Incubator

MoDemo, HeadStart, Proto: It's show(case) time, folks

Namitha Jagadeesh — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:25:00 GMT

Here's a welcome break from all the recession news. The season of start-up showcases has begun again. Nominations are now open for Proto.in and MoDemo, while the nomination process has come to a close with two others - HeadStart and the Tata-NEN Hottest Start-ups. Over the next six weeks, these will (hopefully) bring to light a few dozen start-ups working on innovative products and services.

First up is MoDemo in Bangalore, tentatively scheduled for December 13, provided at least ten companies submit entries. It is organized by the Mobile Monday Bangalore chapter and is meant as a platform for mobile start-ups to demo their products and services. It is strictly show and tell and no power point presentations will be allowed, which means the audience might be spared self-marketing spiels. The first edition was held last December (check out the companies that presented here and a brief summary of the event here), and looks like the MoMo Bangalore guys want to make it an annual affair. To register for the demo, send a mail with brief description to admin@modemo.in

Tata-NEN Hottest Start-ups will announce the final five winners on its site on December 23. The top 30 nominees have been announced. Read our coverage of the competition so far here.

Next up is HeadStart in Bangalore on January 10-11, organized by KickStart, the team behind BarCamps in Bangalore and Mumbai. HeadStart, like MoDemo, is onto its second edition this time. It was started in a bid to showcase innovation across the spectrum, be it start-up, research institute or large corporation (read a brief summary of the first HeadStart here). Nominations are officially over, but companies can still demo their products at booths outside the auditorium by registering here. The nominated companies will be announced on December 12.

Finally, we round up the showcase with the bi-annual Proto.in on January 23-24, to be held in Bangalore for the first time. This will be Proto's fifth edition since it began in January 2007 and second since it moved out of home base Chennai. The last one was in Delhi in July this year (read our coverage of the event here). Nominations for Proto have just opened up. Read more about the run-up to the event on this blog and nominate your company here.

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Mumbai terrorist attack: VCs in south Bombay unhurt, AVCJ postpones annual conference

Namitha Jagadeesh — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:01:00 GMT

Encounters are on at the Taj Mahal hotel and Nariman House as I write this, while the Trident and Oberoi have been evacuated. The Trident is home to global venture funds such as Norwest Venture Partners, which set up India office last September, Battery Ventures, which set up office this year and IDG Ventures India, which initially had only a Bangalore office. Many times, I have run into entrepreneurs who were at the hotel to make VC pitches.

In fact, most VC firms lie between Worli's Ceejay House and various locations in south Bombay. Other venture firms such as Clearstone Venture Partners (which operated out of Trident until a few months back), SVB Capital Partners and Mayfield Fund have offices at Colaba and Nariman Point, close to the two hotels. For this reason, both the Taj Mahal and Trident are popular with VCs to meet entrepreneurs, journalists and host press conferences. Many interviews such as this one have been held at the hotels.

Gautam Patel, a partner at Battery Ventures, and his colleagues were trapped at the Trident hotel for at least 90 minutes after the terrorist attack began, but got out safely. Other VCs operating in the region have confirmed they are safe. Clearstone's Rahul Khanna, in reply to a message, said all partners were ok, but they couldn't get to their office (at Dhanraj Mahal) yet.

Due to security concerns, the Asia Venture Capital Journal has postponed its annual Private Equity and Venture Forum, one of the largest industry gatherings in the country, that was to be held next week at the Grand Hyatt. Last year's forum was hosted at the Trident in December. In the last three years, since private equity returned to India after the dotcom bust, it has attracted large numbers of private equity and venture investors as well as their limited partners (institutions that back equity funds) scouting for market opportunities here.

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Start-up funding may get hit at root, as endowments suffer

Namitha Jagadeesh — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:15:00 GMT

Start-up funding may now be hit at the root source of capital, as US university endowments, which contribute significantly to the pool of money venture capitalists raise, suffer. Universities are looking to sell off parts of their equity portfolio privately, as their investments through endowments take a hit from the market, reports The New York Times. Such endowments, along with pension funds, are the chief sources of VC money (see chart) that is then invested in companies.

