Prof. Kumar on WSJ: Promoting High Growth Entrepreneurship in India
The centrality of entrepreneurship in the economic growth of nations is increasingly coming into focus in these troubled times. As pointed out in a recent article in The Economist, even as governments are busy trying to save their economies, policy makers are demonstrating a renewed interest in entrepreneurship and innovation. (Read the full article)
Young Entrepreneur Awards
Filed under: Announcements, Entrepreneurship, India, Youth |
Leave a Comment
Call for entries:
Businessworld is scouting for the hottest young entrepreneurs with energy, enthusiasm and innovative new ideas. The chosen finalists will feature in Businessworld’s Promising Entrepreneurs Issue.
If you:
a) are below 35 years of age
b) have a business that is over 2 years and less than 5 years old in a brand new niche, a new business model in an established business or an entirely new business, you are eligible to apply.
Last Date for entries: Extended to 15 December 2009
Villgro presents INNOHUB-The Innovation Fair for business partnerships with 20 Innovators on 11-12 Dec 2009 in CHENNAI
Filed under: Announcements, Entrepreneurship, Events, India |
Leave a Comment 
|
Advancing Change – Energy for India’s Poor
NSRCEL@IIMB is partnering with Ennovent, an international social venture capital firm, in promoting the Global Energy Challenge: â€Advancing Change – Energy for India’s Poorâ€.
Most of India’s population has no access to affordable, let alone clean energy. Help us find in India and around the world proven, for-profit solutions that can meet some of the critical energy needs of India’s poor. Ennovent will invest up to USD 500,000 in the Solver to incubate or scale the winning enterprise in India. Ennovent will also offer a reward of USD 3,000 to the Connector who nominates the winning enterprise.
Inadequate access to energy is part of the poverty trap for the majority of India’s poor. Like anyone else, they need energy for example for cooking, lighting, domestic heating, or power for appliances. Dirty and unsafe energy sources such as kerosene and firewood lead to health hazards and take time away from productive livelihood activities. Earning around USD 3.- or less a day (local PPP), poor people in most cases cannot afford clean and safe sources of energy. Despite massive investment by the Government of India in expanding access to electricity, many communities are still in need of services, especially those in remote areas. The private sector is already playing a key role in helping the government meet its goal to ensure energy for all. Investments into innovations – products, services, processes, and business models – are needed to bring clean, safe and affordable energy services to the Indian BoP market.
The mission is to promote entrepreneurs who advance innovations for sustainability at the base of the economic pyramid. This competition is part of our activities to achieve this mission.
Participate in the Challenge by submitting energy solutions or nominating enterprises online at www.ennovent.com. Deadline for submissions is 31 January 2010. For more details of this competiton, write to office@ennovent.com or please follow the URL, http://www.ennovent.com/cms/network/the-challenge/media-r…
Ignite innovation to shape the future
Abstract
Young talents from across the country showcase their designs & analysis that could possibly transform the way we look at our cities & towns.
Synopsis
There are numerous day to day issues, complexities and problems that we face as a society. Solutions are sought to these problems but mostly end in vain. Is there a way we can change this situation? Can we facilitate by bringing in more creative and inspiring ideas to reach the solution to the various problems?
Concept
Nat Geo partnered by NSRCEL@IIMB, IIT Delhi and IIT Mumbai went out to hunt for the Best Brains in the world of Science to help them Re-define & Re-shape our world!! A nationwide campaign to identify scientific and technological innovations originating from the best science, engineering and medical colleges in India and select a few outstanding ones for wide media exposure and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Regional Finals
Over 91 ideas were received in the southern region and 26 ideas were short listed for the regional finals to be held at IIMB on Nov 18 to pick the final 5.
The program for Nov 18 is as follows:
Registration 10am to 10.30 am
Talk on “Innovating Entrepreneurship†Prof K Kumar, IIMB 10.30 am to 11.00 am
Presentations by short listed teams 11.00 am to 1.00 pm
Lunch 1.00 pm to 2.00 pm
Presentations by short listed teams – cont. 2.00 pm to 3.30 pm
Tea break 3.30 pm to 4.00 pm (and time for the judges panel to finalize the top 5 teams from the region)
One to one mentoring for the 5 finalists (10 minutes each) 4.00 pm to 5 pm
All of you are invited to attend and encourage the young participants.
