Case no.1.

Social entrepreneurship in India

Nikhil Menon,ET Bureau

When Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize awardee and founder of Grameen Bank, was
contacted by the Nobel Foundation for the customary winner interview, he remarked, “...poverty
is an artificial creation. It doesn’t belong to human civilisation, and we can change that, we can
make people come out of poverty (sic). The only thing we have to do is to redesign our
institutions and policies.”

That’s what social entrepreneurship is about: creating business models revolving around low-
cost products and services to resolve social inequities. And the realisation that social progress
and profit aren’t mutually exclusive has led to many social ventures taking root in India as well.

Examples of successful social projects like Amul or SEWA were few and far between. However,
with the slowdown taking the shine off urban, higher-income target markets, organisations
focusing on ‘bottom of the pyramid’ audiences have become a reality. But the days of easy
funding are over. Given the employment squeeze, it would be natural for aspiring social
entrepreneurs to stick to their secure jobs instead. Surprisingly, they continue to launch social
enterprises with a vengeance.

In May 2008, 27-year old Rajnish Sinha and his IIM-Kozhikode batchmate Siva Cotipalli started
Bangalore-based DhanaX. A fascination with microfinance and the idea of clubbing it with
person to person (P2P) lending led them to quit their jobs to launch DhanaX, a platform where
people contribute small amounts online as loans. NGOs take up the task of disbursing these loans
to needy communities in their areas of operation.

Interest is charged at 24%, of which DhanaX keeps approximately 6%. This model has worked
in other countries as well. So far, DhanaX has helped its four partner NGOs acquire loans of Rs
20 lakh. While yet to recover their initial investment of Rs 25 lakh, Sinha is confident of success.
“In future, we may partner with wealth management companies or treasury departments of large
corporations to keep the pipeline running,” he says.

Richa Pandey, a marketing MBA, was a media sales professional in New Delhi for eight years.
But her calling was rural India, partly because of her roots—her grandfather was a farmer in
Uttar Pradesh. “The retail and BPO sectors were creating job opportunities in a big way. I zeroed
in on vocational training for rural youth in these areas,” Pandey recalls.

In October 2007, she approached the Rural Technology Business Incubator (RTBI) at IIT-
Madras with a business plan outline. “The RTBI platform helped add magnitude to my plan,”
Pandey says, adding, “Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala assisted me in launching a pilot programme in
three districts of Tamil Nadu under the banner of eJeevika.” Around the same time, she got a
lucrative offer to head the marketing division of a large media firm. Pandey turned it down and
continued focusing on designing course content and online training programmes in three areas:
retail sales, data entry and security services.
eJeevika subjects candidates to psychometric tests to determine where they’d fit in best and
trains them accordingly. But Pandey’s chosen path hasn’t been easy. She currently doesn’t take
home a salary, preferring instead to plough everything back into the business. In the past year,
eJeevika trained 160 people, is on the verge of signing up four BPOs as partners and is growing
both in terms of scale and size, aiming to train 1,500 people by March-end. “If the slowdown has
affected companies like ours, I’m yet to see evidence of it,” she says, “Our team consists of eight
highly-experienced people and we still get enquiries from people who want to work with us.”

Experts like Kallol Borah, CEO, Headstart Foundation, feel that social-focus startups will
continue to thrive in India. “Bringing low-cost services such as banking, healthcare, finance, etc.
to underprivileged sections of society is definitely a big opportunity as well as a necessity. Rural,
small-town and lower-income consumers constitute a large market waiting to be tapped, but it is
necessary for social entrepreneurs to get past language, literacy and geographical barriers.”

The current environment has also complicated the mix. Adrienne Villani, associate at Intellectual
Capital Advisory Services (Intellecap), is cautious, “No market is immune to the global
meltdown. I would think that people earning between 2-12 dollars a day will indeed be affected.”
If that is true, companies working for this block of the pyramid would be affected as well. The
answer may well lie in technology. Hi-tech social startups are banking on ‘smart’ models to
bring services to people at affordable costs.

Case no.2.Biz world witnessing rise of a new

breed of entrepreneurs
Priya C Nair,ET Bureau

“Student entrepreneurship is undergoing a drastic change in India, for the good,

that is,” says Laura A Parkin, executive director, NEN & Wadhwani Foundation.
National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) is a not-for-profit initiative of the
Wadhwani Foundation that works towards inspiring, educating and supporting
young generation entrepreneurs.

“Seven years ago, when we started NEN, student entrepreneurship was an unknown
concept and there weren't any student entrepreneurship cells (E Cells) too. And
today, the scene is entirely different as we have more than seventy thousand E cells
within campuses, across the country,” describes Parkin about the growth in
awareness of student entrepreneurship. “Since the last two years, several students
are moving away from conventional modes of doing things and starting their own
ventures in various fields including alternative education, food business, IT, energy
conservation, etc,” states Parkin about the growing interest in entrepreneurship.

According to Parkin, it is important for students to start up their own ventures

during one’s campus life itself. “It doesn’t matter so much if the companies don’t
turn out to be big or if they fail because the experience these young people derive
and the lessons learnt live with them for a lifetime,” says Parkin.

