Ventureast is perhaps the oldest fund house in India. It has been around since the mid-nineties, and is in its fourth stage of funding Indian entrepreneurs. They have made a Rs 550-crore bet on Life Sciences and is in the process of pumping in another Rs 600 crore in the sector. The remaining Rs 1600 crore of the fund’s corpus has gone into investments in technology, distribution, agriculture and infrastructure companies. The fund is also betting on clean environment. It has invested in interesting ideas such as Central Parking Services (CPS), a tech enabled parking management company, 24LetterMantra, an organic food company, and Bharat Light and Power, a solar infrastructure management company. Sarath Naru, the Managing Partner of Ventureast, says in an interview with BW|Businessworld's Vishal Krishna the risk taking abilities of Indian entrepreneurs have gone up significantly because of the availability of seed capital. However, Sarath believes that Indian entrepreneurs need to build technology businesses that could solve problems related to consumption; such as connecting hyper local retailers to the supply chain and to the factories with a consumer play. Amidst the investment buzz in India, Sarath believes, the general rule of investing in ideas remains, which he means that only a third of the portfolio companies would become extremely successful companies. Ventureast has until now invested in over 80 companies.Here are the excerpts of the interview. What is the current idea behind investing?Seeing the current state of affairs in the e-tail sector, let me quote from Guy Kawaski. It goes back to the previous internet bubble in 2001. His comment was that "I am praying every day for the next bubble to come because I know now what I am going to do". We have seen bubbles and the entrepreneur in us wants to cut it fine because we do not want to miss out on the opportunity. It’s a repeat of the previous peak and we can be talk about winners and losers. In the end of the day the question remains have people created value? That is the way we look at it. By and large we are always moving forward with value creation. There will be transfer of wealth. From a strategy perspective, how do we look at it? We constantly track companies and we are trying to find the best companies before the foreign funds back a startup. There are businesses which will be generic businesses and market places. Market places will be very difficult to build because of the generic nature of the business. The one with the muscle will win. Its winner takes all market. Market share is not the only variable to success. There are good lessons and bad lessons. Many entrepreneurs can raise Series A and get stuck after that. These guys have to restart their lives. It is the nature of the game that they have got in to. What is the new internet business?Businesses that need capital are generic and on a horizontal platform. It is like land grab. Here the entrepreneur is taking a huge risk. The early investors need to take that risk and have to ask themselves if they have the ability to convince large funds to take a bet on their company. We take small bets. Our thesis is that we need to look at companies that have a lifetime for profitability. The next set of businesses is integrated to the real world, where we see they have competitive advantage in product delivery. A combination of real world and the internet is all we are seeing. You need something more than capital in these business cases. Ventureast is looking at B2B, B2B2C. Full stack businesses that look at real world integration. India is a cash economy and companies need to solve this problem of accepting payments in cash. We must use the internet to scale, but the delivery is a real world problem that companies must solve this. One needs to control the experience. The furniture etailers is something that needs a full stack. If someone can solve the experience then it makes great sense to invest in these customers. Can they customise furniture? This is the real world problem that can be solved. It can be solved by working with designers and manufacturers. Now is the time for such businesses. What kind of businesses that use technology can add value in India?The handyman market is there. About eight years ago we worked with ProHandyman, the entrepreneur had a brilliant customer acquisition model, he had a door to door model of selling where he would tie in with Croma and gets a contract to service consumers. The entrepreneur’s problem was with execution of getting the plumber or a carpenter to the home on time. It was a hub and spoke model in Bangalore and Chennai. At least now the acquisition problem is solved and we need to crack the service part. Handyman service is very protocol driven and technology should track every activity and process. There are consumer services which technology can solve. Take for example Portea, about a third of the consumers need nursing and physiotherapy. The delivery has been done with smartphones. Solving the technology part is easier; it is the cultural part that is