Capital deprivation and startup strategies

from Trakin' the india business buzz by Arun Prabhudesai

One of the most important uses of capital is in discovering new markets. With a sufficient pool of capital, new markets can be quickly discovered, probed and exploited; the viable markets invite a rash of competing companies, and unviable markets are neglected and wither.

In India, most companies are severely capital-deprived. With the increases in FDI in recent years, this has changed for the better, but the process of market discovery is still slow and, by and large, left to large companies.

This capital deprivation is one of the reasons that a few large companies are spread across many unrelated markets in India – for example, the Tatas in broadband (Tata Indicom), mobile (Tata Docomo), power distribution (Tata Power in Mumbai), and even electronics retail (Croma).

One of the best features of the American economy is that capital is available to both small and large companies – small companies often doing the work of finding new profitable market niches, and going on to become (or selling out to) larger companies.

In India though, the lack of capital means that most small companies have to think constantly of ways to survive before it becomes possible to sustain the company through cash flows from their primary product.

Some markets require large amounts of capital before it can be said with any certainly whether they are viable or not. In the book "Founders at Work", the founder of Tivo – probably one of the more disruptive products of the last few decades – mentions that it took about $500 million in funding in its first few years. This is an unimaginable amount of money for a small company (or even a medium-sized) company in India to spend, although in the case of Tivo at least, I think the jury is still out on whether this is a viable market or not.

The example of Amazon – which spent several years taking investor money before it turned profitable – is also well known.

These examples – of large capital expenditures before a market is proven – are unlikely to repeat themselves in India since the pool of capital is limited, and flows mainly to large companies. Large companies are typically conservative about exploring unproven markets, since there are multiple internal constituencies that have to be convinced before such projects are green-lighted.

Given this situation of capital scarcity, especially for early stage companies, what is the best strategy for startups to survive?

One is, as mentioned above, to copy products that have worked somewhere else. These have the nice property that you know that someone, somewhere, is willing to pay for that product, and it is also fairly clear how much money is needed to produce it. Companies following this strategy have to be careful that the original product itself won’t be available in their target market before they are ready. For example, making an Indian version of Facebook at this point is probably a poor bet, since the original product has considerable traction. Countries such as China or Germany that have language barriers have seen domestic knockoffs of popular international Web applications before those products were localized into their domestic languages.

Another strategy is to bootstrap the company by doing work for hire. This is a well-established path, and intermediaries like Elance, Rent a Coder and oDesk make it possible to get contract work that (at least in theory) can pay for the salaries of the people working on the "real" product.

In practice, I believe it is all too easy to become a full fledged outsourcing company, and lose sight of the original product. This is fine as far as it goes, but a service company lacks the advantages of leverage that a product startup naturally has. (See my previous post for more on this.)

An additional option, which I believe more and more companies in India will adopt, is to conceive and develop a product in India for the international market.

While examples of US companies that develop their entire product in India while targeting the US market are now commonplace, these companies are typically American companies with American (or Indian-American) founders.

Companies created by Indians in India have traditionally focused on the market at their doorstep before venturing abroad. In some cases, especially for technology products, the Indian market may take several years to become large enough to support Indian startups. In such cases, it makes sense to target global markets side by side with, or sometimes even before, the Indian market.

This "global from day 1" attitude is probably most evident in companies from Israel, as well as other small European countries that lack a large home market. For products where the Indian market is more similar in size to, say, Belgium, than the US, it may make a lot of sense for Indian companies to think international from the start.

[This post is authored by Abhijeet Vijayakar - founder of Nunook Interactive Pvt Ltd, a game startup in Mumbai and Chennai. Nunook is currently developing BrainNook, India's first online, educational virtual world for kids, parents and teachers. In a previous life, Abhijeet developed 3D graphics engines (and games) at Electronic Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. He highly recommends not succumbing to capital deprivation syndrome.]

What’s So Scary About Marketing Strategy?

What’s So Scary About Marketing Strategy?

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Small business owners resist creating marketing strategy like many resist getting their teeth cleaned.

Over the years, I’ve discovered why this is:
An effective marketing strategy requires understanding who you are, choosing to be different than everyone else, and committing to one simple way of doing, acting and creating – to the exclusion of all other ways of doing, acting, and creating. Now, that’s some scary stuff!

The above set of requirements may seem difficult to accomplish, but accomplish them and you will set your business free from the tyranny of making up the idea of the week over and over again. However, that’s the crutch that keeps business owners from ever taking strategy head on. It’s far too easy to just grab another tactic, this week’s twitter, and run with it. If this week’s tactic fails, no harm, no foul, find next week’s thing. (A bit of a dart board strategy approach.)

When you commit to a marketing strategy, you’ve actually got to put your entire authentic self on the line and that scares the hell out of people. What if that fails, how do you recover? Well, it starts with a realistic and practical way of thinking about strategy and a mindset that links your marketing strategy to the culture of your organization – if a marketing strategy is real and true for you, your customers, and your people, to some extent you cannot fail.

My take is that a marketing strategy should scare you a bit, push to you an uncomfortable place, and make you stretch – otherwise is may never truly require you to anything remarkable to reach it.

Here’s what you need to discover and capitalize on to create your one true marketing strategy.

• What business are we really in? – another way of saying this is – what does your customer really buy when they buy your product or service? – does someone buy insurance because they want an insurance policy? Do they hire a plumber because they’ve always had a hankering for a new P trap? Well, what do they really get from a successful experience with you – it’s probably not what you think.
• Who is our ideal customer? - You’ve undoubtedly read this from me already, but I can’t say it enough – not everyone is your ideal customer, you’ve got to know enough about that perfect customer you are trying to attract, so much so that anyone in your organization could spot who is and who is not that customer. Hint: look long and hard at the make up of customers that are referring business to you – there’s a good chance they hold the key to discovering your ideal customer.
• What do we do that our customer really values? – The answer to this question is the essence of your thrust to differentiate your business from all others in your industry. It’s likely that you have a unique way of doing business, serving the customer, and creating a winning experience, it’s also just as likely you have no idea what that unique value is, but your customers do – go ask them to tell you what your magic is and then let it shine in all your marketing messages, because it’s a pretty good bet your ideal prospect wants that too.

The best news of all is that once you do this, decision making – what new product should we create, what should our direct mail say, how can we use Facebook – gets very, very easy. Simply ask yourself – how would this help us achieve our marketing strategy?

