From the Faculty Advisor Dear Reader, It brings me immense pleasure in presenting to you the annual magazine of Entrepreneurship Cell of IIM Shillong, “INCUBATOR”. India has been emerging globally as one of the fastest growing nations and a large part of this achievement is contributed to the entrepreneurs of India. In this issue of INCUBATOR, i-Cube team presents a glimpse of Indian entrepreneurs and their ideas in taking India Inc. forward. Every year, a large number of businesses are incepted by young minds with more than 400 new ventures having been seeded in the year 2012. Graduates from top-notch institutes like IITs and IIMs have begun to give up their quest for high-paying jobs and have taken a step forward towards entrepreneurship; from a seeking job perspective to a creating job mindset and giving way to a new culture of entrepreneurship in India. Most of the minds that nurture the dream of being “The Captain of their own ship” are young graduates. Since 1990, around 3,500 product start-ups have been successfully doing business. But with the increasing trend towards entrepreneurship, it is estimated that in the next three years, India will see about 1,000 emerging businesses. The trend is changing towards a mix of sectors in which investments are made; from purely IT sector to diverse sectors like energy, microfinance, education and health & life sciences among others. Today, Bangalore and NCR are the hot-spots for obtaining funding for new businesses. Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai are amongst the other cities that support emerging entrepreneurial ventures. With the efforts of Entrepreneurship Cell, we at IIM Shillong strive for a change in this trend of start-ups being concentrated in the metros to their percolation to Tier-II and Tier-III cities and then progressively to remote and developing areas like the North-Eastern region. With all the diverse topics that have been presented to you in this issue of INCUBATOR, I hope you will have an interesting reading experience. I would like to thank you all for the endless support and encouragement that has helped i-Cube and IIM Shillong to contribute in the field of Entrepreneurship. Prof. Keya Sengupta Faculty In-charge, Entrepreneurship Cell IIM Shillong
From the Editorial Team
INCUBATOR
Do what you love and money will follow. In our lives, many of us are disconnected from what we love and do things that everyone else does because we think that is the path to success. We believe that getting out of the Faculty Advisor comfort zones and doing things that we love will give us Dr. Keya Sengupta satisfaction and success will follow. Today, we call such people entrepreneurs. At i-Cube, the Entrepreneurship Cell i-Cube Team of IIM Shillong, we are the custodians of that spirit of adAbhishek Kansal venture, that desire to walk, nay run, down a path of one’s Abhishek K. Mishra own making. This second issue of the annual magazine has Bhagyashree Dhawan been published with the sole aim of celebrating that fire Dibyajyoti Saha that burns within every entrepreneur, big or small, rich or Khodyot K. Reang poor, successful or waiting to be. It has been published to Krittika Chakraverti celebrate the courage to start something of you own and Nidhi Garg follow your dreams. The one generalization you can make Rahul Goyal about all entrepreneurs is that they are all unique. None of Vivek Rathi them resembles another.
Issue 2 September 2014
The attempt of this second edition of INCUBATOR, thus, has been to bring together stories of different kinds of entrepreneurs in different sectors. The cover story talks about evolution of media. This is in keeping with one of the themes of media entrepreneurship in EmergE 2014, the current edition of the entrepreneurship summit. The Startup Canvas will take you through the interviews we had with a few entrepreneurs and in Expert Speaks, entrepreneurs will talk about their adventurous journeys. Emerging Trends highlights some movements and trends that hold promise for budding entrepreneurs. An interesting section Rising Stars analyses some growing startups while Bildungsroman charts the growth of companies as they made their way through earnest childhood, tenuous adolescence and into strong adulthood. Out of the Box showcases five companies that are off-track either in the way they conduct their business or in the very nature of their business. The section Rising from the Ashes showcases the journey of four companies that grew to being big firms. Our Specials section has some interesting articles that deal with topics like life cycle of an entrepreneur and Indian startup ecosystem. We extend our gratitude towards the editing volunteers – Aanchal, Navneet, Nishesh, Prakhar, Pratik and Udayan, – as well as the design volunteers – Chahat, Karan, Pratyush, Rama, Saketh, Sagar, Sumon and Umesh - for the long hours that they spent on this magazine.
CONTENTS 08
LETS INTERN
-Rishabh Gupta | Co-Founder & CEO
STARTUP CANVAS
R I S I N G S TA R S
10
ANALYSING LOCALBANYA.COM
12
“Uber”: An Out of the Box Entrepreneurial Venture
14
CHANGING THE DYNAMICS OF HIRING
16
MeriCAR.com: A Success in Making
-Maruthappan S, IIM Ranchi
- Ananya Ankita, IIM Udaipur
-Anurag Mohapatra & Rupam Srivastava | NMIMS-Mumbai
-Dechen Angmo | | Rama Krishna Matli | IIM, Udaipur
EXPERT SPEAK
INDIAN RAGA
Sriram Emani | Co-Founder and CEO
18
EM ER GIN G TR ENDS
We hope that this publication enlightens you, but more than that, we hope that it inspires you, because it is inspiration that engenders creation, and creation is what makes the world go round. Keep the fire burning!
“Social Entrepreneurship” (SE): Need of the hour
20
Industry Analysis: Best fit for new ventures
22
Intrapreneurship - Utilizing the inside entrepreneur
24
- Vrinda Chaudhary TISS MumbaiI
- Swati Sharma IIM Shilllong
TEAM i-Cube!
-Navneet Kumar | IIM Shillong
27
“SUSHANT’S ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY”
B UIL DUN SR OM AN
29
“REWARD” OF FEDEX
- Saket Hawelia & Swati Pamnani | IIM, Shillong
STARTUP CANVAS
CONTENTS 32 35
The amazong Journey of Jeff Bezos
- Mohnish Khiani | IIM, Shillong
59
Motorola - “Back with a Bang”
62
Tylenol Crisis 1982: From Zenith to Nadir and Back Again
-Diksha Agarwal | IIM Indore
- Rohitaksha Panda and Shruti Ray | XIMB
What Happened After Apple-Picking
STARTUP CANVAS
- Nishesh Bhasin | IIM Shillong
anis bari
EXPERT SPEAK
37
O UT O F THE B OX Out of the box entrepreneurial ventures - Dipti Chinchghare | TAPMI
Coin – The “Miracle” Card Starup - Karthik M | SIBM Pune
”Menstrupedia” Breaking Norms - Manisha Singh | XIMB
40
COVER STORY EXPERT SPEAK
Chaitanya Aggarwal
64
- Dibyajyoti Saha and Rahul Goyal I I M Shi l l ong
Digital Darwinism
68
Turning adversity into opportunity
72
SPECI ALS
43
From Start-Up to a Sustainable Corporation
74
46
‘Indian Startup Ecosystem’ a long way from Silicon Valley
76
- Ashmita Sengupta & Suresh Bommisetti | NMIMS-Mumbai
- Chahat Shah & Yash Kushal Shah | IIM Shillong
Quirky new startups | Web merchandising - Venkat Iyer & Bhanu P | IIM Trichy
49
Life Cycle of an Entrepreneur
78
Startups, SMEs and Indian budget 2014: A disconnect
81
Life Cycle of an Entrepreneur: The Reality, the Challenges and the Mentality
83
- Hardik Shah | I IM Shi l l ong
The Journey of Bleacher Report - Vijay Murli & N. Rama Krishna Reddy | I I M Shi l l ong
51
- Mohit Kumar and Kaushal Singh | I I M Shi l l ong
54
internshala | internships that matter
STARTUP CANVAS
- Sudhanshu Gupta | IIM Raipur
R IS IN G F R OM TH E A S H ES
55
samsung
57
The Rise of Jolla
- Pratik Chakraborty | I IM Shi l l ong
- Manas Mendiratta | I IFT D el hi
letsintern | rishabh gupta
Rishabh Gupta Co-Founder & CEO Letsintern
What is the story behind Letsintern? How did it all start? I quit my job with the idea of starting my own company, and it so happened that my co-founder was looking for a new job. So we got together and discussed ideas over some beers. We discussed about connecting student and employers – since nobody was interested in college but what happens after college and outside college, why don’t we build a platform connecting the two worlds? We decided to try and build a platform to connect students and employers and internships seemed the most obvious way to do so. So we quickly googled whether we could get a domain ‘Letsintern’ as it seemed like a cool, action-centric name. The domain name was available for INR 350. My co-founder was unsure. I said that we were paying more than INR 350 for a beer, so let’s just book it. It was an affirmative action and no great story.
my own money. Then I got INR 5 lakh from the Department of Science and Technology in November 2010, angel funding in April 2011, and finally bridge loan in January 2013
How did you bring about funding? The first round of seed funding was
Did your MBA help in entrepreneurship? Maybe in getting funds?
What was your approach? How did you actually approach them with the scale up-idea? You go with a deck that covers 5-6 basic things. First, the idea. You should be able to summarize your ideas in 10-15 words. The next point to convince them on is that there is indeed a big market for your idea. In the first round (the angel round), why you are going to succeed is not such a critical business measure as it is a team measure. Then comes the part where you have to satisfy them that your team is capable of executing your plans. Other points include the nature of the competitive landscape and how you plan to use the funds provided. That was my approach in a nutshell.
Students of some colleges like IIM A, IIM B, ISB, have an advantage over others in securing funds. But VCs are but the second stage of funding. The first round is the seed round. If you have done nothing with this money and have no prototype and no workability, there is no way VCs are going to fund you irrespective of which college are you in. VCs typically hear a few thousand pitches in a year, but invest in less than 10. It is a hard screening process. Your team needs to convince them that they fall into that small percentage. Your college and your MBA helps a bit in that.
What are the biggest challenges that you had to overcome while going for entrepreneurship? I think the biggest challenges are more mental ones than anything else. The first thing is to believe that you can build something big. It probably takes the same amount of time to dream big or small; you need to put in probably 20 percent more ef-
The best way to predict the future is to create it.”- Peter Drucker
fort to be great rather than good, to take you through that extra mile. So, you just might as well dream big. The problem that I have faced in India and across the world have been the people. But some areas are more specific. It is very difficult for start-ups to acquire people in India because traditionally, India has not been a start-up friendly country. There have been no cases where people have made money with ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans). If you are given ESOPs, most people would believe that these are things which do not really mean much. So, attracting people is very difficult, to attract the top talent to make the experienced people to leave their comfortable jobs.
What differentiates you from your competitors? There are two to three things. First, others are hell-bent on building great transaction platforms, like naukri .com, monster.com, etc. wherein you come in for a transaction, post a CV and get a job. The transaction is over and the relationship is over. The way we have built Letsintern is that you get in, you get a certain profile reading, and you have certain levels. We start by helping you to build your resume and make it better. We try to keep testing new things for the employers to get connected to. Now we have added assessments, and a lot of things are in the pipeline which will add to our relationships with students. We want students to come to us in their first year of under-graduation, wanting to do something in the corporate world, and we should be able to guide them through the journey. We’ll start by offering weekend jobs and conducting events. The next year would involve offering proper internships, and providing skill reports as in what skills are being hired.
We call ourselves a pre-LinkedIn for students, where they can connect with employers and career agencies much better. We’ve been able to bring Fortune 100 companies on to the platform. So you see that we care our about our students much more than our competitors.