Support and encouragement are a must for any entrepreneur whether he/she is
young or seasoned. But Parkin believes that young aspirants need a little more
guidance because it’s true that a helping hand will certainly show them the way
forward and introduce them to certain modes of functioning that they might be
unaware of. Along with the need for supporting budding entrepreneurs, Parkin
strongly feels that it is necessary to create awareness about entrepreneurship
among people. “We realised the need for reaching out to people who are not aware
of entrepreneurship and make them active supporters of it. Thus, we started
Entrepreneurship Week India (E Week), a week-long campaign to build awareness
among people of entrepreneurship,” explains Parkin. E Week has active
involvement of more than 30 organisations that support entrepreneurship,
corporate, business leaders, experts, non-profit leaders and faculty leaders to
inspire, encourage, guide, and mentor students.

“During E Week, participants in and out of campuses across the country, students,
parents, friends and key members of the community will engage in an array of fun,
experiential and knowledge building activities that include various competitions,
expositions, educational movie screenings, leadership and motivation talks with
successful entrepreneurs, panel discussions and knowledge-sharing sessions with
experts, skill-building workshops, business and tech bazaars, industry visits,
mentoring sessions, live case studies, awareness campaigns, etc,” explains Parkin.
This year, through E week, NEN is planning to spread the message of
entrepreneurship to about 50 million people across the country.

According to Ulhas Kamat, director India, I Create, Inc - a not-for-profit-organisation

for entrepreneurial development, student entrepreneurs in India are very focused
and dedicated in their pursuit of entrepreneurship. A little encouragement from
outside could help them in taking their business ideas to greater heights. With an
aim to change the mindset of students to become job creators, I Create has devised
various ways to promote entrepreneurship among students. “We have
entrepreneurship courses and entrepreneurial awareness programmes for students
in educational institutions across the country. We also give training to teachers who
could conduct these programmes in colleges. Later, we do a follow up to see how
many people are interested in entrepreneurship and provide mentoring to those
students,” says Kamat.

The organisation also runs a National Business Plan Competition for students in
association with Merrill Lynch and National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship (NFTE) across the country to educate and motivate students to
consider entrepreneurship as a viable career option and provide them with financial
support and teach them the nuances of executing a good business plan. As a part of
the programme, students are given training in various facets of entrepreneurship
and at the end of the course; each student prepares a business plan of his/her idea.
The winner of the competition represents India at the National Foundation for
Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) global event and also gets support to grow
his/her business idea.

“Such programmes impart students with certain skills, essential for starting a
business. It also helps them identifying potential business opportunities using their
skills, hobbies or resources available,” believes Kamat. So far, I Create has worked
with 25 institutions and about 3,000 students across the country, informs Kamat.

True that changing the mindset of students and building confidence in them to grow
their ideas into successful ventures is quite a daunting task. But several such
initiatives and active support from people around them, could pave the way to
enlighten these young minds and make them creators of business empires.

Case no. 3.B-schools nuture students for

entrepreneurship
Priya C Nair and Yasmin Taj,ET Bureau

Entrepreneurship is becoming a popular career choice these days among aspirants and in an
endeavour to cater to this growing demand, many institutions are making ‘entrepreneurship
education’ a part of their curriculum. ET HighFlier discusses the unique ways business schools
are adopting to support students who have a penchant towards creating something new.

MENTORING ENTREPRENEURS:

Karam Lakshman, program manager - iAccelerator, IIMAhmedabad believes that

entrepreneurship education seeks to provide students with the knowledge, skills and motivation
required to encourage entrepreneurial success and lay down the conditions and solutions to the
challenges that one might foresee in a venture. “Business is the backbone of a country’s
economy and entrepreneurship is a tremendous force that has a huge impact on facilitating
growth, recovery and societal progress. It results in innovation, employment generation and
social empowerment. In India, entrepreneurship education is gradually picking up. That said, it
needs to scale up further to make everyone involved – promoter, investor, parents, employees,
etc - more aware about the different aspects,” he expresses.

“The time is right for the educated managers to stop looking for jobs and start providing them to
others. Forming the right team is one of the challenges that an entrepreneur faces and if a person
is starting early while he/she is in college, they will find the right kind of people amongst their
friends, who they can work with easily,” he asserts.

“Students work on their own business plan as part of a project. The students get an opportunity to
do projects with the incubates. This helps them achieve a handson experience of working with a
start-up .” Lakshman adds.

Lakshman further says, “We will soon be competing with the best in the world if you compare
statistics on number of start-ups, funding, etc. Entrepreneurs who don’t know how to go about it,
here’s a pearl of wisdom: An entrepreneurial journey is like travelling through a thin fog when
there is no wind. Start walking and it will keep getting clearer ahead. If you try and wait to get a
complete picture from the start itself , you will keep waiting. Just take the first step and keep
walking.”

GROOMING ENTREPRENEURS:

According to Dr Harsh Mishra, associate professor, strategic management , Management

Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, there is a need for B-schools to have entrepreneurship
focused courses and programs. “Before even experiencing the status quo as an employee, formal
education in entrepreneurship makes a case for early intervention by exposing students to
successful stories, the underlying rationale or theory as well as the science and mechanism for
tapping and developing their entrepreneurial instincts,” says Mishra.

