@TiEcon 2006: When You’ve Built For Someone Else, Why Not Build For Yourself?

The second session one the final day of TiEcon 2006 was a platform for entrepreneurs to tell their stories; Alok Mittal, Executive Director of Canaan Partners was the moderator.
The session began with Romy Juneja, Founder & COO of MobileNxt talking about his company’s vision – of revolutionizing the mobile retailing business by focusing on the training of the employees, the design of the stores and, mainly, the consumer experience. Their pitch to the VC’s was that they needed the money to jumpstart their enterprise and finance hiring the best consultants for their venture. They track the entire inventory daily using IT. His reason for starting up? “When you’ve built for someone else, why not do it for yourself?” Their main frustration: people who move on after training. He and his partners have put their entire savings into the business, and they intend to have 1000 stores in 3 years.
Subash Lingareddy, Founder & CFO of Ocimum Biosolutions spoke about how, while working in the US, he and his wife realised the opportunity in creating software for the biotech industry. Their main challenge: making biologists understand what the techies were saying, and vice versa. An extensive online training on IT and Biotech for their employees helped solve that problem. Cash is still a problem since they sell products, not services. He and his wife put in around $400,000 into starting the business.
Alok Singh, CEO of Novatium Solutions spoke about changing the way people use the PC just as one uses a toaster- as an appliance. India is going to require 50mn computers in the next 5 years, and it is with this market in mind that they’re trying to recreate the PC.
J. Murugavel, CEO of the Bharatmatrimony Group started out by creating a tamil portal and offering calendars, greeting cards and other features. Matrimonial was just one section – the page had one half with profiles of the men; the other, women. He put none of his savings into the business, but did consulting jobs to buy a PC. For marketing, he spent no money, but mailed lots of people and left messages on discussion forums. He did this while he still had a job as a programmer. When he got laid off after 9/11, he came back to India and began focusing on it as a business. He later tied up with Rediff and Yahoo as a matrimonial channel. To expand, he started other portals. His main driving force was the establishment of his own identity. When he took VC Funding, he was hesitant about giving equity in a profitable venture, but also wanted to capture different verticals. He said that investment bankers can help identify the right VCs. For retaining people, he recommends developing interpersonal relationships, and selling people the vision so they feel like stakeholders.
When asked about giving stock options as a means of retaining people, Lingareddy said that they offer a 12% non-dilutable stake with a two year lock-in.

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