What are your thoughts about the future of education entrepreneurship in India? It seems pretty bright. Couple of things are changing across both the US and India since 2012. The US is investing a lot in educational startups. Almost every VC is taking a peg in that space. US is getting aggressive in this sphere, and that has started to reflect in India right now. There is going to be serious investment in the next one year by Indian VCs in the education sector. Once people start using the online medium to study, and corporates start accepting that as legitimate (right now they do not), people would go for modular education wherein you can study the particular parts of the content you are interested in. Once that happens, there is also going to be space for all the things that colleges currently provide, like guest lectures or different collaboration platforms, different career services like counselling or placement cells, which will provide huge opportunities. The way people study is going to be disrupted. Things would become a lot more personalized. People are building metadata and AI on an adaptive learning platform. Innovations are coming at a fast rate. Generally in India people think of entrepreneurship as a risky business. Do you think the scenario changing now? It is definitely changing. The good
thing is that more people are trying, but there is a negative aspect too. People with good financial backgrounds are jumping in without a lot of consideration. Entrepreneurship has been glamourized, which might not create much value. One of the misplaced notions is that entrepreneurship is risky. An MBA student will earn a maximum of less than a crore in the first five years. There is no business in this country which will not generate that kind of money. Even if I sell suits to MBA students on Saturday I will make that kind of money. If you open a saree shop, you can make that kind of money. Generating an annual turnover of 50-60 lakh is simple. If you can manage the social media of shops and digital marketing as an MBA, you will easily make money. I think the biggest fear is of failure. People don’t start because they fear failure – If you can conquer that fear, there is no financial risk.
What would be your message to future or budding entrepreneurs? Money cannot be the motivation for a start-up, though it often is. Take a five-year or ten-year period and all the ideas that you can think of for the same. Map those out on a chart paper or a visual medium and pick opportunities from there which you really feel passionate about. Suppose you care about the environment and you want to invest in electric vehicles. So, you should go for an opportunity in that domain or something related to that. Do not run after immediate fads like photo sharing apps these days. Take a longer horizon, make something that’s sustainable and that is going to create big business and not something that is about to become big in the next one year. That would be my advice to all the budding entrepreneurs of today.
Winners never quit and quitters never win.”- Vince Lombardi
8|9
the rising stars
analysing localbanya.com | maruthappan s | iim ture development project organization. In the past, it has invested in many startups especially in hospitality domain. Currently they have invested an undisclosed amount in Local Banya. SWOT Analysis of Local Banya: With the SWOT analysis, internal and external factors responsible for the growth of Local Banya have been discussed.
“Analyzing LocalBanya.com”The Rising Star -Maruthappan S, II M Ran chi
L
ocal Banya, the first online grocery store of Mumbai, has attained considerable achievements in its past 25 months of operations. It has carved out a niche for itself in this $ 282 Billion market with a wide range of products in 22 categories. Highlights: •Local Banya is an online grocery store started in May 2012 •Founded by Rashi Choudary, Karan Meherotra and Amit Naik •First online grocery store to serve the people of Mumbai •Currently they are serving customers of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane •Instead of inventory model, it follows ‘lean management’ which is a combination of inventory and cash-and-carry model •Apart from grocery items, it offers wide range of products like dairy products, beverages, organic foods, baby care, health care, personal care, desserts, household supplies etc. About the founders:
Ms. Rishi Choudary: The COO of Local Banya. She did her post-graduation in management from SPJIMS, Singapore. Before joining Local Banya, she worked with Raymonds as the Merchandise and Inventory Manager and with E&Y as a strategist. Mr. Karan Meherotra: The CEO of Local Banya; He hasworked in the FMCG sector for few years before moving to Local Banya. Now, he takes care of the logistics and operations. Mr. Amit Naik: After his short stint with an e-commerce firm, he ventured in to Local Banya. He is an IIM Lucknow graduate. Technical strategy of online grocery is maintained by him Why an analysis about Local Banya should be done? Local Banya is one of the fastest growing online grocery stores in the country. It is evident by their following achievements in their past 25 month of operations: 1.Recently achieved 600 deliverables per day. This is the second highest
number of deliverables in the e-grocery field in the sub-continent followed by BigBasket.com 2.In Economic Times, Local Banya is presented as one of the 7 tech startups with women at helm 3.Raised series A funding worth $ 20 Million from BCCL Spring Board and Karmvir Avant Group. They are in the process of raising series B funding worth $ 5 Million 4.In the report published by SutraHR. com in January 2013, Local Banya featured as one of the top 100 startups in India Previous investments by the venture capitalists who invested in Local Banya: BCCL has invested and successfully exited from firms like IIFL, UNIBIC, TravelGuru, Naaptol and Apollo Hospitals and so on. Currently, most of the players, who raised funding from BCCL, are now major players in their respective sectors. Karmvir Avant Group is an infrastruc-
It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” - Bill Gates
STRENGTHS 1.Wide range of products 2.High Operating efficiency at a low operating cost 3.Cost & Pricing advantage over other e-grocers 4.Innovative social media marketing 5.Strong venture capital funding
WEAKNESS 1.Less differentiation services compared to their competitors 2.Services limited to a particular locality only
OPPORTUNITY 1.Rapid growth of e-commerce in India 2.Huge potential to tap in e-grocery market
THREATS 1.Stiff competition
STRENGTHS: 1.Wide range of products: LocalBanya offers large range of products from conventional fruits & vegetables to the baby care, house care & kitchen ware (which comes closer to 8,000 products). Focusing on the products apart from traditional grocery items helps them to gain advantage over their direct competitors like BigBasket, ZopNow, EkStop and GreenCart. 2.High operating efficiency at low operating cost: If a grocer relies fully on his inventory, it could turn out to be a disaster as was in the case of WebVan. WebVan was an online grocery based in USA that went bankrupt in 2001. Being aware of the issue, Local Banya founders decided to tame it with lean management. Besides their very few warehouses (4 or 5), they formed tie ups with many retailers and wholesalers around the city which considerably reduced their operating cost. Thereby they are able to
deliver their customers within 2 hours of order placement. 3.Cost & Pricing advantage over other e-grocers: Even though there is only little price difference between LocalBanya and BigBasket in Mumbai (of INR 3 to 5 in case of vegetables), it may impact the customers who are opting for a bulk order. For example, the price of onion at BigBasket is INR 36/kg and at LocalBanya is INR 33/kg (as on 24th June, 2014). This price difference may attract the customers who are planning to order for an entire month towards Local Banya. It is reported that 29% of Local Banya’s total business happens in bulk purchase of groceries. 4.Innovative social media marketing: It is quiet impossible for a grocer to achieve 600 deliverables per day within short period of operations. LocalBanya made it possible mainly with its huge social media presence in Facebook (54,000 Likes) and Twitter (1,194 Followers) which is the highest among all e-grocers in India. 5.Strong venture capital funding: In the series A funding $ 20 Million was funded by BCCL’s Spring Board (1st Round) and Karmvir Avant Group (2nd Round). They are in the talks of raising Series B funding worth $ 5 Million. The funding would help them to improve operations & logistics, marketing & branding and in hiring new talents. WEAKNESS: 1.Less differentiation services: Unlike its competitors, it is offering more products than services. In this competitive world, LocalBanya need to focus on IT services also particularly when other e-grocers like BigBasket and ZopNow are making use of technology in a better way. For example, ZopNow offers ‘live-tracking system’ with which customers would be able to track their product anytime whereas BigBasket offers customers to order the daily basket through their Android/iOS app. 2.Services limited to a particular locality only: LocalBanya was launched in May, 2012 and currently operates only in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane. Its competitors like BigBasket who launched around the same period now are operating from Mumbai, Hyderabad &
Bangalore. Expanding their operations to different cities could help them to cover more customer base. OPPORTUNITY: 1.Rapid growth of e-commerce in India: Currently the e-commerce constitutes only 0.8% of $ 600 Billion market. This market segment is expected to grow to 2.5% of total Indian retail market by 2016. That would result a 212.5% growth in the e-commerce market. This situation is expected to boost the growth rate of LocalBanya. 2.Huge potential to tap in e-grocery market: In current Indian scenario, including LocalBanya there are very few big players like ZopNow, EkStop, BigBasket and GreenCart. In e-commerce sector, there were only 2 players (FlipKart and SnapDeal) till 2010. Now there are more than hundred players in e-commerce sector. Similarly the number of players in e-grocery is also expected to grow in huge number in the coming years. This would give the existing players an edge over the new entrants in the grocery market which would be in terms of customer’s loyalty and brand awareness. THREATS: 1.Stiff competition: Since online grocery is growing at a rapid pace, many brick and mortar retailers are also interested in setting up their shops online. Apart from them, e-grocers who are arriving recently are focusing more on an individual vertical instead of setting up another grocery shop. For example, SeaToHome offers only fish instead of focusing on the whole lot. The firm which operates in a more focused manner like SeaToHome could give stiff competition to existing e-grocers.
Path Ahead: Local Banya has many plans about increasing the range of products and expanding to other Metro & Tier-1 cities in the upcoming years. Local Banya, which started with 12-15 employees delivering 10-12 orders per day, currently has more than 100 employees delivering 600 orders per day. Based on the previous year’s performance track record of Local Banya, its future looks bright.
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill
10 | 11
the rising stars
uber | ananya ankita | iim udaipur cause of a monopolistic execution of this system all over the world, there had been total disregard for customer satisfaction. Uber successfully tapped into this frustration and the demand for a better alternative. Uber, as a venture funded company received investment from angel investors in the Silicon Valley including a very well-known private equity advisor Christopher Sacca. Later in 2011, Benchmark Capital invested US $11.5 million and were soon followed by Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures and Bezos Expeditions who collectively raised a further US $32 million. How does the system work?
“Uber”: An Out of the Box Entrepreneurial Venture Ananya Ankita, IM Udaipur
U
ber is a US $18.2 billion web based transportation network company which connects passengers to cab drivers using a mobile app. It was founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in 2009 in San Francisco as a luxury car service. It was however launched officially in June 2010 when it released its Android and iOS app. It currently operates in more than 130 cities worldwide, generating a gross revenue of US $10 billion. According to Travis Kalanick, CEO and co-founder, Uber’s revenue is doubling every six
months. This venture funded company has already won the confidence of the big shots in the business world, bagging the Google Ventures’ vote of confidence for an investment of US $376 million. According to Benchmark, an investor shared by both Uber and eBay, the company is “probably the fastest growing company in the world”. Inception: In busy cities like San Francisco, Washington D.C., London, Mumbai
etc. taxi rides have never been pleasant experiences. Earlier, in order to hail a cab, one would have to stand on the pavement, whatever be the weather and wave their hands frantically for the cab to stop or call the taxi dispatcher and wait for at least 20 minutes for the cab to arrive. Putting up with the misdemeanors of drivers, repeatedly providing directions, tolerating “broken meters” and trouble in finding the right amount of change form just a part of the factors which ensure that taxi rides are never hassle-free experiences. Be-
As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.” - Donald Trump
Uber is basically a smartphone app. It acts as an interface between the passengers and drivers. Uber does not own any cabs as such. They only enter into contractual agreements with drivers who have the same vision of customer satisfaction as Uber. Uber drivers must have their own vehicles fitted with a GPS navigator, cover the vehicle insurance themselves and pay license fees on their own. Uber just provides the drivers with an iPhone. Payments for the journey are made only via credit card. 20% of the travel fare is retained by Uber and the remaining is given to the taxi drivers. . As the company has few costs apart from software development and maintenance, marketing and lobbying with government agencies, its net profit turns out to be 20-30% of the net revenue. How does one use Uber? In order to use Uber, firstly the Uber application needs to be downloaded. It is available on all major mobile platforms such as Android, iOS etc. A user profile (wherein credit card details are also entered) needs to be created in order to book a cab. The Uber app is integrated with Google Maps. Hence the rider can use the app to locate how far the nearest cabs are, choose a convenient one, select the rendezvous point and book the to meet them there. The
estimated cost chart for the journey and estimated waiting time for the cab is also shown in the app. One can also see the driver’s name, photograph, registration number and past user ratings. Once the booking is confirmed, a confirmation call and text message is sent to the customer. The cost for a ride is calculated based on different aspects such as distance of travel, travel time taken etc. Once the user arrives at his/her destination, the app charges the customer’s credit card. There is no need to pay any sort of hard cash or tip to the driver. An e-mail is immediately sent to the passenger detailing the cost breakdown for the journey. Success Mantra: By providing a better alternative and revolutionizing the whole experience, word of mouth and good press have worked wonders for the company and it has saved chunks of money which would otherwise have gone into developing marketing schemes. Apart from redesigning the whole experience of a taxi ride by making it hassle-free and convenient, the fundamental formula behind the success of Uber is the planned step-by-step expansion in various new cities which include designing unique strategies for every city keeping the various factors like population, connectivity, law and regulations, politics and local culture in mind and effective execution.
