Category: Indian Market


FounderMates – An online network for Advisors and Entrepreneurs

Filed under: Indian Market, Start-ups by Raunak — Leave a comment
February 13, 2013

Hi Everyone,

It has been long since a new post has been published. Pardon me for the absence, but I was involved in creating my own venture.

Thankfully, after much brainstorming, looking for ideas, understanding our own pain points, my co-founder Nidhi and I, have decided to launch, FounderMates.

The product is right now been developed, but you can definitely look it up here and sign up if it interests you:

http://foundermates.com

The concept briefly is outlined below. We will highlight more in few week’s time as well launch our beta platform to sign in.

 

Why FounderMates? 

Most existing advisory channels available to entrepreneurs today have inefficiencies that FounderMates aims to solve:

1.     Social media / public forums – lack of privacy, disintegrated, search is time consuming

2.     Paid advisory – entrepreneurs charged upfront

3.     Physical networking events – Every advisor cannot attend every event. Also, in an event entrepreneurs do not network with every advisor. Also advisor’s skills are not known by entrepreneurs. Leads to inefficiency

4.     Cold calling – perceived rude by some, time inefficient , limited reach

5.     Personal networks – limited networks , lack of access to broad range of skills and expertise

 

What is FounderMates?

FounderMates is an organized online platform where entrepreneurs can connect with advisors in a safe, secure and private environment at no cost

 

Benefits of FounderMates to an entrepreneur

  • ·  Easy and quick access to quality advisory at no cost
  • ·  Access to a diverse portfolio of carefully selected advisors from different professional backgrounds, industries and skills

Benefits of FounderMates to an advisor

  • ·  Make advisors visible to the entire entrepreneurial community on the platform
  • ·  Enable an advisor to build his SME/startup influence by getting reviews from entrepreneurs
  • ·  Provide a platform to advisors where engagement with entrepreneurs may lead to value added long term relationship

 

Registration Process

 

We invite you to register interest in the link: http://foundermates.com

We will contact you soon with further details of our platform

We will launch in the middle of March 2013

 

Share

Please take a moment after you register to share the link with other advisors and entrepreneurs who you feel will add value to our platform and help make FounderMates a stronger community.

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What stops you from being an entrepreneur?

Filed under: Indian Market, Random, Start-ups by Raunak — Leave a comment
January 10, 2013

It’s interesting to hear people say that they wish to start-up at some point in their lives. By people here, I mean those who are currently employed with companies. And when they say that they wish to start-up at some point, they mean it.

I say so because I said ‘I want to startup’ to my friends and family for about 5 years. It took me this long to start-up. Did I lack the passion? Did I like being in a job? Did I lack an idea? The answer to all these questions is NO.

What I did lack was the ‘doing mindset’. It’s great to dream, come up with an idea but when it comes to doing, most of us begin to face blockages. Some start feeling it’s not what they hoped for, some feel it’s boring and dull, some feel it’s a lonely journey, some get caught up in fear of the unknown. The silver lining here is that YOU are not alone facing those thoughts. We all have those creepy, lowly thoughts nagging at us, trying to distract us from our goal.

Read and take part in the discussion here.

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Startup Networking in India

Filed under: Indian Market by Raunak — Leave a comment
November 4, 2012

Having stayed in London for the past 2 years, I have been experiencing the plethora of networking events across the city for entrepreneurs, future entrepreneurs, investors, techies, business guys, consultants etc.

With online portals like meetup.com, there seems to be a zillion of them around in London. I often get overwhelmed at so many different groups and end up not joining most.

After all, which one do I prioritise and which one will not just be another meeting of young adrenaline junkies, with “taking over the world” attitude which ends up in binge drinking in a country pub.

There are are few platforms like Dreamstake which are trying to create a centralised platform to connect everyone in the startup eco-system in the UK (esp., London).

While doing a bit of research in the Indian systems, I was appalled to find just 1 online meetup group:

http://www.meetup.com/DestinationIndia-startups-investors/

And no where does it mention what exactly is in store for a first time joinee like me who wants to get into the Indian startup system.