Many organisations offers fullcredit courses in entrepreneurship and are also establishing a
business incubator that could provide the opportunity to several new entrepreneurs to germinate
their ideas into a business enterprise. According to Mishra, courses and programs on
entrepreneurship are often interdisciplinary and an MBA program with entrepreneurial focus
encourages students to crystallise, test, self-critique and gain confidence in their own ideas to
move forward.

Many experts feel that B-schools must encourage entrepreneurship, but a student before opting
for such courses, must analyse his/her own personal entrepreneurial capacity. Before starting up
a venture, one must evaluate their entrepreneurial idea to meet the existing market need or a new
emerging market demand, become aware of the legalities involved and various support systems
in the eco-system for entrepreneurship and must not be obsessed with the desired financial
outcome.

NURTURING ENTREPRENEURS:

Prof S Sadagopan, director, IIITBangalore feels that knowledge and wealth creation are equally
important . He is of the belief that Bschools must encourage entrepreneurship , period. “We
promote both, a formal as well as an informal program. Within 10 years of existence, we have
incubated four successful companies. Currently, we are incubating five companies. The proof of
the pudding is in eating; more than 20 of our alumni are pursuing new ventures currently,” he
shares. Talking about the future of this rising trend of entrepreneurship education, Sadagopan
says, “It is clear. Indian techies will increasingly look at e-option ! The eco-system is taking
shape. My advice to entrepreneurs is to get into the ‘network’ and benefit from the huge
advantage.”

Starting one’s own venture is never an easy task but a formal training could teach a person the
nuances of the journey. That is why entrepreneurship education is gaining such momentum in
recent times

Case no. 4.Entrepreneurship & risk appetite

make Indians extraordinary
Nirmalya Kumar,ET Bureau

Indians as acquirers of foreign companies is a relatively new phenomenon. Indian

companies have been doing deals outside their borders in any significant manner
only since 2000. Despite some Western fears (especially prominent in the Arcelor
takeover and Tata’s battle with Orient-Express Hotels) about Indians as the
“barbarians at the gate,” Indian companies for the most part have not sought to
destabilise acquired companies unnecessarily , both in the acquisition process and
the integration process.

Perhaps one reason for the success of Indian firms in acquisitions is that Indian
executives and companies learn to operate in a challenging business environment
as well as to negotiate within a diverse, democratic society . Managing a business in
Maharashtra, with its relatively business-friendly state government , is rather
different from managing a business in West Bengal, with the Communist Party of
India Marxist (CPIM) in power, versus managing a business in Bihar, India’s most
lawless state with a relatively greater proportion of convicted criminals represented
in the state legislature.

Every large Indian company conducts business in all of these states, so executives
become masters at managing the context. The lessons learned in India hold them in
good stead when acquiring foreign companies.

Given that laws in India are not sympathetic to hostile takeovers, Indian firms until
now have sought to make global acquisitions in a soft manner, after obtaining the
buy-in of the potential target firm’s management. Whether this will continue as
Indian companies grow more ambitious is hard to speculate , but the Arcelor-Mittal
deal indicates that some hostile takeovers will be necessary despite Indian firms’
predisposition to avoid aggressive takeover tactics.

However, probably to smooth over the ruffled feathers, the company is now called
ArcelorMittal. Indian companies, relative to their size, are willing and able to make
large acquisitions. Consider Tata Tea’s acquisition of Tetley, a company three times
its size; Tata Steel’s takeover of the larger Corus; or Hindalco’s purchase of Novelis
after taking on significant debt.

Indians are very entrepreneurial and demonstrate enormous risk appetite.

Furthermore , the conglomerate model of the large Indian business houses allows
them to use the assets of the entire family of companies within the group rather
than be restricted to the resources or leverage of any individual company.

Some clear patterns are visible with respect to the types of acquisitions that Indian
firms seem to gravitate to in foreign markets. With the significant exception of
Mittal Steel’s emerging market strategy, most Indian companies are seeking foreign
acquisitions that bring complementary competencies.

The foreign acquisitions help obtain brands that resonate with Western consumers
(e.g., Carlton luggage by VIP or Tetley by Tata Tea), obtain access to foreign
distribution networks or customers (e.g., Dana’s U.K. operation by Bharat Forge, or
various European acquisitions by Ranbaxy), extend the product portfolio to higher-
priced and more sophisticated products (e.g., Arcelor by Mittal or Novelis by
Hindalco), or add significant R&D capabilities (e.g., Hansen and REpower by Suzlon).

Case no.5. Startup atmosphere is helping

entrepreneurship take root in small towns
Ravi Teja Sharma,ET Bureau

When Lakshya Institute launched in Patiala three years ago, its founders were out to
prove a point—that they were teachers by choice and that the location of their
business didn’t matter. The IIT coaching institute they started is showing results—
this year 161 of its students have been selected by the IITs and all of them are from
Patiala.

Surprisingly, none of Lakshya’s founders hail from the city. “There is enough
demand here but when we began there was very little awareness about the IITs. We
had to create the market from scratch and serve it,” says Saahil Harjai, Lakshya’s
head of business development. The startup broke even in the first year and
generated revenues of around Rs 3 crore last year.

