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.

Interview with Mr. Abhishek Rungta, Director and Founder, Indus Net Technologies

Mr. Abhishek Rungta is the Director and Founder of Indus Net Technologies. It has got the ICICI award for being one of the fastest growing SME’s. You meet with such people and they are quick to surprise you. I am not even 2 minutes in his office and he hands me 5 CD’s from his latest company, The Indus Net Academy, as soon as he hears about my interest in Web Design. You can know a lot more about him in his blog http://www.abhishekrungta.com/

He had a lot of solid advice for startups being one of the jury members for various top notch business plan competitions. I’ll list some of what I remember him saying

1. Do not get a partner FOR THE HECK OF IT. The relationship will not last. A lot of time, we choose a partner because we are scared of taking the step along and end up getting into relationships which are “of convenience or compulsion” rather than “right fit”. Work with a partner only when you can blindly trust him / her.

2. Instead HIRE GOOD PEOPLE. If you are not equipped with certain skills don’t get a partner, hire someone who can do that.

3. TAKE SALES TRAINING. It helps a lot if you are good at pitching. Read books on sales. Practice them. The best place to practice sales, is a place where you are almost sure you can’t sell anything (laughs).

4. FOLLOW UP on prospects. Prospects are the people who can become clients. Leave them a mail or a newsletter of your latest work so that you are on their mind.

5. DO EFFECTIVE NETWORKING. Have face to face meetings with as many prospects and others you can. This has become a lot easier in today’s world. 10 years back all this was not possible. People are easily accessible (on the internet) and acceptable only if they are not HIGH NOSED.

6. DON’T SPEND unnecessarily. A lot of people advised me to put blinds in my office and other such things. They are out of business and I’m running a 100% YoY organisation from a modest office.

7. STICK FOR 10 YEARS before you can think of any substantial fruits from your business. It takes that much time. THATS IT.

When I raised the question regarding doing my MBA, he said that its absolutely worthless to do an MBA without 3 years of experience in something. Thats when he checked himself and said, not even 3 years, infact you ought to have 5 years of experience. Do an executive MBA. I was happy because it reinforced my ideas of not giving any MBA entrance exams this year.

He gave me a lot of advice on how I can start manufacturing consulting when I told him about my projects. So effective networking is all about always being ready to provide a helping hand no matter what. Everything he said had such a lot of conviction in it, that I found his confidence rubbing on to me. It was a great experience spending an hour and a half with him. I urge everyone to look forward for such experiences. It will open your mind to new possibilities and increase confidence. GOOD LUCK.

P.S. This was all that I possibly remember from the many pearls of wisdom he had to offer. I have adapted everything he said according to my style of writing. He is all of 30 years and looks even younger.

Should we remain Positive ?

The global economic slowdown has got with itself some sort of gloom. Newspapers are reading job cuts. Companies are rethinking on their hiring strategies. Even if there is no direct impact, companies are preferring to play the waiting game in terms of recruitment. Prediction of economic future uses a lot of statistics and trends. History is a good way to predict what lies ahead. But every now and then, something happens that seems to defy trends. The fall of Lehmann Brothers is one such event. I consider it to be an event, as important as the fall of the Berlin Wall. These incidences turn tables, shift balance and sometimes cause massive restructuring.

 

Because tables are turned and balance is shifted, India should be happy. If at all such a thing happens, there will be massive inflow of wealth into the Indian shores from where it previously resided. The next 10 years on that account should see unprecedented growth. The macroeconomic trend of India has seen a hiccup due to the direct impact of the global slowdown. But then, how can you ever achieve something without falling ? I thus appeal to the nation to be hopeful, think globally and think entrepreneurially. There may not be a better time to dive into entrepreneurship. In times of recession, skilled labour is available in plenty. All that is required is a leader to rise up and show them the path.

 

Remember, newspapers will run a report if a company cuts 500 jobs, but they will never run a report if a new small plant is installed which employs 2000 people. Media and circumstances are not the right people to follow in times of trouble.

The Empowered Individual

There are two types of technology businesses. One in the software domain which thrive on making simple software, web applications and other development based on small and large businesses. And the other is the hardware business which include manufacturing of chips, semiconductors, pcs, cell phones and other stuff people cannot do without.