Close to 90% of venture capital raised for the India market continues to come from limited partners (institutions that back equity funds) in the US, and universities such as Stanford and Harvard Business School are among the active ones here. Harvard, for example has invested more than $ 1 billion in India. Many global funds investing in India such as DFJ and Matrix Partners, as well as domestic funds such as Helion Venture Partners and Nexus India Capital have raised money with such endowments.

Now, universities such as Virginia and Harvard, which have billions of dollars in endowments, are now exploring the sale of their stakes in venture capital and private equity funds, says the NYT:

“The value of some of these investments has fallen, and they are not easily shed because there is no public market for them, as there is for stocks. Worse, private equity and venture capital funds require investors to put up additional capital over time. Cash may now be in short supply at schools facing budget pressures and investment losses.”

Eventually, if endowments start pulling out, it means less capital for VC’s and therefore, for start-ups.

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Maharashtra, Delhi, AP top e-commerce activity (and other curious facts): eBay India report

Namitha Jagadeesh — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:02:00 GMT

Online auction platform eBay, Inc is a popular platform for digging out consumer e-commerce trends that range from interesting to just plain weird. So eBay's India transaction census guide released today makes for an interesting read, especially since it provides comprehensive state-wise segmentation of top items bought and sold in the country in 2007, including places such as Sikkim, Pondicherry and Daman and Diu (eBay has released 2007 data a little late in the day, considering we're nearing end-08). According to a 2006 JuxtConsult report, eBay India has a 38% market share in online shopping, and a majority of its sellers are either small and medium businesses or solo entrepreneurs.

Some interesting trends:

eBay India counts 2,427 "wired" locations in India, i.e where a person has either bought or sold an item on its site last year.
USB drives topped the list of items Indians bought in 2007, and stamps topped the list of what they sold.
Mumbai and Maharashtra ranked the top city and state respectively for transactions.

And some curious ones:

Meghalaya sold the maximum number of drums on eBay India.
Zippo lighters were the most bought items in Jharkhand.
In Tripura, people bought cat's eye (a semi-precious stone said to bring luck) more than any other item.
Uttarakhand sold the most camping equipment and bought the highest number of binoculars in the country.
Apple iPods topped the list of items sold by eBay users in Assam.
The top ten items sold by eBay users in Chattisgarh were mostly high-end gadgets, from Blackberry, N-series and O2 handsets to Apple iPods.
Kolkata bought the highest number of personal massagers in the country.
Chandigarh bought the most number of neckties; Orissa, women's handkerchiefs.

Download the full report here.

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Start-up profile: Bed of roses, at a steep price though

Sanat Vallikappen — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:02:00 GMT

Starting off as a wholesale dealer and exporter of flowers, Laxmi Lobo (45) has now transformed herself into one of the first ports of call for anyone looking to buy flowers online.

Spring Blossoms, founded by her in September 2004, was an answer to the lack of exclusive Indian florist websites that paid special attention to the design of bouquets and the sourcing of flowers.

"There were many gifting portals through which flowers could also be gifted. But a telephone call would transfer the customer to a call centre executive who did not know anything about fresh flowers," says Lobo, of what existed till she came on the scene.

So far, Lobo has used her own funds to scale the business, which has grown from a "Mumbai deliveries" flower shop with one design studio and one retail counter to one that delivers 30 cities through an affiliate model. For Mumbai, Lobo does the sourcing and delivering herself, and employs 15 people.

For the other cities, there is a partner network. In the initial days, Lobo's real challenge was going all-India for deliveries. "I wanted to keep the florist feel and not just be part of the gifting portals. I personally scoured cities and sourced good florists with whom to build relationships. Many of my affiliates are women with keen designing sense and take pride in their fresh flowers," said Lobo. This affiliate model means that there are no commissions charged by Spring Blossoms when an affiliate makes a delivery. Rather, it's an inter-florist rate that is reset every three months or so, depending on the market.

