SBenegaL

Category: Startup

  • Masters of Scale – Reid Hoffman

    I had been listening to Reid Hoffman’s podcast with the same title—the Masters of Scale—for nearly a year and felt there may be something more that I would get from this book. But I must admit, I was a bit disappointed while I read through the book. Most of the book talks about similar lessons that have been shared in the podcast, and this book gives very little additional insight or analysis that I would have loved to see from Hoffman, where he has a more elaborate canvas to detail out.

    I must admit, this could be my bias given the years I have put into the entrepreneurial ecosystem here. You may also find the book interesting if you have not heard the podcast as well.

    Happy Reading!

  • The Mom Test – Rob Fitzpatrick

    An exceptionally quick and handy read for those who are in the early stages of your startup journey. If you are thinking of following the lean startup approach of conducting qualitative interviews with your potential customers, this book is a must-read.

    Of all the examples and learnings he shares, I love the mom and son conversation, which I borrow into my classrooms (mostly my MBA classes) to explain the importance of listening to customers before you sell the solution. The book is embedded with several nuggets of learning for the early stages of an entrepreneur.

    I would recommend this one for all early-stage entrepreneurs.

    Happy Reading!

  • The Culture Code- Daniel Coyle

    One of my quests is about how organizational cultures get formed. My search got me to this handy book, which I suggest entrepreneurs do read—preferably early on in their venture so that they give themselves the time to build the organizational culture and allow for its development before they get to the growth phase where it’s the recruits and culture that would take over more of what they are doing through direct intervention.

    Daniel in The Culture Code breaks down the process of forming a culture for successful groups into three phases. The first emphasizes building safety into the culture, allowing for people to develop trust. The second emphasizes the role of sharing vulnerability in building the exchanges that would allow for trust to strengthen within the team and develop cooperation among the teams. And lastly, the role purposes play in the continuation of the group performance once the team culture has begun to take root.

    I would recommend this one for all early-stage entrepreneurs.

    Happy Reading!

  • Customer: Choosing a right customer when possible…

    If there is a first point in the journey of any startup which I believe is worth celebrating, it is – when a customer sale has happens.

    If one is to make an analogy of startups to plants and their growth – this is comparable to the appearance of the first roots from the seed and penetrating the soil – there by enabling the plant to potentially grow utilizing the nutrients from the environment. Everything else, like raising an investment or finding a supportive supplier etc only enhance the likelihood of the possibility of growth – akin to application of fertilizers or support fences etc. The first positive sign a start up venture surviving the harsh environment and growing into a viable initiative is when the first customer sale happens.
     
    The start-up environment is extremely dynamic, and with many different growth avenues available, it is possible that start-ups could easily be confused about the way ahead. The newness of the start-ups enable them be easily mold them for good into a position they might not like to be in. While one could rationalize these as being defined by the market, I also believe there is a sequence which the entrepreneur could try before accepting being molded by market consequences than by organizational choice. I would love to believe that start-ups though liable to these are not as helpless in this pursuit, and there could be a better logic that product start-ups could benefit from.
     
    [A word of caution before I move further: what I say here might be most relevant to the high – technology focused product start up than others. But, I am confident that, over period as startups mature, they would like to get in to a position of advantage, and these suggestions would still hold at that point.]

    Quick and relevant learning is what I would call the Swiss knife that entrepreneurs should possess when they intend to build their venture. The skillful application of the Swiss knife and its various knives plays an important role in the start up’s survival. Given the relevance of learning, it is most apt to focus the start up’s customer acquisition and growth plans with a very strong base of learning embedded in it. This is also the underlying theme that I suggest in this blog, and also forms the source of some of the suggestions I make here. I also assume that most of the companies here are relatively growth oriented and building global products.
     
    Suggestion 1: Customers from a Developed/Advanced Nations
    High-tech product companies from developing countries who are interested in creating global products are better off focusing their efforts on acquiring customers from developed nations like the United States or the European Countries. This approach gets multiple benefits; some of them are listed below:
     
    a. Most developing countries have an ecosystem that is not completely ready for the products that these high tech start ups are offering. In such scenario, the growth oriented entrepreneur who often attempts to create something innovative, could be satisfied by making a product that satisfies the local need. (It is almost like believing that local maxima could possibly be the global maxima!)
     
    Move beyond the boundaries of the developing market and focus on competing in an international market. (Yes! I hear many start ups cry that they are constrained by the funding issues. But that need not be a limitation – you got to take the risk if you intend to really stay ahead of what is going to come). This could mean finding partner for the company in these advanced nations who could potentially make the product that is user ready!
    b. You could lead the change in the local market once you have a good base established – thanks to the difference in the exchange rates between the developed and developing nations. This could give you a head start and resources that help obtain a leadership position in the local market.
     
    One could often be blinded that, what worked in the developed countries could be easily applicable for the home market of the entrepreneur in a developing nation. Often, this assumption is way off mark – and being open to customization for the local market at that stage would be essential.
    Suggestion 2: Customers as co-producers

    Product development in most startups follows the vision of the entrepreneur, and if this doesn’t get aligned with to the realities of the commercial world – the focus could easily shift from having a useful product to just developing a product none could use for years.

