There has been multiple studies suggesting that more and more businesses are relying on bootstrapping / angel money to start their business and are not too keen on the venture capital, at least in the initial days. A part of this is because of the decreased cost of starting a company and lower development costs because of the open source tools AND the other part is because of the keenness of entrepreneurs to have more control of the company - for as long as possible.

The question to be asked here is: Why are entrepreneurs worried about VC investments, when the VCs truly bring in much more value than just the money?

Guy Kawasaki has a great post on The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT) that created quite a buzz in the blogosphere. He writes his thoughts on the right time for a person to become a venture capitalist and points to a test that can help you figure out your VCAT. He stresses on the fact that one should become a venture capitalist after they have had the shiitake kicked out of them. 

I agree. It is very hard for an entrepreneur to trust a VC who doesn’t have the necessary background in the activities that the entrepreneur is carrying out and the experience in having run (or be a part of) a startup. Somebody who has never answered the board from a management team’s position almost always never understand how is it to run a company. So, while it is important to have people in your board who are independent Directors and aren’t involved in the day-to-day running of company, it is also important for the management team to be able to respect them. The respect comes automatically when the entrepreneur knows that the board member can (and does) empathize with the issues / challenges faced in a company and yet can give open and critical feedback.

Generally speaking - I am quite neutral about my impressions about Venture Capitalists. In fact, it’s been much more on the positive side than the negative side, based on my interaction. But it’s baffling to know that most companies (funded and not-funded) I have talked to have not-so-good things to say about the VCs. On the other hand - everybody have good things to say about angel investors.

Am I just plain lucky (and I have interacted with VCs who would clearly fail the VCAT)? Or is it that Guy Kawasaki has over-generalized his test? India has its own unique problems. On one hand - we need serial entrepreneurs who have been ’successful’ in the past and not just the 1st generation entrepreneurs AND on the other hand, we need Venture Capitalists who have been entrepreneurs before.

Unfortunately, I can not think of more than just a few names when it comes to people who have successfully build even a USD 50 million plus business in the last many years. There are people who have successfully exited on a valuation of less than USD 10 million dollar business but I am not sure if I can term them as being ‘really successful’ or not. But this is a never-ending process where more entrepreneurs will exit out of their venture in case of acquisition - what will be interesting is how many of them chooses to start again and how many becomes VCs? Of course - there are other options as well, based upon the interest and the exit valuation.

A year back - Manjunath Shanmugam, an IIM Lucknow graduate and a Indian Oil employee, was murdered by a dealer of an Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) for not accepting bribes and turning a blind eye to the adulteration of fuel being carried out by the dealer. The entire nation was shaken because of that and I specially feel strongly about the entire incident because

1) My brother-in-law is also an officer in the same company and it was discussed a lot more in my family.
2) I am specially touchy about any murder as a result of the societal corruption / terrorism - for the fact that it has directly affected me in the recent past.

But this post is not about my feelings about the incident but I wanted to spread the word on the activities taken by the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust. I got a note from H.Jaishankar today informing me about a couple of nation-wide initiatives in Manjunath’s memory to bring better transparency and improve governance in the Indian corporate and public life.

Copied below are the details. Please spread the word and participate, if you can.

We wish to make this annual award a success, and encourage more people/institutions to work to improve Indian public life.

Technorati Tags: manjunath, corruption, indian oil

Something that I am not a big fan of is the attitude of businesses believing in CYA (Covering Your Ass) before giving something new to the users. There are many examples of the same - Travel portals (Yatra, ClearTrip, MakeMyTrip, TravelGuru, …) and Social Networks (Jhoom, Minglebox, Yaari) have done that - where they are, practically, building the exact same thing. Everybody claims that they have a different way of approaching the problem but they will do so AFTER they are done with doing what others have done. Though I do understand the reasons for the same and realize that it’s important to ensure the survival of a business before being adventurous, it doesn’t necessarily translate to me liking the approach. Not to forget mentioning that most of these companies either run out of cash or the business model changes by the time they are done ‘perfecting’ the existing solution.

