Vikas Bajaj has a story on NYT about India’s slow pace of innovation.  Nothing new and nothing most of you all didnt know already. Even the ubiquitous Sujai Karampuri gets a mention as is normally the case on stories based on this theme (no offense to Sujai – I love his blog and admire how outspoken he is).

This topic – call it ‘lack of innovation in India’ or ‘why no product companies in India’ or ‘where are Indian startups’ – has been touched upon umpteen times by media, bloggers (yes – I’m guilty too) and startup conferences and panels.

So, there’s absolutely no contest that there’s no or very little innovation happening in the Indian tech scene. I think we should move beyond the obvious and try to focus more on how to resolve the issue.

For starters, I’d like to point to a recent post by Fred Wilson who captured the essence of building a startup ecosystem quite well. By far, its one of the best and most lucid pieces I’ve seen on startup ecosystems. I’d say we’re still early in the first decade and have a long way to go yet.

Meanwhile, I also wanted to talk briefly about the oft quoted ‘not enough angels’ issue. The way I see it — the lack of angel funding is a classic chicken & egg problem in the Indian market. Lets say that hypothetically speaking, I have some extra money lying around that I’d want to invest somewhere. Lets say a startup pitches me for angel funding. Now, without any significant M&A activity or IPO’s, what is the probability of getting good returns on my investment ? Indian Internet, in its current form, is not a very viable market. So, what are the odds that I see more concrete returns in other sectors – be it stocks / real estate etc. and opt to invest in those sectors as opposed to tech startups ?

But some you may argue – arent angels supposed to be true risk takers ? Isnt angel investing more like – invest and forget (assuming you lost the investment). And I agree – thats the reason I say its a classic chicken and egg problem. Without some returns on investment, the sector might not attract a lot of angels and without the angels, there might not be a lot of startups.

Would love to hear your thoughts about it.

• Google joins Band of Angels
• You say lack of angel funding, I say lack of startups
• Ashish Gupta from HelionVC on “lack of funding in India”

Comments

• December 10, 2009, Jojo Joson commented: What we need is not talks, symposiums, seminars etc. What we need is action.
• December 11, 2009, VLSI Training Institute commented: One thing need to understand that India is having huge middle class base but it is not consumer base. So no product innovation can be profitable till active consumer base increase. In India till now people are dead scared of using credit card online. Even offline use is also very limited to high-tech cities. Till actual consumption does not grow the product or innovation development cycle will not complete.
• December 14, 2009, Rajat commented: I personally feel its mostly human nature to follow a trend (as it seems safer), if one VC invests in a company that turns out to be the next google from India, then plenty will follow soon. There are ways to get around this problem. There is a thriving indian community in western countries whether in USA,canada or UK.Why not we people create a pool and put in some money and start investing in startups in India or launch our own startups.Might seem like a stupid idea to some.Shall we create a website for this and take up this idea. Also startups in India can take help from their contacts in US or other countries and ask them to pitch for them in front of VC's there. I think we should think in terms of global markets when we are launching products. I really donot understand when we launch service companies we think globally but when we launch products we think in terms of local market only (which might not be mature at this time for the internet) Also innovation comes from thinking long term.I think its in our culture to think short term, that shows in our vision for creating fly overs that only help to sooth traffic for a while, or joining bigger companies for money. Sticking to a service + product model might work i.e. to say doing 'service' work to survive and doing 'product' innovation to thrive.Once product initiatives pick up , then service work should be stopped.
• December 21, 2009, kumbham dilip commented: hey ! i think we are quite innovative , but problem is in action and action isnt there because we dont get much support from our nearest friends ,teachers and relatives leave VC , having VC funds doesnt bring much innovations , innvoations happens from universities , participating in quality discussions. the more and more we discuss the more products u c from india !
• December 21, 2009, Rajat commented: Innovation is there i agree, but in bits and chunks. And i also agree that many people even though talented enough still donot get support for e.g see this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPN3gLVDsOY This guy can easily be one of the best rock climbers in the world but very few people even know about him even in India, and nobody cares.If he would have been born in some western country by this time he would have been very popular. The chalta hai attitue is killing us and the nature to not help each other to succeed is also a problem.
• December 27, 2009, Nimesh commented: I absolutely agree with the idea about lack of innovation in India. I read a similar article but in a different direction in venturewoods.org, where the author has discussed about why we need product based technology startups in India. You can have a read here http://www.venturewoods.org/index.php/2009/12/17/why-india-needs-more-tech-software-companies/
• January 14, 2010, Sushant @ Techooze commented: Innovation in India is way more than any other country(My Thinking) but there is lack of awareness. The young entrepreneurs are suppressed by conditions here in India. When I started blogging people around me laughed at the idea of income from ads by other people clicking at them and instead of exploring any other field many of us are forced to move along the crowd. For them a 9 to 5 job is good rather than earning more money and working from home.
• January 19, 2010, Joe commented: In an indian context a few things matter most - Family views, Securing ones future, avoiding authorities when possible and buy gold, govt bonds or FD, property if possible...This thinking comes from their parents who have slogged their backs off and saved money all through their lives...It is very difficult to shake this monkey off! I did it and only bcos i am doing ok it doesnt matter otherwise i would have been termed a loser!! Indians need to know they can...like in Matrix...choose between the Red or Blue Pill...we need a Morpheus brigade !!
• March 7, 2010, Vidya commented: Hello Pranav, your blog post highlights a key issue, namely the lack of seed funding crucial to nurture a start up. I would also contend that along with the initial seed investment, having other serial entrepreneurs as advisors is also critical to getting things off the ground correctly. It would be worthwhile to mention that the US recently introduced a bill called the StartUpVisa Act in the Senate http://bit.ly/chjgor. If passed, it might have the consequence of attracting more Indian entrepreneurial talent to the US.
• April 21, 2010, Jagan commented: Hi, A very thought provoking post indeed. When we see many 'uprisings' in entrepreneurship - websites, magazines, funds, conferences etc. one might think India is brimming with a dozen of 'next big things'. Working as a development manager in a business incubator which is a part of one of the best universities in India. I often come across many ideas from students and faculties. from my interactions with student community (in general), i felt the type of education imparted in our colleges contributes a lot to the 'less innovative thinking' among us. You see, I spotted this post through a software developed two Stanford graduates. Most of us uses an operating system developed by a crazy group of college dropouts. We network online through the software developed by a Harvard undergraduate. We learned many things in undergraduate studies. but we were so neck deep in academics that we missed the big market of opportunities. There cannot be true innovation in India unless untill we encourage our engineers/graduates to correlate what they study with what they see. You will then identify the what is missing or what can be added. Such an ecosystem must evolve around our Universities/Colleges.
• December 6, 2010, Raj Kiran Singh commented: You cannot expect everything thing to turn up over night. There is no lack of innovation in India, we innovate at scale which is feasible for us. If somebody expects that we should come up with new Microsoft, Google or Apple, well then they would have to wait some time. Enterpreneur ship is its very early stages in India. Current generation (kids of late 70s and early 80s) is very enthusiatic, I have many friends including my self who try to break the old mould and do something new, but please keep in my that we have be fed for 10 years, to study hard, get a job and get married.
• December 7, 2010, K M Rao commented: Who says there is no innovation in India. Did you not hear of one A raja, Lalit Modi, Gali brothers, Y S R Reddy !!!. They have taken innovation to such a high level no one in the rest of the world could emulate them.
• June 21, 2011, Rohit Kohli commented: Hello, India consist of middle class people, we in india are more concerned on our future rather concentrating on our present, this doesn't allow us to take risk, there is no lack of innovation, I have an idea to connect people so that they can express themselves and share their problems and by the virtue of discussion can arrive a common solution, these requires a tool that i am trying to develop for the time being i developed a website www.evoljournal.com where people can express themselves, now I came across problems which involves funding, this is a situation in india therefore an idea takes a long road to achieve its aim in India
• July 27, 2011, Adrianna Roberts commented: a bookmark to this blog was provided by Christian Dillstrom, the mobile and social media marketing veteran - so you must be doing an excellent job.
• August 1, 2011, Prasanna commented: You guys are the typical bunch who want to "appear very intellectual" but have very little or no substance. Stop yakking and start doing something - if you don't have any ideas, at least keep quiet and stop bullshitting all over the place.
• November 9, 2011, Vaibhav commented: I am not here to argue on what is missing in India and what is there. I am not sure of all the people who made a comment here, how many are really interested in doing something big. I dream of creating something innovative yet useful and during my search to find like minded people on the internet I ended up reading this blog. If anyone here shares the same feeling and is willing to devote some time of their day in realizing that dream then please feel free to connect with me through my email- v_singh@live.com.
• January 10, 2012, Deepak commented: little innovation happening in the Indian tech scene this is real scene......
• February 4, 2012, Southcity Packers Movers commented: This topic is very intresting for me so thanks Delhi Packers Movers
• February 4, 2012, Southcity Packers Movers commented: I am attractive from your blogs you have important information for me tanks Lucknow Packers Movers
• February 4, 2012, Southcity Packers Movers commented: i feel that you are a good reader in your subject Haldwani Packers Movers

Overall Learnings

1. There is no problem, i.e., (1) there are not enough good problems that startups are working on (2) there seems to be no shortage of funds, platforms and ecosystem partners willing to help startups, there are not enough good startups for them to support. The ecosystem is hungry for successes.
2. It was a good *startup* conference and not as a *product* conference – talks about bootstrapping, mentors, jobs for dummies, writing a B-plan, etc. were out of place.
   • We saw delegates from Sun Microsystems, Intuit and many other big companies. These guys would not benefit from such sessions when they were expecting a product-oriented conference.
   • Conferences are really really hard to make.
3. Product Management skills are the need of the hour, NOT talks about talks about opportunities in X sector, and so on. When there is no culture of knowing how to execute, rest of the topics are moot points. We will explain this with an example below.
4. What can be done better next time? More emphasis on product management, practical sessions such as case study on using Google Adwords to do market research, it was briefly mentioned in Naaem Zafar’s presentation, but why weren’t topics like these explored more? And also, people like @gauravnomics should be invited next time for marketing sessions. And so on.

Bottom-line: If you are considering to start a full-time startup, then please, please, build your product management skills than your powerpoint skills.

Now, on to the notes from some of the interesting sessions that we have attended.

Learnings from the Sessions

1. Guy Kawasaki said “Don’t worry, be crappy. Get it good enough, then take the shot and start selling. Don’t ship crap but ship ‘revolutionary new crap’. It’s not about the first version, it is about getting it out there and fixing according to what customers say. Beta programs are BS because no one will give proper feedback. As a rule, all betas go well. People will give real feedback only when they put their money on the line.”

The rest of what he talked about was irrelevant to the context of the conference – about products from India – see Sameer’s question: Why Kawasaki at a Product Conclave? for more.

2. Workshop on marketing and branding strategies for product organizations. The session was moderated by Peter Yorke and the panel had the CEO of Brandcomm, Sridhar Ramanujam, MD of Inventus Cap, Samir Kumar, CEO of Stelae Technologies Aruna Schwarz & Professor. Venkateswaran from SDM Mysore.

• Product is the language in the company. Brand is the language in the mind of the customer. Creating a value proposition is all important to make a product successful.
• When a brand is being created, the path is very similar to what Gandhi had professed so many years ago. First other companies ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you & finally they respect you. Any product/brand will go through all these phases.
• Starbucks is all about consumer experience. That is where all the concentration should be.
• Products are mostly identical. It is of utmost importance to provide and deliver value.
• Product is just a minimum criteria and the value proposition has to be driven by the right marketing mechanisms.
• Technology is one of the unique industries that create a need instead of satisfying a need. You have to be more in touch with market and consumer behavior to drive success through marketing as product development is only a basic condition that is satisfied.
• The most interesting story had been by Stelae. Her company was started by 2 non tech, purely business people even though they were providing a tech solution to publishing companies in France. They did have a customer when they started on it. But, they didn’t hire a CTO until 2 years into the process. This should be an eyeopener to many people in the tech community. Titles are not important. If the roles are satisfied, ignore the titles and move on & create products and do customer development.
• CEO is the overall image of the company. For 5-8 years, there will be no other brand image for the company. CEO will have to meet customers. The way CEO answers the phone might also become crucial to whether you make or break in the industry. Be professional in all your interactions.
• The key message is that “Brand is You”
• The VCs dont want to hear about any cool tech products, or any other kind of cool lingo. They want to see that there is a balance towards customer development. The problem is similar if there are only sales folks and no tech folks. Take care of balance.
• DO NOT create a marketing plan based on any textbook definitions. There have been biz plans with totally irrelevant target spending like on magazines etc.. when the product really requires traction online. The spending has to be very very targeted. Keep in mind that the really important thing is ROI and not doing something for the sake of satisfying criterion. Avoid misdirected spending.
• It has to be all about customer development & customer centricity.
• Have you asked yourself how the price premium is being justified for the product? What is the most unique proposition?

See Minimum Viable Product by Eric Ries and Customer Development process by Steve Blank for a succinct description of the same.

3. Krishna & Arjuna sessions – the value of a mentor/mentee relationship, and how startups should look for advisors

• Krishnas are valuable when they are “been there done that” people
• Arjunas can’t know everything, mentors can guide and tell you what you never expected
• 2-3 advisors in a mix of areas is a good choice
• Look for balance of ideas and execution, balance of advice and rolodex of contacts
• Examine your own SWOT analysis and find people who can shore you up
• Advisors look for humility ⇒ learnability, trust relationship, and their own relevance to the mentee
• Watch out for time constraints of advisors
• Communicate right things at the right time – they need to know enough precise context to advise you so that the 3-4 hours you spend with them is productive
  • A person who has been advising 3-4 companies say that they come to him only when they are in trouble and not give ongoing updates which shows their immaturity
• Can have a 2-3 year contractual obligation / timeline for advisors
• Avoid expectation mismatch, have structuring of relationship
• Distinguish between CEO coach / mentors vs. Advisors vs. Consultants – what are you really looking for?
  • Mentors / CEO Coaches are for long-term
• Compensation is the last thing in mind for a real mentor, but it is a gesture of goodwill. Equity-based vesting over the years is the best and simplest option.
• Only when we walk a few steps together, you really know the person
  • Do due diligence
  • Be patient (think long-term)
  • How do you structure an exit?

4. The panel session on telecom products led by Rajesh Jain was one of the best in the conference. The topic was broad, meaning not much depth but Rajesh Jain really did it well. He asked really pointed questions, guiding other panelists, keeping it sharp & on schedule. It was so interesting that midway I forgot to update my notes on the talk & got totally engrossed in the talk. The following points are all from my mind, so apologies in advance if something is misquoted.

• The panel had one member from each stack of the telecom product space. Vishy from Bell Labs was representing the most basic infrastructure. Sangeet from Comviva was in the space of applications and layer above the basic infrastructure. Manoj Dawane of Mauj Telecom was representing the VAS and consumer space from the telco perspective. Rajesh Jain represented the consumer from a overall perspective at the level of apps independent of the network.
• In the next couple of months/years, there will be an explosion of virtual operators in India. Virgin mobile is one of the virtual operators in India. As far as we know, they use the network of Tatas to provide their services. This will hopefully lead to better margins & free apps on mobiles.
• Hopefully the perennial “1 year away” 3G will be introduced in a couple of months.
• Overall, the telecom space in India is one of the most competitive space. In most countries, the margin is around 20% whereas in Indian market, it is less than 8-10%, putting pressure on the whole ecosystem to show ROI and profits.
• The main reason for the low margins is that the operators want to reach users at all segments and also control the revenue sharing. There have been some issues in measuring traffic for revenue sharing. The operator is all powerful.
• First up, the bell labs member spoke about the innovations at the most basic level.
• 1. Village Net – They are coming up with better antennae technology and hardware to increase range of wifi routers to 20km with no reduction in bandwidth, it is really difficult.
• 2. Mango application – mobile audio video on the go. GPRS is currently not cost-effective and people don’t know what to do with GPRS. The network cant support multiple media downloads etc. with the current infrastructure. You should be able to go into coffee day, browse or download for a couple of minutes, pay in micropayments and get out of coffeeday. This kind of technology is being realised by bell labs
• 3. Micropayments… This was more like a teaser.
• Second, the comviva member…
• Basically, this is the space which supports doing ringtone downloads, infra for VAS support, payment systems of telcos, everything other than basic infrastructure and non consumer end of VAS. This is a huge space in terms of products but very few companies. For example, comviva is in 40 different product spaces. I dont even know the extent of opportunity in this space. This is a good space to think about new services. Map services etc… have to be realised at this level. Another example is the top up technology supported by this layer of infrastructure.
• Indian ecosystem is really really innovative due to the competition and the market. This has led companies to innovate in India and then move on to other emerging markets. It is preferred that you enter the Indian market even though the margins are less and only afterwords diversify. The reason is that the the product will be suited to the consumer market as the company knows the consumer in and out.
• The future will be mobile financial services, mobile internet and mobile cloud.
• Because of the constraints in terms of processing and multiple platforms on each phone, there is a huge need for cloud computing for processing information, helping create a mobile cloud & pipes. This seems to be really appealing space to think of innovative products. Are the telecom departments in engg colleges listening?!
• Thirdly, the mauj member…
• Manoj has had a very interesting life in telecom. He was in telecom when incoming calls were priced at 16 rupees!! ie 1994. He has seen the innovations in the mobile space starting from prepaid cards. He was one of the people who approached Hindustan Unilever distributors to take care of prepaid markets. They went to Italy & some other country to learn how it works and had to implement. Can you imagine the journey form there to easy recharge of today?
• Manoj has been in places like UP which is 6 times the UK in population but a huge challenge to innovate and drive revenue. How can a prepaid card of around 10 be sold and above that, ask them to have ringtones and message beeps? They had to develop a infrastructure to make it based on daily revenue. That is vas, instead of being one time huge money, they made it per day. This was good for telco as well as the customer.
• Rajesh Jain mainly spoke about his ideas to appstore. How that will probably be the time when we can assume that regular users will have access to all kinds of applications.

Some more really good observations form this session:

• Learnings – The learnings in product development can be divided into 3 distinct sections. 1. Customer acquisition is really important. 2. Cashflows have to be handled carefully and effectively. 3. Execution – organization and management. It is all in the promise of delivery and execution.
• English – This was one of the questions. A startup is doing voice based VAS which is teaching english on the phone. I think it is a really good thing that the company is doing. They have been facing operator pressure but I am sure that with the help the telecom ecosystem, we might finally see some kind of education being imparted on the mobile phone. The day might not be far when the mobile phone will overtake the radio as the means to disseminate information in a more personalised manner. One day, there might be info about health, childcare, classes, agriculture and anything else that you can think of… the name of the person who asked this question was Mitul Limbani.
• Persona – “am I the customer” is WRONG! “I am building for the customer” is RIGHT! especially for enterprise customers. Basically, you have create a persona of a customer to keep the company and product in the right direction.

5. Writing a B-plan — Naeem
This was a good session by Naeem, mostly self-explanatory from his slides and from this description. The reason the session was so good was because Naeem was candid and to-the-point, busting so many common myths.

6. Building global consumer businesses out of India.
This was another really good session. We could hear all the stories of the people who created Indian brands for the global market. The companies chosen were also really good. Infosoft CTO Pallav had the most inspiring story. Ganesh of Tutorvista told us about his journey from BPO till tutorvista. Amit Ranjan shared his stories of the creation of slideshare. Narendra of Intel Asia spoke about how managing Asia pacific software products for India was challenging and interesting over the last 10 years. I will briefly tell each of their stories.