Just remember, safe is boring – bold is where the opportunity resides, bold is how your create something extraordinary – do it now!

Image credit: Don Fulano

What would a professional do?

from Seth's Blog by Seth Godin

Every day, you do a hundred or a thousand jobs, some of which are occasionally handled by specialists. You make a sales call or give a presentation or answer the phone... you design a slide or create a simple spreadsheet. You get the idea.

When you are busy being a jack of all trades, you're competing against professionals. The recipient of your work doesn't care that you are also capable of doing other things. All she wants is the best she can get.

I'll define a professional as a specialist who does industry standard work for hire. A professional presenter, for example, could give a presentation on anything, not just the topic on which you're passionate about.

When you compete with professionals, you have a problem, because generally speaking, they're better at what they do than you are.

I think there are four valid ways the think your way out of this situation:

1. Hire a professional.
2. Be as good as a professional.
3. Realize that professional-quality work is not required or available and merely come close.
4. Do work that a professional wouldn't dare do, and use this as an advantage.

The first option requires time and money you might not have, and I'm presuming that's why you didn't do it in the first place.

The second is a smart option, particularly if you do the work often and the quality matters. Slide design and selling are two examples that come to mind here. The first step to getting good is admitting that you aren't (yet.) Invest the time and become a pro if it's important.

The third option is worth investigation, but it's what you've probably already decided without putting words to it. Is the assumption really true? Does your customer/client/employee actually believe that they haven't been shortchanged by your amateur performance? It is costing you in ways you're not measuring because you're willfully ignoring the consequences? Think of all the sub-pro experiences you've had as a customer, instances where someone was pretending to be a chef or a bartender or a computer jock but just came up short... Were you delighted?

The fourth option is really exciting. From personal YouTube videos to particularly poignant and honest presentations or direct and true sales pitches, the humility, freshness and transparency that comes with an honest performance might actually be better than what a professional could do. Harvey Milk was an amateur politician, not a pro. If you're the only person on earth who could have done what you just did, then you're a proud amateur.

You can't skate by when you refuse to mimic a professional. You must connect in a personal, lasting way that matters. That's difficult, but the professionals have no chance to compete with you.

Be an amateur on purpose, not because you have to.

What are you good at?

from Seth's Blog by Seth Godin

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content.

Content is domain knowledge. People you know or skills you've developed. Playing the piano or writing copy about furniture sales. A rolodex of movers in a given industry, or your ability to compute stress ratios in your head.

Domain knowledge is important, but it's (often) easily learnable.

Process, on the other hand, refers to the emotional intelligence skills you have about managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities, etc. This stuff is insanely valuable and hard to learn. Unfortunately, it's usually overlooked by headhunters and HR folks, partly because it's hard to accredit or check off in a database.

Venture capitalists like hiring second or third time entrepreneurs because they understand process, not because they can do a spreadsheet.

As the world changes ever faster, as industries shrink and others grow, process ability is priceless. Figure out which sort of process you're world-class at and get even better at it. Then, learn the domain... that's what the internet is for.

One of the reasons that super-talented people become entrepreneurs is that they can put their process expertise to work in a world that often undervalues it.

New Rules

by Tim Berry

Now here's a good rule to live by:

1) Do unto others as you would have them announce to 100,000 people you have done.

I had seen this one a couple of days ago on the Huffington Post, part of Richard Smith's 10 new Golden Rules for Living in a Web 2.0 World, a thoroughly enjoyable list. Good advice for a not-so-big world.

But wait. What if there's a corollary? You do unto others nicely, as implicitly suggested above, and nobody will announce anything to anybody, because that's boring. Do something dumb, mean, or otherwise embarrassing, and that will spur an announcement. We should call that the page-view paradox of Richard's rules.

Remember the old saying, "Nice guys finish last?" Bad news travels fast, and good news doesn't. Bad reviews are more fun to read than good reviews.

I still remember the line in a movie review, from 30 years ago, where the reviewer said the director had "delusions of adequacy." Panning is more fun than praising. I don't remember lines from good reviews.

I looked back at this and Richard's rules today after I read Michael Arrington's startling spit-in-the-face story on TechCrunch. Which, I should add, I had found because somebody I follow in Twitter commented on it with the phrase "you reap what you sew (sic)." Gulp.

Arrington, clearly still reeling from the unnerving experience of having such a vivid expression from someone he didn't know at all, says he's going to take some time off, and think about it. He tells of death threats a few months ago, and expensive security.

TechCrunch, the blog, and Michael Arrington, its founder, play a king-maker role in high tech. A good review on TechCrunch can make a company suddenly real. A bad review can hurt, but even that's better than no review at all. Arrington's in a tough position, in my mind. He can't do what he does well without disappointing a lot of people. I don't know him, but I've seen him perform, I've read his work, and I feel for his dilemma. You can't do a job like his well without making enemies.

And in his case, it's not even a matter of bad reviews: the worst thing TechCrunch can do to an aspiring new company is nothing at all; there is no news worse than no news. In other words: silence. That's a tough world to live in.

Which brings me to two more of Richard's suggested golden rules:

9) The day your name hits the top of the Google search rankings will NOT be a good day.

10) It is more compelling than ever to simply do the right thing for yourself and for the world. Positive actions have now been gifted with incredibly long tails.

These two go together because rule 9 is a restatement of the page-view paradox. Bad news is far more interesting than the opposite; and the opposite of bad news isn't good news, but rather, no news. So that contradicts rule 10. Damn! I want to believe that positive actions are now being gifted; but I don't see it happening. At least, not often.

It was about a generation ago that Thomas Harris' book I'm OK-You're OK was a best seller. It pointed out (among other things) that two random people sitting together on an airplane seat were far more likely to start talking by sharing the negative (these planes are always late ... these seats are too small ...) than anything positive. This seems to be a general rule. And it relates to the power of the negative in blogs, reviews, and general human behavior. We are all pretty annoying, you have to admit.

So I wonder. I get it that the new world can turn out and expose phonies and cheats faster than ever. But don't they -- the cheats and phonies and all -- get more page views too?