tation very convenient, Uber gets even larger but when we think of it as a supercomputer orchestrating taxi rides all over world, it becomes one of the largest companies in the world. The main challenges for Uber include contemporary ridesharing apps like Lyft and Sidecar and various legal challenges by the traditional taxi industry whose revenues these app are eating into. They allege that Uber will not provide insurance cover to a passenger in case of an accident. Though Uber says that they offer insurance cover for drivers to the tune if US $1 million, as many as 14 US states have warned passengers that rideshare companies may not cover them in case of accidents. Another point raised in lawsuits is the fact that in many places, rideshare company drivers have different eligibility requirements than traditional taxi drivers. Going forward, Uber, by all means a potent start-up, promises to make a mark in the business world for a long time to come. It is one of those revolutionary ideas which completely reform an industry. It is built on a highly political arena, converting smartly the litigations and lawsuits filed against it into a way of marketing, leading to reformation of laws in various cities. It is an excellent model for anyone with a fresh perspective for a startup to follow.
Scope of Expansion and Challenges:
Uber’s revenues are mainly realized from 5 out of 130 odd cities it operates in whereas in the rest of the cities its operations are relatively new. Hence there is tremendous scope for further revenue generation. According to Michael Wolfe, an entrepreneur, viewing Uber as a dominating and growing town-car market, it is large, but when thinking of it in terms of a company offering personal logistics services, delivering people and also goods (packages, dry-cleaning), replacing of personal vehicles by making public transpor-
It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” - Bill Gates
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” - Napoleon Hill
12 | 13
the rising stars
dynamics of hiring | anurag mohapatra & rupam srivastava | nmims-mumbai pus hiring by being able to invite and test any number of candidates in one go. Also, these tools provide efficient hiring frameworks by minimizing the human intervention in the whole process.
Sachin Gupta
Vivek Prakash
CHANGING THE DYNAMICS OF HIRING BY Anurag Mohapatra & Rupam Srivastava NMIMS-Mumbai
A
dding objectivity to the ocean of subjectivity in the process of hiring is what we do, explains Sachin Gupta, co-founder of HackerEarth, one of three finalists from India at the Seedstars World start-up competition held in Geneva on February 4, 2014. HackerEarth is an online hiring platform for coders and engineers. It is a platform that gives students an opportunity to showcase their coding skills in different programming languages such as Python, Django, C++, jQuery and come under the radar of prospective employers like Symantec, InMobi etc. HackerEarth was founded by two IIT Roorkee alumni, Sachin Gupta and Vivek Prakash in November, 2012 with the vision of providing a platform that could benefit both the companies and the students by enabling both to meet each other’s needs in
an unbiased fashion. It addresses the complex problem the students face during placements where a huge gap exists between what the companies expect from the students and how they are assessed. At present, the average time required by a company to hire a candidate is 45 days with the conversion ratio being 80:1. HackerEarth, through its innovative products, reduces this hiring time for any company to 2-3 days with an excellent conversion ratio of 5:1, which saves the company both time and money. This feature makes the idea behind HackerEarth highly scalable. HackerEarth provides an online community to coders where they can showcase their skills through various challenges, analyse their current skills and develop their skills through various online training programs. It
provides a unique platform for the coders to communicate with each other as well as to the companies. HackerEarth uses two tools to carry on their business viz. Sourcing tool and Enterprise tool. The Sourcing tool, which includes the service of HackerEarth Source, allows the companies to create a pool of talent through hiring challenges. The Enterprise tool on the other hand includes services like HackerEarth Recruit and HackerEarth Campus. HackerEarth Recruit is a SaaS (Software as a Service) based B2B product allowing the companies to screen potential candidates through customized examinations, while HackerEarth Campus allows companies to remove the bottle-necks in the process of campus allows companies to remove the bottle-necks in the process of cam-
Success is not what you have, but who you are.” - Bo Bennet
It uses technologies like Code Evaluation Engine, Plagiarism Detection Engine and Intelligent Reports to evaluate the students’ solutions, to check and filter out students who indulge in unfair means and to generate real-time reports. Candidates are auto-ranked intelligently based on a number of parameters like submission-time, logical correctness, code size etc. Each test is standardized by consulting experts in the field, who create and validate the question database 1 or 2 days prior to the examinations ensuring similar difficulty level for each candidate. Like most entrepreneurs, Sachin and Vivek too faced various challenges, worsened by the paucity of resources which restricted their expenditure. “The most important piece of advice that I can give to any entrepreneur is to never lose focus from the problem you are solving”, speaks Sachin, reflecting on his past experience. The initial 6-7 months passed in persevering for developing, optimizing and beta-testing the system. After that, the major challenge for them was to identify the market for scaling up; being a technical product, it was applicable to only specific companies. Finding a willing customer and getting a requisite validation were the most difficult challenges for them according to Sachin. Timing and projection of the products were also other crucial concerns. Their challenges eased a bit when they were able to garner a sponsorship of $150,000, as being a part of the inaugural batch of GSF Accelerator (a program to foster innovation in the digital field in India). They finally had a little relaxed hand in terms of expenditure. But still, new set of challenges imposed themselves as they started to scale up. Improving product life cycle and managing costs in terms of time and opera-
tion became their major concerns. As they scaled up, they planned on incorporating B2C as well as B2B business models to improve their market share. The number of employees increased to 16 as they looked forward to improve on user acquisition and attract more developers. By now their community had grown to more than 30,000 members of which over 2000 candidates from 380 colleges across 4 countries applied for the InMobi hiring challenge of which two candidates were given direct placement offers and 10 were called for onsite interview, of which 5 more were hired by InMobi. Since then, HackerEarth had come a long way. Recently Symantec conducted over 2000 tests over 20 campus hiring drives, over the duration of 6 months through HackerEarth. One would argue that the idea of HackerEarth is in line with the idea of InterviewStreet (now rebranded HackerRank), a US based company, which seems like a similar assessment platform. But Sachin explains how HackerEarth is different from HackerRank. “HackerEarth is more than a tool, as it allows the users to personalize their experience by allowing them to create a live resume. It allows them to develop their skills through various online training modules, which get reflected in their resumes, which can be sourced by different companies whenever required. This feature of a live resume encourages students to take up new challenges and enhance their skill-set”, explains Sachin. HackerEarth has, till now, managed to attract investments from Aloke Bajpai (founder of ixigo.com) and various other investors including a whopping $500,000 from Angel Prime. It has also attracted $20,000 from Rajesh Sawhney (founder of GSF). Previous investors include TA Ventures, Anupam Mittal (founder of People Group; Shaadi.com,), Ganesh Krishnan (founder of BigBasket.com) and many others. Currently, HackerEarth is mostly concentrating its operation on India with a plan to expand in the South-East
Asia soon. They are going about their business in a much planned manner as they look forward to expand in Eastern Europe and gradually to USA. Being a tech-based company, more so a SaaS firm in a specific application of hiring and recruitment, Sachin insists on increasing the company’s business by expanding the company geographically and not by increasing the company’s product base as he believes that diversifying the product base wouldn’t increase the profitability as much as it’d be increased by reaching out to more and more users and expanding globally. The co-founders have divided the responsibility, with Sachin being the CEO of the company and handling the business side of the company, while Vivek, as the CTO of the company, handles the technical side of the company. Sachin says they are very clear about the scalability of their idea and where they want to take the company. “But entrepreneurs shouldn’t worry for the longer run, it is important to focus on short term goals of maybe a year or so”, suggests Sachin. He insists on taking small careful step at a time rather than taking giant risky leaps. The 16 member team of HackerEarth now handle various functions of the business like research and development, marketing, client handling, etc. “We look for the people who share our passion for the work we do and who are ready to take challenges”, answered Sachin on how they recruit people in HackerEarth. They have already been critically acclaimed nationally as well as on the international level. The challenges ahead are abundant but so are the opportunities. And HackerEarth is moving up the ladder to become a giant in the hiring and recruitment service industry.
“Build your own dreams, else someone else will hire you to build theirs”
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” - Bill Cosby
14 | 15
the rising stars
mericar.com | dechen angmo & rama krishna matli | iim udaipur its search visibility so that it takes the first spot on the search results page. Its website offers various features such as nearest workshop locator, customer review section, membership offers, etc.
Value Proposition for the Customer: Over the years MeriCAR has evolved into a customer and market focused company which creates value for car owners, workshops and its partners. It has designed a unique offering for its customers by providing them with the option to choose a workshop, a free pick-up and drop facility and 24x7 customer care support.
MeriCAR.com: A Success in Making Dechen Angmo | | Rama Krishna Matli II M , Uda ipu r MeriCAR.com is India’s first online web portal for car service bookings and was launched in 2008 by Mr.Rakesh Sidana. His goal was to create a platform which would connect the Car workshop owners and customers and help car owners find the right workshop. MeriCAR’s vision is to “To become an aggregation of workshops across the country”. MeriCAR not only facilitates the customer in locating the nearest workshop but also provides them with the service quality levels of the workshop on their website. After tying up with the workshops, MeriCAR started its own Membership Programs for customer acquisition and retention. These value added services include car washing, 24x7 breakdown assistance and car dry cleaning at the customer’s doorstep. At present, MeriCAR has a listing of around 5000 workshops across India. It also provides consultancy services to its member workshops and assesses and suggests process improvements. MeriCAR’s mission is - “Convenience and hassle free service at car service cen-
ters in India, MeriCAR.com is providing personalized support to car owners to find the right car workshop in India.”
Unique Business Model: India has more than 3 lakh unorganized garages with no standard processes in place. These garages provide employment to millions of people but are often forced to shut down due to cash flow problems. MeriCAR has implemented a unique business model to bridge the gap between these workshops and the car owners and has created a marketplace for the same. This has generated leads for more than 300 workshops. MeriCAR generates revenue from three sources viz. commissions from customer leads provided to workshops, royalty from online memberships and loyalty programs and by providing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to workshop for a fee. With continuous improvements in its processes and business model, in the past five years MeriCAR has built a brand which has brought about a revolution in the industry.