• Pallav – He started off without even knowing that PO means purchase online/order?! He is on the path to creating 6 new products after more than 6-8 products in the market. His dad takes care of all the finance part of it. He had to rely heavily on word of mouth, opensourcing code, writing code for free or for some mindspace in the user. It is the perfect rags to riches story of the coding world.
• Ganesh started off working with the BPO. Most investors when he approached them told him that the concept was too complicated and will be really difficult to maintain quality across especially if you expect a teacher who is not tech savvy to wake up at 3am and then teach an american kid when ganesh himself doesnt really know what american education is all about. The opportunity was that for really heavy personal tutoring, the rates were like $30-40 per hour against $100 per month of tutorvista. There are around 1000 teachers and 500 hours of teaching everyday today. (dont remember number exactly). The marketing in local media in silicon valley to Indian gujjus etc.. was unsuccessful. They found out that online ads were the best thing to attract and retain customers. They have adwords on more than 4000? words. It is a really interesting to see the challenges overcome by Ganesh. It seems such a simple idea but so difficult to execute! Every other person who knows skype would have thought of this idea but there are real challenges in executing it and keeping quality.
• Amit of slideshare was also very interesting. Amit was working for pepsi. His sister was a psychology prof in berkeley. Amit was bored of creating presentations everyday and decided to do something on his own. (oh! the irony! They modelled a lot of their site on the ideas of youtube, like embedded links etc.. One of the sequoia presentations has had more than a million views! The team is distribute 2:5 (us:india). They have around 23 people in all. It is really interesting to see an indian company based out of here be a global brand.
• Narendra – shared the challenges and the post mortem of what has happened in the last 10 years in APAC, especially India from a product perspective. Intel was/is interested in software domain as they see software to drive the sales of hardware. Narendra has been following APAC for a long time. The ecosystem is slowly opening up in India and slowly more product companies are coming up like subex etc…? There were a lot of jargons in his speech. It was good but since I dont remember any anecdotes, you will have to read his part elsewhere.

To end it up, let’s take the case of an actual product that we saw in the stalls section of the conclave. The product was called YoPedia (see walkthrough). Great concept of changing the focus of the user from “which software do I use?” to “what task do I want to do?” It delivers the long-forgotten promise of WinFS, especially allowing to store and categorize links, URLs, files, in a seamless way. It has many additional features, such as picking a few of them and emailing them, making new Word documents just 1-2 clicks away, and so on.

The downside? It *still* is not easy to use. This is exactly where product management would come into the picture. For example, anybody who is looking to simplifying the concept of a filesystem would assume that one single way of categorization would have been enough. But YoPedia actually had 6-7 ways of categorizing – category, topic, tags, color, workspace, etc. This means that it replaced the headache of folders with the headache of multiple ways of categorization! Excellent idea, great potential, but suffers from only tech people working on it. Not easy for a beginner, even though that is the USP. The product is still in alpha phase, and will be released as beta in the coming months, and we hope that it will eventually become the simple, easy-to-use, and must-have product that it can be.

It felt gratifying to see one product in the conclave that was interesting, which is both sad and ironic. Here’s hoping to really seeing more products from India!

This event report was brought to you by Swaroop C H and Srikanth Thunga, who thank StartupDunia for the opportunity to attend the event.

P.S. See http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/category/nasscom-product-conclave-2009/ for more coverage of the event.

Comments

• November 6, 2009, sandip commented: Thanks pranav!!
• November 6, 2009, Raghu Pandey commented: That was a quite comprehensive coverage. Thanks
• November 12, 2009, Nevil Nayak commented: Appreciate the coverage. Its nice to gain knowledge on consensus amongst Indian companies. similar issues exist all over the world and this coverage is a good barometer.
• November 21, 2009, Rahi Jain commented: Good coverage and documentation. This is a saver, as in conferences there is knowledge pouring literally out of ears. So you did a good job, session to session,
• December 10, 2009, VLSI Training Institute commented: Thanks you have summarized everything very nicely
• December 25, 2009, Siva commented: About lack of Product Companies in India ..generally guys tend to forget the likes of AdventNet/Zoho, Tally, Focus, Ramco types ........but focus on new age consumer internet start-ups only ......Not sure why ?
• January 28, 2010, Abhishek commented: Good coverage.. Very nice.. Thanks!
• June 23, 2010, Reece Khan commented: i love to download ringtones from our local forum. it is always updated.";;
• July 28, 2010, Zoe Murphy commented: i am always on the lookout for the latest Ringtone and i always look for sites that offer ringtone donwlaod.;~:
• September 14, 2010, Austin Cook commented: which site on the net have the best free ringtone download? .;"
• October 13, 2010, Kitchen Rugs  commented: does anybody know where i can download free ringtones**'
• October 25, 2010, Wire Gauge : commented: there are very small number of websites that offers free ringtone downloads, most ringtone download sites require you to pay fo,":
• December 22, 2010, Activated Carbon Filter commented: usually, the best sounding ringtones are coming from paid ringtone donwload sites :`*
• August 20, 2011, Rini commented: I found your blog website on google and verify a number of of your early posts. Proceed to keep up the excellent operate. I simply further up your RSS feed to my MSN News Reader. In search of forward to studying extra from you in a while!… I am often to blogging and i actually respect your content. Cloud Computing has really peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your web site and preserve checking for new cloud computing information.
• August 24, 2011, Emma commented: Thanks for the recommendations you have shared here. Yet another thing I would like to express is that laptop or computer memory needs generally go up along with other advances in the technologies. For instance, as soon as new generations of cpus are made in the market, there\'s usually a corresponding increase in the shape calls for of both the pc memory and also hard drive space. This is because software program operated by simply these processor chips will inevitably boost in power to use the new technological innovation.

In most of the consumer markets, pricing is guided by a supply – demand fit. Price a product too high and there’ll be less demand, price it too low and you’ll miss out on potential profits (of course, there are lots of exceptions to this too). Pricing is therefore more of finding that fit as opposed to a perfect science.

Last weekend, I went to watch ‘Wake up Sid’ at a nearby theater. For a Saturday night show, the theater was reasonably crowded and I would have expected it to be more crowded. On my drive home, I started wondering – why is it that theaters follow a fixed price model ? For instance, lets say a ticket costs Rs 250/-. You pay the same price no matter if you watch the movie first day first show or 3 weeks later (assuming its still running). The only price variations theaters offer (in the US) are for students, senior citizens and matinee shows. That just doesnt make sense.

Seats in a movie theater are ‘perishable’ inventory. What I mean by that  is all the unsold tickets for a particular show translate to unsold inventory that is wasted – meaning wasted potential revenue. Its just like airline tickets. If a flight is not full, all the unused seats mean wasted revenue for the airline. Ditto for hotel rooms. So, while hotels and airlines offer incentives like last minute deals and sell through other opaque channels like Priceline etc., why dont movie theaters do something similar ? One might argue that last minute opaque selling for a movie theater is difficult since the actual unsold inventory can only be found out after they have sold tickets to a particular show. So, the opaque selling has to be a truly last minute, real time channel to meet the unique constraints of movie theaters.

If opaque selling is not a viable option, movie theaters should at least consider gradually decreasing the ticket prices for each subsequent week that the movie is aired. But if customers knew that movie ticket prices were to drop in subsequent weeks, why would they watch a movie first day / first week ? Wouldnt everyone wait just for the subsequent weeks to watch it ? Well, the answer is no. For two reasons:

1) just like die hard apple fans want the latest gadget as soon as Apple launches them, there will be movie fanatics who want to watch as soon as its released

2) In this scenario, you also throw in a dynamic pricing element. So, for instance, you keep it uncertain whether there will be price drop in the subsequent weeks or not. For a super hit movie like Harry Potter / Batman etc., it might not make sense for the theater to drop the price – there will be hordes of moviegoers who would pay the full price to watch the movie in the subsequent 2-3 weeks as well. Its for the other movies that you are most likely going to have unsold inventory that you try to price dynamically.

There might be aspects of this that might need more research, but just jotting down my thoughts as they flow. Let me know what you think.

Comments

• October 14, 2009, Ganjam Kalyan commented: Nice read. Certain aspects definitely need more research. Atleast in state I live, Andhra pradesh, It's a govt mandate to maintain prices approved by Govt. Multiplexes is a totally different game though which I think have less govt control. However, Movie ticket distribution is broken and there's lot of money at stake for those who can fix.
• October 14, 2009, Hari Babu commented: It is not right to compare movie tickets with airline tickets. Theatres are a source of entertainment; so, people will not want to acquire movie tickets on a last minute basis all the time (probably for the first two days for a blockbuster). However, consider DVDs and rentals : they are the cheaper alternative for older movies, aren't they? They allow you to watch whatever you want whenever you want.
• October 14, 2009, Suren commented: A friend of mine floated the idea of actually auctioning the first few days. The highest bidder wins the ticket. Sort of dwindle the black marketeers out of the picture and make it official online. Profits proceed to the theatre, movie makers and pocket the commission. I said, its viable but said it might seem like a fine line between auctioning and black marketing.
• October 15, 2009, Santhanam commented: In Tamil Nadu, Government has permitted theaters to fix a higher price for first few weeks of the film release. After few weeks, the ticket price goes to a normal level. This is good, since unscrupulous theaters will sell only few tickets through counter and rest through black market by their employees themselves.
• October 16, 2009, MaddyUK commented: The pricing model should also consider attracting more people during off-peak or down phases. Say a movie XYZ is not running well after 2 days from the release date, should'nt the ticket rate go down the normal price (obviously considering the govt. tax) ? I know people don't get fooled with low rates...but isn't there a scope to attrack more viewers?
• October 18, 2009, ankit commented: the idea is good ...tis may generate revnues for even movies that are low budget and currently suffer heavy losses...but i suggest one more thing..for people like us who want to watch movies in theatre every week there should be a priviledge card...to reduce regular cinegoer's expense...for example if you see 4 movies in a month for 600 rupees...using this card if reduces your cost by say 20 % would be cool
• October 18, 2009, amol aggarwal commented: I know a mall in Noida(TGIP) which follows the dynamic pricing model-it was selling a movie ticket for nearly 350 bucks for a newly released movie when the normal price is around 150 bucks.
• October 20, 2009, shande commented: As far I know, Inox has been doing sort of semi-dynamic pricing for long awaited movies on first weekend. usually it will be priced at a premium rate >= 300. Implementing full dynamic pricing based on rate of booking and amount of seats would be interesting. Also, on the lines of airline tickets there should be discount for people who plan and book for a show advance (3-4 days) before official release without hearing any reviews ! Later, when critical reviews are in public domain, prices should be brought back to normal level.
• November 10, 2009, Vijay commented: Actually the multiplexes could do a lot of good to the movie industry if they were freed up from the entertainment tax shackles which every state govt binds on them. These archaic rules don't allow dynamic pricing or discounting based on inventory levels. This is quite popular in the west.
• December 16, 2009, prabhu commented: First, Good thought. Why i think it wont work - In Chennai, Sathyam Cinemas is THE place to watch a movie. The highest ticket offered there is Rs120. One big reason why people go to Sathyam is not just the technology but the crowd who come there. As the tickets are priced higher people who come there Behave!. Unlike other theaters where our common Indian crowd do all the mean things to make the place stink. Make sense?
• February 27, 2010, Rahul commented: The Great India Place in Sector 18, Noida dynamically prices its tickets as a comment above notes. Before noon, during the work-week tickets are Rs 50. In the last half hour before a movie, ticket prices go up to Rs 500. Scalping before ball games and concerts achieves the same end. The other need is for discounting at the last minute to ensure reasonable participation/occupancy/utilisation which can be achieve by discounting for an unseen unbranded purchase as with hotel rooms. Here, for premium seats to a movie purchased online without specifying the theatre and its facilities.
• February 27, 2010, Suresh commented: The issue with movies (atleast multiplexes) is that there is a revshare between the distributor and the exhibitor - so an independent entity cannot do differential pricing - you will need to negotiate with the exhibitor and the distributor. That said longer term there might be a model here. I was seeing www.dealivore.com having some sweet deals (evidently on off peak demand etc). The first deal was a movie deal - apparently though they had a disclaimer as well (i guess it was not necessarily a discount from the theater). The second deal (that is going on) is with a restaurant chain - little italy where an low demand discounting works very well Bottomline - today theaters dont have such a model, ultimately though the industry might move towards that.
• July 2, 2011, bims commented: .) This is the right blog for anyone who wants to find out about this topic. You realize so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would want…HaHa). You definitely put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just great!
• July 4, 2011, granit küptaş commented: .) There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That is a great point to bring up. I offer the thoughts above as general inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you bring up where the most important thing will be working in honest good faith. I don?t know if best practices have emerged around things like that, but I am sure that your job is clearly identified as a fair game. Both boys and girls feel the impact of just a moment’s pleasure, for the rest of their lives.
• July 4, 2011, hafriyat commented: .) There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That is a great point to bring up. I offer the thoughts above as general inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you bring up where the most important thing will be working in honest good faith. I don?t know if best practices have emerged around things like that, but I am sure that your job is clearly identified as a fair game. Both boys and girls feel the impact of just a moment’s pleasure, for the rest of their lives.

The E-Cell @ IIT KGP is organizing an ‘Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive’ to promote entrepreneurship and encourage students across the country to embrace entrepreneurship. They will organize an Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp in 10 cities over a span of 10 days across various college campuses. Some of the campuses they intend to cover as part of this drive include Punjab Engineering college, Anna University, Delhi college of Engineering, BITS Mesra etc. Times Private Treaties and the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) have collaborated with the ECell on this effort.

You can find additional details on their website.

• Event: Conference for Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneurs
• What would be your single biggest advice to fresh college graduates in India ?
• Event: “Entrepreneurs Forum” planned at Bangalore

Comments

• October 2, 2009, amit commented: How is Delhi College of Engineering included in this drive?
• October 3, 2009, TAPAS commented: Dear all, i have a professional working samsung and also doing some kind of online business.. my website is www.lessdeal.com we deal industrial good to diffrent company.. i want to participate
• October 9, 2009, Sartups's Blog commented: Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive by IIT Kharagpur... <p>The E-Cell @ IIT KGP is organizing an ‘Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive’ to promote entrepreneurship and encourage students across the country to embrace entrepreneurship. They will organize an Entrepreneurship Awareness Camp in 10 cities ...

Over the last couple of days, I was getting some updates about friends-family in India, while talking to my mom. During conversation, my mom mentioned about two recent graduates, who’s campus placements (in IT companies) were deferred due to the uncertain economy. And so, they were considering pursuing – applying for an MBA in the meanwhile.

And for some reason, that topic lingered on in my mind – bothering me. Why would two recent graduates consider an MBA as a ‘way out’ ? How much did they even know about what MBA is about ? After all, by the time you graduate with a bachleors degree, you hardly have any insight into real world, leave aside an MBA. Who counseled them into an MBA program ?

It didnt take long for me to figure out that no one else is to blame for this distorted notion but our society. A B.E + MBA combo is seen as the holy grail for Indian technical professionals. BE + MBA candidates are not only paid highly – they are valued highly by the society, professionally and even from the matrimonial perspective. Not to mention the extent to which the media has glamorized the MBA degree – touting the crore plus salaries and the direct placements abroad. Now that I revisit some of the conversations i’ve had with my peers, several of whom have graduated from top-tier MBA schools in India & abroad, it seems that the common motivation to do an MBA seems to be for one of the following three reasons:

1) I want to do an MBA to get a higher salary

2) I want to make a shift from technical to the business aspects of the profession

3) I’m stuck in a rut in my job and so need a change

Taking the entrepreneurial route would guarantee you points (2) and (3) above. Point (1) is something that is not guaranteed and apparently, the riskiest aspect of the proposition. So I guess the sheer uncertainty of point (1) leads people to opt for an MBA rather than taking the entrepreneurial route.

I actually find it quite ironic, because Indian B-schools are shifting into overdrive when it comes to B-plan competitions (just look at the increase in the number of b-plan competitions being held across b-school campuses) – implicitly encouraging graduates to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs. So, its like you joined a b-school, the b-school encourages you to become an entrepreneur when you could have completely skipped b-school and gone into entrepreneurship directly.

Personally, I believe that the biggest value that an MBA provides is the access to the network of people and the alumni. The other 3 reasons listed above seem frivolous in comparison and dont seem to justify doing an MBA – I might very well be wrong, but its just me.

The reason I decided to write about this is because if entrepreneurship needs to be encouraged at the college level then we need to change their mindset that BE + MBA is not the only way to go. Entrepreneurship is a viable career option and chances are that they will learn much more being an entrepreneur than pursuing an MBA.

Ok. Time to go and talk to those family friends about their MBA plans.

• Entrepreneurship in India – hype or happening ?
• Does it matter where people went to college ?
• You say lack of angel funding, I say lack of startups