Small towns across India have been under the radar when it comes to showcasing
entrepreneurial success. And young talent in tier-II and tier-III towns has
traditionally chosen to work for big name multinationals, especially IT and ITeS
companies, over starting their own business. But there’s evidence to prove that the
next wave in startup businesses could well come from there.

The Economic Times, during its recently concluded Power of Ideas programme,
received a staggering 12,000 entries from aspiring entrepreneurs across India. Of
these more than a third came from smaller cities such as Aizawl, Allahabad,
Jallandhar, Jamshedpur, Patiala, Nashik, Rajkot and Tiruvananthapuram. Awareness
about entrepreneurship is improving in these cities and so the startup ecosystem is
evolving rapidly. Events such as HeadStart and Startup Saturday are regularly
organised by The Indus Entrepreneur (TIE) in cities such as Chandigarh and
Ahmedabad. “We are now getting requests from places like Kochi, Trivandrum and
Pilani to organise Startup Saturdays,” says Aditya Mishra, co-founder, HeadStart
Foundation.

Deepak Ravindran of Innoz, a mobile VAS (value added services) startup in

Trivandrum, says that if one has a great idea and manages to put a good team
together, location doesn’t really matter. Innoz’s founders met each other at their
engineering college in Kasargod, Kerala. “Being in a small city has its advantages,
like lower costs of infrastructure and talent. On the other hand we are away from
our clients who are mostly based in Delhi and Mumbai,” says Ravindran.

Being in a small city the Innoz team had to make extra efforts to gain visibility. They
worked social networking sites like Facebook to the hilt and took help from events
such as HeadStart and Proto. “In a small city, if you want to do something, you need
to try on your own and find support,” says Ravindran, adding that if they were
based in Bangalore, it would be easier to find new talent. “We have to do a lot more
convincing here to get people to work for a startup. Here they would much rather
work for large IT companies,” he says. Vijay Anand, founder, Proto agrees: “There is
a lot of human talent available in small cities. Also, there is not much of capital
required to start up in a small city.”

Innoz has two products—SMS Gyan, an on-demand service, which provides

information collated from different web services, and a mobile file-sharing
application called Tranz, through which one can send files to friends on the
phonebook using Wi-Fi or GPRS. Innoz got space and support from the Technology
Business Incubator (TBI) at Trivandrum’s Technopark. Such incubators are also
coming up many other small cities, especially the ones with premier institutes like
the IITs and the IIMs.

For some businesses, small cities are where the market is. For the two-and-a-half
month old startup Ambicales, Uttaranchal is the target market. Its renewable
energy business operates from Dehradun from where it plans to tap the hinterland.
The original plan, says co-founder Sudhir Manchanda, was to set up a
manufacturing plant to make biomass briquettes that compress biomass to increase
its calorific value. To pool in the initial capital required to set up the plant
Manchanda and his partner Mayank Agarwal, both from IIT Roorkee, decided to start
consulting in the area of small renewable energy projects. “Uttarakhand is our
target market as there is lot of biomass available and Dehradun was the perfect
location,” he says. The only problem they faced so far was in getting an Internet
connection. This has affected productivity but they are confident that it will be
resolved soon.

One refrain many entrepreneurs have against starting out in small towns is that
they are far removed from potential investors. But for a venture capitalist or an
angel investor, location is not a constraint while considering a startup contends
Saurabh Srivastava, co-founder of the Indian Angel Network (IAN) headquartered in
New Delhi. “The only issue is accessibility. If we can’t reach them, it will be difficult
to mentor them,” he says. The IAN is now cultivating angels in smaller cities so that
when IAN members collectively in a new venture, the angel closest to it can do a
better job of mentoring. “We are now seeing a new wave of entrepreneurship from
tier-II cities. They are less experienced and have fewer role models but they are
equally good.”

It could, however, take some time before an effective startup ecosystem develops
in these cities. Till then, there will many more startups like Kochi-based CashNxt
which will end up shifting base to larger cities. After spending over a year in Kochi,
Anish Achutan and his team decided to move their mobile payment service business
to Bangalore for better prospects. “We decided on this because of the lack of access
to investors and talent in the financial services space in Kochi, and also because
most of our key clients were in the larger cities,” says Achutan.

Case no.6.Entrepreneurship, today, no longer

a one man show
Priya C Nair,ET Bureau

PARTNERS IN SUCCESS

...in good company

Abhishek Vinod Singh, CEO & co-founder, Nitin Kumar Verma, co-founder & COO,
Kapil Tyagi, co-founder & CTO and Konark Singh, co-founder & board member of
SKAN DbyDx started their entrepreneurial journey together by starting SKAN DbyDx
– an IT start-up, a few years ago. “We know each other since our IIT days and we all
harboured a common inclination towards entrepreneurship. Since our college days,
we aimed to do something on our own and we all waited for the right time and
desired to reach a stage in our lives when we are equipped with the right level of
experience before getting started,” says Abhishek Vinod Singh, co-founder & CEO of
SKAN DbyDx.