Personality is more important

Dan Morrill (Security Project

Manager) Posted 11/19/2007
Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

"Skills can be taught, personality is forever"

Employers are putting an increasing focus on employee personality to ensure that they can work within the team framework, and have a better understanding of the job requirements. An excellent write up in the SeattlePI goes in detail on the subject, and is something that I have noticed that more and more clients are doing. They want people who can hit the ground running, work within the confines of the job, and get along with people.

The standard IT problem of knowledge hoarding and non sociability is quickly becoming a liability even if you are absolutely brilliant. Something that I am fond of telling all the people that I interview with is to tell me what this statement means:

"It does not matter how brilliant you are, if you cannot communicate effectively no one will know how smart you really are".

"We'd rather miss a good one than hire a bad one," said Rackspace Chief Executive Lanham Napier. The 1,900-person computer server hosting company is divided into 18- to 20-person teams. One team is so close, the whole group shows up to help when one member moves into a new home, Napier said. Job interviews at the San Antonio-based company last all day, as interviewers try to rub away fake pleasantness. Source: SeattlePI

Team interviews that last all day are not just a Microsoft institution anymore; these kinds of interviews actually work because people on both sides of the interview table learn a lot about the job. The requirements for the job and the team can see if there is going to be a good fit.

The flip side to that is the idea of "Like hires like", so if you are a non sociable person, odds are pretty well given that if the department is made up of people with a non social way of doing business, then odds are good that you will be hired.

The key to finding a job is to make sure that your personality, goals, wants and needs match the needs of the group hiring you. While some focus on the team as a source of innovation and work environment, some companies do not have the same focus. They are looking for people who can fit in to whatever environment is the one that the company has developed for itself. Personality is important, and fit is very important, finding the right kind of fit goes a long way in job stability.

When interviewing for a job, it is important to find a place that you are comfortable in, and employers have the same right. They need to know that however your personality has formed, that it fits in well with the rest of the people on the team. Time spent in reducing the friction of a group is time lost when good things could be done. The whole point, make sure that you and the company you are hiring with have the same outlook, good or bad, to ensure that you will fit into the group, regardless of personality type.

But with businesses ever increasing focus on being likable, approachable, and smart, computer geeks of all stripes are going to have a harder time finding a job, in a company that emphasizes the "likable and approachable" part of the job interview.

The Crystal Ball and Chain

The Crystal Ball and Chain from Planning, Startups, Stories by Tim Berry This is an answer to a question I get way too often. I call it the "Crystal Ball and Chain" problem. I've run into it several times as I've introduced the planning process into a new company or organization. People in the organization sometimes fear business planning. In the background, the fear is related to accountability and commitment. Usually they don't realize it. They state their objection as: "But how can I possibly know today what's going to happen six months from now? Isn't that just a waste of time? Can't it actually be counter-productive, because it distracts us, and we spend time trying to figure out things in the future?' I've heard this from some people who really did seem to be worried about accountability and commitment, and I've heard it from some who were stars on the team, not worried at all about their own position, but legitimately worried about the best thing for management and getting work done. The answer is that projecting future business activities isn't a ball and chain at all, because in the right planning process the existence of the plan helps you manage effectively. Here's a concrete example: it's September and you are developing your plan for next year, which includes an important trade show in April. You plan on that trade show and set up a budget for expenses related to that trade show. Even though it's September, you have a pretty good idea that this will happen in April. When January rolls around, though, it turns out that the trade show that normally takes place in April will be in June this year. Does that mean the plan was wasted time? Absolutely not! It is precisely because you have a plan running that you catch the change in January, move the expense to June, and adjust some other activities accordingly. In this example, the plan isn't a brick wall you run into or a ball and chain that drags you down; no, it's a helpful tool, like a map or even a GPS device, because it helps you keep track of priorities and manage and adjust the details as they roll into view. It's normal for the crystal ball and chain to appear as an objection when a planning process is introduced. The solution is simply good management. The people involved in implementing the plan learn with time how regular plan review sessions help them stay on top of things, and when assumptions change, how the plan changes. Changes are discussed, nobody gets fired, and you have better management. The underlying idea here is directly related to the paradox in a previous post: business plans are always wrong, but still vital to good management. --Tim

Adding premium to E&E industry

The Economic Report from Star online.

Greater economic benefit can be realised if the electrical and electronics (E&E) industry progresses to higher value segments.

Despite Malaysia's long reliance on the industry, local manufacturers have largely confined themselves to the low value-added segment of the industry.

The section titled "Upscaling Malaysia's Electrical and Electronic Industry" said that with the sector contributing significantly to the manufacturing sector, significant revenue increases could be reaped by moving up the value chain.

Towards this, the Government has initiated strategies focusing on semiconductor clusters, leveraging on information and communication technology (ICT) and enhancing R&D capabilities.

It also talks about developing human resource and the creation of centres of excellence.

In addition, with increasing focus on design and development elements of the value chain, it is anticipated that the import bill for intermediate products can be reduced.

In the long run, involvement in higher value-added activities of the E&E value chain will allow Malaysia to establish international brands and link up with the global supply chain.

Under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, the E&E industry and the electronics sector in particular has been targeted as one of the key industries to move towards a higher level of technology adoption and to produce greater value-added outputs.

In this regard, the E&E cluster in the Northern Corridor Economic Region comprising Penang and Kulim High Technology Park (KHTP) will be further developed.

The synergies arising out of locating related companies operating along the entire E&E value chain will enable them to optimise benefits and minimise costs.

A privately initiated high-tech electronics hub will also be established to complement KHTP.

The presence of multinational companies (MNCs) in the industry will remain significant, nevertheless, as local manufacturers have developed the skills and expertise to support the MNCs requirement for parts and components.

The Third Industrial Master Plan (IMP3) will also provide a clear plan of action to move the industry up the value chain.

Among the strategies under the IMP3 is the strengthening of institutional support, including a comprehensive package of support schemes to encourage investments, as well as expanding the role and functions of industry associations.

The IMP3 will promote new and emerging technologies in biotechnology, cognitive technology and nanotechnology that it expects to further strengthen the E&E industry.

Meanwhile to leverage on new and emerging technologies, the Government – in collaboration with the industry - will also establish the Electronic Industry Advisory Panel to spur the development of such technologies as well as identify local companies capable of applying them.

The industry should also ride on advancements in ICT and make use of Internet facilities as well as convergent products, such as personal digital assistants, to enhance performance.

To intensify R&D, particularly in higher revenue generating activities in design and fabrication, several agencies will actively provide R&D and commercialisation funds.