Comments

• September 16, 2009, vk commented: Good points. Also, points to the social, cultural and educational issues in society where most people are looking to make money the fastest way and not necessarily finding the thing they enjoy doing most and making money in that instead.
• September 16, 2009, Raghuraman commented: Pranav, I agree the whole perception about BE+MBA being the holy grail for good salary is quite predominant in our society. Our whole generation is plagued with the concept of 'better earning' rather than 'better living'. Very good write up . Keep it up.
• September 17, 2009, Aditya commented: In India MBA is distorted - while in the West you need a good experience before you can be even "considered" for a good B programme, in India thousands of freshers fill into our top B schools. Freshers can bring some ideas into the classroom, but without experience they can't contribute as well as the experienced people. Moreover until this recession a lot of companies believed in the B.Tech+MBA dudes and hired them on sky-high salaries, so people who make the choice to do an MBA can't really be blamed.
• September 17, 2009, rabi gupta commented: I completely support your point of view. Even I feel that such problem exists in our country. I didn't go for MBA when I learned that I should start something on my own. I believe that experience can make a person learn things much better and faster! Moreover when we complete graduation we are not sure what profession to choose in our career. Its only the practical experience which makes us learn whether to go for an MBA or not. B-Plan competitions can help anyone (MBA or non-MBA). Even our team got recognized at various B-Plan competitions and our (good) network issue was resolved because of this. We met a mentor who got interested in the idea. I'd suggest students not to go for an MBA before deciding clearly their main goals in life!
• September 17, 2009, kalyan ganjam commented: Can't agree more, very very well written piece. I don't think It's just the BE+ MBA combo that is useless, Bcom/BA/BSC/(whatever) + MBA combo seems equally useless to me. Thanks again, I am just forwarding this to all my friends and relatives stuck with MBA mania.
• September 17, 2009, Aayush Puri commented: You have hit the nail on the head. Actually after looking around and seeing so many of your friends and batchmates pursuing MBA...peer pressure sets in at some point and even if you never wanted to do a MBA or never knew how your career will shape after an MBA, you are "pushed" towards that path. > 3) I’m stuck in a rut in my job and so need a change I have heard this a lot and this is the one on which I laugh the hardest. The reasons most people whom I talk to regarding this say that there is way too much bureaucracy around and no freedom of work. And I have my reasons that after MBA this will certainly increase.
• September 17, 2009, Rohini commented: Good Insight. A lot of colleges these days are encouraging students to pursue entrepreneurship. > Entrepreneurship is a viable career option and chances are that they will learn much more being an entrepreneur than pursuing an MBA. Definitely bootstrapping teaches a lot to an entrepreneur. Once a bootstrapped company becomes mature, an MBA might be helpful to take it to the next level.
• September 18, 2009, Ashish commented: Well i do agree with ur point dat MBA is hyped a lot. I am an engg n I am pursuing my MBA from IMI, Delhi. the reason why i took was all 3 aspects. I had a low salary. I worked in an IT firm for 2 yrs n now the job seem too be too boring, and finance was something which facinated me , but was still greek to me. I had an expectation dat ill become a champ in finance once i have done my MBA. I am currently in my 2nd yr doing majors in finance. Rite now my whole perception about MBA has changed. It is quite diff dan engg. It does not makes u the master of dat subject. It dosent even gets close to mastery in any field. Wen u r an engg in some field, by end of 4 yrs you absolutely know everything .Dats not da case in mba. It just gives u a taste of real world without gettin your fingers burnt. It gives you a range of knowledge but only on a superficial level.Its upto u , ur self motivation to go deeper on your own, if you wish. SEcond thing which MBA does is to groom you overall, in terms of ur personality, ur way of thinking , ur apporch to a problem.This is the biggest takeaway from a good MBA course. Rest is just secondary. Btw in recent times there are sooo many MBA colleges crooped up in india dat u need to be beware about the fake ones.
• September 19, 2009, Anshul commented: Very good discussion going on here. I appreciate the points brought up here. Infact about point 1) , I would say stands true in some cases if one is pursuing MBA from US. There are scores of MBA grads who completed their MBA this year but haven't got a job yet. The earning was stopped for 2 years and huge loan was taken to pay the tuition fee and living cost. Now pressure is mounting on them to pay that amount. Sometimes I wonder, people are ready to stop their earning an d pay 100k+ USD for two years but apprehensive to take entrepreneurial path. I am sure a lot can be achieved with this much money in 2 years.
• September 20, 2009, pranav commented: looks like i struck a chord here !!
• September 20, 2009, Puneet Gulati commented: Good article. Just wanted to add one more point that is a possible explanation for the MBA dream in India. A large number of companies in India are looking out for MBAs for any management position worth the name. For instance, in a recent recruitment campaign from a public sector company - BSNL - for their Management Trainee Programme it was mandatory for applicants to hold an MBA degree. I think this was due to two reasons - a) cutting down on the number of applicants b) companies have little faith in Indian higher education system and Business Schools in India do add value to many graduates who are otherwise very unprepared for real jobs. Come to think of it, a large number of Indian graduates have seldom written a project proposal during college, hardly any project report, very few (if any) presentations and little teamwork or collaborative projects. These are essential skills but there is inadequate guidance on these fronts in our undergraduate courses. MBA forces many to learn all these basic things. And companies like this. These things are part of regular undergraduate curriculum in many good overseas universities. But in India, very few undergraduate courses emphasise these basic skills leaving MBA education to fill a glaring gap. And companies too recognise this. So it's a demand from companies issue as well.
• September 20, 2009, rabi gupta commented: Hey Anshul, thanks for bringing up this point. I was thinking the same for students of ISB who haven't got a job (they didn't have good placement season this year) yet but have spent 20 lacs for 1.5 year course. They could have very well utilized this amount for starting something on own. They think of risks, but now with this kind of situation where jobs are difficult to find entrepreneurship could have been the best option!
• September 23, 2009, Amit commented: Couldn't agree more... I am not sure about the real value that an MBA degree adds, but I am pretty sure about one thing- If you've got it, then you'll do it...with or without an MBA!
• September 25, 2009, vinay commented: Why Indian do MBA ? The risk taking capacity is very low. Not enough ideas (we do lack creativity) Easy path to make money and get married to a nice girl
• September 27, 2009, Anand Srinivasan commented: I agree completely with you. I'm a BE-MBA myself, and while pursuing my MBA, I was actually annoyed to find so many of them who had joined simply because of the higher pay.. Damn learning the business, it was money alone that mattered..
• September 28, 2009, purushothaman commented: although MBA degree is recognised well in the organised sectors in INDIA, only the fittest with good outlook in future management goal likely to survive in timely situation - experience with intelligence is the need of this time
• September 28, 2009, kuberan Marimuthu commented: Oh my god :) I just love this article. Life is for better living and not for better earning. People go behind money and end up doing things they dont like and get stuck with the pressure of family dependants and not able to switch professions. So whatever it is, just go in search of what you like in the initial stages of life rather than struggling in later part of life :) :) :)
• September 29, 2009, Yuva commented: and No many is considered ROI on MBA in term cost, effec/time. my MBA blues.. http://iamyuva.wordpress.com/2004/12/11/mbas-or-not/
• September 29, 2009, Yuva commented: sorry for post half(chewed) reply.. I was saying: Not many seems to be consider ROI on MBA in terms of cost/effort/time. with 100+k$ & couple of yrs of work life spent it would take min. of 5yr to breakeven that investment. I didnt do my MBA(yet). I hope do it for the same reason mentioned by the author (network/alumni). I posted my MBA blues couple of years ago. http://iamyuva.wordpress.com/2004/12/11/mbas-or-not/
• October 1, 2009, Gopal Sharma commented: You are missing a point when you say this: "I actually find it quite ironic, because Indian B-schools are shifting into overdrive when it comes to B-plan competitions (just look at the increase in the number of b-plan competitions being held across b-school campuses) – implicitly encouraging graduates to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs. So, its like you joined a b-school, the b-school encourages you to become an entrepreneur when you could have completely skipped b-school and gone into entrepreneurship directly." You are assuming that all that a business school does is to encourage entrepreneurship. Mind it you just don't need a brilliant idea to become an entrepreneur but you also need specific business skills to become one. That where MBA degree should help you get an overall business skill development in a short period. Just imagine a hardcore techy deciding to open an IT Services firm just because he thinks he can code well..... I think doing an MBA is required to accelerate your learnings on business side. Whether you decide to apply what you learn by working for someone else or use it to start your own venture is a different matter.
• October 2, 2009, amit commented: Actually indians are obsessed with any degree be it MBA or Mtech.. They spend 10 lahks to get job of not more than 20 k per month. Illogical decision.
• October 4, 2009, Viveck commented: Hey, Good article. Here is my take on that http://blogsofvivek.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/myth-of-business-administration-a-paradox/
• October 14, 2009, Talal Khaliq commented: its damn money and nothing else!
• November 10, 2009, Sunil Shenoy commented: I just wrote a similar post myself. Quite agree with what you have to say.
• December 25, 2009, Yuva commented: I totally agree..that may be because i am not a MBA. but did manage cross over from techi to banker (business operations) to consulting. OK. having side that will you hire me...without 'qualifications'!?? probably that why people want to do.because it will get your CV shortlisted.
• January 2, 2010, VLSI Training Institute commented: We personally feel that the value of MBA is highly compromised. With the mushrooming of all small MBA institutes who even do not have any experienced faculty it do not have any weight anymore in resume. Still if you are doing it from top 20 institutes it does give you an edge but not otherwise. This is even reflected in salary scales which you can find in market. People dream that by doing MBA even from small institute will fetch them 6lac plus salary but in reality they will end up in sales job with start-up of 5K+ per month salary.
• January 14, 2010, Sushant @ Techooze commented: B. E + MBA is done not for entrepreneur spirit but because of high salary factor. I bet 99% of B. Tech graduates dont know anything about their field. They just have to complete there course cramming anything which comes in their way and no regard to the practical education. The same goes for MBA, people do MBA because their neighbour have done so and getting a good salary package.
• January 18, 2010, Puneet commented: I think this trend of acquiring so called degrees has cropped up from the fact that our Indian education system is more job oriented rather than knowledge, skills oriented... How many of us were told back in our school days that we should pursue what we are interested in and build on to our natural skills... ?? So getting into MBA or engineering for that matter is probably a part of the bigger issue of misunderstanding the whole concept of education for a means to making money... !
• January 26, 2010, Sunder commented: I think an MBA is not the end of an education. Its just the beginning of a thought-process. A better pay package is not an end. Its just the result of achieving an end-result. I think the MBA degree helps you understand business better. It develops a thought-process wherein you will see a change in the way you approach businesses and problems than you did when just as a Graduate. I think that is what helps you solve these problems much better, saving loads of money for your organization which is precisely why, companies are ready to compensate an MBA with fat pay packets...
• February 23, 2010, Amit commented: Hmm go for 'Better Living' than 'Better Earning' hmmmm... hw do you think that der can be Better Living without Better Earning...Can a hardcore software programmer fit into a role of getting business for a company without any knowledge of Business or d other way rnd can a Business fellow sell a product without knowing the basics.. this is where B.E + MBA comes in picture, it aint useless.. u hv to agree on this.. MBA is for u2 polish ur skills..personality and approach. Mayb nt all d B-schools teach u dis..If you by our education standards den even B.E is useless.. it hardly teaches you anythin which is practically going on.. its all outdated. I think the way we look at MBA should be changed rather than thinkin if it useless or no
• February 23, 2010, Ravi Bhalla commented: Good Artical. It has made me think.
• February 23, 2010, Vicky Pradhan commented: Indians are famous about being obsessed by one profession or another. Earlier it was IAS, doctor, lawyer, engineer, currently it is MBA. Well considering the chronological events i think this MBA fascination will also fade soon. For me MBA is done by 2 types of people, A – These are the majority, who want a good life, nice salary so that they can buy a good house and afford the EMI’s, get a nice wife or husband (probably a handsome dowry in case of few), nice position in the company with subordinates and possibly getting a window office in the future. B – People for whom MBA schools are the place to understand actual business, learn the tricks, empower yourself in becoming the Ambani’s and TATA’s of the world. To talk about MBA for me personally and Type B people like me, it is the most overrated degree in the world. Not much practical knowledge imparted, just analysing past events and prodding the success and running down the failure. I believe much more can be learnt by someone if he or she puts in that money to start their new venture. Trust me, i have done both, so i know. It’s like if you want to swim, why sit by the shore for two years and then probably lose the zeal to swim. If you want to start your own business, start it don't waste the money and 2 years of your life just to get a degree. Off course you will make lots of mistakes, well who hasn’t. And for the Type A kind, i believe one should treat it as an investment, and make a wise decision. Considering job market is getting filled with MBA, with large supply leading to drop in salaries. Vicky Pradhan Founding Member, bharatbuy.com
• March 14, 2010, rohit commented: I totally agree with the content and the point of view put forth in the write up. But somewhere down the line the market currrently is asking for management graduates, and hence there is a need for doing mba. To climb the ladder its has become a necessity. And ofcourse with elevation in the designation, comes higher pay packets. So what is the harm in thinking that MBA will give higher pay packets.
• March 28, 2010, Indian commented: @Ashish -- Well I had to stop reading your post past the first few lines! Learn to write in English the way it is meant to be written, without the use of slangs and by using correct spellings. What makes you think an MBA will take you any further in your career if you cannot articulate your thoughts maturely by constructing readable sentences? I'm an Indian living in the US, but I see too many people like you from India who have never been outside the country think that writing "dat" for "that", and "u" for "you" is something every one in west does. NO! Unless you're a 15 year old teenager no one writes like that here! So before you have big aspirations about completing that MBA and thinking that you'll be managing a bunch of people, learn to write correctly!
• May 18, 2010, Rahul Jawale commented: Your thoughts totally make sense. I had been in this dilemma for quite a long time. I had sustained this parental and peer pressure myself and tried convicing myself and parents that doing MBA does not a prove a thing. All that matters is the passion for something, hardwork and some luck. And ofcourse, MBA is one of those courses which can be done at anytime in your life when you really think that expanding a perspective is going to help.
• May 26, 2010, rajatgarg commented: Stupid blog. Misses the entire point. Indians are obsessed with the MBA degree, because the market is obsessed with the same. When the market decides to place a b-grade mba with 0-1 yr of work ex to boss a team of 4 IIT engineers who have toiled for 2 yrs, what do the IITians do? Crack CAT and get into an IIM. The point about entre. Speak to a few VCs. Pose as an mba, show them the plan. Do the same without saying that you have an mba. Find out for yourselves how easy it is to get funding once you have that degree with you.
• June 4, 2010, Ragav Vendra commented: I have a genuine question. Why do students in India do their BE or B.tech. in the first place when they know they're not going to work in that area? And why don't they directly go for an undergraduate course in "Business Administration"? Why BE and *then* a MBA? They aren't even compatible together! Someone please enlighten me!
• June 10, 2010, sushant commented: totally agree with you.The way a person writes speaks loads about his/her personality.We Indians think that to write and speak in slang is the "American" way, but little do we know that Americans only when writing do not write in slang language.So called advancement in India is all trash.And also i agree with the fact that Indian B-schools have a misguided approach taking in freshers each year rather than experienced candidates.Getting to know how business is done real time is a different experience .US Schools have a minimum range of 4-5 years when accepting a candidate.Our policy is still 40 years old and shows in the way business is done in India.
• July 25, 2010, Jameel Iqbal commented: If not from salary, they definately look forward for the dowry it is able to fetch
• August 10, 2010, Arjun commented: Nice article and insightful comments .So basically ->If not MBA then the entrepreneurial route , if not the entrepreneurial route then some "jugaad" ,if not jugaad then back to a coding job ? I have a pretty decent resume showing my business ,sales and marketing acumen for a software company. I'm 22 and no opportunity to get a marketing job . I guess I'l have to get myself an MBA degree , certifying that I have the business acumen , certifying that I can communicate well , certifying that I can manage well , certifying that I can solve any situation , Giving the market the confidence that "HE" is the right candidate !!!
• November 22, 2010, Journalist commented: Great one. Might get in touch with you for re-publish rights or for quoting you :)
• December 27, 2010, Bernd commented: Very interesting article and comments on this page! I stumbled over this article when googling "Why do all indians have MBAs?". Yes, i am not Indian but German and i have been working for 6 years now. It always struck me as odd that so many Indians seem to have MBAs or pursue one sooner or later (rather sooner). The weirdest encounter i had was a 20-year old with a MBA (?!) Well, now i understand a little more about why this is so en vogue in India... Thanks for the insight.
• January 23, 2011, johnson commented: really good but more work required
• March 29, 2011, Soumadri Roy commented: Totally agree with you. This is the thing ate my head for some long time, finally also sound who's the culprit here.
• March 29, 2011, Soumadri Roy commented: *found
• August 1, 2011, mukesh commented: mba is not a big deal these days friends.....working hard for a degree to graduate and then doing mba.....it doesn't ensures your job at some big place.
• August 1, 2011, mukesh commented: i completely agree with you...click on my name to know more and have fun guys
• August 1, 2011, mukesh commented: yes all these courses are crap...wasting so much time and money and then no surity of your future.
• August 1, 2011, mukesh commented: click on my name and check out some interesting points....click on my name above. :)
• August 29, 2011, Plastic Household Items commented: Today is not the time to run for degree because there is no assurance for the highest salary. Sometimes, after spending lot's of money on course we could not get that much money back which we spend on it. I think that the most important thing is your experience because experience gives practical knowledge which works and help you on your work place.
• December 13, 2011, MK commented: if not too late here are my comments for Ragav. Following are my views. when you manage you manage some thing. if you understand the buissiness and the technology it is connected with it may be far more easier to manage efficiently. In the current world you will need to know how the tech works if not create it yourself. if you do not have BE/Btech you will need some thing similar outside of acadamic degree probably going through training etc. While an MDA does introduce introduce you to some tools that you will need to aquire through reading books going through personal/paid training etc. In all cases education is education that exposes you to available knowledge. It is upto you how much you understand and apply in real world PROBLEM SOLVING to improve others lives and in the process improve your own. even if you are an investor/banker, its easier to invest in what you understand than you do not. Think more based on your own experiences probably childhood/college/etc

Here’s a potential startup idea with a solid business model.

Provide a Groupon clone for major Indian cities.  The concept of Groupon is simple. Each day, you provide a new discount / deal to customers from local retailers. The catch is that the discount is only valid if a certain threshold of customers buy the deal. So, essentially, its group buying power, but becomes active only when the number of buyers reaches a certain tipping point. To illustrate with an example, say you negotiate a deal with a Bangalore restaurant – if you bring 25 customers, how much of a discount will the restaurant provide. Say, the restaurant agrees to provide a 20% discount if you guarantee 25 new customers. So, you announce the deal on your site and the deal becomes active only if at least 25 customers buy the deal. If less than 25 customers sign up for the deal, the deal isnt valid and all the restaurant gets is free publicity / marketing via your website.

Its a win-win for everyone involved – customers get a better deal, retailers get more customers and you take a cut from each unit sold.

Of course, you might need to tune the service as per the needs of the Indian market. For instance, instead of providing a web-app, you could provide operate it as a mobile only app (via sms & mobile payments) so that you can extend the reach beyond the Internet savvy demographic.

The crux of this idea lies in sales and building relationships with local retailers. Start with a city like Bangalore / Mumbai and then slowly extend to other cities depending on your experience.

what do you think ?

• Startup Idea – Rent a SMS short code
• Two killer startup ideas for Bangalore
• Microsoft announces Startup Accelerator program in India

