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
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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.
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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.
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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
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Startups betting on the dometic forex market worth $18 billion to scale up business, writes Vishal Krishna With Makemytrip, the travel ticketing portal, acquiring a 28 per cent stake in Bangalore-based holiday planning company, HolidayIQ for Rs 93 crore, the travel portal industry is fast heading towards raising large funds. The market size for the travel booking industry is $120 billion in India and the organised players have only 2 per cent market share. According to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation, the forex earned from the domestic travel industry can be as high as $18 billion. This opportunity had already started a customer acquisition war like the one that we are witnessing in the etail business and all the money raised will be spent on hiring large sales teams. They will build market share in acquiring properties to be listed on their portals and create a bidding war of consumers. Surely television channels, Google and Facebook will benefit from all this. But what about the business itself? The funding will create many startups, to set shop, and ultimately drive them towards consolidation or make them shut down. For now the system is all geared up for a massive launch. With rumours floating around that Oyo Rooms is raising Rs 630 crore from Softbank, the industry could trickle down more money. The deal would make startups like iTraveller, Stayzilla, TripHobo, Tripoto, Travel Triangle and ZipRooms to raise more money with existing investors or look for funding. Today a startup, which has raised Rs 10 crore or more, spends Rs 1 lakh per day on Facebook and Google advertising. This would mean that Rs 3.6 crore is spent per year by a small startup to increase customer traction. “We look at bettering customer experience and manage customer repeats that book on the site when they are traveling to smaller towns,” says Yogendra Vasupal, founder of Chennai-based Stayzilla. He adds that increasing traffic volumes on to the site and app is not the end game. Stayzilla raised $20 million from Nexus Ventures and Matrix Partners recently. By not focusing on customer service, the travel industry can distance consumers. Today, like every etail business, there have been customer complaints about the less than average experience after booking from several travel sites. No doubt the money will make them improve processes. But this industry too will become a victim to heavy discounting to increase consumer traffic. In the off season too prices may drop to a point where the consumer benefits with a holiday package. iTraveller’s founder Shiju Radhakrishnan says that there is a need to organise the travel industry and that the discounting model is not the right way to go about it. “You need good data about regions and the properties. So you need to organise the suppliers who provide you this data in India,” says Shiju Radhakrishnan, founder of iTraveller. He adds that India will primarily remain a customer acquisition market, through heavy rotation of television ads, because of the nascent nature of the startup industry. “Consolidation is on the cards. But the opportunity to be independent, as a startup, is large because technology is going to disrupt the travel industry by getting rid of middlemen,” says Radhakrishnan. iTraveller recently closed a round of $1 million from LetsVenture. Ticketing is dominated by Goibibo and Makemytrip and these large portals do not have holiday planning tools that are customised for individuals. These new startups provide discovery, booking, planning and experience tools that become obvious acquisition targets. Let us hope that at least this industry is deep rooted in common sense and that it does not get lost in the story of valuations and wealth creation only for fund houses.
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Manish Kumar Pathak reports on the value that the start-ups are adding to travel segmentThe travel industry is undergoing a sea-change. The new age start-ups have popped up and are re-defining the concept of planning a travel, and in many ways the travel industry. The role of these travel start-ups, and their focus on specific areas like women-only travel sites or a student-focused hostel kind of hotel chains is very interesting, and the bearing they will have on this sector was the focal point of discussion during a session that took place at the E-tailing and Travel Commerce Conference 2015. The session was moderated by Anshul Srivastava, Head Sales & Marketing, Arzoo.com, and he observed that travelling is experiential process, and that unlike previously where travelling was a more a family oriented event, people are now very keen to travel in small groups and in many cases solo. Also, what value these start-ups are adding to this segment? Piya Bose, who is the founder of Girls on the Go Club, which is women-centric group, said that when she had started her journey she was very sceptical of the idea, but in these eight years the tremendous response that she has received has changed her perception completely. She said, “These 7-8 years have been a complete revelation, and now women are themselves coming out and challenging me to give them opportunities to travel. They have the means, and travelling is not just a voyage for them but they see it is as means of empowerment. The very feeling of having organised their own tickets or dealing in foreign exchange seems to thrill them, and they want to challenge their own limits. The trend is huge, and it is only on the increase.” Speaking on the issue of bag-packers, and how the trends are changing in India, where earlier travelling was a more planned affair, Akhil Malik, Co-Founder, Zostel observed that when he started experimenting with this concept, they were not entirely sure of the results. However, the response that they received was tremendous and that financially also the model was a viable one. Malik opined, “Earlier majority of our customers (bag-packers), were foreigners (90 per cent), but in the last two-years, there has been a shift of around 65 per cent foreigners and 35 per cent Indians. So, there is a change, and youngsters who are young corporates, or just outgoing youngsters, whose idea of travelling is not staying in a hotel, but to go out and witness the landscapes, taste the cuisines, talk to other travellers and just enjoy their stay in a very different way.” On the issue of value-addition provided to the travellers, Gautam Shewakramani, Founder & CEO, AudioCompass said that they come in when there is a need to replicate the presence of a physical guidance. “We virtually hold your hands and show you around. The problem that people face from our area, is that once you leave the hotel, you do not know which place to go, what to see. Here we step in, as we provide high quality content to the people and safe information about places. Since, many people travel because of site-seeing, we come in and give them this information.” Ish Jindal, Co-founder, Padhaaro, said that his company provides assistance during the period when people actually travel. “People want to visit local places, taste local-cuisines etc., and we then step in. We allocate personal local guides who provide assistance to them.” Chitra Gurnani, Co-founder, Thrillophilia Adventure Tours, says that often when people arrive at a destination they seldom have any plans on what to do next, and this because they are not aware of the things they can do at that place. “We are that bridging gap, and we believe travelling is no more just site-seeing, but more activity based. Hence we have introduced an app called near & far which will empower the people to acquire information about the interesting things to do at a particular place.” Speaking on the role of typical travel agents, Akhil Malik observed that they have to innovate to stay relevant. Piya Bose claimed that the future is bright only when travel agents become more of an ally rather than a middleman.