    Involving the customer early is definitely a key to being able to break this potential trap and anchor the product development with the active involvement by the customer – almost like a co-producer! (At least some end user inputs would be available and thus provide some of the feedback necessary to develop the product further).
     
    The caveat in here is to realize when you are being completely held hostage to a single client. The startup would do well to being engaging with more clients of similar appetite and need once the product has reached a presentable stage.
     
    Suggestion 3: Create a good lead pipeline
    Quantify your customer goals in numeric terms. Goal setting plays a major part in actively pushing the teams towards listening and inculcating the actionable feedback into the development of the enterprise. 

    Creating a good pipeline that helps you reach the target set for the firm is a crucial for the survival of the firm. The dispersion in the kind of customers too plays an important role – else the experimentation that forms and important role in the early stages to find the apt customer segment and the value offering to the segment could be way off target and potentially lead to the demise of the firm. 

    The mix of leads in the pipeline in some ways should also be reflective of the product – features that you intend to test and validate. Focusing on the most active customer segment, and building a predictable cycle for the segment with good processes and delivery timeliness is the second major milestone after the first mentioned earlier in the blog.
    Last but not the least – always be open to change. At the beginning of this blog, we began by saying entrepreneurs need not be reactive always, they could possibly seek a clear advantage if they are proactive in their pursuit of opportunities – It is always possible that in spite of the efforts one would need to change the plans and get back to what could help survive. 

    Remember: The warrior who survives the day’s war – lives to fight another day!

  • Suppliers: A boon that could be a pain…

    Entrepreneurs starting their ventures often try to build a complete solution themselves. This approach of building the complete product/solution by yourself, has been increasingly debated. While it provides a completely proprietary platform on which you could build your product, it could not just delaying the launch of the product into the market but also potentially distract the entrepreneur from what is to be necessarily pursued. A good search in our surrounding would help us identify many aspects of such an approach might not be needed. 

    With the increasing availability of technology or readymade components/products/services, the need to engineering a technology solution for a market gets be reduced to an intelligent assembly of the available components as a solution that could be taken to the market, and validated for its utility. The focus thus could be more on the business generation dimension than on the technology.

    This necessitates today’s entrepreneurs to work with a numerous of vendors/suppliers and choosing the right supplier/vendor definitely would be essential. It would be important to note that the term vendor/supplier is not only being limited to those who provide goods/services in the traditional sense alone, in the context of a start-up world, I would also add in players like incubators, accelerators etc who come in as a bundle of offerings.
    Here is an example using the incubator/accelerator services that would help set the context better for the points made later on:
    Incubators and Accelerators are an important player in the startup ecosystems (especially in the context of developing countries), in that they provide an isolated ecosystem that offer number of benefits. In addition to the access to physical infrastructure including office furniture, meeting/discussion rooms, they could also make available a lot of tacit benefits like – a peer group of companies, mentoring, legal and accounting services etc. In short, the isolated ecosystem is like nursery where plants are built to be effectively transferred to a new environment later on at growth stage.

    Assuming that incubators/accelerators only provide a basic office set up that could help the entrepreneurs and their team focus on the work rather than being distracted by the daily pressures of utility services, could blind entrepreneurs to look beyond this. Many incubators/accelerators constantly hold reviews about the progress you have made on your idea – this could be a double edges sword. Frequent reviews could give rise to a very precarious situation.

    Entrepreneurs often choose their start ups as a representation of their independence/identity – often to do what they intend to do, and being closely monitoring might push the entrepreneur off comfort of working at a steady pace. Alternatively, there are some other incubators/accelerators that allow the entrepreneurs only access to the resources and it is up to the entrepreneur to make the use of these. 

    The choices made by an entrepreneur would have to be defined by what suits the expected direction of the product/service and the entrepreneurs’ personal working style. Here are some caveats for an entrepreneur when thinking of vendors/suppliers for your firm:
    • What do I want from the vendor’s product/service? 
    A clear understanding of the client space is generally hard when one is starting his/her venture and this emerges only over a period of time. Thus, keeping a tab on the large number of vendor products and choosing one from these would be difficult if an entrepreneur isn’t in a position to identify his/her needs clearly.
    While the clarity of the client is difficult, the entrepreneur would benefit from being specific about the requirements from the product/service that is to be tested in the market, and yet note that flexibility of replacement is important. If the direction of the product development has been positively validated, then tying up with your vendor for a long term commitment would be best – till then, tying up with a supplier deeply could prove a difficult proposition.

    [Note here: Deeply embedding oneself to the vendor product could be a potential pitfall in case you want to revisit the hypothesis of choosing to acquire than build the solution.]

    • Do you think the solution from the vendor has the features I am looking for?
    The outcome of the first question could be a list of features that the product/service could have – the next act is to validate if the vendor/supplier has the components or whole of features that could help build the product/service. In addition finding a vendor who comes in with not just the features but a willingness to work closely with the start up is important. The apt question thus is:
    Is the vendor open to working with you on towards co-creating your product?
    Having a vendor who doesn’t just offer you a set of features that was requested but really adds value in multiple ways would clearly be preferred [yes, the size of the supplier could play an important role here]. In addition to the above, would (s)he support your venture at a minimum with the following:
    • Commitment towards the agreed terms of delivery
    • Technical expertise to extend the current product offering
    • Insights from personal experience that could benefit my start up
    In some exceptional cases, there are instances of vendors who have moved beyond the contractual requirements to not just bear the delays in payment, but also support the entrepreneurs through some sorts of funding.