The Spring Blossoms website ensures that only those combination of flowers that are available and easily sourced in a particular city are shown for delivery to those cities. "Flowers being perishable and non-standardised products, affiliates cannot stock everything at the same time. Besides, availability of a particular flower that makes the bouquet depends on the season and the location," said Lobo. "With us, you get what you see on the website."

On a bad day, she sells 10 bouquets, and on a good one, 30. On a conservative basis, that translates to around Rs 36.5 lakh in revenues per annum, at the rate of Rs 1,000 per bouquet.

Niren Shah, now managing director of Norwest Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that also invests in Indian companies, and earlier part of the original management team of Baazee.com, India's largest shopping website (before it was sold to eBay Inc), says, though e-commerce as a category is small now, the future looks bright.

On the prospects for an online flower portal, he says: "It's certainly an interesting business, but at the same time, I am not sure whether, on a standalone basis, it can become large enough to go IPO (initial public offering)."

"It probably needs to consider expanding into the overall online gifting segment, without losing the expertise it has in the flowers business," he added.

Payments for bouquets bought through Spring Blossoms can currently be made online or by dropping off cheques at branches and ATMs of HDFC Bank Ltd and Bank of Baroda Ltd.

But isn't Rs 1,000 too steep a price to pay for a bouquet when you have local vendors delivering at Rs 200-300? "It's like walking into a five-star coffee shop and asking the bearer why he charges Rs 200 for a cuppa when the local chaiwala charges Rs 2. Come on, that's not a comparison," she says

To support the growth of her company, Lobo now needs funds from the outside. "Funds are required from outside as the cost of renting has gone up and business development requires funding for a targeted growth," said Lobo. Delivering overseas is next on her agenda.

There are no real entry barriers to the business, as Lobo herself admits. "Anyone can start a website without really having any specialised florist knowledge, and become a sort of an aggregator of orders. But as the customer gets savvier, he will learn to differentiate between the two. It's all about customer service and professionalism in this business," she said.

Spring Blossoms is one of the start-ups nominated for the NEN Hottest Start-up awards. Read other such start-up profiles here

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Solar co Azure Power closes series-A from Helion, Foundation Capital

Namitha Jagadeesh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:49:00 GMT

Delhi-based solar energy company Azure Power has closed undisclosed first round funding from Helion Venture Partners and Foundation Capital. Incubator had first reported the deal in October.

Azure is an independent power producer, that is, a privately held company that generates power that can be sold to public utilities (like BEST) or end users. Helion managing director Sanjeev Aggarwal, who has taken a board seat, had told Incubator the company will not manufacture solar panels in-house but source it from external vendors. The solar power generated can be supplied into the grid (to state electricity boards) or directly to customers. It is the first venture investment in the solar energy space, which has previously been a private equity play. As this earlier Mint story notes, VCs say deal flow has increased in the sector, spurred on by a generous government incentive scheme annouced in January, that subsidises upto Rs 12 per unit of power produced. But for now, there is more quantity than quality, as most are project financing deals. Funds such as Helion hope the subsidies lower tariff and drive more capital-efficient businessmodels.

This is the first energy investment for Helion, which closed its $210 million second fund in February this year and Foundation Capital's first India investment. Menlo Park, California-headquartered Foundation Capital has backed companies such as online DVD rental Netflix and virtual storage company Zetta, Inc.

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Did Internet help win the elections?

Namitha Jagadeesh — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:25:00 GMT

What role did the Internet play in the recent US presidential elections? A pretty big one, according to this article on the New York Times' blog Bits, which argues that Barack Obama's use of the Internet in his presidential campaign has changed US politics, drawing parallels to John F Kennedy's use of the televised medium in the 1960 campaign.

The article quotes panelists at the recent Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, who argue that Obama's use of free Internet tools such as Youtube not only grabbed eyeballs but saved millions of dollars of campaigning money. (over at Playthings, Ayeshea Perreira has a more in-depth post on the various online tools that the candidates used in their campaigns). The instant access to past speeches and comments also demanded greater answerability. Technology and consumer-focused businesses, particularly start-ups, have typically used the Internet as a cost-effective medium for marketing themselves and delivering business solutions. Its widespread use during this year's US electoral campaign with similar effect is noteworthy. Obama, who posted regular updates on popular social media platform Twitter had the largest number of followers on the site. His last tweet (Twitter update), a little after the results, says, "We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks."