The Team: MeriCAR’s operations is run by a team of 10 employees which includes a Sales & Marketing team, Tele-calling executives, Bill Collectors and Human Resources which is controlled by Mr. Sidana himself. Mr. Sidana believes in the Theory Y approach i.e., a democratic style of management wherein the employees are encouraged to design their own incentive plans and leave schedule. MeriCAR believes in 3H’s: Health, Happiness and Honesty. Technology- Creating Competitive Advantage: MeriCAR has created a strong foothold in the industry by investing in technology such as its cloud based Customer Relationship Management software (CRM), Google Adwords and a user friendly website. The CRM helps workshops to generate leads and increase customer satisfaction by tracking customers and has important features like IVRS, SMS management, feedback fields, call logs and a well-managed database. Through Google Adwords, MeriCAR has provided business to the workshop by optimizing and refining
Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.” -Warren G.
Processes employed: MeriCAR has designed its processes to ensure that it delivers high customer value and gains customer loyalty. To ensure this, it has a dedicated customer care facility which caters to the needs of the customers and resolves disputes between workshop owners and customers amicably. The customer calls MeriCAR and enquires about the nearest workshop. After providing necessary details the customer is put on a conference call with the workshop to get the cost estimation and the services provided. Once the booking is completed, the tele-caller informs the customer about MeriCAR’s membership programs and the discount offers. The coupons link and the membership details are sent to their email ids. After the car service, the MeriCAR customer care executive calls the customer for a feedback which is posted on MeriCAR’s website. In case of negative feedback, MeriCAR resolves the issues and directs customer to a new workshop. This is crucial to its customer retention and brand building strategy.
was nominated for the Tata NEN hottest new startup in India in 2008 and won the first round of WagonR Think Big challenge in 2010. Red Herring Asia and Power of Idea by Economic Times recognized MeriCAR’s innovative business idea and its huge potential in the after-sales market.
Expansion Plan: In May 2014, Mr Rakesh Sidana along with interns from Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur (One of them being me, the co-author of this article), decided to expand its “Franchisee Model” to other cities. My Dream My City is MeriCAR’s ambitious project to expand its business in 1000 cities and create a platform for entrepreneurs to implement MeriCAR’s business model in their city. MeriCAR, through its unique marketing plan and client engagement technique has successfully opened its franchisees in the three cities: Coimbatore, Nagpur and Pune in the first month after the launch and the count is increasing with every passing month. With the rising number of internet users in India and increasing number of car purchases, MeriCAR has got a huge potential to be the market leader in providing after-sales services to car owners. Why MeriCAR is going to make it BIG? There are several indicators which make MeriCAR’s success in the future conspicuous. Preliminary analysis of its financial planning and projected business clearly depict its potential. Mr. Sidana has crystal clear objectives and has framed the right strategy to achieve the set milestones. Few of the salient points in this respect can be listed as follows: The milestones targeted to be achieved are as follows:
and validation for 5 years. So MeriCAR has the first mover advantage • The expansion plan targets the covering of tier 1 cities first, followed by tier 2 and tier 3 cities • The required initial investment and working capital have been raised through seed funding. Plans are being made to raise angel funds in the initial year, followed by venture capitalist support in the second year of operation • The company is expected to be cash-rich in the long run because of the franchisee and SaaS based CRM model. High returns are expected on the investments done all over India • The targeted market is valued at around US $5 billion. It comprises the “Car After Market” in all the cities that MeriCAR is going to venture into • The expected revenues are estimated at `20 lakh from each city, which would add up to 100 crore from 500 cities in 3 years’ time i.e., by the year 2017
Conclusion: The technical expertise in the form of the cloud based CRM, the first mover advantage that MeriCAR has and an already established strong customer base in Delhi-NCR are the major strategic advantages that MeriCAR has gained over the past 5 years. Adding to them is the dynamic leadership of Mr Sidana, which undisputedly would help MeriCAR gain competitive advantage. However there are obstacles in the form of difficulty in convincing prospective partners to invest in the idea, the dynamically changing macroeconomic environment, difficulty in changing the customer perspective towards availing internet based car
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” - Albert Einstein
Potential: With changing trends such as the rise in the number of internet users and • Target of covering 16 cities per month car owners and growth between 5 per initially and 500 cities in 3 years’ time. cent to 10 per cent of the after- sales • Final target of covering 1000 cities market, MeriCAR is growing and the in 2 years figures are slated to improve with • The targeted break-even time is 1 the introduction of its expansion pro- year gram- My Dream, My City. Ever since • The business model is supposedly its inception, the company has been unique and has not been implementrecognized and awarded by the me- ed until now in India. It has been imdia and various business houses. It plemented after conducting research To win without risk is to triumph without glory.” - Corneille
16 | 17
indian raga
sriram emani | co-founder and ceo
Sriram Emani Sriram Emani is the co-founder and CEO of IndianRaga, a creative media venture which aims to establish a platform and an incubator to enable young, upcoming Indian art musicians to become professional artists. IndianRaga creates a community of instructors (Fellows) and students who work together to create accessible and commercially viable music rooted in classical and folk traditions. Students and experts co-create content that is relevant to audiences. Content is uploaded to the IndianRaga portal for crowd-sourced feedback. Thus, the upcoming young musicians are better able to engage with the art form through a peer-to-peer and instructor-led approach. Taking the entrepreneurial plunge I have always had a desire to launch a platform for young artists especially because I have witnessed a huge contrast between the opportunities
Digital Innovations. The ability to discuss and refine the idea in a variety of groups and environments helped me give better shape to it. Winning the Community Choice Award at the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge 2012 was a culmination of these various efforts and conversations, and we received a thumbs up from over a 1000 people across the world to go ahead and launch the actual platform.
ating from IIT Bombay, Sriram worked in management consulting, and led the marketing and business development team at the National Center for the Performing Arts. While at MIT, I worked as a Strategy Fellow with the President of Lincoln Center, and the President of Global Digital Business at Sony Music New York. I was also a Consultant with Disney Theatrical Group.
IndianRaga and the team
professional with experience across telecom, lifestyle retail, fashion and non-profit sectors. A management graduate from University of Mumbai, Amrit brings with her a passion for new ideas and executing these ideas to deliver business numbers. Prior to joining IndianRaga she worked as a brand manager for one of India’s largest apparel companies and helped launch a lifestyle fashion brand. She also handled marketing communications and events for India’s largest chain of bookstores. Her specialties include branding and marketing strategy and creating integrated marketing campaigns.
Amrit is a branding and marketing
us support and encouragement from everyone, and we received significant media coverage and publicity through word-of-mouth and social media. Musicians have been sending in requests from different parts of the world to expand to their regions and provide services. What has been a bit of a challenge, however, is inspiring action amongst some of the traditional music venues and arts organizations in India
Co-Founder and CEO sriram@indianraga.in for engineers in India, and those for musicians. I went to IIT Bombay to pursue my passion for science and technology and was always trying to understand how we could leverage technology to promote the creative industry. It was in 2007 during a 6-month project in New York that the idea started taking root when I was exposed to the vibrant creative industry in New York City. Inspired by the experience, I decided to work full-time in the arts and entertainment space in India, and started the Marketing and Business Development team at the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) to learn more about the opportunities and challenges. One thing that I observed was that while arts organizations in India spend significant budgets on marketing high profile concerts, there is very little done by both them and the media to promote younger artists. In
my mind it should be the other way round, since it is the younger artists who need a higher marketing effort! At around the same time at a concert in Mumbai, Ustad Zakir Hussain asked the media to promote younger, Indian classical musicians. In his words, “I make an earnest appeal to you. You don’t have to write about artistes like me, Pandit Ravishankar or Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma. You need to search for the unknown, low-profile Indian classical musician and feature him for the good of Indian classical music.” This series of events was definitely the inspiration behind IndianRaga. Of course, an idea needs to be executed, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem at MIT Sloan played a critical role in enabling that. I remember presenting my idea and business model to my class in almost every course possible, from Communication, to Introduction to Technology Entrepreneurship, to
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”- Albert Schweitzer
Through its technology-enabled platform, IndianRaga brings together students of Indian music from across the world, and offers them opportunities to create music videos and get certified by IndianRaga. IndianRaga-certified Fellows are given opportunities to perform and conduct workshops and other events. The IndianRaga ecosystem is evolving into a digital destination that provides education, mentorship, performance opportunities, and certification for young students.
that have not engaged with such a platform before. I realized that they need to see some of their peer organizations adopting it before they feel comfortable, and invest the time and platform before. I realized that they need to see some of their peer organizations adopting it before they feel comfortable, and invest the time and effort. Hence we are focusing on a few key partnerships that will serve as an example for other groups: our partnership with ITC Sangeet Research Academy is one of them. The challenges are also the opportunities. Indian music, especially classical, is perceived by many as a niche whose audience base is dwindling. However, digital media has opened up significant opportunities to capture a global audience base, and create new and interesting products in this space.
The team is currently led by and Amrit Chavada and me. I completed my Converting challenges into MBA at MIT Sloan where I was a Sieb- opportunities el Scholar, Co-President of the Entertainment Media and Sports Club, Honestly, such a platform was and a Fellow at the Tata Center for much-needed and we’ve helped fill Technology and Design. After gradu- a huge need-gap, this has ensured When you cease to dream you cease to live.”- Malcolm Forbes
18 | 19
emerging trends
social entrepreneurship | vrinda chaudhary | tiss mumbai cial value. To understand the ‘social’ component of the venture, let us consider an example: Sampurn(e) arth Environment Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (a social venture started by the TISS Students). The problem it addresses is the lack of effective waste management in India. The city of Mumbai alone generates a waste of around 7000 tons a day. The biogas plants have been set up in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences campus and the food remnants, waste items- vegetable peels, etc. are utilized for generation of the biogas which is ultimately utilized as a fuel in the canteens and college kitchen.
“How is that if no one is for these things and Everyone is against them, that these problems continue?” Cause and effect relationships persist everywhere and if we target the root causes and dissolve the root prob-
lems then they would not be able to manifest themselves. To address the ever-growing challenges, more change-makers are needed. Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka, says the next big thing is helping the youth build and refine their skills as this would help them in becoming the change agents.
Why Social Entrepreneurship is the need of the hour:
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” - Peter Drucker
from business entrepreneurs. Social Entrepreneurs act as change agents where they try to seize opportunities in order to invent new solutions, to make the society better whereas business entrepreneurs may create a new industry or a product or market altogether. The idea of changing the lives of people by a small and simple idea may look very feeble but it is not. The ‘ideation’ is the toughest part of planning and before setting up a new venture one has to think about its feasibility and operationalization. But, in the case of a social venture a new dimension gets added and that is changing lives of the people and sustain a so-
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”- John C. Maxwell
QUIZ TIME 1. 2. 3. 4.
Link The Limited, Golden gate bridge, Stanford shopping centre Born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen, what multi billion company did he found? Fill in the blank: Williams, Glass, Stone, ________ Johhny and the Moondogs, The Blackjacks and the Quarrymen are all former names of what?
4. The Beatles
A
Well, every entrepreneur is supposed to live by and follow the message stated by Peter Drucker but a social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage it to make social changes. A social entrepreneur would not give a fish to eat or teach how to fish. Rather he/she will not be satisfied until he/she revolutionizes the entire fishing industry.” The spectrum of the social entrepreneurship is such where profit making is clubbed with creating a social impact, and where the former is not the ultimate goal. Social Entrepreneurs are different
3. Dorsey
new facet of entrepreneurship has gained importance these days-social entrepreneurship. It is the new term that is being frequently used today. What is the need for entrepreneurs to explore social space? I guess the answer is simple and clear- Man is a social animal and every individual contributes in the formation of his/ her surroundings and the society. So how will the field of business and entrepreneurship flourish without understanding the social aspect of it?