    [Note: Often, the transactional nature of the vendor could limit the growth of your start ups.]
    • Am I the only client for the vendor?
    If one is to look out for such a vendor, the most common responses would be from people who think they have a spare capacity. The spare capacity could arise from not having anything else to be occupied with rather than the spare capacity being available through an efficient process of management. Thus, there are many people who would try to build their businesses in a necessity oriented manner completely dependent on your business, and not expanding it to include others.

    This aspect in my opinion would be a paramount factor for the entrepreneur to consider. If there is one thing that start-ups need to remember at all times, it is that the vendor whom you engage with is not building his/her business completely on your expectations (you would better hire a full time employee or consultant in such scenarios!).
    The risk that your company takes in such scenario is not limited to that of your business but also compounds with the risk of your vendors’ business, and this could be extremely catastrophic! [Imagine: A contractual vendor breathing down your neck and waiting at your doors step pressing for the payment on the deadline, when you know that waiting for a 2-3 day could ease the complete cash crunch!]

    Past successes of entrepreneurs engaging with a vendor, word of mouth recommendations etc are important indicators that could help choose the right vendor/supplier. Start ups are a risky game – If the choice of the vendor/supplier is not carefully thought through – this could very well increase the odds against you.

    Reading the above points again, it becomes clearer that the entrepreneur would benefit better from calling the supplier/vendor as a partner in the progress and not really be known as a “supplier” or “vendor” in the classical interpretation of the word.  In many ways, an employee too is a vendor isn’t it? How about the investor! I guess looking at all the stakeholders from this perspective of being a partner could be the subject of another blog!

  • Prioritizing Stakeholders for your start-up to reduce uncertainty

    Murphy’s Law seems to follow entrepreneurs more than anyone else – Yes! anything you believe wouldn’t happen, will most possibly happen. So the challenge is really of being able to live through all these experiences and eventually be able to get the business they intend to create see the light of the day. 

    The notion of such unpredictability in what one does is generally called – uncertainty. There is really nothing certain about the entity that entrepreneurs are trying to create. They have a thought about the need for something they believe would be required by someone… Yes! It is only a thought when it starts like many other thoughts! The entrepreneur chases the thought and attempts to create value – economic, social etc out of the thought by manifesting the thought into the realm or reality.

    In the process there are numerous challenges that come in – beginning with the thought – the entrepreneur would need to really see if the intended product/service is something that would be found valuable and useful for people. The second question is really to see if someone could pay for the same! I have mentioned multiple times about the need for early customer engagement in earlier blogs [read here and here]

    The maximum uncertainty would definitely be on the customer‘s end of the chain. The thought that the entrepreneur would have initiated invariably would have come from his/her prior experience/ability/capacity – essentially – the response to the questions: who am I? What do I know? Whom do I know? She/he would also have attempted evaluating what would it take to create something of value and how someone could and then figure out a way to reach out to the person who could not just use but also pay for the same. 

    This mean the maximum uncertainty for a business is not on the customer‘s side of activities and would progressively reduce in the following order – investors, suppliers and employees. The following diagram indicates the same:
     
    High Uncertainty                                                     Least Uncertainty
    Customer    >    Investor      >    Supplier       >        Employee
    The uncertainty in the above context could be understood as containing two components – the predictability of the behavior of each of the stakeholder and second, the effective control on that the entrepreneur could have on the behavior of each of these. We could visualize the spectrum of predictability and controllability to be as below.

    Least Predictability                                              Most Predictability
    Customer    >    Investor      >    Supplier      >        Employee 
    Least Controllability                                             Most Controllability
    Customer    <    Investor      <    Supplier      <        Employee

    An effective approach for an entrepreneur to be able to leverage and grow his/her business would be to reduce the zone of maximum uncertainty and steadily build the other stakeholders commitments to effectively handle the reduced uncertainty. 
    (click on the stakeholder link to be directed to some best practises in finding a better stakeholder)

  • Balance Product Development with Communication

    Many startups work too much on a product but spend little time communicating about their product/services; there are other start-ups which do the other extreme – over communicate but spend little time on product development. As mentioned earlier, working out the communications to synchronize with what you intend to deliver through your product is quintessential.  It is crucial to find a balance in this activity of really doing the work – and talk about the work. 
    In addition to the hard work put on the product the entrepreneur could at a minimum need to have the following as part of his communication activities:
    1. Elevator Pitch – short pitch that covers what the business does and addresses. Ensure it is catching the attention of the listener! Yes, it takes time to perfect this and its only by practice that this gets better.
    2. Short Business Summary – I would prefer a super short summary in a hard copy format – say around A5 size or even the hind of your visiting card that helps communicate what you do really precisely sharply. There are like like hook to the communication exchange done – people could look at this and find use at a later date.
    3. Business Presentation – this is an ever-evolving document. The more time you spend understanding your audience and the more presentations you make – this one only gets better. Spend time working out your presentation – remember getting the right graphic/images could make is just so much more communicating.
    4. A catchy website URL- there is really nothing like a web URL! for the company that clearly defines what you intend to do. This is invariably a one time choice – so think through and work out your thoughts with the name. For those who still believe offline is the only business – spending time online and having a good website could make a enormous difference.
    5. Blog – Developing a habit of blogging pretty regularly is important when you intend to communicate with your audience regularly.
    Start-ups would benefit by devoting time towards a sustained communication effort. It would be ideal for the founding team to sit down on the communication dimension periodically and take stock of what they are trying to pitch right from day one (or even earlier depending on when they are booking their URL). 
    Even as little as 30 minutes a week to re-look at the way you communicate could emerge very fruitful.Keep the audience coming back for more interesting, relevant aspects. So take the time off and get your communication plan worked out.