Indian politicians too have dabbled in online platforms such as blogging, but with little results so far. As this Mint article noted in September, politicians seem reluctant to allow that kind of open access to themselves that the medium's interactivity offers. In the Indian context, however, the ubiquitous mobile phone may hold better prospects for campaigning politicians. With over 300 million users and a reach that extends far beyond the metros, it will be interesting to watch how parties harness the medium. Thanks to a spate of reality TV shows, we are already accustomed to voting for contestants through SMS. Can electoral voting be far behind?

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The Sensex, my mother and me

Sanat Vallikappen — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:22:00 GMT

With the BSE Sensex going below 8,000 last Monday, the stock markets have come a full circle for me. I started tracking the Indian equity markets in mid-2005 when I joined my previous employers, DNA. Though I saw Sensex 7,000 whizz by (it happened on June 21, 2005 and DNA's first edition came out only by July), the first opportunity I got to write on a milestone was when it breached 8,000 on the way up on September 8, 2005. From then till January of 2008, it seemed like a one-way street up, with minor hiccups such as what happened in May 2006, being taken care of with liquidity infused from abroad.

For most part of chronicling the Sensex's journey up, I stayed away from investing. When it touched 21,000 in January this year, friends were celebrating, television channels were going berserk, and pundits were prophesying a run up to 40,000. That's when the slide started, and I felt partly vindicated.

But wanting to make up for lost time, ‘investable surpluses', to borrow a term from the same pundits, were immediately deployed into ‘growth stocks' when the Sensex went down to 18,000. And it wasn't just my money, but some girlfriends' too, who unfortunately for me, thought I was their guru. What we did not realise then was that 18,000 was just the beginning of the slide, and not its end.

Over the past few months, relationships have expectedly soured, and I'm not sure whether I can call them girlfriends anymore.

My only solace comes from my mother, who still considers me a hero. She had asked me a while ago whether she should invest in the market for some ‘quick gains'. More out of lack of time to explain than any strong conviction, my answer was a vehement ‘No'. I should have known then that when mothers start asking sons about the market, it's time to get out.

Anyways, now that money has been committed, I guess I'll have to ride the storm. Maybe change my strategy from growth to value investing - all the stocks I had got into then anyway look like value picks now - to average out costs.

The only comforting aspect from all this is that I am not alone: everyone's hurting. As has been written about over and over again, even fund managers at private equity firms, whose traditional mandate is to spot investment opportunities in unlisted companies, are ruing their excesses of 2006 and 2007. They, thinking like my mother, that they could make some quick bucks from riding the bull, had directed fistfuls of funds into the public markets.

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Candover's gymming strategy

Sanat Vallikappen — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:37:00 GMT

Candover, the Euroupean private equity group that set up its India office a couple of months ago, and its Asia office in February 2008, is hoping to leverage the connections some of its European portfolio companies have built in the region. See the full article on Candover’s Asia entry here.

“The companies that we’ve invested in Europe, typically have been international. They already have a reach into Asia, and that reach goes back many years,” says Jamie Paton, head of Asia for Candover.Technogym SpA, the exclusive supplier of gym equipment to athletes over the last three Olympics, and a portfolio company of Candover’s since June 2008, is an example.Paton notes that the only gym equipment at the Taj Mahal Palace & Towers in Mumbai, where Candover has set up its India base, is Technogym's.

Harsha Raghavan, managing director of Candover Advisors (India) Pvt Ltd, apart from scouring the local deal landscape, is also busy looking at opportunities for Technogym to develop its business here. “When we hand over our business card, we say that we work with Technogym. Harsha has got people coming to him and saying, ‘that’s interesting…. you’re involved in that kind of business line, we’d be very interested to meet with Technogym…we’re trying to get that into our corporate gym....and by the way, I’ve got this other business which does such and such….Would you like to talk to us about it?’,” says Paton, of how the Technogym connection can help Candover get a cracking start.