It promises to host networking events, presentations across various places in Mumbai to connect entreprneurs, investors etc.

I understand that some of the players like VCCircle, YourStory.in are also trying to create the same albeit at a more expensive level.

VCCircle definitely is a premium one, where most of the events take place at posh 5 star hotels with famous entrepreneurs, businessmen come and talk about their experiences to potential new ones.

Interestingly, while I was looking at a platform to connect to some like minded people online in India, I could not find any. All I had to reply was Linkedin!

This just shows that in India, people still like to rely on in-person meets, or they are just plain lucky to find someone from their peer/colleague circle to start a business.

In contrast, places like the UK thrives on meetups and networking events, where they like to meet new people and potentially start a new venture with them.

I did interview few entrepreneurs in India, and all of them said that they founded their company with a bunch of friends and peers they knew.

Indian startup ecosystem needs to imbibe this culture of meeting new people, exchange ideas, network and start a business. The culture of “Dating” has to set in, if fresh ideas need to emerge. The trust factor has to set in amongst people. A stranger needs to be trusted!

I would have accepted that Indians do not prefer online strangers a decade back. However, with the proliferation of Linkedin as a network of choice, the notion is changing fast. The key is how fast this impregnates in the startup ecostystem.

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How We Fight - Cofounders in Love and War

Filed under: Indian Market by Raunak — Leave a comment
October 28, 2012

Reblogged from Steve Blank:

Click to visit the original post

I often get asked about finding cofounders and I usually give the standard list of characteristics of what I look for in a founder.  And I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets - i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps.  But Jessica Alter, Cofounder & CEO of FounderDating, pointed out that…

Read more… 1,000 more words

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Start-Up Experience – In classroom & in reality

Filed under: Global Market Trend, Indian Market, Start-ups by nidhik — 1 Comment
July 30, 2012

I am writing this blog post not to refute the purpose of higher education but as I have already spent two months with Elevate Direct(a London based start-up), I do get down to thinking how it disconnects from practical learning.

I specialised in entrepreneurship and did rather well in the business plan competition where I got an opportunity to pitch to some of the most well-known VCs and BAs. That was definitely a confidence boost and made me think that if I could pull it off once (of course as team effort), I could replicate the success again. Logical, isn’t it? But unfortunately, the answer is No. As me and my friend started working on a business idea, we found ourselves refer back to the process that brought us victory in the business plan competition. As we went on, we began to realize that it was just another day after day with us being stuck to making better documents containing our research. The alarm bells rung that we were not doing something right.

Simultaneously, at my full time job with Elevate Direct, I began to notice the difference between my approach and that of the co-founders. I began to realize sooner than later that I tend to wear a consultant’s hat which is detrimental to an entrepreneur.  There might not be sophistication with processes or with the way stuff is documented and maintained. But who cares really?!  The most important thing is that they did it! Processes and sophistication are bound to come of their own accord. And that’s what really changed my mindset from that of an MBA consultant’s to a doer (a synonym I like to use for an entrepreneur).

And well, I applied the learning from this environment to our idea and there we go! Just by making our thought process ‘lean’, here we are ready with a first un-sophisticated prototype in almost 2 weeks’ time. If I compare this timeline to what I learnt on the entrepreneurship workshop, I should be still doing my market research & trend analysis ;) .

So, what’s the moral of the story? If you are really contemplating making your own mark in this world, keep structure and processes at bay. They limit and just delay actual action required of you. Don’t get me wrong; I still love my excel sheet and well maintained docs but just a bit of diligence as to what works when can take you miles closer to your goal sooner than you would expect!

Whether you are working for a start-up or thinking about taking the leap on your own, we would love to hear your story in the entrepreneurial world.

Keep watching this space for more….

 

 

 

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Product start-ups in India…Hell yeah, we want more of these!