Comments

• September 15, 2009, Rajat commented: This is a great idea. Actually i think this is the idea that can make twitter/facebook/orkut profitable if it is clubbed with social networking sites somehow.As social networking sites already have the mass of people so why create a new site to bring in new people.Just get the deals and market on these sites.
• September 15, 2009, Raghuraman commented: Similar thoughts to Rajat. This is also very similar to 'Bulk Discounts' at Whole sale Marts like Costco / Sams Club except that it is done offline. This should be experimented in an community level and then scaled up.
• September 15, 2009, pranav commented: yes - similar to costco / sams club - but instead of products, you try and orient this towards services.
• September 15, 2009, Gaurav commented: Groupon looks like woot. The only difference I see is that woot buys in bulk, so they have a limited quantity but cheaper rates. It would be something good to try. @Rajat - As of today Facebook is officially profitable.
• September 15, 2009, Jojo Joson commented: Two things are important. 1. "The crux of this idea lies in sales and building relationships with local retailers. " 2. Most important is to find targeted customers. Ofcourse you can use all the new media, but the ultimate WIN of this business lies on "how you attract" pot customers to read about your services. Extensive marketing is what reqd! Social medias can be used for this without much money involved provided you are creative
• September 15, 2009, Jojo Joson commented: Remember-copying sth from american market won't work here! Think a 100 times before you jump!!
• September 15, 2009, Puneeth commented: There is already a company that's doing that. Check out - GoVasool.com
• September 15, 2009, pranav commented: puneeth, govasool.com does do something similar. however, the difference in that it does for products -- i'm talking of services - like say restaurant deal. or saloon deal or spa / massage service -- anything that can be a local area service..
• September 15, 2009, pranav commented: gaurav, woot employs the 'scarcity model' to sell products. groupon is like a 'collective group buying power'
• September 16, 2009, Aditya commented: There's a similar concept by a company in Indian real-estate market - www.meraflat.com
• September 18, 2009, Anmol commented: I'm actually working on something similar, but not limited to just providing coupons from restaurants. Think of it this way: [(Groupon - coupons) + (Woot - warehousing)] = Unlimited group based buying. More when the service is up :)
• September 29, 2009, David hu commented: i am strarting the group purchasing just now ,and i am also looking for sb who are interested in such kind of business , like bulk-buying ,group buying ,you can email me for sharing more detail about that, i will setup business in china .
• October 19, 2009, SUKHVINDER commented: i am working on this project , may like to seee how we can associate
• October 21, 2009, Ratan commented: Hi David I am working for a large internet company in India in VAS space. I am working on similar thing for India. Would like to get connected with you for the same. Can mail me at : ratan.gmp@gmail.com . If you share your number , can call you for the same.
• November 29, 2009, anilar commented: Hey guys, Appears quite a few people are jumping at the idea & putting their efforts. I am at a fairly advanced stage. How about coming together to execute it successfully? I suppose that is the key. Welcome to write to me: anilarrao@gmail.com
• January 25, 2010, Nikhil Bhatnagar commented: i have seen a similar concept which has started in Delhi and now in Mumbai as well, working well .. i believe its all a numbers game. The site which seems to work in India now a days is mydala.com .. In terms of reaching the target audience. The whole game is of selling the right thing at the right place at a certain point of time. I believe site like mydala is doing good marketing in terms of reaching out. When I become the Fan of the page few weeks on Facebook it was in hundreds and now its all a numbers game and there current status is more than 5k
• January 25, 2010, Rajat commented: Its numbers as well as the quality game as well...if quality is not good person who will try once will not come back again....they have to get the best price deals for a thing which is very much in demand..... i.e replicating Big Bazaar on the web....
• February 9, 2010, Jitendra commented: Is this up? If yes, can you tell me the url? Thanks! Anmol September 18, 2009 at 5:00 am I’m actually working on something similar, but not limited to just providing coupons from restaurants. Think of it this way: [(Groupon - coupons) + (Woot - warehousing)] = Unlimited group based buying. More when the service is up
• March 17, 2010, Sannidhi commented: Checkout - http://www.groupndeal.com, first of it's kind in India and probably even in the world!
• April 12, 2010, Varun Raj commented: well we are on to it... why dont u give me a call at 9809434973 and lets discuss on what each as to offer.
• April 14, 2010, John Kuruvilla commented: Agree with Jojo. We in India love deals and we make no qualms about it.Which is why companies like Big bazaar, Brand factory are raking in big monies. But in the service space it needs far more customisation than mere copying groupon which has enough clones in India. You need a model that works on insights from both the customer angle as well as the merchants. Without diluting a brands equity by being seen as a 'discount place. John
• April 15, 2010, NithinSP commented: Well another website on a similar track of working is "www.snapdeal.com" .. the opening page of this website and www.mydala.com are similar !
• April 16, 2010, nandit commented: Its a gr8 idea ,but I need more clarity on one aspect if I am a person who is visiting ur site and I am interested in a deal ,then will I have to immediately pay the money when I give my consent for buying or will I have to pay once the minimum no. of people is obtained for the deal . in the first case if I have to pay money at the time of giving my consent then if the deal does not materializes then I will get my money back in not less than 3 weeks ,dont you think this would act as an hinderance .
• April 21, 2010, Saurabh commented: Let's get in touch over email - Saurabh
• April 23, 2010, abhishaek commented: principally i agree with you John on this but I am just not clear with your response in case of fine tuning this space for india ..what do you mean here ..also I understand that this market has enough space for multiple players or do you think its going to be one player game ...
• May 7, 2010, Shekhar commented: Can u provide me with some more input on this.
• May 20, 2010, Aravind Jose T. commented: BuyThePrice.com and WaNaMo.com. BTP focuses on products too, but WaNaMo is mostly dedicated to services.
• June 9, 2010, Kunal commented: Not sure if you guys checked out. I did find Koovs.com also going pretty good.. Lets c how things shape up for mydala and koovs. Interesting space though.
• July 1, 2010, Sreekanth menon commented: Juts got an sms for an another one : www.taggle.com
• August 3, 2010, Dr.Arpan Mitra commented: I am also starting a project within 2 months which will essentially focus on healthcare. I would like to share with you people what I think about group concept- 1.In India,only 7% people go online.So there has to be a strong offline component. 2.In an inflationary world,group is a social necessity,not just a mere choice.Right man with right ideas will surely succeed. 3.Group has multiple good uses apart from just group buying.
• August 12, 2010, Narendran commented: There is this site called http://www.snatchdeals.com that aggregates all such deals in one place. Just check it out..
• August 27, 2010, Sarika commented: While so many people are looking at Group Bargains, www.wooqer.com is taking the opposite approach and making deals a one on one affair. Also it is taking deals to another level by making available deals on almost everything from fruits and vegetables to laptops. Users can not only find deals , they can even wish for deals and Brands have an option to grant them based on multiple criteris.
• August 30, 2010, Rohit commented: To add on this due to several group buying sites launched in past few months and number grows to 11 which creates confusion for the normal customer for finding one deal they have to roam several group buying websites simultaneously. To improve this http://30sunday.com is launching on 1st Sep 2010 which will aggregate deals from all 11 group buying websites of India having a reach of 22 cities and strength of more than 75 deals at a single time. It would be India's first exclusive group buying tracker portal
• September 2, 2010, Abhinav commented: I totally agree with point #1. Web presence has to be complemented with something else in India. In the US, 74% of the households access the internet. Plus, they have a long tradition of buying on the net. The winning solution in India would most probably be something else. Btw, how are group buying sites doing in India? SnapDeal - and some others - do not tell how many coupons they've sold. The few that do don't seem to be selling as much as GroupOn. So, I am wondering whether something basic is being missed here. Probably Indians aren't as keen on discounts as one would believe.
• October 11, 2010, srikanta commented: hi, what number can i reach you?
• October 21, 2010, SAGAR J commented: So off the so many who've been interested in GROUP BUYING websites,how many have actually implemented or are in the process,I might have something for you..awaiting reply.. contact me :sagar_jhobalia@yahoo.com
• November 2, 2010, pervin commented: I am interested in this project of your can you please give me more information on this. Thanks Pervin
• November 16, 2010, Pradeep Gupta commented: Hi, I have got hands on experience of working in one of the top group buying website. Will be starting a group buying website very soon. Waiting for investors and partners, please contact 9891067890.
• November 30, 2010, Saurabh Mittal commented: Has any1 who commented above started anything similar? Please share the experience - It adds to advertising anyway! ;)
• December 9, 2010, Dhiren vyas commented: agree with you puneeth
• January 6, 2011, Murali EN commented: Hai Jitendra I am also working on similar space and would like to exchange views regarding this. Would be interested to see how we could associate. Pl give me ur email and phone no. Murali Bangalore 0944376918
• January 6, 2011, Murali EN commented: Hai Anmol I am also working on similar space and would like to exchange views regarding this. Would be interested to see how we could associate. Pl give me ur email and phone no. Murali Bangalore 0944376918 en.murali1@gmail.com
• January 8, 2011, Mandy commented: interesting to read this discussion...however is there ANY data on how these sites r doing in India?
• January 30, 2011, Atul Arora commented: Please see another portal http://www.c2cguild.com. They provide buyers a platform to combine their demand in a given city for a particular Product. Buyers can contact other buyers having the same demand in his / her city. Then they can bargain better for this cumulative demand. This is free of cost. This is a sort of social e-commerce. Must try.
• January 30, 2011, Atul Arora commented: Please see another portal http://www.c2cguild.com. They provide buyers a platform to combine their demand in a given city for a particular Product. After registering, buyer can contact other buyers having the demand for same Product in his / her city. Then they can bargain better for this cumulative demand. This is free of cost. This is a sort of social e-commerce. Must try.
• February 23, 2011, Shivarama commented: Interesting note. However, high end group deals are non-existent as on date. To fill this gap, we have launched http://dealmela.in - India's premier real estate group buying portal. A group real estate buying portal viz. dealmela.in intends to capitalise on the following propositions: a) Bulk discounts based on number of user sign ups. We intend to target builders at the pre-launch phase / slow moving real estate items b) Project Based user communities who can then leverage their combined might to negotiate discounts from builders. c) Time - bound / Last minute deals with call for immediate action driven by fear of deal loss. d) Pre-qualified private buyers club with access to "exclusive deals" (suitable for situations where sellers do not intend to leak the "discount" in the market for fear of underpricing their product for willing buyers. We are looking for investors/ associates/ partners (site is undergoing beta testing currently). Please call Shivarama on 09930996966 for further discussion.
• February 28, 2011, Christian Louboutin lover commented: BuyThePrice. Com and WaNaMo. Com. BTP in product, but WaNaMo mainly devotes to the service.
• February 28, 2011, Christian Louboutin lover commented: Can u provide me with some more input on this.
• March 7, 2011, rhea commented: Sir, Have you started your project? Just curious to know how well it is being received in India ,especially in India where the consumers are more conservative in their bargaining and purchasing methods. What aspect of healthcare are you concentrating on?
• March 11, 2011, Bhavik commented: Dr. Mitra, Just saw your post on this website. I am the founder of an IT services startup and have been thinking about a group buying portal focused in Healthcare/Wellness domain. Wondering if you are still working on this idea. I have a couple of ideas and am am looking for a partner who has good knowledge of trends in healthcare industry in india. Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss. Email: bhavik.dhebar@appsemantics.com Phone: 09687205468 Thanks
• March 30, 2011, Ashok commented: Wanted to share a nice deals aggregator service @ http://getalldealz.com. You will get all deal provider sites all together at this website. Browse deals, discounts of your interests & compare among others at single place :)
• April 20, 2011, Nanda Kishor K N commented: Most deal sites are PUSHING THE DEALS to the consumers But consumers should have the ability to PULL THE DEALS i.e GROUP DEMAND BUYING. http://sharingblogideas.com/nandakishor/2011/04/16/group-demand-buying-pull-deals-instead-push-deals
• April 21, 2011, Louis Vuitton Cruise 2011 commented: Yes, I agree! "make twitter/facebook/orkut profitable if it is clubbed with social networking sites somehow" is what I want to say either ! thanks for the share!
• May 27, 2011, Ravi commented: In India, the best site I have seen for real estate deals is www.groupbookings.in
• June 24, 2011, Jerome Quadros commented: http://DealFlats.com promotes group buying of property through real estate deals. The website has discounted price deals for group buyers of flats and apartments in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad and Indore.
• July 1, 2011, bipin commented: hey friends,,u all can also try dis new site..www.hungrywungry.com.....apart from d regular deal for restaurants...its also has active games n lot many fundo things to do....
• September 29, 2011, Raaj commented: Great concept.. esp for India since owning a home fr yourself if the most essential necessity. came across a similar concept http://snapghar.com/
• October 6, 2011, dr parveen commented: websites like snapghar.com are really making it so easy for the buyers to select a good home without brokerage and giving them gifts like ipads and gold coins.its a must see website
• October 26, 2011, Aashima Jain commented: I feel that the group buying of low ticket items results in small savings which may not be significant therefore group buying can be more successful and effective for high ticket items like real estate. I could find only one website http://www.groupbookings.in doing it in India. I think that as the industry matures, many people will prefer to buy high ticket items in a group rather than the low ticket items.

“Lack of angel funding” is an issue brought up so many times while addressing entrepreneurship in India that I’ve seriously started getting nauseated at the very mention of it.

Its just become common place to cite lack of angel funding as one of the main reasons for lack of startups in India. To a certain extent, I agree – angel funding needs to be more easily accessible and there are a lot of genuine startups that could benefit from angel funding being more readily available.

However, an equal amount of blame also lies in the fact that most of the ‘so called’ startups are simply not fundable. We lack motivated, passionate entrepreneurs pursuing high quality ideas and startups. Hate me if you want, but someone had to say it and so I just did. Like it or not, but thats a fact. As someone who gets several pitches for reviews on a daily basis, I cant help but use one word to describe some of the startups – appalling. Day in – day out I witness how folks develop a new mashup or some inane idea, which at best could pass of as a hobby or a side project. Or even a college level project. But in no way, could they be called a startup.

Over time, the number of such ‘startups’ has increased. I cant help but wonder why / how people tend to get the distorted notion that their side projects could qualify as a startup ? Are we doing something fundamentally wrong from a perspective of fostering entrepreneurship that folks get the notion that their side project is a startup ?  Seriously, not everything goes. Having a lousy website with 10 users does not qualify as being an entrepreneur.

If I find some of these pitches not worthy of even giving a 2nd glance at, why – how do you expect angels / VC’s to fund these ideas with real money ?

Another point that I’d like to bring up is that  it seems like a lot of wannabe entreprenuers have the notion that getting funding is a prerequisite to becoming a successful entrepreneur. I have gotten a hajjar emails from folks who ‘have an idea in mind with millions in potential revenue. But need funding to get off the ground’. Good luck buddy – as if thats going to happen. If you are a first time entrepreneur and you cant bootstrap your way to the first working prototype, I would ask you to reconsider your idea, because getting funding for a first time entrepreneur in such a challenging market is going to be an insanely difficult task to accomplish.

I think fostering entrepreneurship is certainly a great thing and I think we need more of it, especially at the college level. However, at the same time we should also ensure that some basic tenets are made clear as well:

1) Entrepreneurship != Anything goes

2) Funding != Entrepreneurial Success

3) Entrepreneurhisp != Sexy / ‘in thing’

So the next time you pitch your idea – startup to someone – think about it for two minutes. Does my idea make sense ? Is this a viable business (going for the ad based monetization approach might not work well in India, given the tiny online ad market). What problem does it solve ?  Would it be something that I would use myself ? Am I doing it just because its cool ?  If I were to approach others for funding, would I fund such an idea myself with my own money ? Would this be something I see myself doing for the next 2-3 years ?

Answers to these basic questions should give you some fair idea of whether you should seriously pursue your idea / startup and whether it has any merit to it or not. And most importantly – whether your startup is fundable or not.

• NYT on slow pace of innovation in India
• What Indian city is best conducive to entrepreneurship ?
• Ashish Gupta from HelionVC on “lack of funding in India”

Comments

• September 10, 2009, bhowmik commented: Very well written ... Having ambitions of being an entrepreneur isn't wrong but what i find more often is that almost everybody who i meet has this idea which is going to be the next Gmail/Twitter/Facebook/. I specifically mention these ones because i see an upsurge in the whole "online business" idea thing. Everybody thinks it is easy to create a website, put it up and have users flock to their website. The need of the moment as pranav says is to have a better quality of startup ideas and again its going to work both ways. People need to come up with ideas that are more relevant to the Indian market in the next 5 years and they have to be innovative.
• September 10, 2009, Rohini commented: Well written post!!
• September 11, 2009, Rohan commented: This is exactly what I has said in few of previous comments on this blog, and I was perceived as a pessimist and people has literally given me a crash course in entrepreneurship using their theory skills. When it rains, everything looks green. The real test of greenery is now.
• September 11, 2009, Harshal Vaidya commented: Another point I would like to make is that there is just too much in terms of Startup Ecosystem in India. Most people have protos.ins, opencoffee clubs and what not to foster, mentor and networks like minded individuals. With all that euphoria nothing really comes out on the ground. People just get an high of meeting Biggies and think that they have a chance. Its like make believe.
• September 11, 2009, Muraleedhara Navada commented: This article is partly truth, but mostly written against entrepreneurship. I am an entrepreneur myself, founded a startup, has gone through the VC funding pitches myself. Lack of angel funding is a major issue. In our startup, we had a business, which is making real sense, prototyped, proven to make money, well on the path to grow, still angel funders or VC funders refuse to watch at it. They are either burnt their hands in wrong investments and stay put, or too ambitious to agree on reality. They just want to invest on a dream land of making another Google out of India. Guys, wake up, we can make Indian startups first, at a smaller scale before making Google, of course we will make such companies after that. First, come down to reality. We have major problems with angel funders in India.
• September 11, 2009, Ranjeet commented: VCs and Angels in India lack the guts to invest in something new and ground breaking, they are happy investing in companies if some other VC or angel has invested in another company doing the same thing.... that is the real reason behind lack of innovation. it is like develop what the VC wants, not what you think is a great idea....
• September 11, 2009, Arun commented: Hi Guys, Great topic. But believe me you are all talking about a very valid and potential business plan - Find Funding. Have done some digging around - Most of the Ideas at the concept level could be Ok. They are so because the knowledge is limited and so is the exposure. 80% of the VC funding or Angel Investment gets into financial markets for spinn off -it is fast and the market is structured and organised. Other 20% is networking, for the few Select business class. India is still very much in infant stage in terms of VC and angel Investment - if entreprenuers werent there in India - we would be still a Backward country. Pls do keep in mind that 70% of the work is employed there - small or big they are still feeding our hugh population and are the backbone of Indian Economy. Good Minds can get this situation corrected but alas who has got the time. I never write in Blogs - well i have made this exception. Will i start the Change look out!!!!!!!
• September 11, 2009, Rajat commented: In the field of software 'execution' is more important then idea's i believe. There can still be a better search engine, or a better email system whatever. From your post its good to make out that more people are starting side projects, no matter if they fail, starting is more important.If you see the first version of flickr you will think of it as a dumbass product made by some student in 6th standard, but it is what it is today. VC donot fund in india because they want a safe bet, they lack the risk appetite of the western world.Its much easier to get funding if you start some manufacturing business then software business - Correct me if i am wrong on this.
• September 12, 2009, Anonymous Koward commented: I agree with you partially. So many people want to keep a main job while doing their 'idea' as side projects. One reason may be that indians do not really risktakers -- just like indian VCs. As Ranjeet said above, what is the risk taking potential of indian VCs? Are you ready to invest in a startup which doesn't have a proper revenue model but will yield large user base? Are you ready to accept 'number of active users = value' kind of model? it is arguable, but how many indian VCs would have been interested in Twitter? It is catch-22 situation. Both sides are a little scared ab
• September 12, 2009, Anonymous Koward commented: It is a catch-22 situation. Both sides are a little scared about the outcome. I think this will change sooner or later. Till that time, just wait. -Arun (Anonymous Koward)
• September 12, 2009, Raghu Pandey commented: Just a suggestion.... To enhance the clarity of your msg for non-programmers/non-IT entrepreneurs pls write the three tenets in simpler language. "Entrepreneurship != Anything goes" can't be read by many readers as you'd want them to!
• September 14, 2009, vikram commented: i agree with you i started a new project and looking for a investor but it is difficult to get one.
• September 14, 2009, pranav commented: Muraleedhara, I dont dispute the fact that we do need more angel investors who are afraid of taking the risk. however, i dont blame the VC's for being risk averse in the Indian market. There has hardly been any M&A activity, forget about IPOs. If the VC's are not seeing any concrete return on investment, why would they invest ? After all, they have a business to run as well.
• September 14, 2009, pranav commented: I never write in Blogs – well i have made this exception. Thanks.
• September 14, 2009, pranav commented: One reason may be that indians do not really risktakers I dont quite agree with this. If that were true, how would you explain the very same set of folks arriving in the US and then becoming entrepreneurs ?
• September 16, 2009, Roopesh commented: Perhaps the VCs should consider how this situation has come about, and how ? Any wannabe entrepreneur does some research - What does he read - either funding in millions (late startup stage generally) or B-school competitions! The latter clearly is 'paper plan' funding, and that is what one mostly hears about - i am sure you all have also heard stuff like 'I am interested in a startup, but not with my own money!!! i think the VC community (including TiE etc) have taken the wrong tack in becoming well known. They certainly are well known now, but within this surfeit of people/ orgs professing to encourage entrepreneurship, there is no real help available readily. There is either talk (TiE) or B-school competitions that gives people the wrong idea.. Who is going to tell these wannabees what has finally been said in the above article - if you dont believe enough in your own idea, enough to risk something, then no one else will...
• September 18, 2009, Irfan commented: What is your background in entrepreneurship Pranav? It is easy to say things from the sidelines..... Have you ever taken a plunge in startupdunia ??
• September 20, 2009, pranav commented: part time - yes. how about yourself ? if you didnt hide behind some anonymous id, it'd be easier to take you more seriously.
• September 20, 2009, pranav commented: point taken..
• September 20, 2009, Irfan commented: if you have the guts.... leave your job and come to the other side and then lets talk about lack of good startups.... it easy to say things from the sidelines..... people who are managing their companies full time .... face the music everyday, unlike people like you who put their blogs/ comments in their free time....
• September 20, 2009, Abhijeet Sojwal commented: I need a consultant, of course paid one. It is very important to present the project in a right way, I failed previously because of poor preparation of the project. However there are super flop projects that got Huge VC's, some how I knew those before they started, but what VC's looked in to it was that (1) That the Guys are from big universities, or (2) were working in similar setups in US and UK. Yes there are kidos out there with super flop ideas with really huge dreams, like modeling websites, dating websites, online schools, Indian language translators to name a few, these kidos need guidance. If anyone knows any consultant to guide me thru how to present the idea, and from where do we get the statistics like consumer profiles industry size, Market survey data etc please let me know.
• September 22, 2009, pranav commented: I'm not sure if you'll be able to find such a consultant. A lot of this is groundwork that falls upto the entrepreneur.
• October 7, 2009, Tarun commented: Someone make a website about crooked indian politicians and lazy corrupt government clerks.
• April 3, 2010, Saurabh Garg commented: Hi If I have an idea which isnt new. Not new in the sense that it already exists in foreign markets but not in India. Will such an idea receive attention for seed funding.
• May 8, 2010, Parag commented: From an IT services startup perpective ,I still think getting seed funding is very difficult. Maybe because the idea of scalability in IT Software development is primarily either a) Increase the number of employees b) Increase the number of domains c) Get your presence in the primary software markets - UK and EU My experience in funding negotiations is bizzare - "Prove your worth for 5 years with a 100% growth and then I will fund you" There itself I think there needs to be some education to be done for the funders as to what seed capital is , what working capital is and blah blah blah. But they got the money and they are always right by that virtue. My suggestions to the wannabe startups is to work on a startup full time rather than part time and stick to it through the ups and downs. Staying afloat will ensure you get opportunities now and then which you need to grab and see if it takes you through ..
• August 11, 2010, ameeruddin hudda commented: Here in hyderabad i am a financial consultant for one software company who recently developed a software solution related to ELECTRONIC HEALTHCARE RECORDS, which will be mandatory in USA from next year. This is a very good product and for that this company are looking some angle funding and i highly recommend if somebody are ready with their investment. Company is also ready to give collateral security with a good returns. plz contact at 09391154564
• September 24, 2010, Smita commented: Investment Opportunity @ WhiteSolitaire.com Welcome to WhiteSolitaire.com. India’s only Premium Diamond Jewellery Online Store. Want to send a gift to someone you love or want to present a beautiful surprise to your wife, we have the perfect product for you. Real Diamonds & Pure Gold. We are online sellers of premium diamond jewellery. Premium refers to our product which is 100% export certified. The products sold by us are of the same standard that customers use in USA and Europe. From Rs 2500 to Rs 99999 you get the best product for your money. We have huge collection of Diamond Rings, Diamond Earrings, Diamond Pendants, Diamond Necklaces, Diamond Tanmanias, Diamond Nose Pins, Diamond Bangles, Diamond Watches and majority any product in Diamond Jewelry. We are looking for funds to expand our already existing business. Please contact us for more details. India is a growing market and ecommerce has literally an exponential growth opportunity.
• October 27, 2010, Fluorescent Lamp : commented: what would a girl ask for if not for a diamond necklace, diamond necklaces would always impress a girl",;
• November 3, 2010, Complete Kitchen · commented: well, i was enrolled at an online school and the curriculum is quite great""
• November 11, 2010, Arun 1 commented: I am Major Arun Kumar Jha, a 39 yr old serving officer of the Indian Army. Certain fully researched plans have evolved thru me by the grace of HH Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (founder of the 'Art of Living' Foundation) over more than EIGHT years after doing it's Basic Course. The plans envisage raising the domestic agricultural production of India thru the fertile plains of North Bihar (spanning more than 50,000 SQ Km). The plans envision a Private Project of a Legally registered Trust in Bihar; which would be funded - on the strength of its genuine activity and visible benefits - by High Net Worth individuals (Indian, NRI and across the world); Multinational corporations (Indian, NRI and across the world); Trusts and Foundations in India and across the world; International development agencies and all other possible sources of the funds. The plans require minimum USD 10 Million (INR 450 Million) to be started. I am looking for funding (preferably Donation/grants) or even Angel or VC Funding to materialise these plans. These plans can be pursued with full force after 13 May 2011. I request all people reading this mail to give me suggestions or advice at jdfparunjhaatgmail.com at their earliest, but before that date.
• November 13, 2010, Concrete Molds · commented: i wish to have some diamond necklace but they are quite expensive -~-
• November 24, 2010, gautham prakash commented: yaa i really appreciate the views of author but indian mentallity is to study well to get good marks and get good job, marry a lovely girl have a child , house, car broughtup your child retire from the job go tovarnasi or badrinath and wait for dead.
• December 9, 2010, Dhiren vyas commented: agreed bhowmik ....
• March 28, 2011, Gokarn commented: I agree in parts with Pranav. VC's are not short of funds and they are looking for solid well thought out startups to invest funds into. However, personally I feel India still is lagging behind in several areas that are conducive to an IT start-up. There are exceptions such as travel booking online which has done pretty well as it definitely addresses a major pain for customers who wanted an easier way to book tickets rather than just going every time to their agent. It also saves a lot of money. Other than that, India is not very big on shopping online, or for that matter spending money at all online. To compund the problem, cyber laws are weak, patent laws, copyright protection and such things are non existent. The challenges are huge and the bottom line is revenues. For a successful start up the major problem is to address revenues and cash generation. Good paperwork, fancy ideas and graphs will not get you the money. Solution : bootstrap, generate revenues and build brand presence if you want the big bucks.
• April 24, 2011, Achal commented: What you are trying to convey becomes simply obvious once someone has spread even a year and just exploring the idea. I am in my final year and got attracted to entrepreneurship and initiated to entrepreneurial related activities in my first year. After being bitten by the bug and spending 4 years, doing exploration, listening to lectures, discussing ideas with friends, organizing b-plan competition, VC pitches, etc etc and after doing my intern at CIIE, helping an NGO to come up with a business model and all these years dreaming(fantasizing) about being an entrepreneur .. I have decided not to be one .. Simple reason I dont want to waste my energy building the next big thing online but want to do something more meaningful which I find myself not prepared to ...
• August 30, 2011, Manu commented: to all entrepreneurs - just follow your heart and keep working VC are not always angels if you have the fire in your heart you will succeed. as for those who are just for fun, well you will soon learn and back down.
• September 7, 2011, Aldis commented: Found you blog by using digg I have to admit I m amazed with all your articles!
• December 13, 2011, Kashmir commented: I am Major Arun Kumar Jha, a 39 yr old serving officer of the Indian Army. Certain fully researched plans have evolved thru me by the grace of HH Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (founder of the ‘Art of Living’ Foundation) over more than EIGHT years after doing it’s Basic Course. The plans envisage raising the domestic agricultural production of India thru the fertile plains of North Bihar (spanning more than 50,000 SQ Km). The plans envision a Private Project of a Legally registered Trust in Bihar; which would be funded – on the strength of its genuine activity and visible benefits – by High Net Worth individuals (Indian, NRI and across the world); Multinational corporations (Indian, NRI and across the world); Trusts and Foundations in India and across the world; International development agencies and all other possible sources of the funds. The plans require minimum USD 10 Million (INR 450 Million) to be started. I am looking for funding (preferably Donation/grants) or even Angel or VC Funding to materialise these plans. These plans can be pursued with full force after 13 May 2011. I request all people reading this mail to give me suggestions or advice at jdfparunjhaatgmail.com at their earliest, but before that date.