difficult. Can these individuals who are professional nurses make it on time to the destination of the consumers and follow processes. Again we come back to the real world delivery problems. We are looking at a company that allows patients to connect with doctors for surgeries. Hospitals have changed their mode of operations, they are providing infrastructure only. The doctors have to pull patients today. If technology can play a role here then it is a good business to look at. We would like to seed such a company, about $1.5 million is going in. Hospitals have built too much capacity and they need to utilise it. These internet companies can help these hospitals get more patients for surgeries. A patient’s family spends more on the first two days of the surgery and the hospitals want to bring the average length of stay down to increase revenues. Portea has signed up with Manipal to continue monitoring the patient after surgeries. The company makes sure that the person goes home at the right time. The insurance companies are happy because it is data and are happy that people are cared at home rather than a hospital. We had several telemedicine companies in the past and not many came through. The hand-held phone has changed the way you can do diagnostics. The device play is meant for specificity and accuracy of data being collected. Scanning pictures and sending it from remote areas. There is a point of care solution for the company that we have invested in. It is an exciting company. What about skill development as a business?The biggest challenge is no one gives value for certificates. Imagine you getting paid the same salary even after having a qualification, although you have better skills. This is difficult to solve because the companies that employ such individuals need to set a clear path for these individuals. The first wave of course was BPOs and call centres. We skilled so many people and there was too much supply. I think education is a space we still have not found a company that makes a different. But there is a lot of interest from entrepreneurs who want to give back to society in terms of skill development. India will continue to have opportunities for disintermediation, can we make people self employed by using technology and finance. There is also a case for startups that are getting in to financing of small businesses in rural regions. This is a service that can use information and services. What about manufacturing, design and retail services?Make in India has two or three elements to it. India cannot compete with China in scale, investors cannot get into companies that are playing the price game and we need to find companies that can be unique in intellectual property. Clearly we have missed the bus in manufacturing. However, Ventureast is betting on design services and have a portfolio company. In retail there is a play for entrepreneurs in build cloud based services to connect FMCG and Kiranas or small stores. We have already met such a company. The ideas that are coming to the table today are certainly better. Life Sciences is an industry that we will bet on going forward.
Read More
An educational technology start-up, founded by three Indians and a German student in a US university, has received a whopping $100,000 funding from a private investor. CampusKnot, the online educational hub founded by three Indian students Rahul Gopal, Hiten Patel and Perceus Mody, and German student Katja Walter at Mississippi State University, has been designed to increase collaboration among faculty and students. The $100,000 funding by an unnamed investor from the Gulf Coast, has set a record for private investment in a student-run start-up at the MSU, Clarion-Ledger newspaper reported. Free to users, the site is a clearinghouse for schedules, assignments and other academic events. It also offers a marketplace for textbooks, including a feature making them searchable by title, subject and author's name. CampusKnot debuted in 2013. Since then, creators spent two years refining their project at MSU's Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the College of Business. Gopal and his co-founders hope that the CampusKnot eventually will serve as a single site for students to easily reach teachers and classmates, residence halls and student organisations -- plus offer space for faculty to post course syllabi and related academic material. The completed site would also allow students to access automated calendars based on their network groups. Gopal is a senior aerospace engineering major while Patel graduated from MSU in 2013 with a degree in information systems and is pursuing a second degree in marketing. Mody is a senior majoring in medical technology while Walter graduated in May with a degree in art and graphic design. Though still in a testing phase, the company currently is recruiting student leaders and faculty members to form focus groups for a soft launch of the site this fall. "We are not looking to have a job; we are looking at creating jobs and helping to solve educational problems," Patel said.