Filed under: Indian Market, Start-ups by Avinash S Bajaj — Leave a comment
July 7, 2012

Having made a recent vacation trip to India, I had been to a start-up event in Bangalore. Although some speakers and topics were major disappointments (more on this in another post, hopefully), I had the opportunity to talk to some really smart CEOs and investors who were well tuned with the global entrepreneurship scenario. Not surprisingly, our topics always circled back to why India has more service companies than product companies. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against service companies (after all, that is what has caused us to be known in the global start-up scene), but haven’t we always wondered if it is the lack of something that prevents us from achieving that feat as well (given our competitive nature)?

That is the reason it was so refreshing to read today’s article by Paul Joseph of EntrepreneurHeat about how Chennai, one of India’s primary manufacturing hub (also known as the “Detroit of India”), is now leading the way in developing world-class product technological start-ups. Some of the examples mentioned are really inspiring. I have tried to pick the best ones below:

  • Zoho Corporation: “has brushed off acquisition overtures from many leading Silicon Valley corporations and believes in bootstrapping his way to success. He has started a university kind of training within the company to grow talent.” 
  • OrangeScape: “has jointly launched a product named KISSFlow along with industry giant Google in its flagship event Google. IO last week. This is the first time that Google as a company has partnered with another company to launch a product (so far every product launch has been its own, inhouse built, and 100% owned).”
  • Freshdesk: “has taken the global leader Zendesk head on, on this task (to a point where the Zendesk CEO seems to be shaken).”, “have also raised a round of funding from Accel to the tune of $6mn.”
These are just some brief stats to indicate the potential of global strategic partnerships for the country’s young minds. Some of these leading entrepreneurs have also been inspiring images on improving India’s start-up ecosystem.
It will be really interesting to see how Chennai’s start, along with Bangalore’s well known tech capabilities and Mumbai’s commercial mindset, will influence the country’s growing entrepreneurship development.
You can read the full article here: Chennai Emerging as a Global Product Tech City
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College Degrees Not needed! – Admire the thinking

Filed under: Indian Market, Random, Start-ups by Raunak — Leave a comment
June 17, 2012

Came across this article. Peter Thiel, who founded PayPal, an early invesor in Facebook and manages Hedge Fund and Venture Capital Fund, feels that college degrees result in unnecessary financial burden on students in the form of loans which they have to pay back by getting a good job. Instead he feels that companies should do away with ‘useless’ college degrees for the purpose of recruiting talented people.

Here is a transcript from his comments:

“When you hire people, stop requiring college degrees. If you need skills, knowledge, or talents, ask for them specifically, since a BA doesn’t guarantee these things. Review your hiring practices over the next six months, and let’s move toward reducing the demand for student debt and useless credentials by letting extraordinary young adults skip college. If we replace this requirement with more relevant measures, then colleges can focus their efforts on providing skills and knowledge for actual careers.”

Even I am perplexed at the audacity of this idea. However, to think of it, it is a challenge to the so called education system and the status-quo that exists therein.

How successful Thiel’s group of 20 selected fellows become in a year’s time can be debated and experts will have differing opinions on this. But what is truly appealing is the thought process of this VC/Entrepreneur.

India, for example, definitely needs an overhaul of the education system. Atleast the American education system encourages independent thinking. In India, education is abysmal and is limited to a set of exams and syllabus that students need to pass to qualify as a graduate.

I am sure none of the Indian VCs or angels can go this far to banish education as a whole and create a parallel fellowship that aims to create entrepreneurs.

Whatever the outcome, whether Thiel succeeds or this system fails, have to laud the thinking behind such a project.

I am sure the India education system can take a cue from this and develop something more inclusive and challenging for the students.

Just a bunch of exams and 8 semesters of Engineering produces GARBAGE! And India produces thousands of GARBAGE every year, WHICH ARE RECYCLED BY THE IT COMPANIES!

To read the critics of Peter Thiel’s fellowship program, please click on the links below:

Forbes

INC

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