Salaries: A reflection of values? What do you think?
Author Anjana Vivek
Anjana Vivek is Founder, VentureBean Consulting (www.venturebean.com), working with entrepreneurs and growth companies and Guest Faculty, IIMB.
As an entrepreneur/founder you have many choices when you set up your company. One of the first few things you may like to think about is the employee policy and salaries. Gyan, the business advisor, recently met a few company founders and they informally discussed this aspect. One of the points raised by John, the founder of a high-growth, four-year old company, was that there have been enough and more debates about the top of the pyramid salaries in recent times. He wanted to take a different line of discussion in the meeting … and look at the salaries down the line. Two companies (names changed for confidentiality reasons) were mentioned and their employee policies debated.
The first company discussed, Great Images, was … (Read the full story here).
Entrepreneurs of IIMB
A talk series showcasing stories of IIMB Alumni who are entrepreneurs.
Date – 12th November 6:00PM to 7:30PM Venue – Auditorium , IIMB
The first talk is by Mr. A V Asvini Kumar, PGP’81 , Founder of ThinkSoft , a public listed company at NSE
RSVP : Alumni@iimb.ernet.in ; nsrcel@iimb.ernet.in
Mr. A V Asvini Kumar – Chairman and Managing Director
An alumnus of IIM Bangalore, Asvini has many years of experience in the IT services business, including 15 years as an entrepreneur. He has successfully pioneered the outsourced independent domain focused test services model to help Global 500 firms like Citi Group to improve quality, compress timelines and lower costs, thereby boosting returns from existing IT services budgets.
An alumnus of the Osmania University and IIM, Bangalore (1981), Asvini co-founded and ran a startup for 2 years (1981-83), before moving to IIM – B for a year to set up and upgrade their student and faculty computing facilities. He subsequently had a 4-year stint with PSI Bull as Product Support Manager handling large clients like ONGC. He founded Thinksoft with the objective of providing value added IT consulting services, mainly in the areas of requirements testing, documentation and domain consulting. In 1998, his pioneering efforts towards creating an India-based independent test service model was proved a success, when Citi Group became the first client to use Thinksoft’s India based test centers in one of its large Global flagship projects. In mid-1998, Asvini reorganized Thinksoft as a company. In early 2000, a UK based venture fund backed Thinksoft’s growth plans, thus propelling it as a Global player in its chosen area. After a decade of successful run , THinksoft went public in October 2009
A recipient of many academic scholarships and professional awards, Asvini lives in Bangalore with his wife and son. He is an avid reader. He also likes to swim, trek, and listen to music.
Of foster parenting and technology marketing
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Incubation, Marketing, Technology, Technology Marketing |
Leave a Comment The state of technology marketing in India (and else where) is something that is of prime concern for the introduction of new products and the so-called buzz being created to focus on innovative products in SW. We have mostly been a service based economy as far as IT is concerned and there is a sentiment of venture gurus to focus more on innovation, so as to sustain and lead in this arena. Many folks blame the marketing fellows to have failed in sustaining innovation, even if technical folks are busy creating newer ideas. A number of product companies funded by well-known money mines are being shelved, and the blame goes to the entrepreneurs behind these ideas. Are they really failing? Many of them get swallowed by the biggies such as MS and Google (the founders consider it success for them if they have been bought over by a bigger player!).
I believe there is an amazing mismatch between marketing fellows and the techies, and this is the primary reason that they fail. People at the top are unable to comprehend, where buckets-full of money is vanishing in the name of branding a product. For every failure in the market, there are many success stories – sometimes the smaller fish is bought over by a giant or simply shelved into file-13.
I was interacting with the marketing fellow of a techie product – we did not know that he was not a PhD andnot a techie fellow, until his boss revealed. The depth of understanding he had about ‘how his product is going to help the customer‘ was superb. Another example, I would suggest a fellow from Mathworks Inc, who was completely from the sales and marketing side – the clarity he had about the usability of the product was the inspiration to even think of an alternative solution to the tool we were using at hand. You have to keep in mind, just two things - make the customer understand the technology involved in a very simple manner, and secondly, you have got to get the right price. Many marketing fellows avoid the most important questions, saying that they’ll get back to the tech team. And some others, over-promise the merits of the product without even taking the tech team into confidence.