  • Entrepreneur’s Interview – Metrix Line

    Sachi: Good evening, today we have with us Prashanth Kaddi – a NITK and IIM A Alumn
     
    He has since started the company called Metrix line. Without further delay lets request Prashant to give a background about himself and then explain about his company.
    Prashanth: Thank you,
    I am Prashant. I had a very studious background –my schooling at Kendriya vidyalaya and then moved on to do my bachelors in Computer Science from NITK in 1995. Through the campus placements I joined IBM. While at IBM, I looked at how the IT industry was working and wasn’t happy with it. So within an year, I got a call from IIM Ahmedabad.
    I had set a goal of being management consultant when I joined there; I got an opportunity to do my summer internship in the company – Anderson Consulting in their business consulting wing. I realized that just consulting wouldn’t give me what I was looking for; I needed more action in my work.
    While at IIMA, I attended a course by Prof Sunil Handa – Laboratory in Entrepreneurial Motivation. I didn’t have a very clear objective of what the course would give me – the course gave me a stimulus into what I wanted to do in life.
    I joined ICICI from the campus placements, partly motivated by the education loan I had to clear. I also wanted to look at the marketing front of activities in business. I had a pretty good stint here – I was involved in many new financial product design and marketing. The impact of our work was significant – with a lot of results to show. The work I did was interesting, but I was not feeling excited about the environment – working in a large company. After having a stint in large companies this far, I felt I didn’t like working in large companies.
    Jump into entrepreneurship was more a decision from the head than the heart – I didn’t enjoy the stress levels that was building up which in turn prevented me from enjoying the good things that were happening around me.
    After 2 years at ICICI, I began talking with a lot of people – there were multiple groups formed focusing on different ideas. In one such group, I had found a batch mate of mine, who himself wasn’t very serious – but put me in touch with his senior who was keen on starting off. This partner of mine had begun working with a startup and stayed with its journey towards being a large company. The idea we began working was – governance of IT outsourcing. Having observed the business very closely at IBM and Mphasis (where my partner worked earlier) – we realized that
    1. It is a high value business
    2. It has a large amount of inefficiency built into it.
    We decided to use metrics and quantitative assessments, which could according to our estimates increase the efficiency by 10%. Nasscom was projecting the industry to be of $ 50 Billion – and say with 10% we would be saving $ 5 billion for our clients. So clearly the company product we were developing had the potential of being $100 million.
    We got our first consulting assignment in the same space – which could fund salaries of 5-6 people, we put together a small team – this was around end 2005. We came out with the first version of the product in 2006, two things followed –
    1. This version received a lot of resistance from the market and it wouldn’t fly easily.
    2. We would require raising finance to accelerate product development.
    From our friend’s experience and the reading on the internet we realized that the equity we would part for this purpose would be extremely high!
    The good thing that happened during this time was that a couple of companies we were speaking to began showing some traction – the challenge that these companies were facing was about the silos of organizing data. Each of these were understood only by certain group of people. Take for example – A product manager wants to get the P/L associate with his product; unless the finance person has the bandwidth to provide this info, there was no way it would be accessible to him. But this was an important feeder into the decision making about the product line!
    This was the space of analytics and business intelligence. Tough our platform was capable of doing this, but we had a very narrow domain focus. We realized that we needed to make the product more generic and this would help us get a lot of traction. Large companies hadn’t figures out the solution to this problem world wide – So this was a problem we felt we could solve for the world the very first time from India!
    IBM has bought a business analytics company for 6 billion dollars in 2008. SAP bought “Business objects” for 5.5 billion dollars. Harvard guys have begun writing about this too – a book called “Competing on Analytics”. These changes have happened over the last 5 years. In the book “Competing on Analytics” it is said that – product is no longer a differentiator – the only differentiator is going to be quickly you understand market trends and how quickly you could react to these trends.
    And everybody looking at there is huge growth market, and in in hindsight the traction was real. So today, we have a product which we call –a data to information platform – we have figures out how we are different from all other solution in the market, also differentiate ourselves in a competition from large companies like IBM, SAP or other dozens of companies that have emerges in the same space.
    Sachi: How are you addressing the challenge posed by the larger companies in the field?