Malaysia Technology Development Corp, Multimedia Development Corp and Malaysia Biotechnology Corp are already actively engaged in providing financing with the Techno Fund, Inno Fund and Technology Acquisition Fund for the development of significant design and indigenous R&D capability and technologies.

These agencies would also encourage the creation of Malaysian-owned multinational electronic companies.

Another aspect is the development of human resource.

To sustain R&D capability and enhance innovation through design and product development, significant investment in human capital development is a pre-requisite.

Several programmes have been put in place to facilitate human resource development for the E&E industry.

Various "microsystem" programmes jointly developed with world-class design centres such as the Toppan Technical Design Centre, Japan and the Silicon Valley Institute and IPC in the United States are already being offered.

In addition, the Malaysian Institute of Microsystems under the Selangor Human Resource Development Centre has established an advanced technology centre of learning for design development and innovation particularly in IC design.

In terms of funding, Pembangunan Sumber Manusia Bhd, which manages the Human Resource Development Fund helps to defray the training costs incurred by the industry.

Another strategic initiative by the Government for the strengthening of the sector is the creation of Centres of Excellence.

These centres will be responsible for providing technology support, R&D facilities, incubators for start-ups, market intelligence and access to funding for the industry.

Under the IMP3, measures will also be introduced to promote the specialisation of R&D by creating Centres of Excellence in public universities.

Specifically, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) has been designated for microelectronics, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Multi-media University for ICT, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for micro-electro-mechanical system and Universiti Malaya for photonics.

In line with the mandate given, USM spearheaded the upgrading of the Collaborative Micro-Electronic Design Excellence Centre (CEDEC) into a Centre of Excellence, comprising seven universities with USM as the secretariat.

The CEDEC initiative towards the value-added aspiration for the nation's E&E industry includes increasing the pool of IC designers, supporting fabrication foundries by creating local clusters of design houses and enhancing university design skills in fabrication.

CEDEC will also encourage local fabless start-ups through strengthening development and technological capabilities as well as to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit to spawn start-ups.

In addition, it will build up systems design capabilities through developing hardware and software design engineers.

CEDEC has already enabled collaboration and coordination in design activities amongst its members.

In order to further enhance this cooperation, the Fabless Malaysian Integrated Circuit Design Association was formed in June.

The two bodies are expected to fast track the upgrading of design activities as well as grooming more Malaysian designers and product developers.

The IMP3 targets an industry growth rate of 7.2% or RM5.5bil per annum, with a total approved investment of RM82.4bil by 2020.

With total approved investment in the industry of RM8.2bil in the first half of 2007, Malaysia is on track to achieve this target.

SMALL & MEDIUM INDUSTRIES DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION

This link which provides some info on grants available for sme's in Malaysia.

You Always Fire an Executive Too Late

You Always Fire an Executive Too Late
from Planning, Startups, Stories by Tim Berry

I've posted here several times on paradox in planning. This morning I'm fascinated by what Marc Andreessen calls the paradox of deciding to fire an executive.

It takes time to gather data to evaluate an executive's performance. You can't evaluate an executive based on her own output, like a normal employee -- you have to evaluate her based on the output of her organization. It takes time for her to build and manage her organization to generate output. Therefore, it takes longer to evaluate the performance of an executive than a normal employee.

But, an executive can cause far more damage than a normal employee. A normal employee doesn't work out, fine, replace him. An executive doesn't work out, it can -- worst case -- permanently cripple her function and sometimes the entire company. Therefore, it is far more important to fire a bad executive as fast as possible, versus a normal employee.

Solution? There isn't one. It's a permanent problem.

He continues with a quote from Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, who noted that you always fire an executive too late. "If you did it fast enough that it wasn't too late, you wouldn't have enough data, and you'd risk being viewed as arbitrary and capricious by the rest of the organization."

I've cited Marc Andreessen's posts on startups several times in recent months, cataloging it in my mind, and somewhat on this blog, as an excellent take on the high-end elite startup that is a prime candidate for venture capital. His latest in that series, however, part eight on Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives, applies quite well to all business, across the range. It applies equally to the growing and healthy established small business, and, for that matter, the larger enterprise as well.

While you can find a lot of good advice on how to find an executive, how to recruit, and how to select, there's not so much on how to fire an executive. I had an attorney who used to say that the time to fire a person was "as soon as you start asking yourself that question." Andreessen's is better: when you start asking the question, start gathering data.

In this post he also talks about how to manage an executive. It certainly hits home for me when he points out that you don't just build the team, you also have to manage.

"While respecting someone's experience and skills, you should nevertheless manage every executive as if she were a normal employee. This means weekly 1:1's, performance reviews, written objectives, career development plans, the whole nine yards. Skimp on this and it is very easy for both your relationship with her and her effectiveness in the company to skew sideways.

"This even holds if you're 22 and she's 40, or 50, or 60! Don't be shy, that will just scare her -- and justifiably so."

This is the eighth in Marc's series on start-ups -- perhaps the best yet.

--Tim

The Planning Process

The Planning Process 10% from Planning, Startups, Stories by Tim Berry Picture yourself in front of a group of 20-30 business owners. They are computer or software resellers, dealers of Progress Software, Autodesk, Solidworks, or a personal computer manufacturer. They are mostly men in their 40s and 50s. Most of them have been in business for themselves for 10-20 years. Most of them have 3 or more employees, a few have 25, 50, and one or two 100. If you ask this group how many of them regularly review their business plans and revise them as needed, roughly 10% of them will raise their hands. You can explore the details in front of the group. The ones who regularly review their business plans will be the stronger and healthier businesses in the group. If they've been around for a while, they'll be the ones with more employees and more market share. If they're younger and newer companies, they'll be the ones with more growth. You want actual data, numbers, and better yet names? Yeah, me too, I wish I'd done that but it was enough to run full-day planning seminars, each one took a lot of energy, and there just wasn't enough bandwidth for me to be managing the seminars and populating a database at the same time. What I will give you, though, is accumulated experience. When I run one of these seminars I can count on my 10% number enough to take the risk of setting myself up in front of the group, at the beginning of the day, with those people as leaders. Throughout the day I can call on them confidently for comments and details and anecdotes, and they'll have the right kind of useful responses. These people are my stars. They don't all plan the same way, they don't all have the same process, but they have process. I can count on them. They get it. Here's a concrete example: during part of the seminar I want to illustrate the paradoxes of planning, say "business plans are always wrong." I have my two or three stars in the room and I can be sure of getting a useful response from one of them when I deal with this issue for the group. I'll ask, "Ralph, Mabel, Mary ... what do you say? Why do I say that?" And I'll get back a response about how they're wrong because assumptions change, which is why they need to be kept alive and managed. Or they'll say something like that. I don't like to take risks easily when I'm in front of a group. This 10% rule, however, has worked consistently for me for years. Now I realize having a set of numbers to display would be stronger than my anecdotal evidence, but then so many sets of numbers are flawed anyhow, and give the wrong impression. My people in the seminar aren't a random sample by any means, so the numbers wouldn't be statistically valid anyhow. So who are these people? Starting in the 1980s I did some seminars for Apple Computer dealers in Latin America, and then in the 90s in Japan and Singapore, then HP dealers in different places, then Data General, UNISYS, and more recently for dealers of Autodesk, Solidworks, and Progress Software. Does this same 10% apply for other industries? I can't be sure that that my anecdotal data applies; but I'll bet it does. -- Tim