Meanwhile, as I write this, I get an SMS from my neighbourhood gym to avail of a 25-35% discount. It’s a special Diwali offer and today is the last day, they say, when I call to check up. I ask them what equipment they use. It’s Star Trac, Precor and Jerai. There’s no Technogym there.

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It pays to be networked - Admob, LinkedIn announce fresh funding in downturn

Namitha Jagadeesh — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:28:00 GMT

Two Silicon Valley companies - Admob, a mobile ad network and LinkedIn, a professional networking platform have announced fresh investments in the last two days, perhaps the two largest rounds of venture funding announced since the US market meltdown last month. Admob has raised $15.7 million in third round funding from Sequoia Capital (which made the now infamous 'R.I.P Good times' presentation to portfolio companies two weeks ago) and previous investor Accel Partners. LinkedIn announced fresh funding of $22.7 million from Goldman Sachs, SAP and McGraw-Hill, a follow-on to the $53 million series-D round it raised at a valuation of $1 billion earlier this year. TechCrunch reports that while LinkedIn has announced the funding now, the round closed last month, before the market crash.

But at a time when fundraising is expected to get tougher - both for start-ups and VCs, the announcements are a reminder that there is still a pool of already-raised capital that VCs will continue to deploy across start-ups, albeit cautiously. Citing from a report by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association, Venturebeat notes that 55 venture firms in the US raised $8.1 billion in the third quarter of 2008, and Sequoia topped the list.

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Challenges for an Indian company in emerging markets outside India

Namitha Jagadeesh — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:10:00 GMT

We ran this story in Mint today on young Indian companies in IT and telecom services looking at markets such as Middle East, Latin America and Africa for expansion, rather than the US or UK. As the developed economies slow down, it is expected that more Indian companies will head to emerging markets that may be a few years behind India, but growing rapidly. The article talks about how the bet has paid off for early movers, who now make a substantial part of their revenues overseas and the advantages of heading to such markets – high growth, less competition from bigger players. The advantage, however, comes at a price – one of the reasons big players aren’t already in those geographies, apart from smaller customer base, is that they aren’t easy markets to penetrate. The challenges of catering to these emerging markets are significant and considerably different from the problems faced by companies heading to the US. They often have to deal with highly fragmented markets, not to mention cultural differences and language barriers.

English, long held as an advantage for Indian companies going global, is the preferred language in few countries. “Language is a big barrier,” says A R Vishwanath, CEO, IMI Mobile. It has operations in African countries such as Nigeria and Ghana and in Latin America. So Indian companies have to either partner with local companies or learn the language and hire local talent. Gurgaon-headquartered IT services company Mann India, which makes 90% of its revenues from the Latin American (except Brazil) market, is trying the latter. The company offers incentives to its Indian employees to learn Spanish – it is one of the factors considered during annual appraisals for employees. It is also hiring local talent, and plans to have a 50-50 mix of Indians and non-Indians on its payroll by next year.

Culturally too, businesses are driven more by relationships and credibility. So start-ups have to adapt not only to new markets, but new language and culture as well. “In the US, it is possible to walk in from the cold and make significant business deals with business development effort. In the Middle East, reputation is extremely important. So if you fail, word gets out quickly,” says Niket Patankar, CEO, Adventity. So companies have to spend a lot of time on ground learning the lay of the land, so to speak. Mann spent 18 months networking. “Here, it is very important to know senior management within companies, which is not very important to do business (elsewhere),” says Noor Qazi, co-founder, Mann India.

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Entrepreneurship pains are worth the gain

Deepti Chaudhary — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:10:00 GMT

Photo - Hemant Mishra/Mint-Bangalore

The panel discussion at the TATA NEN Hottest Startups event in Bangalore on Wednesday was spiced up with instances of how Indian society takes to entrepreneurs. “There are three kinds of boards that people put at the entrance of their building -- dogs not allowed, salesmen not allowed and entrepreneurs not allowed,” said MeritTrac Services Pvt Ltd’s co-founder and chief executive Madan Padaki. MeritTrac is a Bangalore-based skills assessment company. Giving an insight into how difficult it could be for an entrepreneur, Padaki said he was shown the door twice in his earlier days. First, when he told his then boss that wanted three months leave (without salary) to try out his business idea. Second, by an investor, who said Padaki “was not serious enough.”