2. Amazon
- Vrinda Chaudhary TISS MumbaiI
ANSWERS 1. Roy Raymond/Victoria’s Secret
“Social Entrepreneurship” (SE): Need of the hour
There is a dire need to seed socially responsible and aware entrepreneurs who are the future of an environmentally sound planet that will be able to provide equal resources and opportunities to everyone. “By 2050, we can achieve untouched heights, provided the young lot together with each and everyone else works hard for it,’’ said Nesar Ahmad, Immediate Past President, The Institute of Company Secretaries of India. (Source: The Hindu Business Line article, published on September 11, 2013) The kind of challenges faced by the world – in technology, healthcare, finance, all point out the fact that we need more social entrepreneurs and change makers. Solutions to these problems will be slow if only 3-5 % of world’s population would contribute and the impact generated would not be visible. The impact would not be generated as and when the decision of setting up a venture is made but only when the consequences and values are created with the passing time. A social entrepreneur needs to master the complex skills of empathy, teamwork, leadership and change-making and making people aware, to spread the message. The present generation needs to understand that issues like hunger, poverty will not be solved by reading or discussing about them in classrooms, but by working at the grass root level.;
Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”- Confucius
20 | 21
emerging trends
industry analysis | swati sharma | TAPMI funds is a very important criteria for the survival and growth of its business. Increased confidence of PE/VC funds in Indian start ups have helped this barrier to weed away. Accord-
Industry Analysis: Best fit for new ventures S Swati Sharma TAPMI
tart ups in India are rising at a very fast rate and in the last decade witnessed an exponential growth in the number of start ups. Indian ecosystem has been very favourable for the new ventures and 2013 has been really exciting as $1.6 Billion were invested in Indian start ups in around 300 deals. Start ups have emerged in various sectors but IT/ITes sector has proved itself to be very attractive for taking the big leap. Firms in India estab-
lished between 2000-2006 took 10 years to cross the INR 5 crores revenue mark but firms established post 2006 are taking only 3-4 years to cross the INR 5 crores revenue. This has improved the share of firms in India with revenues over INR 5 crores up from 33 % in FY11 to 37% in FY13. Major reasons propelling such impressive growth of start ups in IT industry is the cost leadership of Indian market, favourable government policies and last but not the least, increase in the number of VC/
PE funding. Because of the low cost of living and low wage rate, most of the IT services gets outsourced to India and foreign companies are able to save around 40% of their total cost. Government has also formulated various favourable policies of tax exemption, liberalized FDI policies, promoted emergence of STPs etc. which have motivated start ups to emerge in the Indian subcontinent. But most important of all the reasons, is the increased number of VC/ PE funding. For any start up, getting
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”- Bill Gates
ing to NASSCOM, 65% of total VC investments are happening in Software, internet and mobile industries.
Scope of Indian Startups in IT IT/ITes: Hot Pick for Startups A recent study by IDG Ventures estimates that India will witness $70-75 Bn of private equity and VC investment between 2010 and 2015 of which nearly $10 Bn is expected to come from VC players, largely in the IT space. Emerging technology trends in IT industry, where we see a lot of start ups booming, are in the field of Social media, mobile applications and user interface, analytics and cloud computing, abbreviated as SMAC. It is clocking an impressive annu-
al growth of 25% and according to Gartner, it is predicted to have an economic impact of USD 14 to 33 Trillion by the year 2025. IDC is also very optimistic about SMAC and
has predicted it to contribute about 90% to IT industry by 2020. The big boys of IT industry viz. TCS, Infosys, etc. have also stepped forward to launch their services and products in SMAC. Wipro has led 2 strategic investments of $5mn in cloud services company Axeda and $30mn in Big data firm Opera Solutions. TCS has set up a business unit in Silicon Valley, pulling all SMAC services under one roof. Cognizant is a bit ahead and has already earned $500mn of revenues in 2013 from its SMAC products. SMAC has a very high growth potential. IDC is predicting that the cloud software market will surpass $75B by 2017 attaining a five year compound annual growth rate of 22% in the forecast period. Analytics market is
also booming high and according to IT software body NASSCOM, the size of the Indian analytics market is $375 million and more than 500 companies are operating in this segment in India. This market is expected to be $1.15 billion by 2015. A large number of Start ups have already bloomed in the field of SMAC, but the most famous has been E Commerce. With internet penetration currently at 16% and year on year growth of 28%, there are around 243 million internet users in India, which is around ten times the population of Australia. The E-commerce market is predicted to touch US$ 24 billion by the year 2015. Major contributor to the revenue of E commerce has been Online Travel industry which contributes currently around 87% to the e-commerce market. Many start-ups like Myntra, Flipkart, Jabong, Red Bus, Make my trip, etc. have benefitted from this emerging trend and have already built multimillion businesses. The future of web start ups is pretty shiny. While a few years ago, setting a start up was very expensive and one had to sweat it out to get the funds of investors to do it. Now the only threshold is the courage. Even this barrier is getting lower, as people watch others take the dive and survive. Developments in IT industry and emergence of various new technologies have made this industry deliver a perfect ecosystem for starting new ventures. With the growing Indian economy and emergence of a stable government, start ups can look for more opportunistic future. In the Finance budget 2014, finance minister Mr Arun Jaitley has announced INR 10,000 crore funds to be established for entrepreneurs and start ups and resolution of many taxation issues like inverted duty structure in the IT. These steps can potentially propel India right after Silicon Valley and ahead of china in terms of early stage capital, thus fuelling an exponential growth for the start ups in IT industry.
Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” –Drew Houston
22 | 23
emerging trends
intrapreneurship | utilizing the inside entrepreneur | NAVNEET KUMAR IIM SHILLONG tion, they are acting as ‘intrapreneurs’ or ‘corporate entrepreneurs’, who vitalize the enterprise by being the desired ‘adaptation’ to counter the change and thus helping them evolve. Although intrapreneurship as a concept was first mentioned in 1978 by Glifford and Elizabeth Pinchot while attending ‘The School for Entrepreneurs in Tarrytown, New York and formally recognised in the April, 1982 issue of The Economist by Norman Macrae, it had been practised as early as in the 1940’s by Lockheed Martin through its Advanced development Programs, also known as Skunk works, whose founder Clarence ‘Kelly’ John-
other example which showered gold upon the company. It started with Sony’s engineer Ken Kutaragi pitching the idea of a CD-ROM based console, the idea of which was conceived by him through critical reception of his daughter’s Nintendo console, to Nintendo authorities when Sony and Nintendo were working together to develop the super disc. However, Nintendo’s president eventually scrapped the contract but Sony went ahead with it leading to the rise of a bestselling gaming device exhibiting much superior quality. Quite clearly, the entity which stands to benefit the most from these ‘entrepreneurs within the organisation besides the happy
and responsibility is equally shared. Lastly, it talks about the initiatives, which include benefit and reward systems, corporate venture arms and other initiatives that lower opportunity costs for entrepreneurs, whose sole purpose is to spark innovation.
son was allowed to act independently within Lockheed. The result was creation of some of the most innovative aircraft models including the famous SR71 blackbird which was and remains the world’s fastest and highest-flying manned aircraft. They managed to produce unparalleled results within the budget and delivered virtually every aircraft they designed and built on time. By virtue of the best, most innovative work, Skunk Works raised impressive revenue for Lockheed and created a reputation that holds to this day. Many such ideas, like those emerging from Skunk works, are “disruptively innovative” which lead to a revolutionary breakthrough for a company. Sony’s Playstation is an-
consumer, is the organisation itself. So, it is essential for the companies to foster that spirit of innovation within the organisation. A 1993 research on the topic indicated that there are three main factors affecting innovation at the firm level – structure, culture and initiatives. According to the research, a flexible organisational structure with smooth co-ordination between different business units and a collective orientation that instils a common sense of trust and purpose is imperative for intrapreneurship. Also, the culture of the organization should promote openness of information exchange and have an element of collegiality where risk taking and challenging the status quo is encouraged
during the testing process by pure accident. The special thing about it was that it was strong enough to stick to surfaces, but left no residue after removal and could be repositioned. Despite this speciality, he couldn’t conceive of a proper use of the product until it clicked with another fellow scientist at 3M, Arthur Fry, who was in search of a bookmark for his church hymnal that would neither fall out nor damage the hymnal. He noticed Silver’s innovation and tried it with a piece of paper as a bookmark on his hymnal. The results delighted him and he soon realized that the ‘bookmark’ could be used for a variety of purposes like keeping notes on a work file and reminders notes.
Firms like 3M, Intel and Hewlett Packard are known to incorporate practices and policies which support intrapreneurs. The story of ‘post it notes’ emerging from 3M is particularly interesting. It began with an attempt to create an extremely strong adhesive for the aerospace industry by Dr. Stephen Silver, a scientist at 3M. However, another light adhesive was created
Intrapreneurship - Utilizing the inside entrepreneur NAVNEET KUMAR | IIM SHILLONG “It’s not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent but the most responsive to change.” - Charles Darwin. This statement by Charles Darwin has often been used in the context of management to draw parallels between development of organisations and organisms because of the similarity in the process of growth
and their relationship with the environment. It hints towards the most important element for survival applicable in both the cases - ‘adaptation’. Under a highly volatile market scenario, some of the biggest threats for all the established firms which are good at operating stable businesses but not as adept at starting new ones are: the constant danger and risk of losing business to someone else who could offer a product or a service with an innovative idea associated, market saturation in developed economies and possibility of becoming obsolete. Aggravating the situation further are the established competitors whose high level of sophistication makes it easier to copy and capitalize on someone
else’s idea with a slight tweak somewhere. To counter these perils, there has to be constant culture of innovation within an organisation which is not just restricted to the research labs. There are often individuals within the organisation who have their own crazy ideas with a potential to generate huge returns and in certain cases, transform the organisation altogether helping it attain amazing new levels. Such people do not simply confine themselves to the ideation part but are also willing to take moderate risks and have a vision towards turning the idea into a marketplace success. When they are provided with the freedom to pursue their idea with complete independence within the organisa-
Any time is a good time to start a company.” –Ron Conway
I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” –Jeff Bezos 24 | 25
runaway success. Post-it flags were introduced as a new way to organize with colour coding, filing and indexing and they simply exploded. Today, Post-it products, which are more than 4000 in number, are sold across 150 countries. The men behind this superstar product, Silver and Fry, finished their careers at 3M having won the highest honours for research as well as numerous other awards within international engineering. When talking about enterprises facilitating the Intrapreneurial zeal among their employees, it can’t go without mentioning Google’s 20 percent policy which encourages employees to spend twenty percent of their work time on experimenting with their own ideas. It is said to have produced nearly 50 percent of Google products amongst which some of the remarkable ones are: Gmail- which liberated users by freeing them from the trouble of managing mail space, AdSense- which accounts for one fourth of Google’s annual revenue, highly popular Google news and Google maps. Another fabulous and ‘creatively destructive’ idea which changed the entire upper class flying experience came from a young designer at Virgin Atlantic, Joe Ferry, who came up with the herringbone-configured private sleeper
sushant’s entrepreneurial journey | tringgr suites design and, as Richard Branson puts it, “put Virgin Atlantic years ahead of the pack and made for millions of very happy horizontal fliers.” Business class experience has never been the same since. Another remarkable example is that of the Macintosh team at Apple which operated independently under the leadership of Steve Jobs towards bringing a revolution. This team of fanatics, like those at Skunk Works,
declared the dawn of a new era which transformed the lives of consumers through a product which improved the lives of millions of users. These stories provide enough confidence about the fact that there is enough potential in an intrapreneurial activity in bringing about a revolutionary change. There are numerous other examples amongst established firms like Toyota, DuPont, GE, Texas Instruments, Genentech, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, Corona Data Systems, Data General and many more which have experimented with Intrapreneurial undertakings and met with success. Hence, there is enough proof to testify that intrapreneurs could be the source of the energy behind innovations that help large corporations meet continuously arising challenges of the modern market and thereby helping them stay profitable and prevent stagnancy. As Gary Hamel remarked, “To succeed, a business has to reinvent itself again and again – otherwise it becomes commercially irrelevant”. In RIM and Kodak, we have examples of companies which were virtually swept away by a technological change wave. Evidently, it would only be smart of organisations to recognise the mavericks within their structure, respect
their creativity and act as an incubator to capitalize on their potential rather than losing out on an opportunity to power themselves ahead of others.