This may seem somewhat off-topic to some of you, but I get lots of emails from users who are confused about their career, unhappy with their jobs and unsure of what’s next in their professional life.

This post on a so-called ‘quarter-life crisis’ sums it up so well. Although written in the context of the western society / lifestyle — lots of bits an pieces could apply to the indian context as well.

It was too good not to share with all of you.

• What would be your single biggest advice to fresh college graduates in India ?
• IT still remains preferred career choice for Indian engineering graduates
• Indian ecosystem needs that one spark

Comments

• July 8, 2009, Bobby commented: I must visit this place
• July 25, 2009, iovite commented: Hey! Your blog is very nice. Visit my blog now.. I forward ur blog to all of my friendss… My blog is about my creativity . My hobbies are writing quotations of types Success,.. Include all my hobbies in my blog.. Visit now and enjoy my creativity . please leave a comment . If u enter my blog you can see the web design sample,free downlaod,online money,.. How can activate ads in my blog? Please tell.
• July 29, 2009, arun commented: I enjoyed reading the comments here, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=679791
• August 3, 2009, rabi gupta commented: Hi Pranav, Where are you for past some time? Is everything fine?
• September 18, 2011, Jessie Gill commented: Punjab just thebest

Building (read- coding and designing) a website or a social network is the easy part.  How you build a loyal, active community of users is the hard bit.

Here’s an interesting post that provides an awesome example – definitely worth a read.

• Internet Entrepreneurs – Make something People will buy
• 5 Hacks for Startup Hiring in India
• Too many Ideas ?

In an insightful post, Deap Ubhi, co-founder and CEO of Burrp, says that India is not yet ready for online or mobile entrepreneurship.

this is where india diverges a bit from many other countries that are currently cultivating some great startup ideas. why is india different? my theory is simply this: the delta (or difference) between what many consider to be india’s market size and its addressable market size is vast.

the mobile market in india is closing in on just below half a billion. that’s almost twice the entire population of the united states. how many of those mobile subscribers are on prepaid plans? how many of them are below the poverty line? how many of them are unemployed? qualitatively, how many of them are just struggling to get a 4th grade education, can’t afford medicine for their illnesses, and frankly, don’t give a shit about anything except making sure their mobile allows them to talk to their circle

The post definitely gives us some food for thought. Deap has had the experience of running Burrp for about 3+ years now and it’d be foolish to dismiss his opinion as lame.

I had touched upon a similar topic way back in 2007 — even though India’s potential seems huge (1 Billion), actual figures are pretty dismal.

• Does it matter where people went to college ?
• Naming your Internet startup
• Entrepreneurship in India – hype or happening ?

Comments

• June 19, 2009, rabi gupta commented: Yes, Pranav that's somewhat the fact. We usually brag about total Indian Mobile Users and also say that total Internet population would increase as more and more users start accessing net from their Mobiles. The fact however remains that almost 80% of the Mobile users who will use Internet on mobile will be using it as a tool to stay in touch with whatever they are missing while they are on move. But in fact, the opportunity for Mobile VAS is still huge. Airtel has consistently innovated different services which are first of their kind in the World. So my verdict-- Online Entrepreneurs still need to wait till real desktop internet users number increase. Mobile Entrepreneurs still have loads of opportunities in Mobile VAS related areas.
• June 19, 2009, viveck commented: I dont consider that a great post. Its always easy for companies to estimate the size of the market and take a pie of it, rather when they work the bottom up way, they will find their estimates are more reliable. Further, I am amazed if entrepreneurs make plan without considering the essential factors such as Average revenue per user, churn rate, (whatever is required that is ) before estimating market size. If they dont thats clearly their fault and if a VC cant raise these fundamental questions, he might as well reconsider investment as a career!
• June 19, 2009, Aji commented: I disagreed about the web entrepreneurs part .... I thought I will add my 2 cents here ... seoforclients.com/blog/marketing/india-is-ready-for-web-entrepreneurs.html
• June 19, 2009, Rohan commented: First of all, I think the term entrepreneur is used very loosely in India. I have seen "startups" with only an idea,a website and no revenue model qualifying as a "startup" in big-name competitions. I wonder if we need a change-of-definition in Indian context. Most of the times, I have seen "startups" in a rat race : "Hey! my code is better than yours", "hey! I got mentioned on so-and-so A list blog", etc. None of them ever come back to tell what kind of money they have made. "Entrepreneurs" here are more focused on displaying their coding skills rather than monetizing skills. It does not take even a pint of brain to come out with idea, but it takes much more to come with something that will actually sell. And this is where they loose. Web and mobile entrepreneurs are more focused on accessory services rather than fundamental or core services for which there is already a demand.
• June 19, 2009, Rohit commented: if this guy is the ceo of some company ....... god save that company.... i dont see why you call it insightful.... the language itself ticked me off....... and the last time i checked burrp it looked an exact replica of yelp...... am i wrong or had any one else seen this ???
• June 19, 2009, Rajat commented: The article is very insigtful. Coming from a person who has a lot of experience in running his own company it really urges you to think in that direction. I personally believe services that are 'Add on' should be avoided instead services that can be included in day to day activity and solve a pain point can earn well in India. I recently read an article on SiliconIndia where they mentioned that most profitable web companies in India were those that were running subscription businesses e.g Naukri.com other b2c companies that get money from advertising are not making much.Mostly if they do get bought over then they make some money. Also indian web startups should target people abroad as well (there is no harm in doing that, i am not sure about tax laws / or any legal stuff though).
• June 19, 2009, Yelper commented: Yelp is barely profitable in the US where a strictly ads-based revenue has historically proven it's worth (unlike India). Burrp was copied from Yelp for the Indian market. I think this guy thought he could be the early bird and get the worm. But the Indian internet & mobile market is so different from the US. How many people in India eat at restaurants and drink at bars enough to make this type of site a hit. Internet users in India still mostly use service like Naukri, email sites, and marriage sites. If you want a piece of the Indian market, fix the infrastructure.
• June 19, 2009, pranav commented: boy - do you seem ticked off these days or what...
• June 19, 2009, pranav commented: rohit, deap has had the experience of being an entrepreneur for the past 3+ years in the Indian internet landscape - so I'd definitely give some value to his thoughts -- after all, he's basing it on his experience. besides, i dont see anything that should tick you off..
• June 19, 2009, Rohit commented: I would more value to thought coming from the original......Jeremy Stoppelman rather than hearing from someone who copied it ...... read deap's other posts about the language.....
• June 20, 2009, Rohan commented: no yaar, its just that I am seeing more of stupid services that one would ever pay for using. And yeah, I am speaking mostly about the web startups....not manufacturing, etc. Making money has to be the aim of any business.
• June 25, 2009, Santhanam commented: Dear Pranav, Replicating any U.S/Foreign Business model in India without any thinking about the viability in Indian Context is really hazardous to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs has first listen to the ground(Indian Ground of course) & offer services which is fine tuned to to indian customer's Requirements & Environment. For eg., IRCTC has done quite successfully pioneered online train ticket booking. Similarly other private players like ClearTrip has offered better UI to train ticket booking which is a Hit. But when we try to book Tatkal Tickets Online (5 days before journey, the quota is open for booking at 8 AM), all the online services fail. Railways Officials / Travel Agents advice people to go to Railway Reservation Office for Tatkal Ticket Booking. Also there are inconvenience/disadvantage in booking wait listed train tickets online. But also just check how many people are checking their PNR status using their mobile phones(Even people who are not net savvy also use it). At the end of the day, whether a service is online/mobile or offline does not matter as long as the service offers good utility/value to customers. A comment from me : If one Indian director remakes Hollywood film by copying everything, frame by frame(names, sequence, dialogue etc/) , that film will not go well with the audience. But the same director, gets the concept of story in that same Hollywood film and adds masala items( songs, dance, indian names,sentiments etc) which the audience will be able to identify with himself and his environment, then that film will be a successful hit. Whichever be the idea, it needs to be thought in the Indian Context and whether the idea can be sold to the Indian Customer, then only the enterprise will succeed. Thank You With Regards Santhanam
• June 29, 2009, pranav commented: thats true -- there's no contention about that. but i guess the point that deap is trying to make is about the potential market size. its just too small in India. so - size and context -- both matter.
• July 11, 2009, Sridhar Turaga (open2save.com) commented: Among other things affordability of computers and internet access may be holding back growth. Mobiles started at Rs. 16 per minute and handsets that cost 10s of thousands ... and effectively stayed out of reach of every one. I suspect we would have never reached the 100s of MNs of subscribers we boast today, if they stayed like that. A similar revolution may be required to get computers and internet to reach masses ... need cheapest computers and internet in the world !! Given revenue models are often unclear with most internet businesses (Facebook is just $500 MN today?) and usage online is lower in India to begin with ... it is hard to break the chick and egg of content vs. consumers first. Blended models (offline or non-internet channels) rather than pure internet / pure mobile ... may be more successful in the next 4-5 years. Even justdial gets at least 5-6 times more calls than visitors online ... and "probably" 80% of their revenue from the phone service. Not surprisingly burrp now has a magazine and I'd guess the advertising revenue from that may be much more attractive than online today. Don't MoneyControl or Yatra ride a lot on the power of TV18?
• July 13, 2009, Rajat commented: Hi Sridhar, As you mentioned 'may be more successful in the next 4-5 years. ', i also agree to this. Something in the history of web also tells me that people who are the first movers in that market (i.e. after 4-5 years) will have the strong footing in the web business at that time.So what i meant to say is even if burrp has a magazine now, they must continue their website and hold on to their web business for next few years, nobody knows tomorrow.
• July 24, 2009, bhogi commented: well, mr Deap Ubhi - when will india will be ready in your opinion?
• August 13, 2009, Ganesh commented: It is going to be a while before Informational based websites to become a viable business model in India
• August 16, 2009, vageesh commented: I really don't think that market is not ready yet, rather i believe that market is just PERFECT now to enter into web based and mobile based business, its just about what kind of business you provide and how you provide, if you are meeting the demands of the customer or solving an existing problem, Why not?? You will certainly a Hit.. So i feel focus should be on solving a problem and providing quality services, that way customer's faith will strengthen and online market will mature.
• February 23, 2010, Vicky Pradhan commented: Give online time to grow, It has large potential in India. Simply consider India’s large middle class population base, one of the highest middle class section in the world, which will be the key in generating the leap for online and mobile businesses. Regards Vicky Pradhan bharatbuy.com

With 43% of votes, Information Technology still remains the preferred career choice for Indian engineering graduates of the class of 2010, as per a survey by Nielsen.

IT is followed by automobile, telecom, energy – oil & gas, infrastructure/real-estate and power sectors.

Some additional interesting tidbits from the survey:

• Ratan Tata is the most popular role model for the 2010 graduating class
• Students perceive nanotechnology (12%), IT services (11%), Power (9%), oil & gas (8%), telecom (6%) as the top 5 ‘industries of the future’
• IIT students consider energy/oil & gas, nanotechnology and finance as the top ‘industries of the future’
• half of the 2010 graduating class intend to move out of their first job in the first 3 years
• 51% cite higher studies as reason for leaving their first job
• 69% of the 51% intending to leave their first job for higher studies intend to do an MBA
• Students are willing to continue with their employer if they employer pays well (39%), they have a good job satisfaction (34%), if they have a good work environment (32%)

You might wonder why this survey even deserves a post.

In my opinion, this survey is important because it gives a very good background on what factors graduates weigh in while looking for a job, while leaving a job etc. Not to mention that entrepreneurship doesnt even figure as a career option anywhere in the survey. The fresh graduating class is where we actually need to sow the seeds for entrepreneurship – that is the best time when they can afford to take risks as entrepreneurs. When such a high percentage of students sees an IT + MBA as the holy grail, there needs to be a means to show the benefits that they might get from being a hands on entrepreneur instead of attending a b-school. Last, but not the least, this data will also be helpful to startups to attract and retain talent.

via release

• What would be your single biggest advice to fresh college graduates in India ?
• Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive by IIT Kharagpur
• Vellore Institute of Technology Technology Business Incubator

Comments

• June 11, 2009, Rohan commented: +MBA ? We are forgetting that over 95% of the people, whether IT grads or not, need "security", "stability", "guaranteed pay cheque" and all that. Add to it, the kind of lifestyle they mostly live and those fat loan installments! Also, an MBA from a high-profile is the only respectable MBA. Even this is arguable because not all IIM-A b-grads are that worthy. And most of these people who leave IT for MBA goto 2nd or 3rd rate MBA "Management Colleges" which we never heard before. For these guys, MBA is just an additional qualification like B.E. or B. Tech that keeps them ahead of the "other" candidates at the interview. Not all MBA is magic, some is black magic :D A few people boast of doube MBA, but when you ask them the college, some never-heard name crops up :D
• July 4, 2009, Ankit Bansal commented: Indian job & education scene is vastly different from the US. Graduates from second grade colleges are considered no better than 12th class passouts. Whereas in developed countries students can hope to get work straight out of school or polytechnics. In India, an MBA is a must to even get your Resume screened for interview. If only employers become more open about hiring graduates, students can take more risks. Of course it can be argued that too many students rushing for MBA provides enough supply of fresh MBAs every year due to which employers are not willing to hire plain graduates. Another important point to be noted is that US is a highly flexible and open culture. People from all sorts of educational backgrounds can do a particular job. In India, try securing an IT job with a commerce/arts background. Even if you were top of the class and have all important IT certifications from the likes of GNIIT and Aptech, you will have a hard time getting a mediocre job. Indians surely have the talent and the guts to take risks, but risks are just too much in our country.

Continuing on my earlier post on startup ideas, here’s another one, although not necessarily technology related.

Start a company that provides handyman, plumbing, general repair etc services to people.

Before you dismiss the it as crazy, hear me out.

In my experience, getting a miscellaneous home repair job done in India is a nightmare. You need to first go hunting for a handyman or repairman or electrician or plumber. Haggle about the price and then decide upon an appointment time and wait for the guy to show up. And for reasons unknown, these guys are almost always late and never able to keep the scheduled time. If you have taken a day off from work or are working from home, it translates to lost work, time and money for you. You need to repeatedly check in with the guy when he’s gonna show up. Its almost as if you are at the mercy of these guys. And that just sucks.

So here’s what you can do:

Start a one place shop that will provide all kinds of repair services – electrical, plubming, general repair etc.

Your goal and USP should be to buffer the customer from bad service.  Period.

Encourage and instill value of timeliness and customer satisfaction in your employees.  By offering a superior customer experience and all-in-one shop, you could also get away with charging a little premium over others. People will happily pay a little more than have to deal with the whims and fancies of local repairman.

And its a win-win for the handymen, electricians, repairmen as well – they get to work as a salaried employee (stable pay) rather than an uncertain income.

Thoughts, feedback welcome.