Both these types of technology businesses are staring at a slowdown. Purists say that it has something to do with the global recession. I however believe that, fundamentally its the empowerment of individuals that is taking the toll on margins.

We are living in an age where 12 year olds have acquired web designing skills and are using the internet to make money. There are a huge number of free platforms available for everyone to benefit from. 3-4 freinds in practically every college is forming a team to build custom software for companies and individuals. Most of them are becoming startups of some kind. This huge wave of developers are actually challenging the multi billion dollar corporations in the real world.

The other business of hardware is facing a margin crunch. As technology is getting more and more widespread and acceptable, people want them cheaper, better and more personalized. Technology businesses which were earlier thought to be high margin businesses are running after cost cutting, optimization and efficiency. All because the individual demands more.

For better expert views I suggest you read http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/11/13/mitra-protectionism-policy-tech-enter-cx_sm_1114mitra.html

I keep saying against technology businesses not because I have any kind of disdain for them. I just believe we need to go back to the old stuff like agriculture and infrastructure in a new way to fuel global entrepreneurship. The best future businesses will be ordinary and global. We only think of technology businesses to be globalized. Others will soon become as global as them. So I believe thats where we should poke our nose.

India’s single biggest challenge

Here’s my answer to the question I was required to fill for the Jagriti Yatra form. Jagriti Yatra is a great concept which hopes to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit by helping the youth travel and observe the unsung heroes of the country. Learning from them will be a great experience. For registration on the journey you can visit http://www.jagritiyatra.com/

The Answer : The single biggest challenge India faces in the next decade is Education. For a brilliant growth rate more people have to be lifted up into the country’s middle class. More people have to be completing their high schools and graduation. There is no use of having qoutas in IIM’s and IIT’s. If at all the poor have to be given benefits, there ought to be quotas in primary and secondary schools. This education at the primary and secondary level is what the Indian poor are really missing, not their education in IIT’s and IIM’s. Half the people of our country are not considered in any economic framework. Which means they are not considered a target market for any business. We don’t want to be selling our goods and services to half a billion people, we got to be selling them to one billion people. This would require one half of India’s population to lift the other half higher into the social ranks. Once India’s education system starts penetrating to the remote rural areas, we will find that suddenly what was considered could be sold only in urban areas, can also be sold in remote rural areas. Right now I am not stressing on the quality of education. That will have to be improved if we want to groom more entrepreneurs and innovators. What I believe is that there is a certain basic education which has to be imparted to every child. Even if we can deliver that to all the villages of the country, we can be sure of a sustained growth rate for 25 years.

Is the urban youth ready for Rural Entrepreneurship ?

Entrepreneurs advice “entrepreneurship is not about flashy business cards and stylish offices.” Some people take up entrepreneurship precisely for that. Because entrepreneurship is the cool thing to do these days, you may see more of it. But is rural entrepreneurship the in thing ? Is entrepreneurship the in thing for the rural youth ? The entrepreneurial bug has bitten the urban youth and they are doing a great job with new ideas and startups. But we have to realize that there is no way the urban population can understand the rural economic needs.

Great businesses are born out of great economic needs. In India there is an economic need of more food, more healthcare, more medicines and better infrastructure. Have the youth started thinking in these directions or are they still focused on technology, internet, services and knowledge startups ? There are 821 million people in Indian villages (approx. 72% of total population). Just imagine if they start consuming as the urban crowd does, where would India’s growth rate go. I’m putting aside environmental issues as of now.

The problem I’m trying to address is that the urban youth have not seen the rural need with their own eyes. That is why they are not equipped to handle startups in the rural domain. On the other hand the rural youth do not have the same resources. So who is going to address this great need ? I believe the government, NGO’s, schools and colleges have to take the lead and produce instances where students at a young age get to interact with the rural population. Special projects and trips will open their eyes to a new world that exists beyond their flats. Only when their eyes are opened to the rural world, will they get the essence of rural entrepreneurship. That’s when the urban youth will show their prowess in handling startups in the rural domain.

So the advice is to keep your eyes open for finding out economic needs. Be open to small projects, trips and events that take you to new places (be it rural) so that you can observe and interact with a new world.  In my final year placements it was disheartening to see most of us seeking jobs in metros and other cities. I believe this trend will change, either naturally or forcibly.