Read More
Ability to quickly get a customer on board, scale at will and deliver a performant system will determine how you set yourself apart from others, writes Rahul JoshiRecently I was part of a spirited discussion with my fellow partners and advisors on positioning one of our products. Question at the table was who is your target customer for what you have built? We had launched a couple of products as part of our business software application suit. Coming from a technical background, our focus from beginning was to ensure our software covers all the business processes that an organization may come across. Over a period of time as we kept getting to know about scenarios not addressed by our software goal was to quickly turn around and account for it. In the quest of not coming across as lacking, improvements to the product preferring efficiency of speed over design were a priority. Soon it grew richer in function and feature which we could boast to show the depth in our product line. However it had a down side the way we approached it. Support and maintenance grew significantly for things that could be termed as “bolted on” to the product over the course of time. When few well-wishers with a business mind started asking questions as to, “Who are your primary customers”? “What core business problem you are trying to solve for them?” that forced us to re-think our strategy of being everything for everyone. Although this seems obvious in hindsight, however it wasn’t until we experienced it that it came to full realization. In fact offering everything under the sunis something startups should diligently avoid. It does not make sense from a cost perspective either where your financial resources are always constrained. There are several advantages to knowing the space you are going to operate in. To start with, it helps narrow down your competition. With a well-defined set you can do a better job of competitive analysis. We would often go in and pitch our entire list of features and functions. Lot of money and time was spent on it so we wanted to let the prospect know we have it. However it would discourage some prospective customers who were looking for only a subset of what we had to offer. It created a perception that since it has so many things it would be expensive than the other guy. Of course ultimately we also had to compete on the price with the other players who had limited functionality but covered the customer’s needs. The flip side was also true with large deployments. We matched the requirement but it carried the risk of coming up short in terms of showcasing it as a platform that can adapt to changing business needs. Knowing who you are building it for also helps set up and align your internal teams. Hiring the right technical skills, identifying appropriate technology platform, identifying early customers all can be determined accordingly. If targeting a common problem for which a solution is offered at low prices, one needs to capture a larger share of the market. It’s a volume business. Ability to quickly get a customer on board, scale at will and deliver a performant system will determine how you set yourself apart from others. On the other hand in a niche area where it is solving a critical business problem, precision and reliability may take precedence over other factors. It is an attractive proposition for investors as well to see a product targeted to a specific market as it helps gauge the potential and thereby their return on investment. A business in consumer retail that appeals globally has criteria on how it’s valued while a B2B business that caters to niche industry has its own way of determining what constitutes a good rate of return on investment. It goes a long way when you can clearly convey what it is that you do and how you can help my business. Not only does it showcase expertise in this area but also that you believe in it strongly to justify all the time and resources you have thrown at it. It gives the customer confidence that they will not be left alone when they sign up for your product. Figuring out your target customer is not just true with software where I first experienced it. The same principle applies to almost any other product. If you are running an e-commerce site dedicated to a specific area may it be apparel, crafts, electronics or any other, due diligence must be done on your target customer. Is it about affordable products or making a fashion statement? Is it about consumers who are early adapters of technology or is it about folks who are looking for well proven products and the experience it provides? For one of the e-commerce sites I am associated with, we are often tempted to carry products which complement our offering. They are very appealing and believe will be well liked. However, the test it has to pass is does it fit the overall theme and nature of the products we say we offer and our customers expect of us? Too much deviation and you may start diluting the very brand you are looking to build. There is no right or wrong option. There is a market to be served in each case, however you must choose. “Indeed we are in this market” is an excellent choice. “We chose not to be in this market segment” is wonderful as well. However “we cater to all segments” may leave you with a short runway, often knocked down by the established players in each segment. Where does your product stand? Now is the time to choose. The author, Rahul Joshi, is a start-up entrepreneur and founder of nectarfarm.com