• Startup Idea # 2
• Internet Entrepreneurs – Make something People will buy
• Bootstrapper’s guide to starting an office in Bangalore – I

Comments

• May 28, 2009, Rajat commented: Another good idea. Collecting people who will work for you and retaining them can be a pain but no doubt its a good idea.
• May 28, 2009, Manu commented: There is a company that does this. A bit expensive. Can't seem to remember their name. But they are doing pretty well. If i find the name will post here.
• May 28, 2009, Manu commented: Got it .. http://www.handiman.co.in/
• May 29, 2009, snigdha commented: superb idea.
• May 29, 2009, Himanshu commented: There is a company in Bangalore named handiman, which does that....
• May 29, 2009, Accentor India commented: Good post, It's better for start up like us. We have got great motivation from this post. We accept such posts in the future ahead. All the best!!!
• May 29, 2009, Accentor India commented: It is a fantastic idea from google to indian market. by taking the perspective of internet penetration google will shortly receive greatest response from Indian consumers. It is also making people more interested towards Internet Search. When people will spend time into internet then online advertising market will grow.
• May 29, 2009, Deepesh commented: Fantastic idea, i had some research on this here are few stumbling blocks and some advantages. I would be the power of SMS here may work the most! Problems, These skilled crafstmen are not fixed in one location.(migrant labour) They have a tendency to directly negotiate and close the sale, therefore to be part of panel we have to make our costs as low as say Rs 10 a month for the person to be listed and it means having alteast 10,000 people to earn Rs 100,000 a month. Overheads are far too much. People may not belive the costs Advantages USP - You can get good work done cheap - You can also provide some sort of warranty on workmanship to take care of these people chaning residences fast (migrant labour) - Typically corporates / hsgn societies and other places can be contracted social benefits to all craftsman who would be part of it - Can add more specialised skilled people to increase rates - Can add more services, - may open job opportunities in smaller towns Where would the business come from? Internet Phone Who would be our users? Corporates Retailers / Market Associations Hsgn Society Individuals Any takers, deepeshkris [at] gmail [dot] com
• May 29, 2009, nikunj commented: Hi I had thought of a similar concept but there are certain issues in addition to the retention of labour and cost. -- it is difficult to fix a price point before examination of the problem. eg. a tap that is leaking might be because it is loose or broken or valve. the examination is done by the craftsman that goes there and then again you are out of loop -- inventory management if you want to provide the spare parts also. if that is left to the craftsman visiting the household, the chances of him keeping a cut on buying spare parts and compromising on the quality are high. if the flush of my house is not working, i will give a call to the solution provider. i dont know what is the problem. the solution providers sends the plumber. the plumber examines the flush and says xyz is to be replaced. i have a choice to either go to the market ( which is inconvenience to me) and buy the particular spare part or send the plumber. if the plumber goes, there are chances of him overpricing or getting low quality stuff. if the solution provider maintains the inventory of the parts, it involves high capital.
• May 29, 2009, Rohan commented: The problem with this idea that your life is "short". After one or two cycles of incidences of "business", you could be thrown out of the picture! Real life example: I bought my desktop computer in March 2003 from a dealer. Since then, it has run into problems quite a few times. The first time, I had to call the dealer and he would send his person. While leaving, that person gave his contact no. to me. Now, when I need help, I do not call the dealer, I directly call the person on his mobile. So all the service charges that I pay go completely into his pocket without a fraction to the dealer. Also, these laborers are so low paid that they will think times over handing you over the commission or "listing" fee. If you want, just go to your local hardware shop and ask him to send a plumber/electrician. The person will be at your door step within minutes. What we are not realizing is that there already exists a strong offline "network" and they are already getting enough business that way. So mostly they won't bother being listing with you if you would charge them. And what will the volume of service consumed anyways? The last time I called a plumber was 6 months back, and the electrician about 12 months back. On both these occasions combined, I paid less than Rs. 300. How frequently will a family need a plumber or electrician? Corporates? They already have these people at hand.
• May 30, 2009, ashutosh commented: Hi, even i had thought of this sometimes back. The essence is that middleclass2.0 is not hesitant to shell out a few bucks for comfort, guarantee of quality work, and hassle free dealing with people doing laborious tasks (plumber/gardener). Additionally, my plan included setting up a single-point contactcentre number taking up all requests on phone. On phone you can request for plumber,car-wash,fetching milk or haldi from shop,taking your dog out, send a parcel to courier guy, or escort your old parents to station airport (yes),car-wash etc . The sense was that you are organizing a person's life and you are acting as a Secretary to a family, just for a service charge for misc srvices (monthly/pay-per -service). I have a detailed business-plan prepared for this. If anyone interested in NCR, i may be interested to hook-up for a chat. -ashutosh
• May 31, 2009, kushal parmar commented: I want to startup a KPO firm in market research,data research,equity research & other such areas. Plz can anyone suggest me how to explore opportunities in this space..? If anyone has idea,plz mail me back we can workout together. mail-kushalparmar@live.com
• June 1, 2009, pranav commented: you dont list plumbers / electricians etc -- you keep them on a payroll..so, they are actually your employees..
• June 1, 2009, Rohan commented: Its very difficult to employ these people in a real-sense. At most, its most profitable to call them free-lancers. I doubt if there will be enough work to keep them employed. And how much money the work would bring in.
• June 3, 2009, FirstBallSix commented: You are getting this one wrong. The numbers will not add up and it doesnt make sense to do this. Again you will have a cost vs service quality tradeoff.
• June 3, 2009, Pradeep commented: Hi This is nice idea. Hope to see more players in this field -Pradeep
• June 5, 2009, Anindya commented: I tend to second Rohan; our team had progressed far in launching; building awareness and subscriptions froma couple of South Delhi colonies where we were planning on launching; creating the netwrok of service providers and all that... Our model was a monthly subsrciption based model and our trouble was not so much the market acceptance but, fiding a steady workforce, ensuring quality and security when these guys visit workplaces. Also, what Rohn says is very true. All the colonies have a strong network of these handymen. And, all neighbourhoods have a services directory where the names are published/ advertised. BTW, these plumbers and electricians are entrepreneurs and do not like working for others :-)
• June 5, 2009, Anindya commented: Ashutosh, Sometime late last year, me and a couple of other guys had done a lot of "research" on this. I will be happy to share my perspective. Mail me (remove the spcaes!) C A N I N D Y A at Z O H O dot COM
• June 8, 2009, vikas shah commented: Take optimum use of manpower .Plumbers ,electricians can be asked to deliver KIRANA or do sth else in part time.Win Win situation.
• June 8, 2009, Rohan commented: The grocery store has enough people to do this. My local 15x8 ft grocery has atleast 5 people working at any given time of the day.
• June 15, 2009, Biraj Desai commented: Hi, Reference to your business plan you can call me on 9820211306. Would love to chat up on the same. Infact regardless the negative, I am already in process of setting this whole AMC jazz. Inputs from your end will be very helpful . Cheers
• June 15, 2009, Biraj Desai commented: Hi, Reference to your business plan you can call me on 9820211306. Would love to chat up on the same. Infact regardless the negative, I am already in process of setting this whole AMC jazz. Inputs from your end will be very helpful . Cheers
• June 15, 2009, Handyman in Jacksonville commented: Your post is very well crafted and I have learned. I
• July 16, 2009, Kevalsing commented: Nice idea, had thought of this sometime in the past. That time i thought of all these pros and cons. Running a business is all about -managing people.(any business needs this skill) or you can have people who manage this for you - Problem of loosing business after 2-3 interactions. This is the problem of any business. What i liked here is -The unorganised sector will get organised. - This kind of service is really needed in metros.
• August 15, 2010, Balakrishna G commented: That's good indea on above discussed business plan. We should also keep in mind in today's competitive world on financiers. Most importantly when we require funds to start any business, our credit-worthiness is being checked and rejected most of the time if CBIL does not reflect good credit history of our. I would request all to discuss in this topic on my blog site at www.article-live.com Balakrishna
• June 27, 2011, Chand commented: I want to open a lak banglce and handicraft shop in UAE any one tell me whats the process and how much investment and i also want a partner contact +919887690816

This guest post is written by Swaroop C H, co-founder of a startup called IONLAB. He writes regularly on his blog at www.swaroopch.com. His company has announced their upcoming product called “Track Every Coin” which can be best described as “Your personal finance in a keychain.” Check it out at www.trackeverycoin.com.

I always used to find the concept of “innovation” very fuzzy, especially when the big managers talk about it. The best explanation I’ve read is “Innovation is the by-product of a well-executed product.” But maybe that’s equally fuzzy as well.

A few years ago, when I was working at Adobe, I got to attend the famous internal “Dev Summit” which is a fantastic event that happens every year. At this event, I got to attend a talk on the “vectors of innovation” by Geoffrey Moore. This talk is related to his book “Dealing with Darwin”, so for those who have already read that book, please do chip in with your thoughts on the takeaways from the book in the comments section. For the rest, I have jotted down here my notes from that talk.

First, he exploded the myth that innovation in itself is valuable and that innovation is the same kind in every company.

He explained why innovation is important to a company:

Innovation is valuable only if it helps us achieve competitive advantage. Its greatest value is when it differentiates us from our competitors sufficiently that customers prefer our offers to theirs and will pay a premium to support that preference. It also has value when it helps neutralize their competitive advantages over us and when it helps us improve our own productivity and thus profitability. But we should realize there is a lot of innovation going on today in our company that meets none of these criteria, that is in fact creating waste. Managing innovation successfully requires us to redirect that energy back into economically rewarding outcomes.

The economic argument in favor of innovation focuses on pricing power. Without innovation offerings become more and more like each other. They commoditize. As they do so, customers are able to play one vendor off against the next to get a lower price. Over time the market stabilizes at prices at or below cost, creating returns for investors below the cost of capital, causing investment to flee the marketplace. By contrast, when innovation is applied, offers become more and more differentiated from one another, leading to different ones becoming the preferred choice for different market segments, giving those vendors pricing power within those segments. In this scenario the market stabilizes at prices well above cost, creating returns above the cost of capital, attracting more investment into the marketplace.

The fundamental principle that drives this argument is that when innovation creates differentiation, it creates attractive economic returns.

This brings up the next important point:

Focus and prioritization. Those are the issues when it comes to innovation for differentiation. If we do not break away from the herd, we have wasted our budget. In order to break away, we must overcome risk reduction mentality and lack of corporate alignment. Neither is a natural act.

Now that we know why innovation is important, we have to figure out how to focus on what kind of innovation.

Geoffrey describes what he calls “innovation vectors” – The idea that each type of innovation can be thought of as a strategic direction for investment that competes for resources with alternative vectors.

Here are some of the example innovation vectors that he describes:

• Product Leadership
  • Disruptive innovation (Google)
  • Application innovation (Amazon)
  • Product innovation (HP)
  • Platform innovation (Microsoft)
• Customer Intimacy
  • Line Extension innovation (Apple, Autodesk)
  • Design innovation (Apple, Ideo)
  • Marketing innovation (Salesforce.com)
  • Experiential innovation (Facebook)
• Operational Excellence
  • Value engineering innovation (âfreemiumâ model, open source)
  • Integration innovation (Microsoft Office)
  • Process innovation
  • Value migration innovation

It’s an art to be good enough on many innovation vectors and being great at specific innovation vectors. This is what will differentiate and “make” the future of the company.

The “good enough” vectors are for hygiene if it’s bad, people will crib. If you’re good, nobody will pay attention. The “great” vectors is where you make your mark as well as maintain your discipline. Choosing a primary vector is key. And avoid diffusion of innovation that leads to no returns. Once you choose, align.

And when you make that decision, you have to constantly repurpose from Context to Core:

Core as we traditionally have defined it applies to processes that differentiate your offers to create competitive advantage leading to customer preference. Context refers to all other processes. The overwhelming bulk of all work is context, not core. The goal for managing context is productivity, freeing up resources to repurpose for core. To this traditional definition we have added an extension that applies to markets. Here core means a market is in play, with market leadership up for grabs, and context means its structure has been determined, the market share pecking order set. Again, the best strategy is to extract resources from context markets, even ones that are highly competitive, and repurpose them for core. Needless to say, this is not for the faint of heart, but it is behavior that Darwin rewards.

To explore more on this subject, please refer the “Dealing with Darwin” book website.

• NYT on slow pace of innovation in India
• Some startup events and more
• Where is the Indian fool.com ?

Comments

• May 31, 2009, rabi gupta commented: I haven't read the book but I don't know why I found this a bit confusing to understand. May be I need to read the book first :)!!!
• June 2, 2009, Aniket commented: Maybe the waste consists of having the same features like ur competition.... if so then neutralization shud also be counted along with it.....coz even being on par wont give u any edge.
• June 2, 2009, swaroop commented: @Rabi Hehe, it's just a long-winded way of saying "find your focus", but when it comes up to prioritization for your company, I'm sure you'll find it useful to think on these lines. @Aniket Well, there is a thin line between waste and neutralization - if you know for sure that it doesn't add value to the user, it is definitely a waste. But whether you want to add something to neuralize or consider it a waste is a judgement call.

HeadStart Foundation has partnered with Centre for Electronics Development and Technology (CEDT) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to launch a business incubator. The focus areas of the incubator are:

* Personal Area Networks: Multimedia delivery, home security, healthcare etc.

* Automotive Systems: Guidance systesms, entertainment etc.

* Low cost embedded computing: Communications, Access control, transactional systems

* Environmental monitoring: energy management, safety & security, disaster management systems

* Clean Energy Systems: Energy management / reduction, distributed clean energy generation etc.

The first batch of companies will be admitted in June 2009.

You can access the site here.

• The startups that demoed at HeadStart

Comments

• April 30, 2009, Sartups's Blog commented: CEDT - IISc launches business incubator in partnership with HeadStart Foundation... <p><a target="_blank" href="http://headstart.in/">HeadStart Foundation</a> has partnered with Centre for Electronics Development and Technology (CEDT) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to launch a business ...
• December 10, 2009, VLSI Training Institute commented: A very good start to develop new technologies in field of advanced digital system design. We at Indian Institute at VLSI Design Train Graduates from Electronics engineering branch in VLSI Design Techniques in Cadence tools and ASIC flow.

More often than not, you hear all the great, fairy tale endings of how an entrepreneur made millions by selling his startup etc.

However, seldom do folks discuss the emotional and physical toll it takes on the entrepreneur.

Here’s a great blog post by Jason Nazar, founder CEO of DocStoc.com, who describes some of the downsides of being an entrepreneur. Its an amazing read – do give it a dekko.

• Read, learn and imbibe from the guru
• Frugality tenets for Startups
• Why do you want to be an entrepreneur ?

Comments

• April 21, 2009, Rohan commented: Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur because they think it gives them real freedom, no-boss, exciting, challenging nature of work, etc. But it is very difficult to succeed(=make great money). Not all entrepreneurs enjoy that kind of money, 95-97% of the fail. Only the minuscule fraction succeeds.
• April 21, 2009, Rama Vadakattu commented: Thanks for sharing. Yes it is true.The kind of stress,solitude that one has to face in the initial stages of company is really challenging.
• April 21, 2009, pranav commented: glad you liked it.
• June 28, 2010, laurel commented: For more, check out: http://blog.playplanit.com/2010/06/28/downsides-to-running-your-own-business/
• October 15, 2011, Jessie Gill commented: Gippy Grewal

When it comes to Indian entrepreneurship, the roster of current entrepreneurs as well as wanna-preneurs is dominated by men. Women entrepreneurs find it challenging to get a footing and to be taken seriously by others.

The Indian Women Entrepreneur Network (IWEN) aims to support women by encouraging entrepreneurship, helping them getting access to resources. It was started in Feb 2009, and currently has 50 plus members. The First of the monthly IWEN meets is being held on April 2nd, Thursday, 6pm at the Indiranagar Club, Bangalore.The goal is to connect with all the smart women on the IWEN, learn something new, and have fun ! There are also 2 surprise guest speakers, speaking on divergent topics of interest.

If you are a women entrepreneur or an aspiring to be one, do checkout their LinkedIn group and attend the meetup if possible.

In addition to the above group, TiE has also started an initiative – Stree Shakti in an effort to promote, encourage and help Indian women entrepreneurs.

Comments

• April 14, 2009, For Technical Information commented: Lets see how it gona work out....No Comments
• May 28, 2009, Ekta Jain commented: Women always required support in every field,even to live her life or to survive on this earth.However she is the living being bringing life on earth. I appreciate the efforts but it really hurts, why do we need support? Good Luck
• May 28, 2009, Priyanka commented: no contact in mumbai? I would like to get in touch
• May 19, 2010, Sienna Richardson commented: i am working hard to be a good Entrepreneur in online services. I also attend online seminars to sharpen may skills.*.,
• July 18, 2010, Maryam Kaur commented: I always wanted to become a very successful entrepreneur so i studied to become one.-`,
• July 30, 2010, Sushma commented: I am interested in starting a new business in a rural area. Can anyone join or suggest me?
• August 16, 2010, caroline commented: Hi sushma, i would be interested, please let me know the details
• August 31, 2010, Jonathan Allen commented: the best way to become a millionaire is to become an entrepreneur'-*
• October 11, 2010, Autumn Washington commented: being an entrepreneur can give you a good deal of money, *.~
• October 22, 2010, Interactive Whiteboards : commented: being an entrepreneur is one of the ways you can easily achieve financial freedom;,;
• December 13, 2010, Laser Etching Machine commented: being an entrepreneur opened up lots of business leads on my line of work, i like to make money both online and offline ,*"
• May 27, 2011, Ravi commented: Would like participation in a survey about 'INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT FOR WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN KARNATAKA'. The survey intends to evaluate the support schemes which are supposedly available for women entrepreneurs. if interest in -email : ravisjcc@yahoo.co.in
• May 27, 2011, Ravi commented: Wanted to know if anybody is interested in a survey about ‘INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT FOR WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN KARNATAKA’. The survey intends to evaluate the support schemes which are supposedly available for women entrepreneurs. if interest in -email : ravisjcc@yahoo.co.in
• June 15, 2011, Preeti Mittal commented: Women don't need support, they only need motivation and encouragement to startup a business, which is required by any entrepreneur. I got this motivation from my husband and family. Thanks to all! CEO BlueBit Systems Online Marketing and Website Development
• October 15, 2011, Jessie Gill commented: Punjabi Downloads
• October 16, 2011, deshpande neeta commented: Hi priti, I am working as a CHB lecturer in commerce college. I am M.Com.B.Ed., M.Phil.,LL.M. Having lot of ambitions in life to become a successful entrepreneur by generating seklf employment in village . But need help for encouragement motivation.....
• October 24, 2011, Namrata commented: Hi Neeta, Could we connect to discuss this? I have some ideas as well. Namrata

Economic Times Power of Ideas has announced their first shortlist of applicants.

This first shortlist consists of 1000 applicants. Manu has done some quick analysis of the results. A few key highlights:

• Maximum number of applicants from Bangalore (202), with Mumbai (138) and Delhi (115) a close 2nd and 3rd respectively
• In terms of age distribution, 357 applicants are in their 30′s, followed by those in 20′s (315)
• Only 126 applicants 25 years or younger made the cut

You can view the rest of his analysis on his blog.

The one thing that I didnt like about the shortlist is that it publicly exposes the birthdates of applicants — this kind of data is supposed to be kept private.

• Economic Times launches Power of Ideas to promote entrepreneurship

Comments

• March 30, 2009, Aditya S. Chauhan commented: Hi there, Very Well done Manu..!! Just finished going through your blog and the analysis report. I am one of the selected in the 1000 list and was thinking of sitting and analysing the same. Good that you did it my dear. Saved so much of time and i think you did it much better than i could have. Cheers..!! Aditya S. Chauhan P.S. - Do visit our site and i shall look forward to follow up this page for comments and feedbacks. :-)
• March 30, 2009, Aditya S. Chauhan commented: Aditya S. Chauhan says: March 30, 2009 at 5:57 pm Hi there, Very Well done Manu..!! Just finished going through your blog and the analysis report. I am one of the selected in the 1000 list and was thinking of sitting and analysing the same. Good that you did it my dear. Saved so much of time and i think you did it much better than i could have. Cheers..!! Aditya S. Chauhan Cornucopia Weekend Planners (We 'turn-on' your weekends..!!) www.cornucopiaindia.com P.S. - Do visit our site and i shall look forward to follow up this page for comments and feedbacks.
• March 30, 2009, Narayanan Mummidi commented: Hi Mr Manu, Kudos to your efforts in bringing to light a very interesting & indepth analysis of Short list candidates announced by Economic Times -The Power of Ideas. Very useful content for the Participants aswell as to onlooking Public. Hats Off 2 u. With best regards Narayanan Mummidi
• April 4, 2009, Adhishwar commented: Find a device to generate cloud
• November 18, 2009, aryan malik commented: this is immense work on drive of economic times. if you may send top 50 ideas it will be great help for me aryan malik
• October 15, 2011, Jessie Gill commented: Punjabi Downloads
• December 13, 2011, Hens commented: Hi Mr Manu, Kudos to your efforts in bringing to light a very interesting & indepth analysis of Short list candidates announced by Economic Times -The Power of Ideas. Very useful content for the Participants aswell as to onlooking Public. Hats Off 2 u. With best regards Narayanan Mummidi Reply

Given today’s extraordinary economic circumstances and the resulting bleak job market, what should fresh Indian college graduates do ? Seek a professional job and stay put or venture out on their own ?