    Prashanth: We could look at it in 2 ways – the technological angle and the business angle.  These are not by design, but have evolved over our years of business.
    In general, any data to information service provider would do the following 3 things
    1. Aggregate the data at a single place
    2. Analyze and Synthesize the data
    3. Interpret and Present the data as information.
    Traditionally, it was extremely hard to have an integrated product for all these – it was typically a combination of 4-5 different products. These had to be configured and programmed to work for specific organizations – this meant a large cost implications for the companies. The companies would have to invest nearly Rs 4-5 Crores before beginning, also the problem addressed was typically fewer in numbers. This was a huge pain point with users.
    We focused on this pain point and designed our technology to be extremely flexible with minimal programming effort at the customer end. This would make our product easier and faster to deploy. Our objective was to reach to zero-programming design; this has put us way better than many existing products. This was the differentiator on the technology front.
    Pretty early we realized that most of the enterprise IT solutions were moving to hosted and subscription based solutions. The poster boy of this move was – Salesforce.com. Lot of people were beginning to say – I don’t want to buy your software, I just want to use it – this was a shift from ownership to usage of a license. Given this, we decided to try out the subscription model.
    This decision helped us reduce the extra costs associated with trying to sell a high priced product. This was a differentiator for us from the business model point of view.
    Sachi: In your journey of the last 6 years, what have been your best and worst moments?
    Prashanth: Entrepreneurship is a crazy emotional ride with many ups and downs.
    One of our first down we faced was when one of our best product developers quit – that was primarily for money. Since we were a small group, this reduced our team size by nearly 10%! It was really hard to accept this for a few days!
    The second down side we faced was when we lost a client – we had engaged very close with a company; but then there was organizational restricting and the CEO with whom we were working was fired – the organization changed their complete direction; which made us redundant. We had even begun making some revenues and if the contract had gotten implemented completely, it would have defined our next growth!  2009 was anther hard year; we were close to closing 2 enterprise levels working with 2 fortune 500 companies. One of them fired 40% of their staff! What we had projected to achieve in 2009, we were finally able to achieve it in 2011.
    In 2009 when we came up with the product, the market was tanking; but we stuck to what we had decided to have our first 10 clients from among the fortune 500 companies. This would make it easier for us to sell to the 11th client. When we achieved each of these milestones – it was great feeling.
    Another high has been in the last 2 years, when we were in direct competition with the major companies. When we won contracts for specific products from this competition – it was a bigh high for us.
    In start ups, you don’t have the time to enjoy your small victories for a long time; you need to move on.
    Last year was the most memorable day for me – It was when we signed our contract with Microsoft. This was special for 2 reasons –
    1. They themselves had a competing product to ours in the same space
    2. They are the world’s largest product company.
    Sachi: How did you sustain in the last major economic crash?
    Prashanth: 2009-10 was really hard years. We had entered the market in 2008 and the product revenues had just begun kicking in; the services revenue was still with us. While the services helped us survive, the product side was severely dented.
    The crash taught us an important lesson – Our primary target at that time was the US market given the margins. We realized that over reliance on US was really terrible – since then we have tried to expand our business into a mix of developing and developed economies.
    Since we have subscription model for our product – it was in some sense was a recession proof business models. Though initially we stuck with this as a matter of chance, it proved to be extremely beneficial for us.
    Sachi: from this experience, what was your biggest take away?
    Prashanth: 
    1. When I look back I realized I was hung upon the Idea – which could be 100 million dollars; I didn’t want to be a small shop. In reality – you have to be there and do that, in order to say that you know. It cannot be based on imagination.
    2. Cash is absolutely king.
    3. Its ultimately about people – we need to take this aspect more seriously and learn to keep the motivation high and running. It’s ultimately all about retaining the best talent when you have little monetary buffer.
    Sachi: What is your message for the aspiring entrepreneurs?
    Prashanth: Start with a right motivation – it has to strong emotionally to handle the ups and down of the business. Do not take to entrepreneurship for reasons like – the glamour quotient associated or just for fun.
    As a broad principle having an understanding about the space is a good starting point if you are thinking of – this is for non breakthrough sort of innovations.
    It is important to manage the friends and families who would be your support line in this journey.
    Sachi: Thank you Prashanth, thank you once again.

