Proto.in Article2 : When, Why & How to start a business?

Proto.in4 covered various aspects of entrepreneurship. The session by Mahesh Murthy of Seedfund raised several critical points, which need to be seen before starting your own venture.

Novelty of Idea : The idea should have some novelty component. You should not read newspaper one day and think that the idea given in newspaper is worth exploring. If the journalist is publishing the idea in newspaper then either you are too late or idea is worthless to be explored. Try to evaluate the novelty and be a trend-setter. Try to venture into new areas and don't create a buzz about your idea in the initial stages. Evolve the idea and grow it to some level and let others talk about it after sometime. This way you can reach masses without spending a penny.

Right Time to Start : You should not get into entrepreneurship, because your current job is bad. The right time to get into entrepreneurship is when you have great idea which can change the world. You should have firm belief in your idea and should be able to sell the idea to others. If there are not enough takers for idea then definitely there is some serious problem i.e. either you are very bad at putting things and/or the idea is not that great. Don't try to be 20th company of any field. If you want to grow in any particular area, then try to be among first three companies.

How to Start : A lot of us feel that there should be enough market research before starting any business. We look at various reports published by Gartner, McKinsey etc. to see market trends and forecasts. The market research results go haywire many a times. The gut feeling and intuition clubbed with business acumen is very much required by any entrepreneur. Also for radical innovation from where are you going to get Market Research reports. A lot of traders ( quite successful entrepreneurs) from Gujarat & Rajasthan never read any research report and/or do any financial analysis. They just go by their gut feeling and passion to enter into new/existing business areas.

The keywords which holds highest value for entrepreneurship are trend-setter, out-of-the-box thinking, intuition, dedication and passion.

Proto.in Article1 : The Art of Building Internet Business

A lot of businesses start with a small scale-operation and then gradually gain momentum and volume. For first generation entrepreneurs taking a call to pursue a business is even more difficult. The situation was no different for Murugavel Janakiraman - Founder of Bharatmatrimony.com. He started his venture from his bedroom way back in 1997. At that point of time, internet was just picking up and few people were using internet as a medium for discussion and information sharing. During initial stage he developed a forum for discussion and information dissemination.

After sometime he noticed that a lot of people were using such platforms for matrimony purposes. After some thought, he decided to focus on this area and founded Bharatmatrimony.com. During initial stage a lot of people were skeptical to put their photographs and information over the net. Also a lot of people were just hitting the website and not taking any action. In the initial stage they charged Rs. 300 once the marriage is finalized. After some time Bharatmatrimony was made paid service which charged for establishing contact. Slowly the business started picking up and they got several million registered users in no time. In 2006 they raised money to scale up their operations. Currently they have more than 1000 employees and 700+ Bharatmatrimony centers.

The key learning's from the session: -
1. For 1st generation entrepreneurs, everything starts small and then grows gradually based on dedication and business decisions.
2. One should be flexible enough to do mid-way correction. If one strategy is not going well, be ready to try out new things.
3. Be passionate about what you are doing.
4. Be transparent to all stakeholders i.e. employees, partners, customers
5. Don't change your attitude with time as you grow bigger and achieve financial success.
6. Share your wealth with people who shared your dreams and joined you during initial stage of your venture
7. Be ready to take and enjoy risk. You past experience and family background doesn't matter a lot, if you have passion to realize your dreams.

Proto.in summary series

So,the high-energy and spirited semi-annual technology showcase & networking event ended today. The event was quite enriching in terms of gaining & sharing knowledge, meeting-up new people with lot of ideas & dreams and getting a feel of startup issues and probable solution approaches. The idea of the event was learning through engagement. On personal front I also learnt a lot from this event. I would try to capture this event in a series of blogs. I feel I should be done in 7 postings ( But who knows.... I may come up with even double posts).

I am listing here few items which would be covered:
1. The Art of Building Internet Business ( Taking BharatMatrimony.com as an example)
2. When, Why & How to start a business ( Building upon Mahesh Murthy's session)
3. What a Venture Capitalist look for in you & your business?
4. How a Card, Water, T-shirt matters?
5. Selling the dream & executing? ( Building upon Tekriti's talk)
6. Why a start-up should network? Realizing power of networks?
7. Blogging as a tool for creating brand and selling your services.

A lot of ideas and discussion in these postings would help you to start thinking and executing.

Open Coffee Club Posters

OpenCoffee Club : This is an attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where emerging & aspiring entrepreneurs can meet with investors, marketers, developers (and anyone else who fancies coming along) in a totally informal setting.
The key is a regular place and a regular time - it's not important who comes along, some days it might be no one - just that people know if they want to meet, this is the time and this is the place.