Whatever little interest they might have in entrepreneurship is sure to be tested by today’s turbulent times.

In an effort to seek out different opinions, I contacted several successful entrepreneurs to see what advice they had to offer. Below are some of the responses I received:

Rajesh Jain from Emergic:

The thing which holds us back from doing many things is the FEAR of FAILURE. So, ask yourself: what would you if you were not afraid ?

Sanjeev Bikhchandani from Naukri:

Get some work experience before you start your own company. Learn in a bigger better organization first.

Faisal Farooqui from Mouthshut:

My single biggest advice to college grads would be to work on their communication skills and ability to work in a team.
If this is worked upon, everything else will fall in place.

Sramana Mitra:

Sramana is vocal about entrepreneurship as a viable career option for folks graduating in today’s market.

I’m not in the same league as the folks above, so I’ll refrain from adding my own input. However, there’s one advice from Chris Wanstrath (GitHub co-founder) that I really liked. I quote him below:

Do whatever you want.
Don’t take VC because Twitter did. Don’t piss off investors because 37signals likes to. Do whatever you want, whatever works best for you, what makes you the most comfortable and seems like the best idea. Do what you love.

It has always been my experience that the more people you ask advice the more confused you become. And that’s not just constrained to career advice, but even otherwise.  Every individual you ask will offer their own perspective, which has been formed based on their circumstances, their experiences and their personality. The more perspectives you seek out, the more conflicting suggestions you will get, confusing you even more. In the end – do what your gut feeling says.

What do you think ? If you were to advise fresh college graduates, what would your advice to them be ?

• IT still remains preferred career choice for Indian engineering graduates
• Vellore Institute of Technology Technology Business Incubator
• Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive by IIT Kharagpur

Comments

• March 10, 2009, An Advisor commented: Be remain single :)
• March 10, 2009, pranav commented: Sounds funny, but so true.. hope my wife doesnt read this ;-)
• March 10, 2009, Add wiser commented: Dont fake your resume' ..... it takes one minute to find out...
• March 10, 2009, Sachin commented: I am 100% agreed with Chris..Do whatever you want. Because you can never blame others for what they have advised to you as it is your life and future and you should think about it yourself. Although some good advice is always useful but still its you and your decisions which matters in a long run. The best thing I follows is " Whatever you do, Do it excellent."
• March 12, 2009, satyarup siddhanta commented: If you already have a product plan... which is robust... go ahead with it... whether you are a fresher or experienced doesnt count ... but if your first thought is to become an enterpreneur no matter in what way... and you dont know in which way you want to become one or you dont have any area in your mind to venture for, its always better to gain some experience wherein you can have a better understanding on various areas,. Moreover you will tend to meet a lot many people and you will be able to identify many many areas, areas less ventured .
• March 17, 2009, Birinder Singh commented: My advice will be go for a Job and whenever you have your first customer, then go for your own venture. Its very important to secure funds or customer before starting.

One of the oft asked questions is — How do I get my startup idea ?

While many of the startups are founded by entrepreneurs to solve problems they personally run into, startup ‘ideas’ may not come so obviously to others. So, while some have already found that idea, some are still suffering from idea overload and several others have no clue on how to seek out ideas.

So, how do you seek out ideas ?  Specifically, how do you seek out startup ideas for the Indian market ?

Why do I specifically say the ‘Indian market’ ? Well, because the Indian online market poses some unique challenges.

First, in terms of size.

The Indian online audience is really small. Internet and more specifically broadband adoption is still in its infancy. Majority of the Internet usage happens from cyber cafes and workplace. Not to mention broadband adoption is skewed mainly across the more IT savvy urban areas.

Second in terms of the Indian online usage patterns.

Bollywood, news, stocks, cricket, matrimony, jobs, astrology still dominate the online Indian usage pattern. Indians are heavy consumers of content but dont fare well at content generation. Anything outside of the above verticals risks borderline into a niche category.

Taking into account the above two factors, seeking out ideas to the Indian Internet market is quite different than seeking out ideas for the US market. Something that has been successful in US may not work in the Indian market without taking into account the above two constraints that are unique to the Indian market.

So, how can you find the startup ‘idea’  for Indian market ?

To find your startup idea, you need to build something that people want. And for that you need to know their intent. Search engines are one way of telling intent – you can tell a user’s intent by knowing what info they are searching for (Google’s Adsense is built on the same premise).

So, how can you tell what people are searching for ?

It’s here that Google’s Insights for Search comes into play. Though it doesnt get as much press coverage as some of the other Google products, its one of the most useful and powerful products that Google provides. A market researcher’s dream.  For a market researcher, Google’s Insight into Search is what Disneyland is to a kid.

If you arent familiar with the product, I’d strongly suggest you really get well acquainted with it.

Its basically Google Trends on steroids, and Google describes it as:

With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.

Using Google Insights for Search, you can basically analyze data on what content people are searching for. You can then dissect the data based on location, time ranges etc.

I’m going to illustrate how you can use Google Insights for Search with a simple example.

Lets say I’m interested in a startup idea related to an iPhone application for Indian users. To begin with, I need to know if there’s a viable market related to iPhone apps in India. Are Indians familiar with iPhone apps ? If so, what info do they seek out on Google related to iPhone and iPhone applications ?

Here’s a quick capture from Google Insights, which shows that search for ‘iPhone’ and related terms has grown by more than 5000% in the last 5 years.

If you look at the normalized search totals for iPhone, it ranks at 20 — which indicates that the number of iPhone related searches was pretty less over the past 5 years (obviously — duh ! iPhone was launched couple of years back, so you wouldnt expect a lot of search volume in the last 5 years).

Next, lets look at iPhone related searches over the past 1 year.

You’ll now see that the normalized search volume ranks at 34, which is decent but still not spectacular.

Next, lets look for searches related to ‘iPhone applications’. The normalized search queries for ‘iPhone applications’ for the past 1 year in India ranks at 63, which is quite surprising – considering that the normalized search results for iPhone itself was ranked lower. Probably the only reason why that could happen is that there are lesser people searching for iPhone in India. However, existing iPhone owners are actively searching for iPhone applications. Either that or offshore software development companies are looking for info related to iPhone application development to cater to their clients.

Additionally, when you look at the regional interest for iPhone applications in India, you see the following:

Only people from the above states were looking for iPhone applications and I wont be surprised if majority of the iPhone owners reside in the above states (considering that these states are more tech savvy and have a larger early adopter crowd). Or the other assumption also applies – majority of the IT software companies are located in these states and they contributed to the higher search volume for ‘iPhone applications’.

Moving on, when you look at the related search terms for ‘iPhone applications’, you see that ‘free iPhone applications’ ranks pretty high as well.

So, now that we’ve done a really rudimentary market research, what does the above information tell us ?

• The market for iPhone applications in India is small, undoubtedly a very niche category.
• There is an interest in iPhone applications, but this search volume / interest is skewed because:
  • These searches might be originating from Indian software development companies catering to project from western clients Or
  • These searches originated from actual iPhone owners, which might indicate that iPhone owners are in love with their iPhone. But this still limits the actual market size, since as per our first bullet, the interest in iPhone is small in India. In essence, a small but really rabid user base
• Edit – forgot to add this bullet earlier: Of the interest in iPhone applications, the search volume for free apps ranks higher. So, probably a paid iPhone app might have some challenges in adoption

You can then use this information to decide whether you really want to proceed with your iPhone app idea or think about an alternative.

The goal of the illustration above was simply to show how you can use Google Insights effectively. By no means am I implying that you should or shouldnt venture into iPhone app development.

Google Insights is a powerful tool and I think you should use it more often and become a power user – not just for seeking out ideas and doing market research. It is also immensely useful for marketing, brand research, competitor analysis and SEO magic.  Even startups that have already launched should harness its power to get additional insight into market trends.

If you have any additional ideas or tips on using Google Insights more effectively, do share !!

• Too many Ideas ?
• Is there a thing called too many ideas ?
• You say lack of angel funding, I say lack of startups

Comments

• February 17, 2009, Rajkishore sahoo commented: Sir ,
• February 17, 2009, Jojo Joson commented: thats an awesome post!..useful...xpecting more posts like this...of the same quality
• February 17, 2009, Ganesh commented: You seem to have moved to a new plane altogether over the last one month... Keep going... - Ganesh
• February 17, 2009, pranav commented: Thanks guys..I'm glad you liked it. As time permits I'll try to write more of such posts.
• February 17, 2009, A V commented: Echoing what the others have said. An excellent article. Kudos!
• February 18, 2009, Vikram commented: You just made my day... Excellent article
• February 18, 2009, peppysophia commented: Hi Pranav, This article is very good.....I have checked my idea using google insights & found that interest in my field increased in recent times regards Sophia
• February 26, 2009, Kathiravan commented: Hi, This is one of the best article i've read in the recent times. Thanks Kathir
• August 1, 2009, Santosh commented: Nice Article Pranav..! You picked up my fav topic "iPhone Apps" :)
• August 3, 2009, Kevalsing commented: Really helpful article for people venturing into new ideas.
• August 7, 2009, Rajat commented: Excellent article pranav.
• August 8, 2009, chaman commented: thats a really gud post...need more posts like this..
• March 2, 2011, kushal commented: good article. the resources of this blog are goood
• October 28, 2011, naveen commented: awesome post ... gives 'insight; into new stuff :P

Sramana is doing a series on Entrepreneurship – Innovation in India for Forbes and requested my perspective about the same.  I chose to write down my thoughts as a post and seek out your thoughts about it as well.

When it comes to entrepreneurship in India, for the longest time now, it seems that most of us have been rehashing, repeating and regurgitating the same things over and over again:

“Revamp Education system”, “Lack of funding”, “No ecosystem”, “No product companies”, “Indian mindset and culture”, “Bureaucratic red-tape” and many other such reasons.

Its time we really took a deep, hard look at what is the current state of entrepreneurship in India, what is broken and how can we really fix it ?

In all fairness, I am not on ground zero. And so it may seem as inappropriate to many that I speak of entrepreneurship in India while residing in the US.  You might very well diss my opinions expressed below based on the same grounds, and in that case, I welcome your perspective – hopefully we can have a healthy discussion via the comments.  In my defense, even though I’m not at ground zero, I have been closely monitoring the startup and entrepreneurship scene in India over the last couple of years. I’ve talked to lots of Indian entrepreneurs, tech enthusiasts and VC’s over this time – enough to form an opinion.

If someone who’s totally ignorant about the Indian market walks up to me and asks me about entrepreneurship in India – my answer to them would be that its more hype than happening.  The awareness about entrepreneurship is definitely increasing incredibly, but not enough converts yet. Lots of wannapreneurs, but few actual entrepreneurs.Again, my goal isnt to ridicule or point fingers, but rather narrow down on what’s broken.

Some of the most commonly attributed reasons for the lack of entrepreneurship in India:

Lack of funding:

Is lack of funding that much of a big deal really ? The cost to do a technology startup has gone down drastically. Reduced hardware costs, bandwidth costs have dropped, cloud computing and open source technologies make it really cheap to launch a technology startup. Unless you are launching a capital intensive business, why should you really need outside funding for doing a startup ?

Look at the Ycombinator model – $5k – $10K per startup, which is literally peanuts if you need to survive in Silicon Valley.  Why cant Indian entrepreneurs be cheap in a similar way ? Why not bootstrap ?

No Ecosystem:

If you would have made this argument 5 years back, I’d probably have agreed. But over the last few years, the startup ecosystem has improved by leaps and bounds. VC’s have entered the Indian market, events and conferences are helping the startup community to network and converge, B-plan competitions on various campuses are raising awareness, an active and vibrant community is forming around entrepreneurship.

Bureaucratic red-tape:

While I agree that some things in this aspect are not as smooth as in other countries. However, most of the entrepreneurs I talked to did not cite this as a major hindrance as part of their entrepreneurial journey. Hire a chartered accountant and he will take care of majority of the initial process of incorporation, taxation and other legalities.

No Product Companies:

I for one dont really buy into this argument. While I agree that product companies may offer long term sustainence value (while current outsourcing focused services companies are simply benefiting from the cost advantage), but then entrepreneurship is still entrepreneurship – be it a services or a product company.

Below are some of the reasons that I personally think have a strong impact on entrepreneurship in India:

Revamping Education:

If you look at the success of Silicon Valley, one of the key factors that was instrumental in shaping it was Stanford & UC Berkeley. Ditto is the case with Israel’s Technion. I strongly believe that education, innovation and entrepreneurship go hand in hand – especially technology innovation. While the IIT’s have immensely successful alumni, the IIT’s have not been able to create a fertile hotbed of innovation & entrepreneurship in their own backyard.

At the same time, we need to encourage out of the box thinking as part of our education system. Rote learning can only get us so far. We need to ramp up coursework so that student skills remain in sync with the rest of the market. When Stanford and other universities are teaching iPhone and Facebook app related courses, teaching Cobol & Fortran to Indian students would be stupid in today’s age. Students should be encouraged to consider entrepreneurship as a viable career option. I believe this to be the single biggest factor that could foster entrepreneurship in India. Young college graduates are at an age when their inherent risk is at the least to becoming an entrepreneur.  Educating them early enough would also give them ample time to shape up their skills and experience that can prepare them for their entrepreneurial journey. We also should make it easy and acceptable for students to take sabbaticals from their degree coursework.  Currently, this if frowned upon in Indian society — we should try to make people more accepting of it.

The NEN Foundation has done a good job at increasing entrepreneurship awareness across various campuses. However, when you take a quick peek at some of the questions that are asked by some of the student participants, it just boggles your mind. Few are requesting ideas, several requesting funding even before doing any analysis of the idea and several others simply leave you in sheer disbelief.  One common aspect across most of the questions is that they are looking for handholding.  And I think that really needs to change. I’m not sure if we’re (including mainstream media that has glamourized stories about entrepreneurship and VC fundings) sending them the wrong signals – but if you think all information, market research and other info will be served to you on a silver platter, then probably being an entrepreneur is not in your best interests.

We missed out on the technology innovation bus, but if we dont really ramp up our education system and associated R&D – innovation, we might end up sitting on the sidelines of the cleantech wagon as well.

Lack of Good Mentors:

India does not have a large pool of successful entrepreneurs who have built global level companies and are keen on mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs. From a lot of entrepreneurs that I’ve talked to — they were more desperately seeking good mentors as opposed to funding.

We probably need someone to lead & pave the way just like what Yossi Vardi did to Israel and what NR Murthy did to the outsourcing market in India.

Lack of M&A activity:

This I say just from the technology market. M&A is just not happening in the Indian market. Consequently, the already existing portals, news sites get a chance to launch their own services without any strong startup getting an opportunity to establish itself.

These are the three things that I think have the biggest impact — but then, there’s a good chance that you might disagree.  This is a highly subjective topic and everyone has their own convictions about it. I think when it comes to technology entrepreneurship, we should try and do a detailed case study of Israel. The country has just  a population of 7 million, hostile neighbors and high taxes. Yet it boasts of the 2nd highest concentration of startups just after the US. They’re definitely doing something right. And that’s what we should try & emulate.

What are your thoughts about the topic ?

• NYT on slow pace of innovation in India
• Vellore Institute of Technology Technology Business Incubator
• Indian ecosystem needs that one spark