Sales doubles company troubles

Sales doubles company troubles

from Planning, Startups, Stories by Tim Berry

[This is based on a true story. I've changed only names. --Tim]

Leslie is 15 years older now, approaching 50, still running a network consulting business with Terry, still married, and still living in the same West Coast university town. He's happy with the way things ended up, but I can see the wrinkles in his face and the gray in his hair as he talks about that time in the mid 1990s when sales doubled. Like the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Flash back to 1994. Mozilla was available and the World Wide Web was beginning to reach a few commercial users. FedEx had a site, so did Disney, and people were starting to catch on. Clinton was president. The dot-com boom hadn't happened.

Leslie and Terry had a small office downtown and a reasonably good business, billing about $30,000 a month, taking home about $5,000 each per month after overhead, expenses, and, of course, taxes. Call their company Local Network Services. They'd been doing a lot of work for a few pioneering local businesses wanting local area networks, electronic mail, and such. Things were pretty good, they got along well, their offices were pleasant, but they could have used more money. Life can be expensive in a nice West Coast university town.

Then came the bonanza. A contract with the university. Both Leslie and Terry were alums of the school, and they'd happily maintained contact with some of their former professors, so it wasn't that unexpected, but still delightful news. LNS was asked to manage a very ambitious new project to rewire the campus for Internet access. It meant new servers, new routers, new switches, new software, and a lot of consulting. This was going to be worth something like $150k, maybe even $250k. I had lunch with Leslie during that period. He was excited. Growth is good. He was rubbing his hands together in eager anticipation. Those were good times.

The deal was landed, and a contract was signed. Depending on how they delivered, Leslie and Terry would essentially double their business in two or three months.

And things stayed good as they delivered on promises. They hired contractors, freelance consultants who were mostly friends, they got to work, did a good job, finished milestones, delivered as promised, and turned in their invoices. Okay, they weren't real quick to turn over their invoices, because they were doers, not administrators, but the invoices did get delivered.

In a matter of 10 weeks, LNS sales had doubled. Profits more than doubled. Life was good. Leslie and Terry celebrated. They moved to new offices, not much fancier -- they were techies, after all, not MBAs -- but bigger and better wired. They became quite popular with their contractor friends. Each of them leased a nice new Mercedes. It reminded me of a television commercial they used to show in Mexico City, when I lived there, for some luxury car: "for the man who has conquered his place in the world."

I sat with Leslie at some point during the euphoria weeks. We had coffee at a local place; he didn't have time for lunch but he was happy. It was fun to watch. There was the feeling of making it, success, wow, it's great to be an entrepreneur. Thank goodness he had left the big company to partner with Terry in LNS. He drove off happily in his Mercedes.

I heard the ugly "rest of the story" about six weeks later, from my wife, who used to see Terry's wife every so often. It came to me at that point as a kind of morality play, sending a message. Had I heard about the whole thing turning bad? my wife asked. They went crazy and overspent, she said, and now they were in real trouble. They had to take out second mortgages on their houses, just to cover expenses. Terry's wife was particularly unhappy; I heard, second hand, that on the day they had to sign the mortgage papers, they drove there in "that damned Mercedes."

Terry was one of those people who liked to share good news but not bad news, so there were no pleasant lunches during this time. I didn't see him again until the crisis was over; LNS had weathered the storm and would survive and continue to grow.

What happened? Cash flow happened. The rest of the story is painfully anticlimactic, and painfully common. Neither Terry nor Leslie stopped, during all the excitement, to think about accounts receivable. When they turned those invoices over to their friend at that university, he signed them, approved them, but he didn't pay them. He turned them over to finance, which, at the time, was sort of like sending them into a black hole.

It isn't that the university didn't pay its bills. It's just that it didn't pay them fast. The process would take several months.

In the meantime, LNS had to cover its costs. They had to pay the new rent, the moving expenses, and, most importantly, those contractors. The contractors weren't just business expenses, they were people with families to support and mortgages to pay. Terry and Leslie needed to pay them.

They didn't feel comfortable going back to their main contact to complain. After all, he had signed and approved the invoices immediately. They didn't want to be polluting their business relationship with this important new buyer by bugging him about the cavernous and slow-moving university finance department he depended on. And they didn't know anybody in finance.

So they shut up and borrowed money. And that required putting up collateral, which became second mortgages; one second mortgage for each of the two partners. They were lucky they had house equity because that's what saved their business.

What should have happened? Business planning should have happened. Here's where the story gets sad. Had Terry and Leslie been running a decent business planning process, they would have seen immediately upon signing that contract that a cash flow crunch was coming. They could have gone to their bank three months in advance, with a plan illustrated by tables and charts, showing how they were going to double sales and profits but they would need working capital to support the expansion.

Think of the contrast: how does the banker react when you've landed a big new contract and you know, because of your plan, that it will take working capital to support? Okay, and how does the banker react when it's Tuesday and you need money by Friday to make payroll or to pay the rent and not get kicked out of your space? Which scenario would you rather be in? That's why you want to plan.

Summary: Business planning didn't happen. Stress, pain, and heartache did happen. All of hurt, suffering, worry, and I do mean all of it, was unnecessary.