“SUSHANT’S ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY”
QUIZ TIME 1. What do we now know the Henry Ford Company as? 2. Le marchand de la mort est mort (“The merchant of death is dead”). What did this line, published in a wrong context by a French newspaper in 1888 lead to? 3. Link The Sun, Dow Jones and Company, Harper Collins, 20th Century Fox 4. Which famous website was founded by Dr Simon King 5. Which fashion house was established by Donna Karan in New York in 1984? 6. 10. Which food item, consumed worldwide, was first developed by Frank Epperson in Oakland, California in 1923?
ANSWERS 1.Cadillac Automobile Company 2. Founding of the Nobel prizes 3. All owned by Rupert Murdoch 4. Cricinfo 5. DKNY 6. Popsicle
emerging trends
He, along with Silver, began developing the product. It was tried in 3M’s office, received great responses and then commercial production started in the late 70’s. In 1977, the product launched under the name ‘Press n’ Peel’ couldn’t garner expected response in the test markets but 3M’s belief in its potential lead it to launch ‘Post-it notes’ again in 1979 through a massive sampling strategy. The product was a
The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.” –Walt Disney
Details on my Entrepreneurial Journey and love for technology to develop Products that solve a problem and thus are helping people Tell us a bit about yourself. What motivated to take up entrepreneurship? I am Sushant Pandey, A 2005 CSE grad from IIIT Hyd. I started with my career with Microsoft IDC but was bitten by the start-up bug early in my career and hence after a short stint with a start-up, I co-founded IT Services Company called Effect Labs. After running it for more than 4 years, I was still finding some gaps between my product mindset, reaching out to a much broader audience and really making the difference and hence went on to bootstrap “Tringgr” which is aimed to democratize web communication and make it usable with ease without worrying much about bandwidths. There have been several odds in my entrepreneurial journey but one thing remained the same – My passion for technology which helps people. In the beginning of my professional career, I too got some good offers from the US and at one time I wanted to go as well but as I gave a deep thought and asked myself that how much would I be impacting the world and what is that I actually want to do, I realized that my natural
interest is in developing products/ services in the Technology space which could be instrumental in solving some real problems. That led me to drop the US option and in fact leave Microsoft for a start-up. [How working at Microsoft and my earlier experience helped me] While working at Microsoft I gained the technical expertise which is required for pure technology oriented product development. The experience from my previous start-up and the one before that, helped me with planning in a better manner, sales, full product development, execution and providing me with initial clientele. Please throw some light upon webRTC and IETF? What makes tringgr.com the best webRTC service in India? What separates you from the others? Tringgr is a FREE cloud-based video conference and communication infrastructure platform. The USP of Tringgr is that it Works well even on bandwidths as low as 30kbps for voice and 128kbps for video giving us huge opportunity to help the growing markets’ conferencing needs and that it doesn’t require any plug-in or download. All you need is an html5 compliant browser on any device and you can go live!! Tringgr provides a 360 degree solution for video or voice calls and additionally provides support for file transfer, recording, screen sharing etc. Tringgr is based on top of WebRTC which is an open source project backed by Google. Tringgr.com has its own communication stack called TringgrRTC on top of it. We have our own full back end servers and JS libraries that makes us a complete WebRTC player. Tringgr.com is probably the first WebRTC based full communication service from India where we provide ability to communicate anywhere, anytime across really low bandwidths. Also, we provide JavaScript libraries and hence adding Tringgr’s capability in your product or service is just about adding 5 lines of code and less than 5 minutes of
job. This makes us special. Tringgr.com’s next release will present it as a native mobile app, and a user would be able to call between mobile, browser, VOIP and PSTN phones (mobile and landline) at really low cost or may be completely free of cost (we will announce this with the release). The platform of Tringgr.com is FREE where Tringgr hosts the conferences and our business edition is called Tringgr Connect where we provide integration with your CRM and other Enterprise workflows. Tringgr Engage is another offering which helps websites to add Live chat support along with voice and video. What is your business model? How do you generate revenue? Our business model is based on the ‘Saas model’ where we charge for TringgrConnect and TringgrEngage on per user per month basis. This comes with some storage space also to store recordings. Additional recording spaces are also sold. Recordings become crucial for Recruitment, Important meetings, Web Consultation and Web Teaching etc. We have thought of keeping Tringgr. com as a FREE service. A Freemium on that might come later for end users but is planned for near future. So, all new additions would come to end users for free. Since internet penetration in India is still pretty weak and the 3G and the 4G services are still in their nascent stages, how do you see yourself expanding? Internet reach is constantly increasing and we have given a deeper thought on the prevailing problems. A lot of this would be handled in our next and future releases. Smartphone reach is very high in India and our next rollout (in September) is coming out with a native Android app. On the bandwidth, we are creating low bandwidth running as our USP and hence we are constantly work-
You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” –Richard Branson
26 | 27
BuildunsRoman
ing to get the Audio conference down to 10-15 kbps so that it works well with the 2G network. The video conference would definitely require more bandwidth but we are working to bring that down to 100kbps or below. We are gaining some really good traction and our website stats currently show more than 2800 conferences involving around 5500 users and 40,000 minutes clocked between these. Apart from this, we are providing TringgrEngage and TringgrConnect services to more than 15 companies from sectors like Education, Tele-Health, Technology etc. The journey till now has been exciting and the future looks great because as we are starting up aggressively on sales we are finding how people and companies are facing problems due to bandwidth and how Tringgr can really be a solution for them. What do you have to say to aspiring entrepreneurs and also to those who are skeptical to take the plunge? I am a technology enthusiast and an Entrepreneur at Heart. It always asks for a bit more than being in a
reward of fedex | saket hawelia & swati pamnani | iim shillong
comfortable, conventional career setup. Sometimes the asking of Entrepreneur takes a toll too but if you are clear or even want to give it a try, TRUST ME, it’s worth it. The immense satisfaction in carving out a company out of daily basis odds has its own charm and fun. There are times when we find something really interesting to work but our thought process negates it because of the fear that probably this is much bigger than my potential or capability and we tend to drop the idea. NEVER DO IT! This is where a start-up either starts or stops. Follow your feel and give it your full for a decent time. The least you can get is some valuable experience which will pay off really well later and in the best case, you will have the opportunity to live your dream. Look at founders of startups like Zomato, Embibe, Housing and many others. It expands your horizon and helps you actually look at things both from the top and from the bottom. It is essential for strategic decision making and helps in long term. Now, with the internet starting to boom in India, there are huge opportunities for startups and budding En-
trepreneurs. Presently the boom in eCommerce can easily be seen and similar potential unlocking is going to prevail in Education and Healthcare industry in next 3-5 years. There are many other open areas and the reach of internet and smartphones along with the trust on online transactions have unlocked real business opportunities. The present start-up ecosystem is nothing more than an amateur in India and I see a lot of support in form of Incubators and Accelerator program all across the country. So, in my opinion, this is the right time for people to think about problems or servicers that can either be solved or improved and start Entrepreneurship. My Quotes: “If you are not playing with All in, you are really not playing.” “Everyone is special. Try to find what makes you special. If you know, then keep nurturing it else keep trying” Sushant Pandey sushant@tringgr.com
Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle and a victory.” –Mahatma Gandhi,
“REWARD” OF FEDEX
By Saket Hawelia & Swati Pamnani IIM SHILLON G
S
teve Jobs once said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life… have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” Entrepreneurship seems to have become the new mantra of the day. The boom of the internet technology and ever increasing needs of the customer have thrown a plethora of opportunities to the young entrepreneurs who do not shy away from rejecting the fat pay cheques of the multinational corporations to tread on a journey of their own, led by a passion to win. Fred Smith is one such entrepreneur, who has redefined the lifecycle of an entrepreneur. He founded FedEx, which began its operations in 1973 as a global logistics and supply-chain management company. Its annual revenues exceed $20 billion and
24 to 48 hour delivery is available across the globe. In 2001, FedEx was named one of the top ten most admired corporations in America. Federal Express, as FedEx was known for many years, has the distinction of being ‘first’ among American businesses in several categories, including: •The first American company to reach $1 billion in revenue within ten years of start up without acquisitions; •The first service-oriented company to win the Malcolm Baldrige Award; •The first company to develop the huband-spokes system. The life cycle of an entrepreneur may be thought of as the entire journey of the entrepreneur, right from the moment
he conceives an opportunity till the point of exit. Needless to say, the first stage would be ascertaining the reason why an individual wants to dive into the risky-but-rewarding venture of entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur’s journey may be explained through a “REWARD framework”. REWARD basically stands for: •Review of External Environment •Evaluating the Opportunity •Working out the Plan & Committing the Resources •Action •Re-evaluating the opportunity and further expansion •Divestment An attempt is made to impose the REWARD framework on the journey of Fred
If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” –Mario Andretti
28 | 29
BuildunsRoman
Smith to better understand the challenges faced by him during the course of building the FedEx brand:
Review of External Environment The first stage involves scanning the external environment and looking for opportunities therein. The entrepreneur must first try to understand the target market wherein he wishes to set up his venture. He must be clear about the needs and requirements of his potential customers and also have an idea as to how he plans to satisfy those customer expectations. A good business plan in a bad environment amounts to nothing. It is during this stage that the entrepreneur goes through what is known as the “Death Valley”. Many opportunities may look very lucrative at the superficial level but through a proper analysis of the same, most of them “die out” in the Death Valley. In the early 1970, Smith realized that at least 100 major cities of United States of America did not have an overnight service and the total domestic market was estimated to be USD 1 billion. Thus, an opportunity was realized and the challenge was to evaluate the opportunity to find out whether it was lucrative enough to go ahead with it.
Evaluating the Opportunity Focusing on the idea at hand is absolutely essential. There may be possibilities of branching out the business in the future, but the present business opportunity should be narrowly defined. Therefore, technically speaking, this stage is apparently “the no / go stage” for the entrepreneur. He has to decide whether the idea is practically feasible and commercially viable. Fred Smith commissioned two separate and simultaneous feasibility studies on the air express-delivery sector. In fact, both the studies confirmed the viability of an overnight freight service for time-sensitive packages.
Working out the Plan & Financing of the Venture Capital puts life into a business idea. A business plan no matter how much promising and lucrative is of no use unless and until there is a financial backing to it. In this regard, the entrepreneur needs to ascertain the various sources of external funds: by taking bank loans; through venture capital fund or angel investments; the amount of own cap-
reward of fedex | saket hawelia & swati pamnani | iim shillong ital that he intends to infuse into the business; the debt-equity ratio; or any other means of funding that he can utilize. Also, this stage involves making decisions pertaining to the sources from where materials would be acquired, the delivery of the product, etc. In 1971, Smith purchased Arkansas Aviation Sales, a small firm located in Arkansas. Most of 1973 and 1974 was spent by Smith travelling around the country, trying to solicit the venture capital to fund his operations.