Read More
Information platforms to crawl the web to pick relevant content for marketers to make their campaigns become more personal. Vishal Krishna reports The name of the digital game today is “engaging” the consumer. The consumers, so far, discover content by themselves and are very often in a fix about the pertinence of the content consumed. But how does a marketing company discover the right content and continue a lasting engagement over a campaign or even try to engage the consumer personally. The answer lies with engineers. Startups such as AirLoyal, DrumUp and IceCream Labs are helping companies to take information and re-market them to consumers. These technology companies are self-funded companies and have now achieved reasonable scale to raise funds. They are betting on their intellectual property, the data engineering and analytics engines, to make their pitch stronger, which is to tell marketers that they need these platforms to make campaigns effective to keep a customer loyal to the brand. Big Brands are spending at least, Rs 100 crore, each year in trying to increase engagement over the web and soon this number is only going to go up significantly. GroupM, the media buying agency, says that the total market for digital spends hit only Rs 3,400 crore in 2014, expected to double by 2018, which is less than 7 per cent of the total marketing spends in the country. However, in the net, it is very important to find early influencers and marketers for engaging the digital citizens. Today a campaign drives up traffic on a website or an app and then the traffic dies because of lack of continuous engagement. IceCream Labs worked with Lifestyle, the Rs 4000-crore retailer, to make the retailer’s private label brand “Code” to reach the relevant target audience on the web. Every time a person made a search for the word “Farhan Akthar” and entered a website, images of Farhan Akthar wearing Lifestyle’s collection appeared as a banner. “The algorithms are powerful because they recognise images and bring it as part of content during campaigns,” says Madhu Konety, founder of Icecream Labs. This is also a new form of ad-technology where content is preferred over plain banners. Icecream Labs has raised two rounds of angel funding, sources say the amount raised is close to $250,000 or Rs1.50 crore. Similarly, DrumUp helps marketers crawl the web and get content which is relevant to their brands. “Discovery of content has to become an engagement. Today content is what ad-technology companies are after,” says Vishal Dutta, founder of DrumUp. This startup is building a Business-to-Business (B2B) and a consumer strategy. “Today organisations are willing to pay to get relevant content,” says Dutta. The consumer can use our app to get content for free, which will be the data on which DrumUp will engage businesses. They are currently in talks to close a $1 million (Rs 6 crore) round. They are in many ways similar to HootSuite, based in the USA and started in 2008, which raised $285 million to help companies their social media platforms. “Today TV is still important for engagement, but with the growth of marketing smartphones will use this channel increasingly because of it can be customised,” says Hemanth Rupani, VP Sales for Britannia India. The ideas do not stop there. AirLoyal, a Chennai based startup, has signed up over 20 companies and are signing a vendor agreement with a large FMCG company to make their campaigns powerful. Their app “Ladoo” is doing two things, first, it makes consumers take simple questions on the app, on behalf of brands, for which they receive free vouchers that can be redeemed on different brands. Second, it provides brands a platform to ask questions and get responses on trending topics. This campaign ignition platform can also be white labelled for marketers. It provides dashboards based on various variables fed in to the software based on the kind of the questions the marketing team chooses to input on to the platform. “This is a far better way of engaging consumers, than throwing in banner ads across apps,” says Raja Hussain, co-founder of AirLoyal. The company competes with the likes of mCent, which has a similar business model. In India the per customer acquisition cost is larger than what they spend on a product. Today for 36 million customers, net savvy or smart phone savvy, advertisers spend Rs 1100 per person. The ad spends are made on acquisition of the customer rather than engaging them. At least these startups are going to play a prominent part in making marketing meaningful.