Lately I spent a bit of time looking at the indian job portals and the trend continues there. Naukri and MonsterIndia continue to lead the race and the argument on who is bigger doesn’t cease to stop. My personal experience says that there is little to choose between them and we have an account with both these providers (that I am dying to get rid of as soon as other providers match up in the resume count). Both Naukri and Monster work decently well for people at entry and junior level but the job consultants still work better for senior level people. There are other job portals like JobsAhead (acquired by Monster), TimesJobs, CareerIndia, ClickJobs, etc which are also trying to have a piece of pie (which is substantially big). ClickJobs impresses the most because of its user-interface, some premium services and customer-focus.

Job board is another way the companies in the US have targeted the market, specifically for a niche segment. 37Signals and GigaOm have that offering in the US and the similar stuff has been provided in India by JobMilan (I am sure there are others also but I am just not aware).

Yet another site that I want to mention here is CampusChai which is operating in the same space but claims to be focusing more on the college campus placements than the general job search.

First impression: I was pretty excited after reading the byline but the first page disappointed a bit. The employer registration didn’t work for a long time - the AJAX call was made displaying the status but the page did nothing more for the first couple of minutes. The site, in general, has a clean interface which is very encouraging and shows signs that the stress will be laid on the usability and not the plethora of features (hats off, if you can keep it that way).

When I signed-in to the site as an employer, this is the screen I saw:

The site has a pretty good use of AJAX which makes it highly interactive and responsive. I liked the usability aspects of the site which tells me that the implementation team has done a pretty good job. What I didn’t like is the fact that even though they want to specialize in providing tools for managing campus placements easier (that also is a tough job because of the education needed for the college placement officers - who, in my opinion, will not be too easy to convince), they started with being yet another job portal. Of course, the number of resumes is also very limited currently which doesn’t make it really valuable currently. And the dynamic display of jobs in the front page can be done away with - it’s distracting to say the least (changing the job on page-refresh is ok, abusing AJAX is not).  It’s early days but I see some good signs there - like they have a blog at http://campuschai.wordpress.com. My recommendation: Come on guys, you need to live up to the reputation of ‘Campus Recruitment done better‘, as claimed in your byline. Leave the act of following to the big guys - you can’t beat them with the unchanged rules. Change the rules - that is your best bet to win it!

Oh, and as is the trend these days, they also have a promotion which gives you a PS2 if you are the one who finish the contest with the maximum number of points. I am a loyal customer of Microsoft and don’t want PS2 - do I have a choice?

I have some weird habits. For example - I start counting the number of tiles while seated in a waiting area OR that I don’t throw away empty jars easily and instead arrange them in the kitchen to form a shape. Another such weird habit that I have is that I try to connect with a character in any movie that I watch. But I think the last habit is not really unique and it happens with most other people. Most of us either relate to a character in a movie or have a secret fantasy of being able to play the ‘reel-life’ in the ‘real-life’. I am one of them - though the intensity dies down with every birthday that I celebrate.

That was the reason why ‘Dil Chahta Hai‘ became immensely popular amongst the youths as one could relate their life with one (or more) of Akash, Sameer or Siddhartha. ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge‘ is one of the most liked movie for teenage girls (boys also but I think it’s liked much more by girls) because of the extreme sugar-coated romantic setup. Superman is liked by the kids because they see a character who is powerful, grown-up and yet is more like their ‘friend’ than just another powerful character.

Lage Raho Munnabhai is beautiful because of the same. I, finally, got a chance to watch the movie this long weekend (when everybody else in the world have watched it weeks back) and without doubt it’s a wonderful movie, to say the least. Though I don’t exactly idolize Gandhi, but this movie showed how is it still applicable in today’s scenario and did what other movies on Gandhi could not do. The movie exploits, positively, many sentiments of the movie-goers but there are two that I will want to single out here:

1. People, in general, are genuine and will do the ‘right things’ unless it forces them to go too much out of the way. So - if there are 2 paths, one right and the other wrong, people will choose the right one. No surprises but ‘Lage Raho…’ tried to show that choosing the right path is, even though, difficult but there are other practical ways which are still better than the ‘wrong’ path.
2. People connect with the characters of a movie, unless it is out and out fiction. As noted above, many people can connect with MunnaBhai of ‘Lage Raho …’ because most of us have gone through a phase where we have lied and have also acknowledged it later only to find out that speaking truth was the much easier option than spending our energies in hiding that one lie.