-- Tim

Ramki' dreamt big and won from rediff.com

Ramki' dreamt big and won

Shamni Pande

Irrespective of whether you think marketing is a science or an art, data is critical to the debate. Think about it, data is necessary to build case for either situation. But using it is easier said than done; pick up any market research report and see what you make of those figures laid out with vision-blurring, precision.

Sensibly, companies have now started outsourcing this data-crunching exercise to specialists. This is where 34-year-old S Ramakrishnan - 'Ramki, as he likes to be called - CEO Marketics Technologies, comes in. His venture is to get sense out of data, and it's an interesting story, read on:

The late Nineties is a good start, just around when the Internet and dotcom buzz started. Ramakrishnan - by then well entrenched at P&G India's brand management team, did something that was not so unusual for many raring young individuals at that time - turned a 'Net' entrepreneur.

Catalyst for the atypical decision is S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai, from where Ramakrishnan claims the bug got him: "It was a rather unorthodox MBA training that encouraged entrepreneurial abilities."

Part of the new-technology wave, where people across categories harboured sweeping visions of what the Net could do, Ramakrishnan egged on by his friends, also co-founders - Vinay Misra and Shankar Marwada - launched Intercept Technologies in 1999.

Prophetically christened, to say the least, we see Intercept Technologies being cut in its stride by the dotcom bust. All we hear from Ramakrishnan of the crash, is the furious effort to reboot.

The trio knocked around with some ideas, unwilling to call it quits: "After all, it were our clients - the dotcoms - that went bust, we still had a concept going," Ramakrishnan says - asserting all the reasons why things should have worked.

To cut it short, Marketics Technologies is what we now know of, of the trio's act of defiance - which is gearing up to be a Rs 100-crore (Rs 1 billion) entity. There appears a huge thrust on role definition, for instance, the company

March 10, 2007 works on latent marketing skill, initially concentrates all efforts on the US market and works on its belief in the Net and uses it as a core platform for interface. End product is well-analysed, marketing intelligence given to clients to draw decisions from. Significantly, Marketics has eschewed from tapping the market for funds, "we started on a shoe-string budget, which involved some of us not taking our salary for sometime," says Ramakrishnan. He's game to various options in future, including short-time collaborations. But most critical of all these decision has been the collective choice to stay focussed on the US market - initially: "It's easy to be lured and go tapping every 'expression of interest,' that comes along. But not all turn out to be solid business propositions. We decided to conserve our talent to make an impact in one area, before we could address other geographies," says Ramakrishnan. Today, Marketics Technologies has made a foray in UK and is seeking to spread into Europe and is even looking at prising open the home turf here in India. On board are some of the top-Fortune 100 companies in different industry segments. Non-disclosure agreement prevents Ramakrishnan from actually bandying client names, save a few such as Universal Studio and RCI (part of Windham Worldwide). Finally, it's interesting to note that Marketics has managed to capture the US market with just 10 people servicing (including Ramakrishnan), and two back offices in India. Interestingly, Coimbatore is chosen for its 'surprising' cost-effectiveness in comparison to other Metros, "we found excellent technical talent there," says Ramakrishnan. There is also a big office at Bangalore and all together the team is 250-strong, winning against all the odds.

From sethgodin.typepad.com

I still remember an interaction I had with Jim at Activision in 1985.

And when I run into Ted once or twice a year, he reminds me of something I gave him eight years ago.

As Derren reminds us, your actions today could be tomorrow's anecdote. One that grows in the telling. In fact, every single interaction you have... every blog post, every customer service interaction, every shareholder conference call... could turn into an anecdote that lives on for years.

Almost everything that happens before you fly on a plane is not as it seems. In order to deal with anxiety, the airlines put on a show. They've been doing it for a long, long time, and it's starting to show signs of wear and tear. The show is getting old and the lies are starting to show. Here's some snips from an Economist article (hat tip to theFreaknomics blog)

Entrepreneurship = 60 hours of work

What makes a great entrepreneur?

Subroto Bagchi, co-founder and chief operating officer of MindTree Consulting tries to answer this question in his book The High Performance Entrepreneur-Golden Rules For Success In Today's World.

He writes: 'Entrepreneurship requires the ability to read patterns on the wall, flexibility and an uncanny ability to seize the moment.' He also mentions that the minimum number of hours an entrepreneur must put in, a week, is 60 hours. In reality this figure is closer to 70.

An excerpt:

• 
  

Entrepreneurs work hard and are extremely goal oriented

How do we quantify hard work? When I was working at Wipro, my last assignment was to work for chairman Azim Premji as corporate vice president, mission: quality. This was preceded by three other jobs in the organization. In the course of each, I had made a mark. I always used to think that I worked hard.

So, when I was being considered for the position, Premji asked me, how many hours a week do you put in? Not a superfluous question, this. The man measures and tracks the number of hours he works every week. He does not expect everyone in the organization to work as hard as himself. But he has figured out the minimum number of hours a person must be comfortable working in order to be part of his team. That number is a minimum of 60 hours a week, in reality closer to 70. Premji average 80 hours a week. That is hard work. But just so we know, Premji never asks someone to change holiday plans, once these have been approved, never recalls someone on vacation.

Ashok Soota, chairman and managing director of MindTree, works as hard. He measures the number of days he is on travel every year. That number, when he was 62 was an average of 140 days a year. It does not mean that he is a workaholic with no life outside of work. He settles his vacation dates at the beginning of the year and these are non-negotiable. At least one vacation in the year involves a mountain trek or a snorkeling trip during which we do not contact him. Ashok's self-discipline and hard work rub off on every senior person in the organization. At the next level, a 70-hour workweek and an average 140 days of travel has been the way for all of us since MindTree was born.

Along with hard work, comes the ability to work unsupervised. It is a critical requirement of entrepreneurship. As a paid professional, often someone can blame the system for not providing either the direction or the resources. As an entrepreneur, you no longer have that latitude. You have to work hard, very hard.

That is why venture capitalists have coined the term 'sweat equity', the ownership that comes by the sweat of your brows.

Entrepreneurs are flexible, opportunistic and recognize the power of 'emergence'

I love this story about IBM and its founder Thomas Watson, Sr. that I heard Peter Drucker narrate. It was 1934 or '35. IBM had built the first accounting machines for banks but in the Depression years, no bank was buying anything. IBM was on the brink of bankruptcy. Watson's wife forced him to accompany her to a social event where he was seated next to a middle-aged lady.