Comments

• February 11, 2009, Ganesh commented: Pranav, Cannot agree with you more... Bulls-eye on all the points... I would like to add one more point though.. Family and Society outlook - Here in India it's considered to be hip to be working for a MNC than to do your own thing.. An entrepreneur is looked upon as somebody who could not find a job and somebody who is just not good enough to be a part of the main-stream society.... this has to change... Maybe if we have the first wave of success stories from India, things may be different.... - Ganesh
• February 11, 2009, pranav commented: ganesh, I think family outlook depends a lot on whether your family has a business background. what i mean by that is if there's a history in your family of folks starting their own thing, then its not so much of an issue. for example, a lot of marwari friends that i have are a part of family owned businesses. so, when they decided to do their own thing, it was frowned upon by their family members. in fact, they were encourage to do their own thing actually.
• February 11, 2009, Gaurav commented: Pranav, I think culture is a big reason which hinders entrepreneurship in India. Other than what schools or colleges have in curriculum - parents and society do not let kids do what they are passionate about, but instead they follow the so called proven path of being an engineer or a doctor. Schools give out projects (a lot of them are lame) but how many students actually spend time in making those and researching on them? Colleges have internships - how many students actually (a) try to get an internship on the basis of their merit/portfolio (b) how many of the students actually do an internship rather than getting a certificate from an uncle's company? The "lower class" (think of Slumdog Millionaire) is better at entrepreneurship than the regular "English speaking middle class" in India. Its because middle class society does not promote independence and practical knowledge gain for students.
• February 12, 2009, Santhanam commented: Pranav, I agree with remarks on your Marwari friends. In India, society which looks upon businessmen / entrepreneurs as their role models / heros (even if they don't have a personal mentor) spawns more entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the middle class was previously held government service as top most priority & now MNC/high paying jobs/foreign migration as top most priority. Having said that, once a entrepreneurial spark has been set in the neighbourhood, people from all communities get inspired & try to change their destiny. Cities like Coimbatore, Tiruppur are examples.
• February 12, 2009, vandana commented: Entreprenuership in India is definitely not hype!! Its a part and parcel of Indian life...infact India has more entreprenuers than employees! The statement might be tough to believe but its true...if you consider each and every shop in India as an entreprenurial venture, each street vendor doing his own thing and every farmer cultivating his own land (even if its less than 1 acre in his possession) ...the mind boggles! Indians prefer to work on their own, especially because they think that someday they will strike it big; (we all are firm believers of luck, aren't we?) and also because there are not enough jobs otherwise for our billion plus population. While we do have strong entreprenurial blood, I think the big IT firms and outsourcing kind of hampered entreprenuership. When I wanted to start mGlitz, an industrialist uncle of mine said something that got me thinking. He said, in his time (read 25 years back), he started companies right after college because there was no money in a job. Today, he says, a fresher ends up making 40K without much trouble. So, why should I start a firm, when I was already making more money as salaries than I would in the first few years of being an entreprenuer......well...I think he neatly summed up why many of us, while still desperately wanting to be entreprenuers, stick to our steady tech jobs! (and his statement stands true till date...I did make less money last year than I did as an employee!! lady luck..hope you are reading this ;-) ) Now, as far as education is concerned, I think people just dont read books anymore :-( If you have seen "Goodwill hunting" Matt Damon defends a friend of his in a bar when his friend is having a verbal spat with a MIT student showing off his knowledge..stating you have no original ideas, you pay thousands to get a degree when anyone can get the same knowledge by visiting the public library! I believe there is a message in that for everyone... one should try reading more..atleast half an hour a day shouldnt harm anyone's routine! Well..thats enough gyan from me for now..methinks!! tata!
• February 12, 2009, Jojo Joson commented: Yaa! I think so! Society has to change a lot and I can cite a lot of examples from my own life. When me and my friends decided to start Techseol Websolutions Pvt.Ltd (an SEO/Online Marketing firm) while we were doing 3rd year Engineering, it was fun to see what others speak abt us! Most people,even the faculty (a college which has an Entreprenership Development cell) took it as a "kids" play and many laughed at us. But things changed when they got to know that we are serious and our daring decision to quit offers from Wipro,Cogniznat and Infosys was viewed with excitement by many (including friends). Later we got a decent coverage from local media, which was very helpful in gaining some businesses...I must say MEDIA is always supportive for such new startups. I have seen many other new startups coming then and many of them got covered in media too. Now its about 7 to 8 months after leaving college, we shifted our office to Kerala IT Mission in Cochin, have a handful of satisfied clients and now working to expand more! Entrepreneurship is always CHALLENGING & EXCITING!
• February 12, 2009, gurgaon commented: looking for more info on guragon
• February 12, 2009, Rakesh commented: There is a difference between entrepreneur and businessman. An entrepreneur has a "dream" to get his idea works and people appreciate it, but a businessman knows how to make "money" from any idea. That is large gap of thinking if someone can understand it. It is a difficult, but possible, to start thinking like a good businessman, when you are an entrepreneur. BTW: We have registered with “The Power of Idea…The Economic Times” but have no reply from them yet. Can anybody tell me what is happening there.? Thanks. Regards, Rakesh
• February 13, 2009, Santhanam commented: Vandana, Nice Post & Insight. We have heard of Self Help Groups is helping to foster entrepreneurship in people who otherwise don't have opportunities & resources like funding, ecosystem, education, good mentors etc. But they have plain grit, determination & courage to over come their difficulties together. The success of self help groups made MNCs like HUL & ITCs to look for them for their own business development. As you said Indians are very entrepreneurial in nature. In olden days, people used to say that instead of working for government, they will till land or do their own business. The previous attraction for government jobs is safety when they work and pension when they retire. Now i can see in few of my friends families that the husband works in a corporate/government job which ensure a steady flow of cash to take care of family needs & wife working on her own entrepreneurial venture. In some cases, the roles are reversed also. Basically i feel that one person should have strong survival instinct to be a successful entrepreneur. Regarding good mentors, i feel that if one takes part in Rotary / Lions / Round Table kind of club activities, we can get acquaintance of people who have varied experience & backgrounds. Round Table particularly is for entrepreneurs, technocrats & professionals. If some one has more inputs on how these clubs are fostering entrepreneurship, please kindly post their view.
• February 13, 2009, pranav commented: yeah -- the difference may be subtle -- but lets put it this way. A good entrepreneur must learn how to be become a good businessman ? how does that sound ?
• February 13, 2009, pranav commented: about the power of idea, they are still in the idea gathering phase. in case you have questions and need to get in touch with them, I'd suggest trying to email them at the contact link on the power of ideas page.
• February 13, 2009, pranav commented: Great to hear that Jojo. examples like yours should definitely get more publicity -- it will encourage students to take entrepreneurship more seriously and not just as an afterthought. Thanks for sharing your story.
• February 13, 2009, pranav commented: @Vandana, thanks for the insightful comment. When i say entrepreneurship, i'd be biased towards technology entrepreneurship since thats my background. so, probably i should have worded my post to include that. about the good will hunting scene -- yes, its an all time classic. even though you might be earning less money, at least you look forward to your work -- so many of us are stuck in the drudgery that just going to work becomes a challenge in itself. so you might make less money, but you are doing what you love. and dont worry -- as they say - luck favors the brave. good luck with mglitz - hope you meet lady luck soon :-) ..if you do, put in a good word for me as well ;-)
• February 13, 2009, pranav commented: I agree whole heartedly. stable job was the numero uno goal for middle class (& still is for many) Indians.
• February 13, 2009, pranav commented: that is so true. I have been a student in India and the Us as well. And the quality of education, thought process etc. is so vastly different between the two -- especially in terms of graduate / undergraduate education. We have to start teaching students to think outside the box..and that things are not just black or white.
• February 16, 2009, Rakesh commented: Hi Pranav, I agree with you on .. A good entrepreneur must learn how to be become a good businessman ? Thanks for your reply on this, Regards, Rakesh MeriCAR.com
• February 16, 2009, pranav commented: no problem, good luck with mericar
• February 17, 2009, Anil commented: Ganesh is right. Even if u come from a family with business background, they prefer a job in MNC. Bootstrapping is OK for web startups. But in other cases it's almost impossible. The supply chain itself makes it impossible to innovate with low cost.
• February 17, 2009, Pranav Gupta commented: Hi Pranav, Really nice reading ur articles regarding entrepreneurship. I am working with an IT MNC at Noida as Software consultant. I want to know that how is the idea of starting a coaching & training company for MBA, IIT-JEE , English Speaking programmes? I being a graduate of a premier Engg. institution and have a very good command over mathematics (class VI to XII). I plan to do an Executive MBA from IIM. Will that really help in long run? Your advice/suggestions required...... Pranav Gupta
• February 17, 2009, pranav commented: Anil, that is true. I have a tech background, so I'm more biased towards them.
• March 12, 2009, satyarup siddhanta commented: Article definitely pin points some facts thats holdng back people from becoming an enterpreneur. Everybody has one thoght looming large than any other... how to make quick money. While MNCs are paying a lucrative salary... which till now used to be a very safe option for so many... people had the fear to go into the uncertainity... Other countries the people dont have the fear because they know if they dont succeed in what they aim to, they can always find a backup job to support his family... He can work for 40 hours in a bar and get a decent salary... the scenario is not the same here... once you are out of job for few months, the companies tend to reject your profile stating there is a gap ... who is to blame?
• June 13, 2009, Raj commented: I noticed an interesting trend while going through TATA NEN.. http://www.nenonline.org/ All the startups that were submitted were either IT, marketing or e-commerce related. Not even single entry was published under manufacturing. Every e-commerce idea was either copied from elsewhere like takeovercode.com from lawyers.com ..etc.. When will we have true innovation? like google or yahoo?? Guys!! innovation is true entrepreneurship period When was the last time an Indian invented something in India where the world went gaga!! Decide yourself whether entrepreneurship in India is hype or happening!!
• June 15, 2009, Rajat commented: Hi Raj, Its not a problem with Indians the problem is with the Environment.A lot of indians have invented great things here in US as an e.g consider Pentium IV, or Google News. The environment in India is more towards making quick money rather then creating something very innovative. Regards Rajat
• June 15, 2009, Rajat commented: A lot of young people coming out of college are thinking of startups now.I was working in a team in India when some of the young guns in our team, left and founded commonfloor.com I have heard the startup is doing pretty good now.The trend is changing and people are becoming more risk taking specially the younger generation and they are bright as well.Things are changing and becoming more +ve.
• August 9, 2009, DJ commented: Pranav, You have made some good observation and points about Indian enterpreneurship ecosystem. I keep visiting silicon valley quite often. From many years I keep studying how the startup evolved here, what role stanford played, sandhill road VC etc etc. I dont want to talk about all the E-commerce related startups in India. They are do able with minimum funding and infrastructure. Lets talk about high tech manufacturing startups in India which went very big. Are there any such startup with a break through product. The point is in Silcion valley long back during 80's created that ecosystem, companies like fairchild semiconductor whose offshot started compnies like Intel, AMD, National Semiconductor etc etc, got their ideas while working for such compnies. And phd grads of Sandford, berkley worked on very good ideas and implemented to form companies like google, yahoo, SUN etc etc.. My study of Bangalore (I am talking about High Tech Manf Product Companies in Bangalore) Here in Bangalore if you want to startup any MEMS, Microchip fabrication, Ceramic technology companies, Thin Film Coating, where is the supporting infrastucture?? Only the IIT's IISE, ISRO, DRDO, HAL, NAL etc etc have quite a good support systems. But did any of their offshot's started any big companies?? It only companies like Hindhivac, VaccumTech.. etc, who started their own high tech companies.. and that too in 80's.. But their offshots just did a copy exact and started a herd mentally startup which did not make into big companies.. The public sector companies do work on some good technology projects. And their are very bright engineers too in those companies. May be the public sector atmosphere does'nt nuture innovative thinking and risk taking ability, who could have taken risk in 90's and started companies in domain like aerospace research, carbon fiber technology, semiconductor fabrication equipment, biomedical equipment.. etc Hopefully now after the BPO, IT, BT boom.. some day we can see high tech startups in Bangalore too.. Then we can see some good brain drain from Silicon valley to India to join these startup.. DJ Bangalore
• October 27, 2009, karthikeyan commented: it is no hype at all and as someone alreday pointed out Indians are by defualt great Entreprenuers. It is matter of time before the The business Process Ecosytem is freed from legacy British Design. Why not Govt. throw open Citizen ID project to Ist generation Entreprenuers with startup Seed capital. I am one hundred percent sure we will have somehing in hand not only satisfying our needs but a product/service saleble globally
• November 9, 2009, Ankur Jain commented: Hi Pranav, Nice blog! Well, I am in the stage which I am sure most of the commentators above me have gone through - confusion while incorporating a company. Mine is going to be a 100% software export oriented unit and I am getting varying responses from different CA's. Some say I should go for LLP (a new company structure introuduced in 2008 in India), some ask me to go for Pvt Ltd. Then being a export oriented unit, I thought of applying to STPI (Software Tech Park of India) for exemption in tax, again there are mixed responses. For some CA's, my nature of work doesn't fit in STPI scheme. Even there are varying responses from STPI offices located in 2 different cities, one say it is and another it is not! ... and we talk about ease of business in India.
• November 11, 2009, K K Reddy commented: Society is changing no doubt, but I wonder its far slow in south down here. I am fighting with my family for the past 2 years to leave the job. Yea a Govt Job. Here comes a problem. My parents regard job as most respectful job, even though I earn less than 5 % what my grand fa earns in his business... they never wanted me to move into it, the reason is its not dignified. I just wonder how dignified am I working under a brainless boss, who comes to office to escape his wife's chantings ... that's bit too personal .. forgive. Practical Problems are better faced than discussed :( Registering a Business itself is hell of a task. 6 months on it yet no result, may be its very specific to me .. but there's a problem with this. .. more updates as I face them ..
• November 14, 2009, Abhishek commented: Truly agree with Reddy...I am a 2009 graduate of IIT Delhi and got a job in a PSU.... I am also fighting with my family over leaving my job and going for a start up ...but i dont know what happens to them when i say i will be leaving the job..mom just goes hysterical...its like i m doing some crime..they just cant understand why i am talking abt leaving a GOVT. job (particularly when sixth pay has been implemented--had it not been there i hope my life would have been easy..) don't know when i will be able to gather courage to go against my parents but hope it will be soon..:)
• November 22, 2009, varun bansal commented: HEY PPL WELL FOR THE ENTREPRENEUR ITS AL ABT PROFIT ,STABILITY N SUSTAIANBILITY... WEL TALKED ABT LOT I HAVE PROBLEM , I JUS PASSED OUT FRM COLLEGE THIS YEAR , I WAS FIGURING OUT WAT TO DO SO I HAD GONE TO MY UNCLE TO DISCUSS ABT MY CAREER GOALS N AL ...SPECFICALLY I ASKED HIM ABT BUSINESS NA L AND HE TOLD ME TO PUT THE ANCILLARY UNIT FOR THE CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING PARTS HE SAYS THAT THERS S HUGE DEMAND FOR THE THAT ........ NOW I ASKED U PPL SHOULD I GO FR TAT OFFER OR SHOULD I WAIT MORE TO GET SOME MORE IDEAS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP..........
• November 26, 2009, peecee commented: Why are the words "start-up" or "entrepreneurship" only talked in the context of technology? There is a shortage of ecosystem, funding etc. for non-tech start-ups? Do you know the brightest people from India actually shun away from IT or technology related topics? In many cases, when these people are asked if they work in IT (which is presumed because you are an Indian), they get offended.
• September 14, 2010, maz commented: hi people, and all future enterpreners, iam glad to write this post, i am 21 years 3 yr engineering degree elctronics and telecom student and i started my own gym business as enterprener after my diploma in engineering and have finished 1 yr and iam curenntly in second yr of my business i have learnt so much in this time that i could not learn in my entire life and my confidence too increased but my first gym failed miserable bcoz of lack of managment skills ,knowledge abt business operations and stupid business partner but now i have learnt my lessons shifted my gym and making decent profits and managing well iam planning now to open chain of gyms in mumbai and i might require some assistance frm bank orvc 4 which iam working on my business plan if any one intrested in investing in gym business with me or need help about enterprenership guidance pls free to cont me on email free2call103@yahoo.com trust me its is the best expereince to start and manage ur business . WARNING -PLS DO LEARN ABT MANAGMENT AND BUSINESS PLANNING THROUGHLY AND DO MARKET RESEARCH ABT UR PRODUCT TO AVIOD FAILURE OF UR BUSINESS.BOZ IT IS THE MOST RISKIEST AND MAD THING TO START UR BUSINESS WITH OUT FIRST KNOWING UR CUSTOMERS AND SELLING TO THEM AND ASKING WHETHER THEY NEED WHAT UR SELLING SO PLS DONT GO BANKRUPT AND THINK 10 TIMES BEFORE STARTING ANYTHING ALL THE BEST TO ALL ENTERPRENERS AND KEEP LEARNING . MAZ
• November 30, 2010, website designing kerala cochin commented: Why are the words “start-up” or “entrepreneurship” only talked in the context of technology? There is a shortage of ecosystem, funding etc. for non-tech start-ups?
• December 3, 2010, Narayana Peesapaty commented: Hi all, I am 45 and decided to quit a cool researcher job after 18 years of working. I amke what is called the EDIBLE CUTLERY, where you can use the cutlery and eat them too. It took me three and half years of real dog labor getting my business up... I would not say it up already, but I overcame several teething problems. What I wanted to share here is entreprenuership is like a bungee jump. Remember, initially you fall but at one point of time, you turn around and eventually reach a position much higher than where you started from. The analogy here are the following: 1. Double check the bungee rope (meaning do your market research thoroughly along with all other issues - sources of funding, sources of technology, etc) 2. In entreprenuership you will begin with a very steep fall in your finanical resources (no income but more expenses as investments) 3. Once you have decided to take the jump, at any point of time, do not let go the rope. Have faith and confidence - no matter what your so called well wishers may say So late into my career, I have seen becoming an entreprenuer is really tough, if you have done your homework properly and you have the necessary perseverance. All the very best to all of you. Narayana
• January 18, 2011, Yogesh commented: Pranav, I am in totally agree with you on the certain issues as being.....i have started SSI unit for chemical manufacturing and it was real pain right from buying land in industrial area..water & electricity connections and various formalities........
• February 24, 2011, Ankit Agarwal commented: Hi Narayana It was an insightful analogy.But how many of us are ready to endure the sustained fall for a long time and have the patience to wait foe the rise..there are so many extraneous variables over which we have no control..
• March 28, 2011, Gokarn commented: If anyone thinks that entrepreneurship in India is mere hype, it is a very pessimistic approach. Entrepreneurs are people who are ready to risk it all to navigate into unknown and uncharted waters. It has nothing to do with being from any particular caste, creed, religion or ethnic background. I see repeated comments that Marwaris, Gujratis and Sindhis are business type people and more likely to become entrepreneurs and this is complete BS. Being an entrepreneur is like an itch you just have to scratch. And not only that, you have to devote your life towards that goal. There is no promised land for everyone, most will fail and some will prosper. India is lagging behind in fostering a environment for entrepreneurs. There is no support, lack of education, lack of resources from Government and also lack of support from families/friends. Yet, these are challenges, not barriers for Indian entrepreneurs. I see a bright future for Indian entrepreneurs. We have businessmen who have made their mark globally, there is no doubt on that and millions more will shake the world. Perhaps I am too optimistic. Most families are content just having their children getting a 9-5 job. Someone commented above about someone in the family saying that nowadays 40k jobs are plenty and hence there is no need to even start a business. It is precisely that kind of thinking that strangles entrepreneurship. We need a more aggressive approach. Do we need to be reminded that we are perhaps living in the most exciting time in human history. We are sitting here commenting, collaborating and talking to people thousands of miles away at a click of a mouse? Cmon guys, where is the passion, where is the drive to create something and add value. What irks me are people content to create inferior products and focus on making money. Indian entrepreneurs, most who are leaving a 9-5 job to take up a business where they slog to get paid money. Hardly a difference. I think it is this micro thinking which is the reason why India is lagging behind. We cannot think beyond next one months salary. There are entrepreneurs who will create a ripple and those that will create a Tsunami wave. Where we are lacking is there are numerous entrepreneurs just content on creating ripples. I suggest reading Start up Nation : Story of Israels Economic Miracle.
• June 29, 2011, Sandeep D commented: Dear Friends, Many of us agree on the fact that entrepreneurship in India is a long dream to achieve. And that the people's background/education/attitude/governance....and so on are responsible for this. But I reckon these things are not true any more. People are thinking out of the box, coming out with small but dynamic ideas. I believe every entrepreneur starts with a small idea, and these ideas have started cropping in young Indians now. I f you have a round into the industrial areas or SEZs, you will come across many such young engineers or technicians who have started developing their ideas into products-products into business- and business into entreprises. You talk about passion, you talk about creativity, you talk about infrastructure- here it is. We have it now. And even if we dont have it, we know how to create it. Why the world is saying that India is going to be a superpower in 2030-50 ? Why n how do they predict this- on what basis do they say this. The basis for these prediction in the growing entrepreneurship in India. In terms of Entrpreneruship growth rate--from a scale 1 to 4- India is rated 2.70, China - 2.66, US-2.80, Germany-2.60, France-2.56, UK-2.50. Who says we are behind the world. Indian youth from no-business background, no-financial background, instead of adhering to a high salaried job, are but getting attracted towards starting their own ventures-trying to mold their ideas. I strongly feel, we, so called highly educated people should stop disparaging our country and the people of our country... "Dont criticise the system..be a part of it and change it for the betterment of our people."
• August 1, 2011, mukesh commented: enterpreneurship is definitaley happening in india. I am also an indian teenage enterpreneur and working in a software company along with regular b.tech course
• August 1, 2011, mukesh commented: yes, family background matters my friend but it's an excuse for not having innovativeness....when you think at bigger level you will see what matters more is your will power to do something innovative and challenging not others opinion dear friend!
• October 17, 2011, izz commented: Dear frnds , i need an advice, i wanna start on my own, i have ideas n also a huge demand project report i have made, its been 3 yrs i finished my engineering, because of my family force i came to soudi arab for job, i wanted to start after i completed my engineering but i cud'nt because of my family issues, now i have decided to return back, i am here from just 6 months, i dnt have much money too in hand. Kindly advice should i return now n start or make money for some time here n den return & start. please guide me....
• October 17, 2011, deva commented: dear friends i have gone through the entire blog and all the comments by the readers. i too want to be an entrepreneur. food processing industry, alternate energy, biofuels, gobar gas etc are my interests..... all directly or indirectly related to rural india. i want to make a difference, focus on bottom of the pyramid and improve the total socio-economic conditions of rural india. but i am struck. i donno how to start or approach. i have finished my engg and have a job in automobile industry. i donno what avenues to explore further. i dont have any mentor who can guide me or steer me through. should i do mba and go for institutes like EDII (entrepreneurship development institute of india) ,IRMA (indian rural management ahmedabad). please advice me.
• November 7, 2011, Nikhil yadav commented: I totally agree with you.. education is a key factor here.i also started a software organization, it is in startup phase. and i know that i have good command on web development, android apps development,large it portal, linux etc.. but it all cost only 55% in my b.tech . They din't teach the new and innovative we were studing 15 years back and when there is campaus in my college they wanted me to study R S agarwal and do some mathmatical calculation .
• January 10, 2012, Pavlo Phitidis commented: Hi guys I have just come back to south africa from my first of what weil be many trips to india. I loved the country but loved the people I meet even more. I think entrepreneurship is thriving in india but the two biggest impediments I noticed as an outsider were government policy and business lifecycle. Government policy has held india back until recently. It seems from people I sure with government and the p private sector had pour relationships and government control over the economy restricted entrepreneurial investment. This seems to be changing at snail pace. Business development seems to be misunderstood. Many entrepreneurs running their shop selling goods were satisfied that that was what building a business was all about. Very few had an idea to grow 1 shop into 2, 2 into 3 and slowly build a network of shops. On thursday night, I am speaking onmy radio show about entrepreneurship in india and I found this great blog. Thanks guys