of Bush being the worst president of the United States of America.

Every policy or economic decision Bush took was frowned at. Inspite of that he was able to push them and get them passed by the senate. Be it a huge cut in taxes, increased spending on education and the legendary Nuclear Deal with India. On his way out of the office, Bush was faced with perhaps the biggest economic challenge of America; the credit crisis. By this time, the people of America and the senate thought there is nothing that Bush could do right. His bailout plan of $700bn was outrightly rejected. I don’t know what Bush does to push his plans, but a week hence the senate was by his side and the bailout was passed.

The tenure of Bush saw some of the toughest times for America. The terrorist attacks of 2001, the two wars after that, the hurricane Katrina and the Credit Crisis were the features of the last 8 years. George W. Bush in his farewell speech put what I was thinking very aptly, “You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to make tough decisions.”

The motor of the world is kept running by people like Bush. The ability to make difficult choices and implementing them is what is required by more leaders and entrepreneurs to take humanity to new heights. At least we don’t need people who can only talk, who only have opinions after everything has happened. Someones got to make things happen first.

P.S. This post is not meant to express my opinions on whether Bush was a good president. It was just his leadership style which I liked. I wish I could have known more about the way he does things. I believe Bush’s skills are great for entrepreneurship.

Interview with Mr. Ganesh N. Prabhu, Professor of Corporate Strategy and Policy, IIM Bangalore

Ganesh N. Prabhu is a professor of Corporate Strategy and Policy at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.  He had come down to our college for the Open Panel Discussion at Gnosiomania 2009. We had a talk over breakfast about the various issues that are doing the rounds these days. A number of friends of mine were actually livid after getting CAT percentiles in higher 99’s and still not getting a call from the IIM’s.  So I thought Mr. Ganesh would be the right person to quiz on these issues. Here are the excerpts.

Me: Whats this talk of too many engineers getting into IIM’s ?

Mr. Ganesh: Well, engineers tend to do well in their academics right from the 10th standard. I mean, that is why they become engineers eventually. So, they do have an edge in CAT. On our part we don’t have any quotas for non engineers as such. That would not be morally right. But it is true that, having more engineers in a class doesn’t promote a good discussion. The ideas become less varied.

Me: What is the criteria by which IIM B has shortlisted the students ?

Mr. Ganesh: The criteria hasn’t changed in 2 years. You can have a look at it from our website. We give different weightages to the CAT score, 10th marks, 12th marks and the graduation marks. The average percentages for a candidate here at IIM B for their 10th, 12th and graduation are 88, 88 and 82.

Me: Do you think the urban entrepreneurs have it in them for rural startups (Mr. Prabhu has done his masters in rural management) ?

Mr. Ganesh: The awareness of the rural people of the opportunities available is very less. Well educated villagers who can help their native regions prefer moving to the cities for better opportunities. Similarly, the urban people also have a lack of awareness when it comes to the business opportunities in the rural areas. The urban people who visit the rural areas generally do that in a van or something. You actually have to live with the rural people for a few days to know about their needs. At IRMA, we had 30 weeks of compulsory training out of which 10 weeks was in the rural regions. A lot of MBA institutes have rural programs but sometimes it is not sufficient. S. P. Jain has a 2 week rural exposure program for example.

Me: What are the entrepreneurial opportunities in rural India which can be tapped ?

Mr. Ganesh: If you look at individual villages, there are no opportunities as such. But if you look across villages there are loads of opportunities. You have to make a general product for villages and test it out. The product has to be less sophisticated to spread across villages. A good example was when BPL came out with a television which had only 4 buttons. The villagers found it far more acceptable than the ones with a large number of buttons on the set or on the remote.

Me: Is MBA a good entrepreneurship course ?

Mr. Ganesh: The students who join the IIM’s by and large do not want to be entrepreneurs. It is high profile corporate jobs that is the aim of as many as 98% candidates. So in a way, an MBA is not meant to be an entrepreneurship course. At the same time there is no reason why aspiring entrepreneurs should not do an MBA. It does give them platforms for excellent networking and knowledge.

Me: What is corporate Strategy ? When you consult the corporates, what is the pain that they have which you relieve ?

Mr. Ganesh: Corporate Strategy is about looking at the business as a whole. The problems are generally low profits, high overheads and expenses, etc.  Sometimes the companies are very good at doing the wrong things or making the wrong products. The company thenselves may not be able to integrate the work of different departments that they have. Here we teach the candidates on how to analyse the data and situation well. They are taught to identify the key problems efficiently.

P.S. There were a whole lot of other questions which I asked. I will publish them sometime later as part 2 of the interview. We sat for a good one and a half hours and discussed a lot of things ranging from the recession to the Satyam Scam to PPP models, etc. Again I have adapted the interview to my style of writing. You can view Ganesh N. Prabhu’s profile here http://www.iimb.ernet.in/~gprabhu/

Interview With Kaustav Bhattacharya, Webmaster, TATA Jagriti Yatra 2008

Kaustav Bhattacharya is a Systems engineer with CISCO. He works in the UK. But not too many people would know him by this designation. He is popularly known as the  man behind TATA Jagriti Yatra’s rocking website, internet marketing and other digital media content.

He is a complete computer nerd and an avid user of mobile apps and GPS. Besides that, Kaustav is now into photography very seriously. Now, I’m usually a skeptic when it comes to internet and mobile businesses, so I thought Kaustav would be a great person to quiz on these issues.

Here’s what I remember :-

me: How did you get into computing ?
kaustav: I got into computing way back before 1984 when you weren’t even born. It was an 8 bit computer with 32kb of RAM which my father gifted to me when I was 7 years old.

me: Were you a gaming addict ?
kaustav: Yeah, I used to play a whole lot of games which I think got obsolete by the time you people started. We used to play games like Elite, Space Trains which was an early strategy game and Citadel which involved finding treasure and involved real time strategy.

me: Whats your take on mobile businesses ?
kaustav: The entering of 3G will lead to a huge entrepreneurial wave in India. There are so many opportunities that come bundled with 3G. Unfortunately, its implementation in India has been delayed a lot and there is even talk of India moving straight into 4G. I personally see money being made out of data sharing, blogging, video uploading, photography on the move and GPS. I personally use sports tracker on my nokia smartphone (http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/main/index.do) and use flixwagon.com and qik.com for video streaming.

me: Aren’t we done with Social Networking websites and other internet startups ?
kaustav: Its been only 10 years since the web has been around in a big way. The opportunity is still massive, especially in the rural space. Social Networking is still in its infancy, we are still playing with simple data. Getting intelligent systems will get new content on the web, there will be more Artificial Inteligence (AI) on social networking sites. For example if I go to makemytrip.com and give information that I have 4 kids, they gotta know automatically what type of car I might need (now as well as in the future). So there is a huge opportunity in terms of analyzing and playing with tons of data.

me: What has the web got for startups and businesses in the fields of manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare and infrastructure ?
kaustav: Information management on the web is a huge scope. There has to be more efficiency in communication for rural development. The web can be used to speed up processes with accountable supply chain management and infrastructure coordination. Many entrepreneurs are using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to their advantages to collect a whole lot of data for different regions which help them in decision making.

P.S. This was all that I possibly remember from the quick interview I was able to take in Tilonia, Rajasthan. I have adapted everything he said according to my style of writing. Kaustav hasn’t got any startups in his mind as of now, but I’m sure he has got his eyes open.