  • Entrepreneurs’s Interview – Sen6

    Sachi: Good evening, today we have with us Smruti Parida. He is the founder of this company called Sen6 networks along with his batch mate from NITK Suratkal – Vinuth
     
    Welcome Smruti to this interview. Could you please let us know your background and then tell us about your company?
    Smruti: Hi, my name is Smruti; I am computer science graduate from NITK Suratkal, from 2005 batch. Immediately after my graduation, I was joined United Online.
    United Online was a small 400 people company in Hyderabad which works in the area of email protection, spamming etc. For two years, it was a very good experience working on the basis of internet infrastructure; and definitely a high learning phase. I really experienced the potential of internet and its ability to bring convenience on a scale unthought-of.
    After this, I moved on to Microsoft, where I worked for 3 year; I had the opportunity to work on “Bing” – the search engine. While working on this project I understood the way in which large projects are handled – how the efficient strategies could help achieve significant results. These learning were always happening.
    I also began thinking – what does ambition mean for me? What would be my vision for life etc? After 5 years of working for these companies, and thanks to circumstances – I decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship.
    Along with my cofounders, I started Sen6. The idea of Sen6 has changed since the initial thoughts we had. All of us cofounders were technical people and with a background in internet technologies. We firmly believed that internet had the potential to break barriers and make people act smarter and more productive. Since one of the cofounders had an inclination towards arts, we decided to start working with this focus. Our objective then focused on empowering the artist so that the artists in remote areas can reach out to the rest of the world easily. We now envision ourselves as creating an e-bay like platform for Indian art.
    Through this platform we would be democratizing the whole art scene in India and get to the forefront many talented artists and their original works which are inaccessible otherwise. The platform would attempt to put the middlemen and advisors, consultants etc – this could thus disrupt the existing structure and make the whole scene transparent.
    Sachi: You told your cofounder was instrumental in getting to operate in this domain, Could you just tell us about how you met your co-founder and how it started off?
    Smruti: I didn’t do too much homework in choosing the cofounder – he was my batch-mate at my engineering college. Both of us joined United Online together and while there, we were also housemates.
    We found that our frequencies matched. We tried doing things part time, however since our interest would quickly shift from one to another, we failed. That is when both of us came to the understanding that starting off something would be only possible when we are full time on it.
    While there could be an analytical way to find a co-founder, for met it is the pre-established connections that helped. We used to complement each other well and that was something that helped find the right team for us.
    Sachi: Since you operate in the business that deals with Art Industry. Could you just brief tell us art and how the art work?
    Smruti: I would be very frank that we do not understand art industry completely. The understanding we have got is by reading, meeting artist, and people who deals with architect, interior designs, art galleries etc. So we would like to say that our understanding could pretty much be wrong but I shall talk about the problem we address.
    The consumers of art could be at any place, at your home, hotels, resorts, or art gallery – where you see paintings. It is generally the interior designers who really get these art pieces into these places. The kind of art that these interior designers get is called affordable art. But still art in general hasn’t been accessible to common people.
    One of the reasons for this is that Artists are generally not the people who would like to market their work – they are happier exploring their skill. There are people who purchase art at a value which is much lesser than the market value of the art and make profits out of the deals. The price differential between the 2 is extremely broad.
    There are lots of middle men who operate in this business, and generally art continues to remain accessible only to a small set of people. We want art to be accessible to common man – we do not want art to be considered as something that could decorate the walls of your home. There is lot of very talented artists whose work doesn’t get recognized – primarily due to the accessibility or lack of discovery platform. We want to be that discovery platform.
    Reports say there are nearly 30,000 not so noted artists and trough the online platform we intend to give them a larger customer base to derive value for their art pieces.
    Sachi: In the last one and half year of operations, what has been the major learning? Do let us know some of the major mistakes you have done and how you overcome these?
    Smruti: If I am to look back and think if the work that I have done this far – I feel I have taken longer than usual to accomplish this.
    One of the initial mistakes was with us taking a long time to open up our minds – As said earlier, we were technical people and when starting off a business it requires a complete change in the thought process. It took us quite some time to get this realization. It would be of enormous help if this mindset shift occurs before you start your business.
    As a business man, you would need to get to meet various people; understand their minds and only then will you realize that the way your consumers perceive your business. You need to be a salesman of sorts. In our case, we had to meet a lot of interior designers who are comfortable with the current way they do their business, then you go to them and talk about the platform which has features they might not need! You need to be persuasive, and not expect that things would happen naturally. It always helps if you can make a strict routine.
    What we had done was building the product that we believed had to be the best in the world – but we now feel it would have been better if we began entering the market and showcasing the platform to people much earlier. Dividing the work and continuously being persuasive is what we learnt in this exercise. We are now smarter with this experience.
    Having said that, as an entrepreneur, one is generally curious and wouldn’t follow the book; it is only when he has attempted and learnt from the mistake that he really learns it. It is really this characteristic that differentiates them.
    Sachi: Your business has 2 parts to bridge – one is the artist and the other is the purchaser of these art pieces. How did you go about bridging this?
    Smruti: It wasn’t really a big problem for us, since our business was attempting to get a business model that had worked in the west, it was useful to learn from their experience and use it into the Indian context.
    We found quite a few Indians who use these international websites to sell their work – we wrote to them and able to get them signed onto the platform. The appreciated our efforts to target the Indian Market. There are nearly 5 lakh other people across the world who also used the same platform and when we started sen6, they felt there could be a good recognition for their creations.
    Given our culture and traditions, only an Indian could understand and appreciate Indian Art, the larger western audience couldn’t appreciate this to a large extent. So this problem wasn’t a very difficult one.
    Sachi: How did you get through to the paying customer?
    Smruti: Once the artists signed in, they asked their regular purchasers to use this platform to make the purchase of their art. So the initial set of our orders were received that way.
    We did some online marketing through Google Ads, Facebook etc and these campaigns helped us get a few more orders.
    We are currently working on building a B2B connect for the online portal.
    Sachi: How would Sen6 be in say three years time?
    Smruti: Our study indicates that there are 30,000 artists in India who constantly generate new art, so we are targeting having around 15,000 of these artists on this platform.
    We want to create a brand for our self in the home-buyer section of the business through the convenience that Sen6 intends to provide.
    We also want the large B2B buyers using sen6 for their business and professional needs.
    Sachi: the customer of you platform could be anywhere across the world, how do you manage the logistic if you do manage it?
    Smruti: Currently we operate only in the re-production print and fine art prints of original works business and not in the original painting sales. This is to keep our self in line with the affordability focus we have. In this model, the digital copy resides in our secure store and when a sale is concluded, we take care of printing and shipping the product. We accept the payment and then transfer the artist his share with a 15 day time period.
    For original painting, the costs of these would be much higher and we would handle the logistics when we get into this segment of the market. Currently we are staying away from this.
    Sachi: What is your message for the aspiring entrepreneurs?
    Smruti: If you are aspiring to be an entrepreneur, this is probably the best time for that in India. If you have a curious mind, you will find lots of problems in India, which need to be solved. Be patient and continue perusing – you will definitely make enough money – and in fact even more than what you could have earned otherwise in a job. It is all about taking the bold step of leaving your comfort zone and coming out. And then keep learning, be courageous, know your mistakes and adapt to the changes.
    Sachi: Thank you Smruti, for coming down to this interview