Read More
Sankara Srinivasan (BW Photo by Bivash Banerjee)There are several real estate portals in India that are trying to change the way consumers discover and buy real estate market. However no one has achieved growth in client acquisition, revenues and profits. Fundamentally none of the portals have solved systemic issues which deny information to the consumer and leave them in the dark while buying a house. Portals are spending heavily on marketing in TV, social media and the net. But the customer knows that if he wants to buy a property he searches for the name of the builder directly. It is difficult for real estate portals to survive if they do not add value. Here is how the real story unfolds: The truth (notice how a consumer makes a search on Google about one suburb called Hebbal in Bangalore): It is clearly evident that the home buyers are choosing homes based on brand identity of the builder rather than using broader search metrics to find the right home. From the above table we can estimate that monthly traffic is 5,000,000 (for top 40 builders, 500 projects) in Bangalore alone. The total expected traffic for new projects will be, across top 8 cities in India, will go over 100 million. In comparison with this traffic, the leading real estate portals fall flat. Existing portals, which have raised large sums of money, are not the destination of choice to find new homes. People are influenced by advertisements of builders alone. Home buyers find unique problems like understanding the quality of builder, fair price of the project, growth in price of a location and land ownership details. Realtycompass.com and other portals are now trying to build unique features like builder ratings and floor efficiency (super built up to carpet area ratio and feedback is now being taken on experience with builders) which creates transparency, for people, in real estate market. What Do The Home Buyers Want?Though the real estate portals are having huge inventory and offer a 360 degree view that is the 3D floor plan; it still does not provide some basic information. Portals still need to build the following.1. Reputation of builder – Whether the company delivered the project in time in past, quality of construction, promoters’ track record, litigation against the builder and educational qualifications.2. Project approvals- Clear land title, compliance to approvals, building construction without deviations, bank approvals, extent of encroachment on the project.3. Fair price – recent transaction price for the project, comparative analysis of rates of similar rated projects, total inclusive price of projects (basic rate plus other charges), white versus black money component, calculated price based on credentials of project (amenities, specifications, possession, materials to be used etc)4. Location details – zoning of location, accessibility to basic infrastructure & civic amenities, water scarcity, safetyDue to lack of above information home buyers are not able to make decision on buying home online and relying on brokers, friends, brand name to conclude their home purchase process. The Way Forward:There are approximately 8,00,000 houses are getting sold in top 8 cities in India over the next few years. The total sales and marketing spend (including brokerage) of builders on these houses are expected be around Rs 20,000 crores. This gives a great opportunity to solve big pain points that the home buyers are facing today. The real estate regulation bill, once enacted, it will solve lot of problems such as stopping the builder from transferring money from one project to another to acquire land and punish willful delays in completion of project. Portals can solve many of the problems through technology. Intelligent apps can report real time inventory based on crowd sourcing, insurance for delay in possession of projects (high premium for disrepute builders would create market pressure on them) are some of the new features that can solve night mares to millions of people in India. The question is are we doing it right.The author, Sankara Srinivasa Aiyyathurai, is Chief Operating Officer of Realtycompass.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/sankara24@asankar24
Read More
All successful people are first positive people. Don't fall for the cliché "to fail is ok", then you can't give your best, says Vaidyanathan the former MD and CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company to Businessworld's Paramita Chatterjee Entrepreneurs often give up after a great start for lack of perseverance or for lack of scaling options. For any enterprise to work, we have to be entirely consumed with it, and work towards it like a possessed person. To say that failure is the stepping stone to success is just a cliché, we can't say to fail is fine, says V Vaidyanathan, the former MD and CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, who in 2010, wore an entrepreneurial hat, bought a stake in an NBFC and formed Capital First through a buyout transaction. Since then, he has converted the wholesale NBFC to a Retail finance company, and grown from a mere Rs 935 crore in 2010 to over Rs 12,000 crore today. What’s more, he also managed to rope in Warburg Pincus to fund his venture at a time when private equity investors took a cautious approach towards funding! BW began by asking him what his success tips are for emerging entrepreneurs. Passion to Create Something: The most important thing is to be driven and motivated. If there is a great idea in and we feel we have a good chance at it, don’t let it languish! Besides, creating a new brand and name for ourselves, we can create thousands of jobs. After all, creating a business and seeing it scale is a great feeling for anyone. Don’t depend on luck: When we were looking for a PE to back us, we were out there frantically searching them and seeking them out day in and day out. Nothing falls in our lap. Yes if we keep searching, some accidental meeting happens, some serendipity does occur. Our QIP attempt in 2011 failed, but a PE backing happened when we kept trying. No pitying ourselves when things go wrong: We are not unique in facing trouble, and we are where we are because of our own actions.. Every entrepreneur you know or read about has had challenges, who hasn’t. All successful people are first positive people. Don't fall for the cliché "to fail is ok", then you can't give your best. We can't afford to- we have a responsibility to our own image, or family, our colleagues, and all well-wishers who are backing us. Credibility is everything. Don’t overpromise. Present strongly the case to prospective partners, shareholders, employees. Over time reputation spreads in the market. Depending on how we conduct yourselves, people want or don’t want to associate with us. We have to be worthy of their trust. Our employees are ‘entrepreneurs’ too: I believe anybody who goes thru the pangs of decision- making, takes decisions, is directly impacted, and lives with the consequences of the decisions is an entrepreneur; we are not the only one. Our employees are as much owners in our venture. This is how you can attract good talent and retain them. Otherwise, why will great employees of other great established organisations leave and join our fledgling start-ups? Weare nobody without our partners.