At SKAN DbyDx, each of the co-founders has a different role to play. “As a CEO, I
handle global sales and client relationship. Verma manages the operations and
finance divisions while Tyagi manages the technology bit. Konark brings with him
the vision and strategic inputs that play a key role in our development,” explains
Singh.

This has brought in clarity on the roles and responsibilities of each person. Even
then, running a company together has its own challenges. “For us, conducting
decision-making meetings are a huge challenge. Different people think differently;
they have different opinions and styles of working,” says Singh. But the team has
figured out a way to manage these differences that sometimes tend to exist.

“We let everyone express their opinions freely. We call it ‘being ruthlessly honest’ -
we are ruthless in criticising each other and express all our views freely. Then, we
discuss together the pros and cons of each viewpoint expressed. These discussions
can be heated, at times. However, these discussions result in a particular viewpoint
being accepted. If not, then we go with the decision made by the person responsible
for that particular function.

For instance, Tyagi, being the CTO will get more weightage on any decision
regarding technology,” explains Singh. “Functions like sales, technology, finance,
etc require different skill-sets. Having multiple founders help in managing these
functions with ease. Another advantage is that we get multiple solutions for a single
problem,” adds Singh.

TEAM PLAY, THE KEY

Kiran Konduri, co-founder, asklaila and Shriram Adukoorie, co-founder, asklaila know
each other for more than 15 years now and they translated this strong bond
between them into a successful business when they launched asklaila – a local
search engine. According to Konduri, when you start something as a team, knowing
each other well is very important. “Since we know each other for long, we know our
strengths and understand each other well and hence, we have mastered the art of
striking the right chord between our professional and personal relations. This helps
a lot in our business too,” adds Konduri.

Adukoorie says that it is always beneficial to have more people in the founding
team of a venture. As you have more people, there are several minds working at
the same time. Also having another person to support you and guide you is
advantageous, especially in a start-up. Even then, both of them agree that there are
chances of disagreements when you have many people.

A SWEET ASSOCIATION

Akhilesh Bali, Shashank Agarwal, Rachit Mehra and Ashutosh Dixit were from
different backgrounds before they started MithaiMate – an online portal that sells
traditional Indian sweets. “Three of us wanted to start something on our own and
thus, we conceptualised MithaiMate and the fourth person joined us at a later
stage,” says Akhilesh Bali, founder-partner, www.mithaimate.com.

In order to create clarity of operations and manage the business at different

locations, the founders have different roles and responsibilities distributed within
the organisation that are also spread across different locations. The communication
between founders mainly happens through skype calls on a daily basis. “When we
stared our firm, there were a lot of uncertainties; so having a good support system
was always good. Also, we left our day jobs one after another so as to ensure that if
at all something goes wrong, we have the salary of the other person to survive.

Since there were three other people supporting me, it made me more confident,”
explains Bali. According to Bali, the founding team must have some kind of
arrangement between themselves to sort out issues and work together. Also, Bali
says that they never allow business to come in-between their friendship.

These entrepreneurs go on to prove that the age-old adage, “too many cooks spoil
the broth” may not necessarily ring true in today’s times!

Case no.7

Entrepreneurship and role of family

Niranjan Mudholkar,

Recently, I was reading an interesting blog post that listed several reasons for not
becoming an entrepreneur! One reason amongst the top five was ‘sacrificing quality
time with family and friends’. Indeed, many entrepreneurs do say that they had to
sacrifice their family life to make it big in the world of business. And quite naturally
since setting up a business, taking care of it and then growing it takes away a
substantial amount of time from a person’s life leaving very little for friends, family
and other personal pursuits.

The initial period is almost always difficult but some entrepreneurs do learn to bring
in a balance after achieving reasonable stability in their businesses. “During the
first 5-6 years I had to sacrifice my family life, friends, and focus on building
business. Over a period of time I have learned to balance both my professional as
well as personal time,” says P Sridhar Reddy, Founder & CMD of Ctrl S Data Centers
Ltd. This gentleman has been in the business for more than 15 years and has
achieved considerable success so he should know. But of course, it is not easy for
all entrepreneurs to be able to draw that line.

Although family life and business life are distinctly different from each other there is
an element of commonality between the two; both need a fair amount of emotional
investment. Quality time means nothing but the period when we are involved at
some emotion level. Thus, family life invariably demands emotional participation. At
the same time, most entrepreneurs will also agree that they are extremely
emotional about their work. Don’t we often read or hear about how entrepreneurs
are emotionally charged up about their businesses? Don’t we often hear
entrepreneurs saying ‘This is my baby’ or ‘I have nurtured it like my child’ about
their enterprises? Thus, with both requiring emotional involvement, it must be
difficult for an entrepreneur to draw enough emotional strength for family needs as
well as for business demands. As a result, one of them tends to get neglected and
with entrepreneurs it is usually the family part.

It is not surprising therefore that a lot of entrepreneurs do not get much support
from their families, particularly at the beginning. In fact, at times there is opposition
for various reasons including emotional as well as financial ones. “It was very
difficult for me to convince everyone in my family that I could make it really big with
search engine marketing (SEM). No one had heard or even knew of SEM at that
time. The initial hardships were late hours, sleepless nights and low income coming
in from the business,” says Vivek Bhargava, Founder & MD, Communicate2,
recalling his early days of entrepreneurship. Many times, when an entrepreneur is
down, it is his family that comes to his/her rescue.