Action Once he is finally satisfied with the offerings and once the necessary changes have been incorporated into the offering, the entrepreneur finally goes ahead with the final launch of the product. Depending on the success and the profitability of the offering, plans have to be made for future, both in terms of the core offering and incorporating newer features in the product. This is particularly important, especially in the dynamic world of today, where businesses have to run faster to be in the same place and look for ways how they can make their own products obsolete before the competitors do it for them. Due to the expansive geographic nature of the business of FedEx, the company employed close to 500 people by its first night of operations. In every other way, however, the company resembled a start-up business. For an airline, the venture was very small, and only one basic service was offered during this cycle, the overnight delivery of time-sensitive packages. Decision-making was bold and intuitive as the air express industry concept was new and market share was being created as the company grew. Smith made sure that there were proper departments organised right from the beginning so as to avoid confusions arising from vaguely defined rules.
Re-evaluating the Opportunity and Further Expansion Once the entrepreneur has established a foothold for itself in the market, has become a market leader and scaled a cruising altitude, he must take a stock of the journey as of now, re-evaluating the business plan to ascertain the future potential and profitability of his venture. He now has to look for the financing of further expansions, i.e. whether the growth would be financed internally, by ploughing back the profits previously
earned or through external financing. In FedEx, an operations research and corporate planning group was formed with the objective of planning for the future of the company. ‘What if’ analysis was the order of the day, as this group, under the direction of Ted Weise, attempted to model present operations against future scenarios. Several failed attempts at international expansion precipitated the decision by Fred Smith and his top management team to buy their way into Europe, Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. From January of 1984 to May of 1989, Federal Express made eighteen acquisitions with foreign operations, the largest being the purchase in 1989 of Flying Tiger.
Formality Less Centralized; Begin Formal Information Processing M e dium-sized; More Heterogeneous Environment; More Competitive
STAGE 3
Growth > 15% Defender (Focus on Efficiency) Formal; Bureaucratic; Functional Moderately Centralized; Reliance on Internal Information Larger; More Heterogeneous Environment
STAGE 4
Growth >15% Analyzer (High level of Risk Taking) Divisional More Formal Analysis; Sophisticated Information Processing Very large; Very Heterogeneous Environment
Divestment This stage is also referred to as “the harvesting stage” as efforts are made to capture the value that has been created during the course of the previous stages and devising an exit plan, if so desired. The exit plan which the entrepreneur usually follows is either:
Stage Strategy Structure Decision-Making Style Situation
STAGE 1
<10 years old
Informal; Simple; Owner Dominated Highly Centralized; Bold; Trial & Error Small; Homogeneous Environment
STAGE 2 Prospector(Niche)
Growth >15% Analyzer (Incremental Innovation) Functional; Some
STAGE 5
Falling Profits Reactor (Risk Averse) Formal; Bureaucratic; Mostly Functional Moderate Centralization; Less Sophisticated Information Processing Homogeneous And Competitive Environment
•An Initial Public Offering or IPO wherein he dilutes his stake in the entity, or •Sale to a larger corporation Evidences from corporate history suggest that the opportunity to exit successfully from a venture is a crucial factor in the life cycle of the entrepreneur, and for that matter, any investor who, during the course of the business venture, makes any investment in it. Fred Smith went for the former and got FedEx listed on the New York Stock Exchange, thereby diluting his stake in the organisation. The journey may be broken into 5 distinct stages as depicted below: Although possessed of brilliant entrepreneurial talents and instincts, Smith has proven himself to be much more than a start-up person. He has continuously exhibited the foresight to seek expert input, put trust in others’ judgment, and make whatever moves are necessary to drive his organization to success. Hence it can be concluded that only when the entrepreneur has been successful in implementing his ideas and shaping them into a reality, throughout the aforesaid mentioned stages, that he may consider himself to be a “Rewarded Entrepreneur”.
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” -Stephen Covey
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”-Maya Angelou
30 | 31
BuildunsRoman
The
the amazong journey of jeff bezos | mohnish khiani | iim shillong
g Journey of Jeff Bezos Mohnish Khiani II M , Shillo ng
Jeffrey Bezos, famously know as Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon.com, was born in New Mexico. When he was born, his mother was still in her teens, and his mother’s marriage to his biological father lasted only for a year. She later married Mike Bezos, when Jeff was 4. When she married
Mike, the family moved to Houston, where From an early age onwards, Jeff displayed a knack of mechanical aptitude. As a toddler, he asserted himself by dismantling his crib with the help of a screwdriver and converted his parents’ garage into a laboratory for his projects. In high
school, Jeffrey first fell in love with computers there later he entered Princeton University planning to study physics, but then returned to his love for computers, and graduated in electrical engineering and computer science. After completing his graduation, Jeff was employed on Wall Street, where computer science graduates were increasingly in demand to study the stock market trends. He first went to work at Fitel, a company that was building a network for conducting international trade. He stayed in the field of finance with Bankers Trust, rising to its vice president’s level. He then joined D. E. Shaw, a company specializing in the application of computer technology to the stock market. Bezos was hired for his overall talent and not for any particular assignment. While at DE Shaw, Bezos met his wife, Mackenzie, who was also a Princeton graduate. He rose quickly at DE Shaw, to become the senior vice president, and was looking forward to a bright career on Wall Street, when he made a discov-
ery that changed the way of his life. The Web was originally created by the Department of Defence but over the years, it was used by government organizations and researchers to exchange data, hence in 1994, there was still no e-commerce. One day in the same year, Jeff observed that the usage of the Web was increasing by 2,300% a year. He saw this as an opportunity for a new area of business, and immediately began considering the varied possibilities. Bezos quickly reviewed the top twenty mail order businesses, and thought which one could be conducted more effectively over the Internet than by traditional means. Books were the product for which no complete mail order catalogue existed, because any such catalogue was be too big to mail, a perfect model for the Internet, which could share a huge database with virtually innumerable people. The very next day, he flew to Los Angeles to attend the American Booksellers’ Convention and learn everything about the books busi-
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” Ayn Rand
ness. He found out that a majority of book wholesalers had already compiled an electronic list of their inventory. All that was to be done was a single location on the Internet, where the book buyers could search for the available stock and place orders online. Jeff and Mackenzie drove to Seattle the next weekend, where they would have complete access to the book wholesaler Ingram, and to the set of computer talent Jeff would need for his enterprise. The company would be called Amazon, for the endless South American river with its innumerable branches. They decided to set up shop in a 2-bedroom house. Jeff set up 3 Sun micro stations on tables he had made out of doors from Home Depot for less than $60 each. When the test site was up and running, Jeff asked 300 acquaintances to test it. The website worked seamlessly across different computer platforms and on July 16, 1995, Bezos opened his site to the world, and told his 300 testers to spread the word. In 30 days, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries. By September, it had sales of $20,000 a week. Bezos and his team continued to improve the site and introduced such features like customer reviews, 1-click shopping and e-mail order verification.
The business was growing faster than Bezos himself could imagine. When the company listed in 1997, skeptics wondered if an ecommerce bookseller would maintain its position once traditional heavyweights like Barnes and Noble entered the Internet picture. 2 years later, the market cap of shares of Amazon were greater than that of its 2 biggest retail competi-
tors combined. Jeff had told his original investors there was a 70% probability they could lose their entire capital, but his parents signed on for $300,000, a substantial portion of their life savings and by the end of the decade, as 6% owners of Amazon, they had become billionaires. For several years, as much as 33% of the shares of Amazon were held by members of Jeff’s family. From the beginning, Jeff sought to increase market share as quick-
ly as possible, but this was all happening at the expense of profits. He then targeted to go from being the World’s biggest bookstore to the World’s biggest anything store, skeptics were of the view that Amazon was growing too big and too fast. But Jeff continued to emphasize on the 6 Core Values of “frugality, customer obsession, high hiring bar, ownership, bias for action and innovation.” Amazon moved into electronics, toys, music CDs, videos and more. When the Internet’s stock market bubble burst, Amazon had to re-structured, and where other dot.com companies evaporated, Amazon continued posting profits. In 2002, Amazon added clothing to its line-up, through partnerships with retailers, including Gap and Land’s End. Amazon would share its expertise in online order fulfilment and customer service with other vendors through co-branded sites, like Toys ‘R Us and Borders. Nearly at the same time, Jeff also launched an online sporting goods store and started to offer more than 3,000 brand names. In 2006, Amazon.com had sales of $10.7 billion and had
become America’s largest online retailer, with nearly 3 times the sales of its nearest rival. The success of Amazon allowed Bezos to explore his lifelong interest in space travel. In 2004, he started an aerospace company, Blue Origin, which developed technology for spaceflight, with the goal of establishing an enduring human presence beyond the Earth. From its 26acre research campus and a private rocket launching facility, Blue Origin
Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.” —Tim O’Reilly
32 | 33
BuildunsRoman
was testing New Shepard, its rocket-propelled multi-passenger vehicle designed to travel to and from space at affordable prices. As exciting as that prospect may be, Jeff also has more terrestrial innovations on his mind. In 2007, Amazon created a handheld reading device called the Kindle. The device used E Ink technology to render the text in a printlike appearance, without causing eyestrain associated with computer screens. Hundreds of books could be stored on the Kindle and many classics could be downloaded for free with all new titles initially priced at $9.99. The same year Amazon’s sales increased by 38%, and its profits more than doubled. In 2010, Amazon signed a deal with The Wylie Agency, in which they gave Amazon the digital rights to the works of many authors they rep-
what happened after apple picking | Nishesh Bhasin | iim shillong resented, completely bypassing the original publishers. This deal and Amazon’s practice of selling books prices far below that of the hardcover copy, angered publishers and authors, who saw their royalty threatened. But it appears that the advent of e-reading devices is increasing the total sales of books, which would benefit both readers and authors. By mid-2010, Kindle and e-book sales had reached $2.38 billion, and Amazon’s sales of e-books topped its sales in hardcover. With e-book sales rising 200% a year, Bezos knew that e-books would overtake paperbacks and become the company’s highest earning format within a year. The first major challenge to the Kindle’s position in the e-book market came when Apple launched its iPad, which was also designed as an electronic reading device. Amazon responded
aggressively by cutting Kindle’s retail price and adding new features. In 2011, Amazon launched the Kindle Fire, a mini tablet with a colour touch screen, to compete with the iPad. Amazon also offers firms to manage their online infrastructure through Amazon Web Services. In 2012, Bezos opened Amazon Studios, which crowd-sourced the development of television shows and feature films and plans to present them through an online video service. The company’s share price increased by 30% in 2012 alone, and 10-times over the previous 6 years. Fortune magazine named Jeff Bezos its “Businessperson of the Year” in 2012.
QUIZ TIME 1. Which famous Australian once lost 28 million dollars at London Casinos in 1999, said to be the biggest ever gambling loss in Britain? 2. Who is the current owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the American NFL team also famous for his stake in a professional football club? 3. Who, known as ‘the Lion of Hollywood’, was said to be instrumental in the introduction of stars such as Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and Katherine Hepburn to Hollywood? 4. Which famous Asian entrepreneur founded his first company in 1947 producing plastic flowers that became the largest supplier of such flowers in Asia?