It is very difficult (particularly for the bigger companies, who are the guys with the money), to shift from a software tool to a newer one. They keep working with the older tool because their client overseas has not yet upgraded to the latest version or the newer tool in discussion.
Pouring money to marketing of technology is never going to work in the long run and we keep lamenting the disappearance of innovative SW. It has to (blame it to Darwin or to anyone) vanish unless sustained in a motherly way (marketing folks always have a mix of fear for tech and over-commitment, making them almost step-parental). In the same lines, we need more and more tech fellow develop the ability to market for themselves or assist the marketing fellow (instead of looking at the marketing fellow as a money-minded jerk who gets paid for ‘just babbling’). In many successful companies, the pitching team always comprises of a combination of a tech person and a non-tech person.
We got to evolve. SW ideas evolve faster than they get accepted in the market. Secondly, SW ideas come to shape faster than bigger project’s life cycle. Example, an Airbus 380 project had loss in billions of USD just because the SW they used underwent a major version upgrade. For this reason, the bigger projects prefer to freeze the SW till the project is delivered and the support for the project continues with the same tool. Its like, you have ten soaps on the shelf to take bath with, you’d generally choose one for the whole period of the bath (the project). Can you say that another soap which was bought while you were busy bathing has failed, for you!? Every innovation is important – to make it viable in the business sense needs planned effort.
It is high time that VCs and the folks whose money is involved, get deeper into the idea behind an idea, than just playing with spreadsheets. It has become like the discussion between a foster parent with her teenage daughter – the adult is not interested in going into details of what the teenager wants to prove, and the teenager does not want to or is incapable of explaining the real meaning of her intentions. The money-folks keep looking at the halo over the head of the inventor, and the inventor may lack the basics of explaining the money aspects of the innovation. Unfortunately, the idea gets shelved!
Money (funnily, many folks really understand it as muscle power – its true!) plus better marketing/entreprenuers can make more number of SW innovations see the light of the day – and we need not lament dying innovations (due to Darwin stuff about evolution and the survival of the fittest) - if people can do without them, they will.
Incubators such as NSRCEL are a great source of a collection of mentors who bridge this gap to a large extent. You will find people who are interested in both technology and money, (in an equally ignorant way!), so as to look at the better aspects of both. When you look at an idea from a non-rejection perspective, and with all the patience that it deserves, it will evolve faster and healthier. “Generally at the NSRCEL no Idea is rejected.” And if you observe, the gap between the marketing and the techies are being filled by appropriate support from NSRCEL. To have the right kind of folks do the job they are best at is the focus. This will help the techies focus on innovation and would make sense when the need of the hour is to focus on innovative products.
- Divyajeevan Sahoo
The search for ‘Made in India’! – TiE
“TiE would like to showcase inspiring and innovative enterprising Indians and enterprises at the TiE Entrepreneurship Summit (TES) in Mumbai, from December 21-23 2009, in line with the purpose of “Enterprising India: Changing the Nation, Leading the World.” They would showcase four such enterprises across each of the following six areas and the following enterprising Indians (the TES Co-Hosts) will introduce them:
- KV Kamath – Finance 2.0: Services and Solutions
- Malvinder Singh – Health is Wealth
- Kishore Biyani – Serving the Indian Consumer
- Harsh Mariwala – Innovate or Die
- Narayana Murthy – Education the Great Leveler
- R. Gopalakrishnan – Make things better, Make better things “
Entrepreneurship gains ground as a career choice on campuses
Filed under: Clean Tech, Entrepreneurship, Idea Validation, Incubation |
Leave a Comment Campus incubation centers are filling a vital gap but must offer the right mix of seed money and mentorship.
Across Indian campuses, incubation centres such as NSRCEL are breeding entrepreneurs. – LiveMint
thoughtstreams
ejeev
sunilmango