Lage Raho Munnabhai helped me make that connection. It showed how Gandhi’s principles can be applied in today’s scenario. It showed, to everybody, that Gandhi was not a ‘boring’ character who was visible only in his Khadi Dhoti, Stick or a Spinning Wheel. It showed that it’s still not un-fashionable to follow Gandhi’s principles. It reinstated our faith in truth. It symbolized hope.

On a related note, there was a poll today in the Times of India asking that given the success of the 2 recent bollywood movies - Rang De Basanti and Lage Raho Munnabhai - who do you idolize more ‘Bhagat Singh’ or ‘Mahatma Gandhi’? Now, that’s a tough choice now. Idolizing Bhagat Singh seems easier as ‘tit for tat’ gives the faster satisfaction, though not the desired end result; while on the other hand, idolizing Gandhi needs one to be that much more patient but higher chances of the desired result. I can’t decide - my heart leans towards Gandhi but my brain says that there are many cases where that won’t work.

Santosh from JobMilan informs me of a Job Board he started in the form of a blog called JobMilan.

We have witnessed a few India focused Job Boards coming up in the last few months, which is good if one of these become really popular and they keep it free. I find all these commercial job sites over-priced - we pay really high amount for our accounts with Naukri and Monster. Here is what Santosh has to say about JobMilan:

Some of the advantage of publishing in JobMilan :-

• FREE Job publishing
• Exclusive Startup jobs section for startup employers
• We have a steady growth of 70% page views every month
• Strong community of job seeker querying and getting information about jobs (please see our “Recent comment” section)

I sincerely hope that the service remains free, even when this becomes a lot more popular.

It’s difficult to miss the article in the various newspapers that Infosys announced a special bonus of Rs. 126 crores for its employees to mark the occasion of its silver jubilee.

From the article:

The Silver jubilee celebrations won’t be the only reason for the Infoscians to cheer. In addition to the celebrations that mark 25 years of the IT giant’s existence, all the employees of the company are set to receive a substantial bonus. A princely sum of Rs 126 crore will be distributed among its 58,000 employees.

If you just think about the figure of 126 crores (US $30 million) outside the context, it sounds huge. But let’s do some calculations: (Assumption: US $1 == Rs. 42.00)

126 crores for 58000 employees == Rs. 21724 (US $517) per employee.

So basically Infosys is handing over, on an average, just above $500 to each of its employee. Of course, those who have been in the company for a longer duration will get more than the average while the others will get even less than that (Any company will do this - you will always get rewarded for being loyal). I am sure their average annual bonus will be more than this amount.

Let’s take a look at it from another perspective. Infosys also announced its quarterly results for April-June quarter and its revenue expanded 38.7% to $660 million from $476 million. Assuming $660 million as revenue and 30% profit, the net profit for the quarter is $198 million - which averages to ~ US $66 million per month.

When the monthly profit is US $66 million, a disbursement of just $30 million to mark 25 years of existence seems abysmally low to me. I definitely expected a lot more from Infosys. So, yes, they did a pretty good job at announcements with media showering praises on them - but I think that the Infoscians deserved a better deal.

Or did I miss anything in my calculations?

With Infosys still being the most fair company amongst the big names when it comes to treatment of their employees, it’s not surprising to see people at these companies getting frustrated. I can only say, with the risk of making a very general statement - “You either offer some good, challenging and satisfying work OR you offer good money OR you do both; what is the point in offering none?”

Technorati Tags: Infosys, Silver Jubilee, Silver Jubilee Bonus

I have been continuously traveling for the last 6 weeks. 2 Chennai trips, 1 busy US trip, a much awaited trip home for 3.5 - 4 days (with stop-overs at Kolkata) and now Jaipur Trip - is the maximum I have done so far in such a short span of time. There was a time when I used to complain to my folks that I haven’t been to as many places as a lot of other people I know. It won’t be too much of an exaggeration if I now say just the opposite - but with the difference that most of the travel has been limited to business.

We had been planning to organize a major team event since the last couple of months but kept pushing it till the past weekend primarily because we wanted all of us to be present during that big event. The trip started at 6 AM on Saturday (July 22nd) when we all assembled in the office and boarded a bus booked for the trip by us. That was just the beginning of the fun.