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GrownOut’s software combs through candidates to compile a list of those best suited to a particular organisation, reports Simar SinghHuman Resource professionals are always on the lookout for novel ways to simplify and expedite hiring processes, while ensuring that they rope in the right person for the job. GrownOut is an integrated solution providing software as a service company which seeks to assist companies through an analysis of behaviour, using various parameters based on pre-existing commonalities to provide clients right pool of potential employees that best suit their profile. “Job boards and career sites only cater to active candidates, a segment which forms a mere 15% of the total working professionals. Moreover, this 15% may not be the right talent for a particular job profile”, says Sumit Gupta who co-founded the Gurgaon based start-up in January last year and serves as its CEO. To tackle this problem and provide hiring solutions to HR managers, the cloud based tech-company, operating on a B2B model, focuses on the recognition of a relevant talent pool, and facilitating trustworthy warm introductions and communication through a system of social referrals.“All the information needed for sourcing is today available but it is important to know, who will be suitable to your organisation and also how to contact them to make sure the talent is motivated to join your organisation,” says Gupta. GrownOut’s software combs through candidates to compile a list of those best suited to a particular organisation. This process is based on selecting people from the same college that existing employees are form, those who have worked with existing employees in their previous workplaces or those who have attended events like conferences and seminars with them. These parameters, according to Gupta, are what help create an exhaustive talent pool, from which the best match can be hired. Integral to GrownOut’s hiring solution are warm introductions through social referrals. “Cold calls in the form of calls or mails from consultants and HR personnel have all lead to spamming and a general lack of faith in communication. The best way to contact a prospective employee is if a friend asks him to join the company”, says Gupta. GrownOut uses cloud technology to gather and analyse data related to the behaviour of both the job seeker and the recruiter and ultimately simplifies the hiring procedure. According to Gupta, this helps in establishing job switching behaviour to recognise which candidate is ready to switch, ensuring that the candidate is equipped with the right skills and will culturally fit into an organization, helping HR departments to map out a clear and distinct job profiles. The company received funding from Outbox Ventures and Matrix Partners in a Series A round of funding last October, currently has 20 employees and estimates that the numbers will swell to 50 by the end of this year. Currently around 125 companies are signed up for its freemium service. This includes the likes of Ola, Quikr, Appiterate, Stayzilla and Winshuttle. And, According to Gupta, clients are quickly moving on to the premium version. “In last one year the company’s only focus was to create the right product to fit the market and we have managed to do that- creating a next-gen referral hiring solution, a concept that is globally unique. All our funds have been dedicated towards this end and we are now concentrating on client acquisition”, says the company which is currently aggressively pursuing clients in the Delhi-NCR market and soon plans to expand to other metros.
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It is turning an idea into a successful commercial story that captures the imagination of the NextGen today. Gone are the days of young people pursuing stodgy jobs; this is the age of following your passion and starting your own enterprise. BW | Businessworld applauds this spirit; and to capture it, is organising the Young Entrepreneurship Conference and Awards to felicitate the enterprise in today’s youth. The event is on 23rd July 2015 at The Leela Ambience, Gurgaon, Delhi NCR. BW | Businessworld did a special issue on startups, issue dated June 2015, and it is with this event we are felicitating the young winners who can be the potential future leaders of corporate India On the sidelines of the awards ceremony, BW Businessworld is organising a half-day conference. This is an attempt to bring the best minds together in the startup ecosystem and discuss the key attributes for entrepreneurial success. The event will kickstart by a welcome note from V Vaidyanathan, CMD of Capital First, who has been responsible for India's largest management buyout of a listed company. As part of this MBO, private equity player Warburg Pincus acquired a majority stake (70.57 per cent) in Capital First. Our first panel discussion is on how these business leaders built fastest growing companies out of India. Some of the founders that the startups can learn from are Rahul Sharma, co-founder and CEO, Micromax; Mohit Tandon, CSO, Delhivery; and Yatin Shah, founder, IIFL Wealth. Business owners have to take several decisions, big and small, every minute in their entrepreneurial journey. This can be quite overwhelming, personally and professionally. Our next discussion is on how these founders – Rahul Yadav, former CEO of Housing.com, Vikas Malpani, co-founder of Commonfloor, Neeru Sharma, co-founder of Infibeam went against the tide and stood by what they believe is right. India needs to do much more to improve the ecosystem for women entrepreneurs is a given. It ranks a low 70 out of 77 countries in the Female Entrepreneurship Index 2015 (formerly known as the Gender GEDI). It is to talk about these issues we have five women leaders — Anshulika Dubey, COO, Wishberry; Ashwini Deshpande, co-founder, Elephant Design + Strategy; Sairee Chahal, founder, SHEROES.in; Neha Juneja, co-founder and CEO, Greenway Grameen Infra; and Upasana Taku, co-founder, MobiKwik — to share their experience of building companies and suggest policy changes to get more women to join the fray. When to raise funds? How to raise money? These questions can be mind boggling for any first time entrepreneur. To unravel the funding game for these entrepreneurs we have Natarajan R, MD and CFO, Helion Ventures; Mohit Bhatnagar, MD, Sequoia Capital; Karan Mohla, executive director, IDG Ventures; and Dev Khare, MD, Lightspeed Ventures India on the panel to share their gyan.
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