Read More
Whether to join or not, if you are dicey about whether to join a startup or continue to work with the corporate, this Good Vs Bad of the startup world can help you take a better decision for your career. Check out these points to identify what is right for you.Work EnvironmentInformal atmosphere, flat hierarchies, open mindedness are some terms that perfectly describe work environment at a Startup. So, if you are bored of your organisation’s formal work environment, then startups have a better place to work at for you.Real Ownership & ResultsBy working at a startup, you can have a freedom to work. If you have an idea, execute it, and come up with the results. There is no need to follow a hierarchy and take multiple approvals. In case, your idea is a big hit, just enjoy the equity.ExperienceStartup gives you ample of opportunities to take decisions and that too quickly. This would not just help you in learning but also help in gaining experience in case you have plans to initiate your own startup.Sense Of AccomplishmentWorking at a startup gives tremendous & quantifiable impact. Startups give you a position to be an integral part of the system that plays an important part in the fine working of the business. The sense of accomplishment one gets from this is something that money can't buy.Diverse Work DayWork day at startup is not like 9-5 corporate job. You do not have to go to office to do the defined tasks & come back home. Instead every day, in fact every minute can be unpredictable about work. There are different clients and different work, and you would have to manage all simultaneously. So, one another best aspect about working at a start-up is, you won't be bored!The Bad SideLack of structure: Due to inexperience of leadership, if management loses sight of team/cost/communication of strategy with investment, then one has to face the consequences and bear the burden.Perk-less Salaries: Yes, startups have fund raising issues. So, do not expect big salary package in the beginning. There is even no scope of any sort of perks or monetary benefits in the initial years of the Startup.Lack Of Work Life Balance: Startup also means a lot of work, which demands extended work hours. You might enjoy flexibility in work style, however it would surely demand more time from you. So, be prepared to give extended working hours to your job and compromise with work life balance at initial stage of startup.Job Insecurity: Your career is directly proportional to the growth of the company. If its future at stake, so is your career. Chances of instability are thus high with startup companies.Now that you know the good and bad side of working at startups, take decisions wisely and then work hard to enjoy success.Courtesy: CareerBuilder India
Read More
Successful women entrepreneurs say the business community in the country should change their opinion towards them, reports Arshad KhanThe urgency to elevate participation of women entrepreneurs in the national business ecosystem was met with wise suggestions by the Y-gen women entrepreneurs at the Young Entrepreneurs Award event hosted by BW|Businessworld. The face of successful women entrepreneurs agreed that the business community in the country should change their opinion towards them and the failure of a start-up has nothing to do with the gender of its founders. Anshulika Dubey of Wishberry says, “six months back when we raised Rs 4 crore, many people said that we overvalued ourselves. This thing wouldn’t have been said if our company would have founded by all men league.” Further she adds that she doesn’t take investors on board whose opinions vary for female entrepreneurs. On discussing with the most common phenomena of quitting job after reaching to a certain age category to don the role of a family caretaker, the panel urged the women section not keep their dreams at bay and give equal importance to their professional life. Upasana Taku, co-founder, MobiKwik preferred a rather different view and said that women levels themselves below par combined with fear of a failure. This makes them to lose confidence in other women too. Women are the largest unused resource of the country and they ambition should not be crushed by social conditioning.” A country like India where half of the of the population lies below 30, there is huge opportunity for young women entrepreneur to prove their mettle in the business ecosystem. Example such as Indira Nooyi and Arundhati Bhattacharya have already paved a way for them to look into them and follow the path which they want to choose.