  • Entrepreneur’s Interview – BrizzTV

    Sachi: Good Evening Amar, thank you for accepting to come on to this interview.  
     
    Amar is the founder and CEO of Brizz TV. Brizz TV is an innovative platform that delivers internet content directly to the television using set top box technology.  
     
    Without further adieu I would like to ask Amar to briefly tell us about his background and then about the idea?  
     
    Amar:
    Thank you. My name is Amarendra Sahoo, I am a 2004 Computer Science Graduate from NITK Suratkal. After graduation from Suratkal in 2004 I worked across various companies like – Cisco, Juniper, and Lucent for about 5 year. Then I joined IIM Bangalore in 2009, and that is when I started the company – 2009 December.
    Clearing the CAT I would say was an accident, and I joined IIMB – also to fulfil the dream of my parents, wife etc – not many could get a selection to IIMB and not join it. In all this, I was still a “Techie” at heart. Neither the work as an IT professional nor the MBA knowledge was able to satisfy the void I felt. There was a period of self introspection and the meaning of the MBA and the work that would be of interest to me while at IIMB.
    I was also reading some very interesting technology and entrepreneurship blogs at the time, – the achievements of people seems to push me to believe I could do something too. I felt I had quite some time at my hand and I should consider starting off.
    I come from an embedded system, networks background and that probably fed me to believe I could do something more challenging than a e-commerce site. At the point I was thinking of all the idea I consciously stayed away from it even though ecommerce sites were getting a lot of funding.
    While all these questions were popping up at the back of my mind, one day while sitting in a case discussion on Reliance Big TV – as part of the Marketing Course; It struck me that I could be very interesting if we could show Wikipedia on the television without any complex internet stuff in it! A regular TV but with Internet content in it – That is how BrizzTV began.
    At BrizzTV, we show selected Internet content directly on your TV – Example, if we are pushing facebook on your TV you could watch it, unlike internet where you can pull the content. Just like you cannot watch a cricket match on ESPN unless it has been broadcasted, you wouldn’t be able to watch unless we broadcast it. So the data that we transmit will be available on the TV just like any normal channel.
    Our focus is to keep this medium affordable, accessible and easy to use. The problem that we are solving is pretty interesting – in a country with a large rural population, an investment into a PC wouldn’t be economical. Added to this would be the cost of internet. Internet is also not all pervasive, and also costly for a rural consumer.
    In addition to the cost of purchasing the PC, the other barrier for people to adopt to PCs is lies with the additional learning of the usage of the operating systems, brower etc that are  a sort of barrier for adoption.  Also the rural person could run his life without an internet connection!
    Given these thoughts, I wanted to give an affordable, accessible and simple solution – that would have to be the TV. There is not much complexity to using the TV too!
    Facebook which I used as an example earlier is just to make a mention – our focus is on providing quality content that would be mass consumed like; say Wikipedia, or Exam preparation etc. The facebook example was primarily to relate with the present generation J.
    Simply put, Brizz TV enables you put selected internet content on TV, available on a channel interface – say channel 931, 971 etc.
    Sachi: Could you tell us how you managed to put your first team together, and how you managed your finances?
    Amar:
    I never thought I was heading this company, and hence there was no thought of putting up the team as such. I discussed the idea with my friends, and whoever felt that the idea was good I believed we could form a team.
    The first friend I found this way was my batch mate from Surathkal – Jeetu. He was working with Cisco at that time. So we both came together to start this venture off. None of us were from the broadcast domain, and our limited understanding wouldn’t give us a real picture of the technical constraints we might face. We approached an expert – Krishnan who at that point was working at Philips and understood the set-top box pretty well. He encouraged us, and after some calculations and suggested this could be possible if a broadcaster like Airtel or Tata could agree. This was how we formed the first team.
    Coming to the point of Funding part – Both Jeetu and I were basically programmer, and hence we believed we didn’t need any funds to start off. We had a product bent of mind and hence finance was something that we didn’t bother much about. We began working on the product in December 2009 and by April 2010 we had built the prototype. We next had to move towards meeting a broadcaster.
    We approached NSRCEL with the thinking that they could help us connect with the broadcast companies. At NSRCEL we met Guhesh who thought the idea was cool enough to try – he had a friend at Airtel and we were able to get the traction. With this prototype demonstrated, Airtel was willing to work with us. Other things began to move ahead – we were funded by NSRCEL in December 2010. 6 months post the VC round of investment from NSRCEL, we got our next round of investment from Ojas.
    Sachi: Could you tell us how the discussion with Airtel happened, how was the experience? 
     