Today, having attained leadership in India’s contextual advertising space, Mr

Bhargava’s firm is on the roll. And he doesn’t hesitate once before giving full credit
of his success to a family member! “I would give the credit of my entire success to
my father. He was the one who supported me during tough times. During the
dotcom bust days, when nearly everyone in the family had given up on our
business, he was the only one who not only stood by me, but also supported us
financially to survive those times,” Mr Bhargava says.

Several entrepreneurial success stories are evidence enough that family support
can be a huge factor. “The biggest motivation was the one that I received from my
parents, brother and sister-in-law. My brother gave me the biggest support, which
was to free up my time from the other businesses so I could focus completely on
Finewinesnmore even if it meant 18-hour days for him,” says Dharti Desai, CEO and
Founder of Finewinesnmore. Ms Desai, who’s a single mother entrepreneur, has also
received great emotional support from another key family member. “My nine-year
old daughter, Anjali brings a much needed balance to my workaholic lifestyle. It has
not been easy being a single mom, especially when I was alone in NY. She gave me
strength when I had hopeless days and smiled and brought me up when I was
down,” adds Ms Desai – her words oozing with affection for her daughter.

What binds a person with his family is mutual love and understanding. So a family
can be the biggest support even when the entrepreneur is not exactly able to
devote enough time for his relationships because it understands the person’s
aspirations and cares about his/her dreams. And in times of trouble, it offers a
helping hand. “It’s the support of the family, which counts the most as they are the
only people whom you can rely on. My family not only understands, but also
supports me in my difficult times. It acts as my friend, philosopher and guide, and
makes me sail through the difficult times,” states Neeraj Gupta, MD, V-Link Taxis
Pvt Ltd.

Another fine entrepreneur Vasan VS, Co-founder and Director of Sanat Technologies
too acknowledges the role played by his family despite his not been able to give
them enough time. He says, “An adept adage in the current context is ‘Behind
every successful man, there is a supporting family’. My family has been very
supportive of the long hours that I put in for work and has taken things in stride
despite my limited time availability with them.”

Walt Disney, one of the finest entrepreneurs ever once said that a man should
never neglect his family for business. Many entrepreneurs are today learning to give
something back to their families. Mr Vasan gives his example. He says, “I do try to
compensate this to a little extent in the weekends by being with my wife and
daughters and taking care of some household chores.” I know of a certain
successful entrepreneur who makes it a point to drop his child at school no matter
what.

There are others who help their younger siblings with issues related to academics
while many others personally arrange for their parents’ health care. Basically,
entrepreneurs are now realising the significance of the role played by their families.
Ms Desai puts it across succinctly. She says, “The love and support of my family has
made it seem easy for me but I never take them for granted! If I didn’t have them,
I’d be singing a very different song!”

Caseno.8.What ails woman entrepreneurship in

India?
Moinak Mitra, ET Bureau

Though startups are beginning to make their mark in India, throwing up

innovative designs and product lines, very few of them are headed by
women. In a situation where incubation centers and entrepreneurship
learning centers are few and far between, the pitch gets queered further for
the fair sex.

Opinions from cross-section startup buoys plumb the issue even further.
Besides, catching up with some of the rarest of rare startups run by women
provides a magic-eye into a world of struggle and partnership.

The Ahmedabad-based incubator Nirma Labs has been around for four years
and taken in 33 students since inception of which only two have been
women. “We encouraged women and made an effort to see that they were
encouraged, but even the two that joined the (entrepreneurship) course,
dropped out,” rues Madhu Mehta, chief architect of Nirma Labs. Mehta
further reasons that by the time women sign up for the course, they are in a
marriageable age, or professionals with 3-5 years’ experience, who find it
difficult to juggle time and work. “Despite women being better suited for
managerial enterprises, they shy away from taking a risk.”

Some, like Rajnee Aggarwal, president of Federation of Indian Women

Entrepreneurs (FIWE), even point out a geographical in equilibrium in the
country when it comes to churning out startups with women honchos. “South
India has more startups with women bosses than North India because for
years, the north has not been exposed to education, and the socio-economic
structures up north are backward, to say the least.”

Such a view perhaps leads one to the critical aspect of background. “How
many women come to professional life? Where are they coming from?,” asks
Poonam Barua, convenor of Forum for Women in Leadership. She lists time,
resources and building relationships as the three pivots of enterprise, and
women are often hard-pressed for all three.

“They (women) do not have aspirations to be leaders because they are not
taught to be leaders,” she remarks. “Women often do not possess advanced
skills or money and most leave middle management when they are between
30-40,” she adds. Though few take women “seriously” when they embark on
a venture, Barua maintains that some “softer” sectors like BPOs, publishing
and hospitality are most suited for women entrepreneurs.

Pundits even believe that many of the enterprises defined as being run by
women (that is, enterprises in which women hold the controlling share) are in
fact run in their names by men who control operations and decision-making.
They feel that the road to emancipation can only be achieved through
mobility since there is proof that increased mobility contributes immensely
to raising confidence levels.