While talking with her, Watson described to her the machine IBM had built. It turned out that the lady was in-charge of the library system in New York City. She told Watson that they were in complete disarray, unable to manage their books, and told him that she would need half a dozen of these! Next day, he sold her five of the machines.

Until that moment, Watson had never thought of his computing devices as machines for tracking books.

That one sale pulled IBM from the brink of bankruptcy.

Had it not been for Watson's capability to go with the emergent flow of events -- moving from accounting machines to the recognition that he could make general purpose computers -- IBM would not be what it is today. We all know that the essence of entrepreneurial ability is about building a future and living in it. Sometimes, it is about 'willing' a course for the enterprise. Yet, things do not always go the way you plan. Destiny tests you all the time, plays pranks and shows tiny openings in a moss-covered brick wall behind which often a whole new world awaits.

When we started MindTree and were a no-name entity in the US, a chance meeting took place with a man called Larry Kinder who had just moved in as CIO of Avis. We won an assignment to build consensus between two groups of Avis managers on the future of their on-line reservation system. A team from MindTree, led by Erik Mann, who is one of our best consultants, delivered well. Consequently, we moved on to win the technical design for re-architecting Avis.Com. Then we built the on-line reservation system. Today, the system handles $1 billion worth of transactions at Avis. In the course of following up on that small opening at Avis, we saw three CIOs come and go and then came a CEO who even wanted us out of the door. We survived all those changes and focused on building value, one day at a time.

Many analysts ask me how we won Avis. One morning Joe King -- an early member of the MindTree team and currently a senior vice president of our US operations -- called Larry Kinder's office at 7 in the morning. That is called the 'golden hour'. It is a direct marketer's dream time. The golden hour is when a senior executive has come in but his secretary has not -- someone who is paid to block unwanted callers. Larry picked up the phone that day, listened to Joe's pitch and agreed to see us. I am sure he was used to a hundred such unsolicited calls-this was the heyday of the Internet boom. I often ask myself, what would have happened if Larry had not been in office that day? Why did he have to pay attention to Joe? What if he had dismissed that one call?

Providence is very powerful in our journeys and entrepreneurs must take room for her. It is not always what you bring to the table. Sometimes, it is an unexplainable turn of events that changes your course. From a small assignment for Larry in 1999, in 2006 MindTree did $15 million worth of business for the whole of the Cendant Group that owns Avis and learnt enough about the travel industry to start a vertical focused on it.

After Larry Kinder moved to a larger role a Cendant, due to turbulence in the organization, things became difficult for us. At the Avis end, a turnaround CIO named Raj Rawal took over. As it often happens in times of corporate transition, Raj had received mixed messages about our capability, role and contributions. My first meeting with him was not in happy circumstances. Yet, the moment I met Raj something about him told me that I could bet everything for this man. We hit it off and under his leadership, the reorganization and our role in it got sorted out. Our relationship grew. In time, Raj moved on and eventually took over as CIO at Burger King. As he settled into his new job, the phone rang at my desk.

In 1999, we had started the company with the vision to be focused on two businesses: IT consulting and software services, and R&D services. The former was for building Internet-based applications and on the R&D side, we wanted to work on providing solutions in the telecom domain. In just about a year, there was a dotcom bust and the telecom domain just about vanished.

On the IT services side, we had to rapidly move into other areas like Supply Chain, Data-warehousing, Mainframe-based Application Management Services (AMS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). None of these words existed in the original business plan we had written. On the R&D side, we created new verticals like Semiconductors, Appliances, Industrial Automation and Avionics, Storage Technologies and Computing Platforms. Again, these were things we never thought we would dabble in. All that had to be done without losing the original position of strength, all that had to be done in real time and by taking all our people along with us.

Nine out of ten companies born at the same thing as us, anywhere in the world, do not exist today. Entrepreneurship requires the ability to read patterns on the wall, flexibility and an uncanny ability to seize the moment.

Want to succeed? Fail first

Sunder Ramachandran

If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.'
Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, uttered these famous words.

As you try to leave an impressive mark at work, a failure can bring
unexpected twists and turns. How you deal with failure is what will
ultimately help you succeed.

The question is: are you smart enough to learn from your mistakes?

What is considered workplace failure

While there's no standard definition of workplace failure, you know
it's happening to you if you can associate with any of the following
examples at your workplace:

Not meeting deadlines consistently

If you get the stick from your boss repeatedly for not finishing tasks
on time, you seriously need to consider a course in time management.

If you have taken on too much workload and set yourself an unrealistic
timeframe, you may have just set yourself up for failure.

Tip: Trust your instincts. When you feel bothered, speak up. It may
take some guts initially, but it will save you face later. In case you
miss the chance, request for a private meeting with the boss to
explain your feelings about a short notice to meet a tight deadline.

Fighting with colleagues/ peers

In this age of teamwork, conflicts with people and petty fights with
your boss definitely get labeled as failure.

Tip: Find common ground and never take sides in case of a conflict. If
you are involving your supervisor, tell him/ her how the conflicts
within the team affect your productivity and morale -- that way, you
will not sound like a whiny complainer.

Not keeping promises

Your customer's product is not ready or has not been delivered. It's a
massive service failure and you have no clue how to salvage the
relationship.

Tip: Be honest with your customer and tell them you will do whatever
it takes to fix the issue. Never hide behind policies or procedures.

Your clients are human and will appreciate your honest effort. The
next time they give you business, surprise them with super fast
delivery to gain the credibility back.

Making excuses

Constant excuses can label you as undependable; you could be
considered overly defensive and resistant. You may be strong
otherwise; however, if you're always covering up your shortcomings
with excuses, your negative reputation will make you succumb to
failure.

Tip: Face the facts and stop procrastinating. Take other people's help
to get things done.

If you still fail, apologise and fix the issue without hiding behind
fictitious explanations. If your boss says the report was late, you
can choose to ignore but it does not become any less true.

My great idea bombed

You creative pursuits got the better of you and you spent the
company's money designing a product so way ahead of it is time that
nobody bought it. While you were expecting laurels for your
creativity, your boss asks you for a report to justify the investment.

Tip: Acknowledge the failure but don't apologise; risk-taking is a
skill required to succeed. Tell your colleagues you know one more way
of 'How not to do it'. Analyse what went wrong and crack it the next
time around.