    Amar: 
    Airtel is a very partner friendly company, most of their activities are outsourced. They weren’t very aggressive in the negotiation too.
    I wasn’t looking for a negotiation too; I always thought that the product I was building had to see the light of the day. I approached it with an open mind.
    Airtel wanted the technology evaluation and proof of concept – all this happened extremely quickly. The approach seemed to be that we (Brizz TV) could do a lot of value add if the young team was taken care off. Airtel has been a fantastic organization to work with. Given their long term vision with Brizz TV, they offered what they generally offer to anyone else without much negotiation.
    There was some bit of luck and the remaining worked with the technical strength the team had.
    Sachi: You have been funded at a very early stage – it would be interesting to understand the experience? 
    Amar: We are a pre-revenue product company – any VC who would invest in us wouldn’t be looking at any revenue for at least one year. It was pretty interesting if we look back at the instance. None of the factors seemed to be favoring us – I was studying, and there were 2 other members in the team. The product was just taking shape, and the company we were working with – Airtel was thought to be as someone whom a start up should be scared off. The technology that we were building was however a very interesting one.
    We went about looking at many VCs in search of funding. The IIMB – NSRCEL connection helped us get a ear from the people we met. Though the technology was interesting, it want something that was tested – they weren’t sure about the monetization prospects of the company.
    I was again luck that I came across to the Ojas investments – Mr Rajest. He was also an NITK alumnus, which helped connect better with him. The team seemed to have struck chords as well. The perspective of looking at Airtel being interested in us also seems to have worked for us. And I think he was willing to take the bet on us.
    Though initially we went about just meeting folks, we began to feel the pinch towards May 2011. We required the money for supporting the operator lab that was crucial for the testing of the final product. Again I believe it was luck that pulled us through.
    Sachi: Out of curiosity, did Airtel help you? Did they co-develop the product or did you get an infrastructure support ?
    Amar: 
    Airtel provided free access to their labs, but given their schedules etc they couldn’t co-develop the product with us. We suggested that we would take care of the technology, and Airtel could help test the product in the lab.
    I should say they facilitated everything around technology development and that help  for us.
    Sachi: Most of your team is from NITK. What do you think excited people to work with you??
     Amar: At college we were always perceived as being friendly guys, we were not considered geeks. People knew us as these are cool chaps and straight from heart. They do things right and they don’t lie. When they say something they mean it. I think this reputation seems to have paid off. So our friends are always willing to work with us.
    The open approach we have followed has helped us all through.
    Sachi: How do you envision yourself in the next 4 or 5 years?
     
    Amar: I think I should be still be rocking. Doing something that excites me something in the tech space. Hopefully Brizz tv, will be a much bigger company – more than just in terms of revenue. We intend to create something meaningful out of India that world finds useful.
    Sachi: If I could mention, you represented India at the Intel UC Berkeley Challenge. Could you tell us how that experience was? How did it help? 
     
    Amar:
    The trip gave me a free trip to Berkeley – I saw a parking space “Reserved at all times for Nobel Laureates” – that excited me as I had never seen a Nobel laureate. I felt extremely excited about the concept.
    The competition was good too, we didn’t win the competition but the experience was pretty good. The exposure was pretty useful for us.
    Some of the competitors from China were doing a bio-oil business – this got me to think of the Indian context where we do 90% business and 10% technology. The kind of innovations from these countries seems to be more technology focused than us. It was a feeling like we could see the future being built here.
    Sachi: You are an MBA and an Entrepreneur – It is generally felt that this combination doesn’t work best. What do you have say about it?
    Amar: 
    It is like telling people who have pistol are dangerous because they can fire!!
    MBA to me is a tool; it is good to have that. It tells you something beyond technology that you could use – you could value add.
    To me personally I have seen If I am not having MBA, things would have been little slower.
    It gives you a market focus, structures your thought.
    If there is a question is “Does the MBA make a better entrepreneur?” I cannot answer that question. But I  am going to  say it  never going to be a harm  it only helps as long as you know how to use it like a tool and it works in  some person’s hand and does not work some else.
    Besides the large network that an MBA provides if you have graduated from a top institute, it gives you a different way of looking at things you know. I am personally excited of doing an MBA.
    It definitely adds value to my team, my company – but I am still a techie at heart. If you consider MBA to be a tool it would be a good perspective. – It never harms, it helps
    Sachi: What message would you like to send across to all the readers?
    Amar: Since I am a techie at heart, I would talk about technology. If you are a technology person, build your technology product first. Build it so well that world just cannot ignore it. People just cannot take their eyes off it.
    If you look at Indian web companies, there is lot of things as an engineer I never liked. The scope to improve is vast. You can make it 50% or 100% better than what it is today.
    Keep your eyes open. Don’t listen to the markets. The market’s foresight is pretty short – a quarter of a year.
    Do not believe when any one says you need leadership and all of that. All these are secondary. If you are good person given a chance, you can be a good leader.
    Build your character and just keep building a good product.
    Sachi:  Thank you Amar, taking your time to this interview. Thank you once again.