But Preeti Arora, 27, founder and director of Gypsy Bags & Lifestyle, is
already brimming with confidence. After a stint in Mercedes Benz and
Hyundai as an executive in international marketing, she was smitten by the
entrepreneurial bug. So she ventured out in 2005 with Rs 2.5 lakh in her
savings by making bags, and today, she makes bags for Adidas in Germany,
importers in the US and promotional bags too. Last year, Arora clocked Rs 75
lakh in turnover.

But there were hiccups, admits Arora. Her startup involved working in a
factory full of men, late into the night. “You have to be physically present.
You can’t leave it all to your assistant and go back home,” she says. “But
then the family is concerned about safety issues that arise when I am
working late and I can’t do much about it. We are a growing company and if
an order has to be finished, it needs to be done,” she points out.

While there a quite a few incubators dotting the country, some do not seem
receptive at all to women recruits. Take the case of Pooja Chauhan, founder
of Anduril Technologies, a startup that was incubated at Amity University
recently. “I was the first woman entrepreneur here,” she says with pride. But
she wryly recalls her woes when she was working at the incubation center.
She claims that all women washrooms at Amity used to shut at 6 pm sharp.
“We can’t hire women staff with such a scenario. People just don’t expect
women to be working late,” she explains. So she fought with the
management on the issue and has finally succeeded in buying time.

There are also those startups, which are run by women with women,
minimizing interface with male counterparts, and perhaps adding focus and
teeth. Shaleen Raizada’s Sanshadow Consultants is one such IP consulting
firm, which took root in 2004. Nearly 90% of her 20-member team comprises
women. At 35, Raizada started out with Rs 15 lakh and her company is today
worth nearly a quarter of a million dollars. “The first time when we went
cash-negative a year-and-a-half back, I started crying. I saw that the other
women were crying too, and that gave me strength,” she says highlighting
the positives of female bonding.

Again, the 29-year-old Anu Lall attributes her success to relationship skills,
an asset her gender demonstrates with much more ease. Her nearly Rs 1-
crore ERP firm Snartak IT Solutions was started two years back with a mere
Rs 12,000. “I contacted people from my own MBA network and the various
social networking websites like LinkdIn, from where I got business,” she
claims, hinting at the still unexploited nature of social networking sites. With
her range of contacts, today Lall has an office in New Zealand and another at
Oslo, besides being headquartered in Delhi. “I have to work 15 hours a day
traversing three time-zones, and that’s not easy,” she points out.

Case no. 9

Leaders redefine entrepreneurship

Niranjan Mudholkar, TNN

A true leader can convince his employees to believe in his entrepreneurial vision
and lead them to translate it into a magnificent reality for everybody.
Dwight D Eisenhower, the 34th US President and Supreme Commander of the Allied
Forces in World War II, described leadership as ‘the art of getting someone else to
do something you want done because he wants to do it’.

It is an apt description that cuts across times and has relevance even for today’s
business leaders – more so for entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs are extremely
passionate about their visions. However, not many are able to motivate their
employees to work with the same passion. That requires leadership.

It takes the leader within an entrepreneur to motivate his employees towards a

common goal. Not surprisingly therefore, when you look at the success stories of
great entrepreneurs you would realise that they all have been great leaders too.

Leadership is a blend of several qualities; it’s a role that demands multi-tasking.

That’s exactly what a successful entrepreneur does.

As Kaushal Sampat, COO, Dun & Bradstreet India says, “The very nature of the role
requires the entrepreneur to don many functional hats – she or he is a finance,
marketing , sales, operations professional all rolled into one.

But the most important role of an entrepreneur is that of an HR leader – the ability
to make his team see a big dream and stick with her/him through some very tough
times.”

“Our research on leadership factors that spell success has thrown up the ability to
motivate a team, to work well across cultures and to be able to facilitate change as
the top three factors that are a must have,” adds Rajiv Krishnan, MD – Development
Dimensions International (India).

If entrepreneurship is about utilising a market opportunity to create a business,

leadership is about building the right team and getting it involved in achieving the
business goals.

Besides business acumen and competence, an entrepreneurial leader also needs

other characteristics like integrity, dedication and determination to persevere
against all odds.

A good leader is able to take his team along with him; it is not so much about
people management as it is about understanding people and inspiring them.

Organisational structures are necessary to facilitate smooth operations. But they

are good enough only as long as they work as enablers and not become
impediments.
Good leaders understand this and also recognise the importance of providing a
healthy work environment where employees can express their views and ideas
irrespective of their position in the organisational structure. Good leaders are good
listeners who pay attention to what their employees say.

“It is important to create an environment where anyone can come forward with an
idea on how to improve any aspect of the business,” says Tom Nies, CEO, Cincom.
Mr Nies, who has been described as ‘the epitome of the entrepreneurial spirit of
American business’ by the 40th US President Ronald Reagan, practices what he
says.

One of his staff members came up with the idea of creating a call centre business in
order to reduce the cost of customer service. Although the idea was contrary to
Cincom’s background, Mr Nies saw sense in it. He supported it by travelling to India
to promote its opening.