The first 15-20 minutes was quiet with everybody settling in as the bus departed to Jaipur. My younger brother Amit was the only person on the trip who was not from Tekriti and I am glad that he agreed to go else I wouldn’t have been able to. Amit was visiting me for a few days after he wrote his 4th year end semester exams towards his MBBS course. I could feel the unrest in the bus immediately after that as I felt people wanted more activity than what was happening there.

We begun with organizing the usuals - Antakshari and Dumb Charades. I was organizing the events, something that I have always found myself doing in a group - and so was having the maximum fun. The noise level was very high and I had to literally shout at the top of my voice to make myself heard to everybody in the bus. I had a bit of sore-throat and was asked to speak less (by the doctors - my dad and, even, my brother) for the next few days but the temptation to see everybody on the trip having a real good time was so strong that I defied the orders and pleas.

Here is the journey in pictures:

Everybody got seated in the bus preparing for the journey.

Last minute negotiations with the bus-driver who had some confusions regarding the payment. We had to call the travel agent to get it sorted.

I don’t know what Kapil was thinking here. The bus was pretty good.

OK - people had to get up at around 5 in the morning but it was especially tough for Gurpreet since he was partying till late the previous night.

We broke for breakfast here on the Delhi-Jaipur highway - oh well, the restaurant was inside.

We started to play ‘Mafia and the villagers’ and few people who were not playing the game tried playing a spoil-sport by disclosing who the actual mafias were. This single incident evoked the maximum laughter from everybody and was the highlight of the onward journey. Check out Sunil and Kapil standing on their seat and trying to look at the cards of those playing.

Amer Fort!

On the way to ChowkhiDhani. We had pretty bus conductors

Come on - don’t bother the conductors because there isn’t a prettier bus conductor in the country.

ChowkhiDhani - the place rocked as it showcased the Rajasthani culture.

Waiting for food! It was difficult to say No to the guys serving the food. Very authentic food - little too much for everybody. They gave me a roasted papad even when I stood up and clicking snaps of others who were still eating.

All in all - Jaipur trip rocked. Apart from the sight-seeing, the entire team bonded well during the trip (or so, I like to believe). Keep up the great work TeknoKrats - we will have many more such trips.

Saad has an awesome collection of photos from the trip. Don’t miss clicking the link - he is one exceptional photographer.

I have been resisting from writing anything on the Mumbai blasts so far. It is because I feel so strongly about any act of terrorism, murder or a form of killing which is deliberate by an individual or a group of individuals that I am afraid that my opinion will be little too harsh. But, it has been discussed so much in the blogosphere that I can’t resist adding my $0.02.

Very recently, one of my cousin, who I used to admire the most for his approach and risk-taking capabilities in business, was murdered brutally - this has been the single most disturbing factor for me and a lot of my family members in the last couple of months. This is one of the things that one doesn’t want to discuss about and talk about but feel so strongly about that the hatred against any murderer, any terrorist is strong to the extent that nothing can justify another such act. Mumbai blast is another such event and my heart goes to all those who suffered because of the heinous activity.

But more than the terrorists, I blame the Indian government for this activity. We just don’t learn from past and let these acts happen time after time. Why can’t we reply to it once? We have been practicing tolerance from the last so many years and nothing have changed. I can act matured and say that it’s not just the government but our responsibility too but if it happens with you and you know that the frequency of the operation will not change, that maturity goes for a toss. The number of terrorist organizations have only increased with time, the attacks are becoming bolder and the number of civilans that get affected has only increased. And if we take actions, we take it half-heartedly which does more bad than it does good. We will have to stop being such an easy prey for the terrorists. And if it has to happen - we need to give one really strong response. I don’t exactly support the way US attacked Afghanistan and looked for Bin Laden because of 9/11 attacks but don’t we all think that if US hadn’t done that and weakened Taliban to the extent that they had to go into hiding, there would have been more such attacks in the US. Yes - it does mean that US will always have to be careful because there will be somebody from the Taliban organization and their supporters who will always look to harm the country but it is also true that no other attack has happened in the US after that. We just need to compare that with what has happened in India as against to in the US - in the last decade. So, it’s very easy to read about this in the newspapers and come up with comments on whether we should act or not against such attacks - but history tells me that unless we take some concrete actions, nothing will change. Terrorism will never stop. And if the terrorism doesn’t stop killing so many individuals, it is just a matter of time that another section of the society will take up arms and fight against them. Obviously, we don’t want that.