Read More
Paramita ChatterjeeThe startup space has been bustling with activity with Indian entrepreneurs churning out winning ideas and attracting millions of dollars in funding. In fact, there is growing chatter across the risk capital industry that the venture market is the place to watch out for! “What is exciting today is that this kind of a venture ecosystem did not exist five years ago,” said Mohit Bhatnagar, MD, Sequoia Capital on the sidelines of the Young Entrepreneur Conference & Event (YECE) organised by Businessworld on July 23. “If we as investors can handhold a few promoters and scale them to the next level, the contour of entrepreneurship will change in the years to come. There are great ideas floating in the market now,” he added. Investors who attended the Young Entrepreneur conference evinced interest in a slew of sectors including consumer, biotech, healthcare and software, apart from online and ecommerce within technology that are currently doing the rounds. “A good business can be described as one that can be scaled up rapidly and has robust unit economics in place that can help the company achieve profitability,” said Karan Mohla, executive director, IDG Ventures. In the first half of the current calendar year, the number of private equity and venture capital deals in the country increased to 462 from 285 in the corresponding period in 2014, as pet advisory firm Grant Thornton. In terms of value too, investors pumped in 38 per cent more at $7.1 billon in the January-June period this year. “We are always scouting for exciting business opportunities and are looking to fund in the range of $2-100 million,” said Sanjeev Aggarwal, co-founder and senior MD at Helion Venture Partners. Entrepreneurship in India can be classified into various categories of which these three are most common. One, businesses that ride on content. Here, promoters do not need too much of experience to begin with and therefore, the new breed of India's entrepreneurs who are typically very young and are fresh out of college are foraying in this space. Two, businesses that combine the online and offline models where experience is welcome but people can also start from the scratch. The third category is the outsourcing business where one typically would require prior experience to make a mark. “Our agenda is to explore investment opportunities and build relationships,” said Dev Khare, MD, Lightspeed Ventures India. “There are several India-specific businesses to watch out for and going forward, they are expected to gain traction as they exist nowhere else in the world,” he said. All in all, both private equity and venture capital investments in the country are here to stay. However, there is one factor that fund managers seemed wary about - high valuations riding across sectors. “The valuation game is really tricky. While certain companies are quoting high numbers, there are some who are finding it tough to even startup ,” said Sequoia’s Bhatnagar.
Read More
Ajay Batra I believe that “Startup” is a broad term that is used far too generously. In reality there are four nuances of this term, each denoting a specific stage of maturity of the entrepreneur and his/her organization. In reality, a Startup is mapped to one of these 4 nomenclatures: IDEA: An idea is not a startup. An idea of a startup is also not a startup. It is just what is – a thought. Sometimes the idea pertains to a feature (e.g. add voice search on corporate websites), solution (e.g. increase efficiency of petrol cars) or just passion in a broad area (e.g. school education). It is common to have many ideas – especially if the would-be-entrepreneur has a curious bent of mind and is comfortable asking “why not” questions. Unfortunately, in the world of startups, ideas in of themselves carry very little currency. Ideas are great only when they become useful. Although the entrepreneurial journey begins with an idea, we must understand it’s just one of the steps in the overall process.Many entrepreneurs convince themselves that they have the next “billion dollar” idea, without understanding that it is the realization of the idea that generates its value. The billion dollar idea, if appropriate, if well planned and executed, may well become a 100 Billion business.Eureka moments to change the world are great. But they have to be nurtured and morphed into something else. An entrepreneur is not only an idea generator, he or she has to be the executor of the idea. To proceed to the next stage, an entrepreneur has to ensure that the ideas is aligned with the entrepreneur’s passion, and he/she is happy to make its pursuit the purpose of his life. Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats. -Sue Grafton EARLY STARTUP: If the entrepreneur/founding team engage with the idea for a sustained period of time, and wish to take it forward – they will adorn the identity of an “Early Startup”. These entities have an abundance of positive energy emanating from the belief in their idea. There is clear evidence of excitement and willingness to learn / unlearn. The focus of the team at this stage is to visualize how their idea could be converted into a solution (product or service), and to validate that their idea has potential. This entails identifying who could potentially benefit from their solution (potential customers), what pain will the solution address, what comforts will the solution provide – and is there anyone else who may already have implemented all or part of the idea. All this is accomplished by real conversations and experience-sharing with potential customers or users - with a fair amount of iteration. There is a clear focus on thinking “outside-in” and developing a robust business model for the idea. Often, coloured by their passion or egos, or both, founders convince themselves of the usefulness of their idea – without any real interactions with the real world. Having dispassionate and experienced mentors at this stage becomes critical for ensuring objectivity of observation and analysis. The one thing that founders must avoid during the process is the - “solution looking for a problem” syndrome. To proceed to the next stage, the entrepreneur has to have discovered the exact markets/market segments his idea/solution addresses, and how these customer segments are to be reached, and how the idea with morph into a viable business. VALIDATED STARTUP: Possibly after multiple iterations in the previous stage, the founders have discovered how their proposed solution sits in the world of potential users and customers. They also have a tentative idea of how the startup will make money. So far, the founding team has not had the need to actually work on creating their product/service solution. That changes now. The knowledge gained in the previous stage is critical in developing a prototype of the proposed solution. The degree of functionality in this prototype will vary, e.g. quick wireframe of a proposed portal is much easier to make than a prototype of the new artificial limb. Hopefully, the founders will select an appropriate development methodology (e.g. rapid prototyping for software development) and will soon be able to have something that “feels and looks” like the final product. The prototype is shared with a select group of “representative” customers for their feedback on its functionality, physical attributes, accessibility and usefulness. Additionally, the team should inquire about the possible costs that the customer will bear for the solution [both one-time and repeat – if applicable]. These informative sessions are used as a feedback loops to continually refine their solution and the business model. Lest it conveys otherwise, the purpose of engaging with customers at this stage it not just to understand how much they “like” the product, but also to make some sales. Intense focus on adding the right features on the product, learning from the customers and convincing at least some of them to pay for it – makes this stage one of the toughest ones in the journey. This stage is also marked by encounters with nay-sayers; hence the founders need that extra dose of self-belief and perseverance in them. One common pitfall to avoid is to not spend extraordinary large amounts of effort and money in making the product/service so feature rich that it ends up overwhelming the customers, or makes the product unaffordable. To exit this stage, the startup must have a fairly well-defined solution that is being used by some paying customers – within the context of a working business model. You’ve invented something new but if you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business – no matter how good the product is. - Peter Thiel HIGH-GROWTH STARTUP: With market validation of not just the idea / product – but the business model – the startups is ready for enhancing its presence in the marketplace. This stage is characterized by: further refinements in the product /service solution, intense marketing and brand promotion, increased focus on sales and building the organization that will deliver the high-quality products/services to customers continuously. The founders have a tight balancing act to play: they must ensure that new customers are being acquired, existing customers are being provided excellent experience, bringing-in new team members for specialized roles and “letting-go” of certain decision-making responsibilities. This phase is challenging for many founders from work-life balance and operational perspectives (e.g. many founders don’t like marketing/sales/managing people – but this stage requires them to all of these, and more). The next stage truly takes the entity out of the startup universe. It is ready to become a “Scalable Organization” that has built reliable systems for planning, execution, talent management and product innovation. If we can keep our competitors focused on us while we stay focused on the customer, ultimately we’ll turn out alright. - Jeff Bezos
Read More