We want to create some density for people -- a few places where people know they can meet or bump into others.Something that can be replicated anywhere else at little or no cost where entrepreneurs can meet and know people might be around for them to talk with.

Venture Capital firms invest $340-M in India during H1 ‘08

According to a study by Venture Intelligence in partnership with the U.S.-India Venture Capital Association.

Amount Invested in H1-2008 by (VC) firms : $340 million ( $158 Mn. during April-June)
Number of Deals : 51 (( 26 during April-June)

Apart from IT other key areas are alternative energy, media, retail and other consumer demand-led sectors.

Top VC Investments in H1 ‘08

1. 20 Mn. in Obopay working in the area of Mobile VAS (Payments by Essar Communications Holdings, Promethean India, Richmond Management, Others
2. 20 Mn. in Sai Advantium working in the area of CRO by MPM Capital
3. 18.5 Mn. in Cleartrip working in the area of Online Services (Travel)by DFJ, others
4. 15 Mn. in Deeya Energy working in the area of Energy Storageby DFJ, BlueRun, NEA, others
5. 15 Mn. in Soham Renewable Energy working in the area of Renewable Energyby D E Shaw
6. 11 Mn. in Jivox working in the area of Online Services (Video Advertising) by Helion Ventures, Opus Capital, others
7. 10 Mn. in Brand Marketing working in the area of Retail (Fashion Brands)by Matrix Partners India
8. 10 Mn. in Emergent Ventures working in the area of Carbon Credit Advisory by IDFC PE
9. 10 Mn. in Gridstone Research working in the area of Enterprise Software
(Stock Market) by Helion Ventures, Maverick Capital, Charles River Ventures
10. 9 Mn in Paymate working in the area of Mobile VAS (Payments) by Mayfield, KPCB, Sherpalo Ventures

Open Coffee Club Noida - July Edition

Yesterday, I attended July edition of Open Coffee Club Noida. The topics of discussion included Machine Learning, Knowledge Management, Differentiation, Open-Source to Guitar Classes. I would capture key discussion points along with my insights:

1. Machine Learning : As defined by Wiki - Machine-Learning is a broad sub field of artificial intelligence, machine learning is concerned with the design and development of algorithms and techniques that allow computers to "learn". The major focus of machine learning research is to extract information from data automatically, by computational and statistical methods. Hence, machine learning is closely related not only to data mining and statistics, but also theoretical computer science.
It was debated that there are still a lot of systems where input and output are known, but we have no/limited knowledge about the process of transformation. It was also said that inferences based on heuristics need to be re-verified at regular intervals and may not translate into predictive modeling.

2. Knowledge Management & Idea Generation : It is imperative for any organization to manage the knowledge available within organization or with other stakeholders in best form. The use of knowledge helps in organization's growth in short & long-run. New ideas should be generated om regular basis to make improvements and expand service/product offerings. Organizations like 3M, Google & Bosch give high emphasis to idea generation and execution. The customer oriented organizations should involve their users to give creative feedback. The ideas which are worthwhile should be implemented by organization to improve offering and customer satisfaction. The whole idea of such initiatives is to involve inside/outside people and take actions accordingly.

3. Open-source : Few participants were apprehensive about participation of people in giving creative feedback. In their opinion, why should somebody invest his/her time to give ideas?. The premise of open-source is shared learning, removing re-work and improving existing processes. A lot of people are interested in making processes/systems better and hence would love to contribute at their own cost. Even simple examples like information sharing with TV/Radio channels and voting for good performers by common man justifies the whole point. Even small incentive programs can be used to get more people involved. A lot of people are interested in contributing at their own cost.

4. Differentiation Strategy : What would be best strategy while developing a product already existing in the market? Should we include too many new features?
A lot of people said that even if you are late-entrant, you should not think of making a product which may be perceived as a different offering. Product differentiation is possible up to a level, after which the other factors like Marketing, End-User Requirements, Environmental factors come into play. So you should look at multiple factors rather than just concentrating on making your product completely different from existing ones.

5. Niche Emerging Business : There are a lot of unexplored business areas in India, one of which being good professional trainers for musical instruments. At some places the people involved are too busy and costly while at some other places the quality of service is poor. There is pressing need of good companies offering such services at reasonable price and with good service quality. Once specific example is of a Guitar Training Company founded by group of IITians which is offering good training at reasonable price. Even in future they can think of extending their services to multiple locations using Franchisee model.

Overall, it was an enriching experience to hear and share good ideas. All like-minded people from different domains should definitely get-together here at no cost ( or at the cost of your own coffee).