First, take time out

"The problem with many young professionals is that they aim for a
flawless career from the moment they enter the workforce. They have
high aspirations and want to be seen as credible professionals with a
100 percent track record of success. They don't realise that nobody
made it big without failing a few times and the ones who succeed are
the ones who bounce back from their failures," says Rohini Verma, a
Delhi based clinical psychologist.

Take time out to think about what's going wrong with your strategies.
Don't be in a rush to get into the disaster recovery mode. Take a
small break; go for a vacation or a long drive.

Try meditation or yoga to help you ease your mind and focus. The
objective is to take your mind off work so you can think about
workplace challenges from a new perspective.

Next, analyse your failure

There could be several reasons but, if you get to the bare bones,
there are two factors that stand out:

You are stuck in the wrong job

This is a no brainer. You need to have the aptitude for the work you
are doing. If you're in the wrong job, you tend burn out quickly and
get tired of your job, which leads to more failures.

However, figuring what you want to do for a living day in and day out
takes some consideration. Try to get diverse experience in many fields
and then decide what you would like to do for a career.

You are just plain careless

Maybe you failed because of your own sloppy work, or you just did not
spend enough time understanding what you were doing or you made some
hasty decisions or misunderstood your job profile.

If these happen to be the reason/s, you need to listen, accept the
facts and shape up for the job.

Now, take steps

Workplace failures are a part of life but, if dealt with well, can
turn out to be life changing events. Here are some smart strategies to
repair your workplace failures and mistakes:

Acknowledge your failure

Taking ownership for your mishap is the first and the most important
step. Blaming others rather than yourself for the new product nobody
seems to be buying will create tension at office and spoil your
working relationship with others as well. You are much better off
focusing on the actual sense of the issue and what went wrong.

Don't make it personal

Criticism of your work does not mean your colleagues/ customers are
targeting you as an individual. If you goofed up during an important
client presentation, it doesn't make you a bad employee nor does it
negate your prior accomplishments.

Learn from your failure

So what if your idea bombed? You should use this to your advantage in
preparation for your next big project. Analyse what went wrong or
could have been altered. Maybe you could have done some more research,
or could have tested your idea before you went public or perhaps taken
the advice of some senior members of the team.

"Treat work life like a game of chess. One bad move does not mean it's
the end of the game. If you take a grip of the situation, you'll
always get the opportunity to strike back," says Prabh Sharan,
training manager with Kingfisher Airlines, Mumbai.

Make genuine friends

Have people on whom you can bank in good as well as bad times. Take
their advice. Ask them for feedback on your ideas and let them play
the devil's advocate. In an already competitive world, any help you
can get should be welcomed. Don't run the solo race.

Don't get emotional

You are bound to feel frustrated and upset when you miss an important
deadline that impacts a client, but don't blow it by making it all
public.

The angry young man title will not get you any rewards at the office.
Maintain your dignity and be quick with your apology in order to
salvage your reputation.

Never say die

'No guts, no glory' is a cliché worth repeating.

Failure can be one of the best teaching tools; the best part is it
doesn't have to be your own mistake in order for you to learn from it.

In the words of Michael D Eisner, chairman & CEO of Disney
Corporation, 'Recovering from failure is often easier than building
from success.'

Even if you fall flat on your face, you can always use the valuable
lesson you learnt on your way to the t

What every entrepreneur MUST know

What every entrepreneur MUST know
Sunder Ramachandran

After attending the summit for young entrepreneurs at IILM, Gurgaon,
last week, I caught up with venture capitalist Alok Mittal, a
chairperson at the event. Alok works as partner and executive director
with Cannan Partners, which invests in early stage technology
companies.

Alok was co-founder of JobsAhead.com and was instrumental in the
acquisition of JobsAhead by Monster.com, the global leader in online
recruitment. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and
Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and a
Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of California,
Berkeley.

After covering lessons shared among entrepreneurs at the summit in my
earlier article, I bring you Alok's views on entrepreneurship and his
advice to young entrepreneurs.

*
Have a question you want to ask?

How do you know when you are experienced enough to start your own
company? Are there any benchmarks or is it enough to go with your gut
feeling and overall confidence?

I think the origin of many large businesses is the ability to spot
gaps in the solutions that are currently in the market. You must focus
on the ability to build strong teams and your ability to understand
the market well. Given those two things, today is as good as any other
time to start a business for most entrepreneurs.

What, according to you, are the traits most successful entrepreneurs
have in common?

Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to take feedback from the
market. They also have a high degree of market understanding.

A good entrepreneur has conviction in his/ her plans and is open to
changing strategies based on the market dynamics. He/she also has the
ability to build well rounded teams.

*
Entrepreneurship: What it takes

What are some of the common mistakes that you have seen young Indian
entrepreneurs make?

I think India has a weaker ecosystem for entrepreneurs right now. One
of the gaps is the lack of advisory bandwidth. Sometimes,
entrepreneurs are internally focused and do not keep a close tab on
the customers' need.

Entrepreneurs tend to focus more on their solutions than the
customer's problems. Sometimes, they lack a broader perspective of the
market. That's where we, as venture capitalists, add value, but we
would rather that start-up teams have that kind of ability and
foresight within the team.

What would you advise existing or aspiring entrepreneurs who feel
stuck due to the lack of investors? How should they go about securing
capital for their business?

I think funding is only one part of building a successful business.
There are many entrepreneurs who did not get funding at the start-up
stage. One in a hundred ideas gets funded by venture capitalists.
Entrepreneurs should be prepared to find alternate ways of
bootstrapping their plans.

You can always get back to venture capitalists once you have
demonstrated that your business plan has value. You must prove to
venture capitalists that your concept is working or that your
execution of the idea is superior.

Which are the sectors in which you see maximum scope for entrepreneurship today?

Given that India is on an accelerated growth path, I see opportunities
widely in all the sectors. The Internet is fairly under-leveraged.
Mobile and telecom technology is a big area. I also see opportunities
in software for the small business segment. Other than technology, the
retails sector is an obvious high potential industry.

What is your advice to the student community who may be toying with
new business ideas? How should they approach entrepreneurship?

Students should go out, spend some time in the real world and explore
real problems and real solutions. Our academic framework does not
provide that to the students. I have seen students just theorising
stuff that may not work in the real market.