Karthik KS, chief executive, 24X7 Learning Solutions Ltd., who had a similar experience to share, said entrepreneurs need to remember that what worked for others may not work for them -- something he learned early in his career. Karthik had decided to base his company 24X7 Learning out of Hyderabad, imitating a successful firm in that city. His e-learning initiatives failed and within months Karthik had to shift base to Bangalore, incurring a loss of more than Rs200,000.

Both entrepreneurs agreed that though they had their share of frustration, conviction in their business idea and support from family and friends kept them going. “I had always wanted a BMW,” says Karthik, adding that though he doesn’t own one due to commitments to his team, he can afford it.

Though markets are grappling with a global slowdown, they feel it should not dampen the spirits of budding entrepreneurs, as opportunity-spotting is high in bad times. It is rather favorable for an entrepreneur to start in a meltdown as they get disciplined not only with their money, but work also, says Padaki.

If you have an idea and you believe in it, follow your dreams, was the closing note of the session. “It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all,” said Karthik.

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Tim Draper on India, space DNA and repealing Sarbanes-Oxley, “that stupid law”

Namitha Jagadeesh — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Venture capitalist Tim Draper doesn’t miss an opportunity to promote a portfolio company. “I hope you’re doing all your travel through Cleartrip,” he told me a minute into our conversation - his firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson led an $18.5 million round of funding in the online travel portal last year. He’s also very vocal about free enterprise and blames the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (a US federal law introduced in 2002 that requires public companies to follow a number of standards) for the lack of venture-backed IPOs in the US this year: “We have a huge backlog of companies that should’ve gone public but aren’t”. DFJ, which has invested in 500 companies across the globe through its own and affiliate funds, has seen big ticket exits such as Hotmail, Skype and Baidu. Draper was in India last weekend –his first visit since DFJ set up a local office headed by Mohanjit Jolly last year – to meet the 15 companies it has funded here. Here’s his interview that we ran in print on Saturday. Draper had much more to say than that, so a Part-II was in order.

Where do you see India in the global scheme of things for DFJ?

It’s a fantastic country, with huge opportunities, very large marketplace and a group of highly educated people. The culture is incredibly entrepreneurial. I don’t know what you guys did during that time before the free market, but you really know how to deal with a free market. It’s a few years behind China in its growth. Most of the growth piece for high-growth countries comes from small businesses, and we hope that turns out to be entrepreneurs that we backed.

You’ve said before that DFJ likes to invest in disruptive, cutting-edge technology while India is seen as more of an execution play….

That’s the same thing they said about China, and I don’t believe it for a second. I think people who do the work [execute ideas] come up with creative ideas, start new businesses, do more work and get more creative. I’ve seen a lot of very interesting creative ideas - there aren’t a lot of low-end electric cars out there, but we found one in India [Reva], which is a great global opportunity that’ll make the air better, and we’ll get around in quieter vehicles.

Is venture investing moving towards capital-intensive sectors such as cleantech and nanotechnology companies as opposed to Internet companies that can be started by two people in a garage?

We’re doing both of those. We do tend to push the edge a little. When we’re wrong it’s usually because science wasn’t quite to the point it should’ve been. (Corrects himself) We’ve been wrong for a lot of reasons, but that was one.

But have the longer gestation periods of such companies contributed to the lack of VC-backed IPOs in the US this year?