Case no. 10

On wings of social entrepreneurship

Shivapriya, TNN

When 24-year-old Anand Shah was flying out of India back to America, another
Indian sitting next to him on the flight was complaining.

“The taxi drivers, they fleece you. The food, the water... oh, I was sick for four days
out of ten.” Born in the USA and trained at Harvard as a biologist, Shah thought to
himself that criticising came easily to us, but not the initiative to change things.

Mr Shah, on his part, decided to do something for the country of his parents’ origin.
He looked around and realised there was a huge need for talent to work at
grassroots organisations in India. “What India needs is people time. Very rarely
would you see very talented people getting their hands dirty,” he says. Thus was
born IndiCorps, which works to bring the brightest and best people, often lost to the
management consultancies and investment banks, to work in social development.

Mr Shah is not alone. An increasing crop of professionals are sacrificing lucrative

corporate jobs to become social entrepreneurs. They blend the entrepreneurial skills
of the business world with the social purpose of non-governmental organisations to
create unique solutions to India’s problems. For decades, social work in India meant
charity, but the economic changes of recent years have brought hard-nosed
business sense and professionalism to the social sector.

Like Mr Shah, Mumbai-based Venkat Krishnan quit a nice job to start a company
that brings together donors and social organisations that need their money. His
company, GiveIndia, works with about 100 organisations that have projects ranging
from environmental protection to child welfare.

Social entrepreneurship is no different from starting a profit-motivated company-the

challenges are perhaps only tougher. They grapple with problems of retaining
people with motivation, scaling up viable business models and of course, raising
resources. But the modern day social enterprise has one advantage compared with
a conventional NGO-it is run by a professional who understands target setting,
performance and accountability.

For instance, Mr Krishnan opted to set up his venture as a company rather than as a
charitable trust. The company has on its board, strategy consultant Rama
Bijapurkar, ICICI chairman N Vaghul, Tarun Das of CII and Kishore Chaukar of the
Tata group-well-known people who brought credibility to a start-up and also a
specific set of skills to the table. “To some extent, being from IIM-A helped to
establish my seriousness and get them on board,” says Mr Krishnan. Like any
corporate, GiveIndia also periodically works out the cost of raising funds and
compares with other ways of raising funds. The goal being to raise funds in the most
the cost efficient and effective manner.

Employee retention is the next challenge. Vineet Rai, whose organisation Intellecap
acts as an advisor to firms with a social-focus feels human resources is the number
one challenge most of them face. This is where organisations like Indicorps come in.
The Indicorps fellowship programme is an intensive two-year programme that
involves a selection process to identify the best talent-those selected work for 1-2
years on the project of their choice with grassroots organisations.

While volunteering for social work is not new, getting the brightest and best minds
to do it and tapping their potential at a costs lower than consultant fees is the
crucial differentiator for IndiCorps. “This is not volunteering. These are fellows,”
says Mr Shah, who calls what his organisation does “service for the soul”. The basic
requirement for the Indicorps fellowship, apart from being a person of Indian origin,
is a university degree or five years of work experience. Interested candidates need
to fill out a 20-page application form, pay their own way to India for the interview.
So only serious candidates apply.

Initially, Mr Shah found NGOs were not very excited about the idea. “But once you
give them (the NGOs) the basic management skills, you suddenly find they are very
hungry for talent,” he says. Unlike traditional businesses, that can use
compensation and stock options to employ good talent, social entrepreneurs have
to rely on other incentives to retain people. “Usually, we find we lose people to
other organisations in similar fields,” says CRY (Child Relief and You) CEO, Ingrid
Srinath.

CRY, one of India’s better known organisations working for child welfare,
commissioned Ernst & Young to do a study to reduce its employee turnover which
had gone up to 25%. In response to the findings, it increased salaries by 40% across
the board in 2006. “We were able to bring attrition down to 6%, and compared to
before, when we had 46 vacancies, we have under 20 now,” says Ms Srinath.

CRY was a first mover in many ways. It was among the first entrepreneurial efforts
in the social sector that was professionally managed and run. It was also among the
few organisations that built a strong brand presence that was bigger and better
known that its shy and retiring founder Rippan Kapur.

“Most organisations are board driven or CEO-driven. It is rare to find the ideal
combination where the board is involved in the governance and the CEO in the
management,” says Noshir Dadrawala, who advises charitable organisations, and
who has authored a number of books to help them. Even today, CRY is among the
most professionally run and managed organisations.

In 2000, it commissioned IMRB to study donor habits and found that the biggest
block to making donations was inertia. The intent existed but few people translated
it to action. Acting on this, CRY put in place mechanisms to make the payment
process more convenient, and also put in place an online payment system. Confesses
Ingrid, “When we outsourced our cards business to Archies, we also introduced a
voluntary retirement scheme.”
Compared to 1979 when CRY was started, there are now many more resources for
social entrepreneurs. There are courses run by management institutes such as
NMIMS on social entrepreneurship, as well as hand-holding and consultancy that
organisations such as Noshir’s Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy provide for
free. Even venture funding is available if it is a for-profit socially focused venture,
apart from organisations such as Ashoka that fund deserving individuals in social
work. The time for social entrepreneurship has come.