And now this blocking of blogs is probably the most insane thing that the Indian government has done so far in this episode. Apparently, they are blocking the communication between terrorists - as if they just had this medium to communicate. If they really have to communicate - what will stop them from registering a domain and using that for communication instead. That was just an example, there are so many means of carrying out the communication. As pointed out in the comments of my previous post (by Saad), why don’t they block Google? Yeah - we all understand that the ban is not permanent and will be removed in a few days. The blogspot and other blog-users can start using their blog after a few days but it is setting a bad trend and will give government an excuse to ban another blog / site in future whenever somebody writes something that is not popular with them (as Hiren pointed out in the comments of the previous post). Huh - how lame.

My dear politicians of the country, you will be appreciated a lot more if you focus your energies on actually doing something against terrorism either diplomatically or in a more aggressive way. It’s not difficult to make out if an act was truly to block terrorist communication or just something lame to divert people’s attention.

The sad part is that your actions, however lame, doesn’t affect most people in the long run. It’s because those who haven’t suffered directly at the hands of terrorists will have short-term memory here. I have known more than a few people (directly or through another contact) who have, unfortunately, been on the darker side of the fence and none of them will ever support it. When somebody bombed the parliament and you saw a personal risk, the entire army was stationed at the border but if it happens at a more public place, nothing happens. What kind of justification is that?

Technorati Tags: Blocking Blogs, Terrorism, Mumbai Blasts

This is an old news now where people have been speculating about the reason for a lot of different blogs to be blocked in India.

Indiatimes has an article with the reason for the blogs being blocked: Terror heat hits netizens, select blogs blocked.

From the article:

MUMBAI/DELHI: The central government, reeling under fierce criticism of its response to the Mumbai blasts, has struck a blow at the online community by issuing orders to block blogs across the country.

Experts believe that the government’s sudden move is aimed at thwarting the use of blogs (online journals) and websites by terrorists and their supporters. Blogspot, a Google-owned site, is among those blocked by this government measure.

And, they say, we have a freedom of speech! Another reason for not using a hosted blog - thank god that I have my own domain name.

In my current trip to the US (I returned last night only), I got to meet a lot of interesting people - who belong to different sections of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Most of the meetings were casual with another entrepreneur, waiting-to-be-entrepreneur, people who want to join a startup, investors who brainstormed the idea and importance of investment even when you don’t need any, potential and current clients, and friends and family who were generally interested in what is new in the domain we are working on and what is that others are doing.

In the entire trip, the moment that got me thinking the most was during BarCamp, San Francisco which was one of the event that I attended while I was there. As I entered Microsoft building in SFO that happened to be the venue for BarCamp, I noticed a big sign-board which said “Enter the area if you are FREE” (or something like that - I don’t remember the exact words). It didn’t make a lot of sense to me then even though it got me thinking. But soon after I entered the area and interacted with various people in different rooms, things got clear. The rooms were full of people who were either entrepreneurs, worked in startups or just waiting to leave the corporate jobs and become FREE by joining / creating startups.

Even though I didn’t like the sessions in the conference (I have already expressed my dissatisfaction in a previous post), it’s hard to be not impressed with the various people who were present there. There were thinkers / visionaries, entrepreneurs who have been successful in the past ventures, fresh thinkers and executioners, technologists who understand the need of standards and are driving the adoption effort, people who think about users without thinking too much about technology. Not only the people at BarCamp, it’s also those who watch the BarCampers including the investors and heads of M&A divisions of the big companies - that takes the entire thing to the next level. Web 2.0 is probably the most sought after topic in these conferences but there were others like peer to peer (P2P) technology companies (and others) who had a decent audience.

In my perspective - this is what makes Silicon Valley. The availability of venture money is all important and is probably much more accessible in the Bay Area but it’s the positive energy of people in the area that is the real differentiator. Till the time we can replicate the structure, it’s really difficult to have another true Silicon Valley. I love that place - for its energy and for the viral entrepreneurship effect that it has on everybody!