That all has to do with Sarbanes-Oxley, because of that stupid law! That costs three million dollars [to take a company public]. Maybe it’s come down, but at the time it cost that much. We just froze all the IPOs. We didn’t want to blow all our companies’ money. That should be out of there, should be repealed. No Sarbanes-Oxley! It is expensive, wasteful and a huge block for IPOs. Think about it – an entrepreneur comes and we say, here’s some money. In 5-7 years, if you’ve hit $20 million in revenue and $3 million profit, you can go public. In seven years, we’re ready to go public and we say, “That $3 million in profit? After you go public, it’s gone. And nobody will want you because you’re not profitable anymore. Put your head back down for 4-5 years more, get to $150 million in reven, then maybe we’ll take it.” We have a huge backlog of companies that should’ve gone public but aren’t…because of Sarbanes-Oxley. Eventually we will.

After Enron, every bureaucrat politician was so after businesses, they made it miserable for businesses. You’ve got to be friendly to businesses and open up. Look around, water we drink, pencils, chairs (picks up the water bottle, the pencil and shakes the chair next to him)… the government didn’t do that, that’s all business. They’re getting in the way. Finally with the crisis, I don’t know if they’re going the right way, but at least they’re trying to help businesses. That’s in the US. (Grins) In India, you’ve got your own problems. And problems equals opportunity.

How does DFJ stay local to entrepreneurs while working with such a large network of affiliate funds and regional offices?

The team is local to the entrepreneur. It’s very important to be local to the entrepreneur, but it is also important for entrepreneurs to know they’re in a global economy and for the VC to introduce them to whoever they need to meet in that economy that makes them more successful.

Do you have an intelligence network?

Yes. So when we see a deal in Mumbai, Mohanjit [Jolly] will do a network blast to alert people to a certain market. The market will then show itself - three companies in New York, one in Silicon Valley, one in Seoul and one in Ho Chi Minh. We have a software that does it. We might decide to do two [of the companies] and drop the rest. And when an entrepreneur is funded, we can introduce them anywhere in the world – for outsourcing, Infosys, Satyam…some in China. It’s the network that they would not have had if it was a provincial isolated VC network. We’re pretty happy about how it’s worked out. Also, if we need to syndicate when capital is tight, we can go to our group and say, we’ve got a deal, who wants in? That can happen in an informal way with a lot of VCs, but it’s much more efficient and effective through the network.

You’re sending your DNA into space…

(Laughs loudly) That was well worth doing. I hope some alien picks it up and transfers it to another VC populating the galaxy with more entrepreneurs.

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Fighting demons and darkness at the Cleantech Forum

Namitha Jagadeesh — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:56:00 GMT

Panel discussions at the Cleantech Group's first India Forum were peppered with references to Indian gods. First, the Minister of State for New and Renewable Energy Vilas Muttemwar, in his six-page written speech, invoked the sun god thus:

"The Sun God has blessed India with a presence averaging 320-325 days in a year. I often jokingly say that the Sun God.....unlike many of us, never takes casual leave or sick leave."

....and triggered off a chain of allusions to gods and demons. Panelists such as Tata Power's chief sustainability officer Avinash Patkar and Cleantech Group chairman Nicholas Parker spoke of 400 million rural Indians living in the dark as "our Ravana", the demon to be vanquished, and called upon Shiva "to wage a war on the old way of imagining the energy future."

Ironically, as it was being debated heatedly by energy companies and investors, that very darkness manifested itself in the hall in the form of a power outage. As the stage lit up with floodlights and massive chandeliers plunged into sudden black, the discussions on energy innovations and investment opportunities gave way to sheepish silence, followed by wisecracks on conserving energy by conferencing in the dark.

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A higher wall for Wall Street

Sanat Vallikappen — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:11:00 GMT

More than 300 years after it was dismantled (by the British in 1699), there must be a prayer that the wall along whose length Wall Street was constructed in the 17^th century and from which it takes its name, be restored.

That wall had formed the northern boundary for early Dutch settlers in lower Manhattan, and served to defend them against foreign invasion.

This time though, it’s required not to protect those within, but rather to shield those beyond it. There is that $700 billion wall being designed by the US central bank, but the question is whether it’s high enough to keep damage-inflicters at bay.

It may still be early days, but judging by its impact, or the lack of it, on world markets, it sure seems low. In faraway India, for instance, the Sensex dropped 1,197.96 points or 9.56% over the first three days of this week.

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