5. Which stalwart of the fashion industry, once a member of the Italian Communist Party, together with Patrizio Bertelli turned around a brand launched in 1913 making it world famous? 6. Which famous Stanford graduate’s first job was as a clerk for a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals and recently founded a late-stage investment fund named Mithril? ANSWERS 1. Kerry Packer Glazer 3. Louis B. Mayer Shing 5. Miuccia Prada
2. Malcolm 4. Li Ka6. Peter Thiel
Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.” —Jeffrey Zeldman
What Happened After Apple-Picking By Nishesh Bhasin | IM SHILLONG “Sometimes, life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith”
I
t all started in the year 1976, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak came together in Jobs’ parents’ garage to complete the beginning of a revolution. Wozniak wanted to build a small computer as a way to pass his time, but Jobs realized the marketing potential of the idea, and together they created a machine that was christened ‘Apple I’. In order to gather enough capital for the same, and to start their company, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Minibus while Wozniak sold his Hewlett-Packard calculator, raising a total of US$1,350. Apple 1 took off on a slow trajectory, catering mainly to hobbyists, but the income from sales grew enough for the two entrepreneurs to get an office and refine their product into its newer form – ‘Apple II’. It was a tremendous success, with its design being user-friendly, complete with a
keyboard and it being the first personal computer with colour graphics. Within two years, sales went up to US$200 million. Apple tried to innovate and improve their product further with products like Apple III and LISA, but with increased competition and relatively poor sales, Apple lost nearly half its market share. This is the time when Apple came out with its ‘1984’ advertisement to sky-rocket its flagship ‘Macintosh’, inspired by George Orwell’s book by the same name. Aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, it brought home to the consumers’ mind the message that Apple products were for non-conformists. Jumping back in time, we see that by 1980, the tag-team of Steve Jobs and Wozniak was more or less set, even
-Steve Jobs
though Jobs was considered to be the ‘fiery visionary’ while Wozniak was the ‘quiet genius’ who converted the visions into reality. The board of Apple, however, was not very comfortable with this imbalance of power, and in 1983 it convinced Jobs and Wozniak (Jobs was the tougher one to convince) to add John Sculley to the executive team. In 1985, a year after the mould-breaking advertisement directed by Ridley Scott, the board ousted Jobs in favour of Sculley. What followed for Jobs was very different from what followed for Apple. Jobs spent the next 11 years focusing on two major projects, namely the investment in a controlling stake of Pixar in 1986, and the development of ‘NeXT’, which were high-end computers with an operating system (named NeXTSTEP) that represented
Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” —Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO
34 | 35
BuildunsRoman
the best attempt so far at making the power of UNIX operating systems fix into a graphical user interface. The eventual success of Pixar in digital animation meant that Jobs became richer by about US$1 billion at the time of the Initial Public Offering (IPO). The development of NeXT too came in handy for Jobs, because by 1997, Apple was floundering due to Microsoft, another tech giant, overtaking and crushing Apple’s market with cheap PCs running Windows. Apple was looking to replace its old operating system with something new, and it bought NeXT from Jobs, bringing him back to Apple once again, to the very position he was ousted from a little over a decade ago. Being put directly in the spot, Jobs had to go into crisis-control mode directly to turn around the decline of the company. At the 1997 Macworld Expo, 90 days before Apple would have to declare itself bankrupt, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be entering into a partnership with Microsoft. Included in this was a fiveyear commitment from Microsoft to release Microsoft Office for Macintosh as well as a US$150 million investment in Apple. As part of the deal Apple and Microsoft agreed to settle a long-standing dispute over whether Microsoft’s Windows operating system infringed on any of Apple’s patents. It was also announced that Internet Explorer would be shipped as the default browser on
up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I’m concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry and to get healthy and prosper again.”
the Macintosh, with the user being able to have a preference. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates appeared at the expo on-screen, further explaining Microsoft’s plans for the software they were developing for Mac, and stating that he was very excited to be helping Apple return to success. Where many would have considered this an extreme measure, and it was an extreme measure, it was not a negative one. Steve Jobs expertly handled the situation, and immediately after the address of Bill Gates to the audience at the expo, he laid down the new future policy of Apple – one of peaceful coexistence. An excerpt from the strategy-defining address is as follows: “If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us that’s great, because we need all the help we can get, and if we screw up and we don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our fault. So I think that is a very important perspective. If we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude; we like their software. So, the era of setting this
In 1998, the NeXT operating system was used to create the iMac, Apple’s first hit computer in a long time, which made the computer a trendy item, and clutter-free too. Jobs followed this up with a list of successes, ranging from the iPod in 2001 to the iPad in 2010. The years between saw Apple dominate the smartphone market with the iPhone, open up an e-commerce store with iTunes and launch branded retail outlets called, what else, the Apple Store. When Jobs stepped down as CEO in August 2011, Apple was scrapping with Exxon for the world’s largest market cap. It is true that we cannot sum up the life of Jobs or that of Apple in one article, but there are some key learnings for all of us from their story. The first one would be that innovations matter, but innovative products without proper marketing fail in today’s world. A close second is the fact that there are no straight and easy paths to success: Jobs was kicked out of his own company, and Apple had to beg its rival for assistance to remain solvent. Above all, we learn that in order to beat one’s best competitor (which is oneself ), one needs to have an open mind and a can-do attitude.
“…because a lot of time people think they’re crazy, but in that craziness, we see genius”
The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” —Thomas Edison, General Electric Co-founder
Anis Bari W
e have all heard the names of Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and more recently, Aung San Suu Ki. What is the common thread that connects these legendary people? If you were required to answer that question in one word, what would that word be? Freedom! They spent their lives fighting to free their people, their country, and in a way, all of humanity. Today, the word ‘Freedom’ has acquired new shades of meaning. We talk in terms of gigabytes and megahertz. Freedom to today’s generation is the freedom of the mind, freedom to
think, freedom to act on one’s dreams. It is this freedom that Narayan Murthy and his six friends sought when they left Patni Computers to form Infosys in India. I have realized that the reason I love entrepreneurship so much is because it is my oasis of hope. Every young entrepreneur has proven that we are not limited by our constraints but only strengthened by them. I normally look at the very essence of entrepreneurship - resilience. You should keep at it till you get to the goal post, even if it keeps shifting.
The Entrepreneurial Journey:
Lessons come from the journey not the destination and the most difficult entrepreneurial journey is the one you never begin I have always been an average performer who was relatively good at some stuff but could never develop the guts to follow my heart. I could not pursue sports as a career despite having some real merits in my kitty because I was influenced by the voices of the external world. The so-called external world in tandem with my parents, gave me 2 choices: one, become an Engineer or two, become a Doctor. To become a good doctor one needs
Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” —Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder
36 | 37
anis bari
I engage in all these apart from my work to keep myself fresh and shielded from the negative energies around.
Advice for Entrepreneurs: Believe in Your Idea: You must have heard of the efficient market theory. If Rs. 1000 was lying on the road then someone might have already picked it up. This notion has destroyed many business ideas. Opportunity lies in lonely spaces, wherever you see humans, you have the opportunity. Ask tough questions to yourself: (1) Are my goals well defined in terms of personal aspirations, sustainability and tolerance for risk? (2) Do I have a right strategy in terms of S-U-G: severity of the problem, urgency of the problem and growth (scalability) of the problem?
to study for at least 10 years and to become an engineer one needs to study only for 4 years. So my choice was obvious: I decided to become an Engineer. I somehow completed my engineering degree and luckily got through to HP as a software developer. After working for a few months, I got frustrated with the kind of work I was doing. I did not like the work nor the way the manager handled the team. Just like a supply and demand gap, there was a mismatch of expectations on both sides. I hated it and so one fine day I decided to quit. I have always believed in value creation but unfortunately I was not creating much value for the software company neither was the company creating some value for me (read: no salary hikes). When I think back now, I feel that had the manager not been rude to me, I would never have considered leaving a high paying job and becoming an entrepreneur. He helped save a couple of years. I co-founded Tantra Consultancy Services in 2010 with two of my friends who shared the madness and the urge to follow the path to freedom and excellence. Initially we helped small
brands in marketing and then later on in streamlining their operations with IT. The core inspiration was to do something meaningful rather than some monotonous bug fixing. We wanted to be a part of the growth of small companies and help them in making their operations more efficient. No parents in the history of mankind have ever completely understood someone trying to do something different. The entrepreneur’s own ‘concerned’ parents attack the founders’ selfworth daily. It happened with me too.
up. I was once sitting with my friend and mentor Ghanshyam (a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School) at a Café Coffee Day outlet. We saw some big hoardings on the street for various coaching institutes and randomly started discussing about the coaching industry. We dug deeper and saw a problem to be solved in the education field. If we look at the landscape in which coaching institutes are operating, they have a ‘buffet (fixed) mod-
We then did ‘Raising Voice’- a leadership project at the grassroots level in Bihar for Panchayati Raj Department, which was covered by ‘The Economic Times’ upon its successful completion and fetched us the award for the most promising startup by TiE. Afterwards, to strengthen my entrepreneurial & leadership skills I started preparing for MBA entrance examinations and got an offer from Asian Institute of Management, Manila (founded by Harvard Business School & Ford Foundation) in 2011. The learning Post MBA, I decided to work on innovative ideas that could be scaled
Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.” —Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO
el’ where students pay for the overall course without having the flexibility in terms of topic sequence, price structure and time availability. Also, industry reports show that there is more than 50% student dropout rate in the coaching industry. We are trying to create an ‘a la carte’ model through our startup ‘Vidya Hub’ where in coaching institutes can post the requirement for the vacant slots in their batch and students interested in studying any topic of any subject can join. It will be a one window platform to connect various coaching institutes with students. With the rise of e-commerce market in India, I thought this should be the right time for anyone to get into the market. Many people are stepping in to be acquired by some big companies in the coming years. Companies are focusing on acquiring customers and enhancing sales. Through Style Shop we would be adding value by providing online fitting solution for apparels. As a result, online shoppers would not be facing issues related to sizes. I feel that in the coming days, customer experience would be the key driver for e-commerce driven businesses.
‘Entrepreneurship for value creation’ has become one of the
together, struggling to get projects but I have never thought of calling it quits. I joined the World Economic Forum’s Global Shaper Community to strengthen the idea of value creation for the society. I am working to foster the spirit of Social Entrepreneurship in the state by sharing my limited knowledge through business model development workshops. The Global Shaper Community is an amazing platform to learn and share. I have also written ‘Dreams of The Mango People’, a book to share my story, the lessons I gleaned from life and entrepreneurial frameworks, which became a bestseller this year. Whenever I get time, I utilize platforms like Yuvolve Youth Forum and Patna Chess Academy to interact with young teenage students and players. I have played chess professionally for some time and it has contributed a lot in my life. Though it’s a game of mental torture but it enables you to plan well and take quick decisions. I am an internationally rated player with a FIDE rating of 2194 and was selected to represent India in the World Junior Chess Championship. For fitness, I play badminton, cricket and sometimes also practice kickboxing. Getting a chance to interact with young teenage students and players keeps you alive as you get to listen to a few innovative fresh ideas coming from them.
Build Skillset: Build the skillset required for the business and don’t be afraid to push the envelope and do things without precedent. Raise Funds if Required: Look for the 4 F’s- Family, Friends, Fools and Fiancé. About Anis Bari: Anis Bari (Co-Founder of Tantra Consultancy Services, Vidya Hub & Style Shop India), native of Bihar, is a graduate of MBA from Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Philippines and B.Tech from PESIT, Bangalore. Before a stint at Entrepreneurship, he worked in IT in India with Hewlett Packard. In 2010, He was recognized as the most promising Entrepreneur of the Year, by the global organization TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur). Anis has won numerous business plan competitions globally and has a deep interest in entrepreneurship and social innovation. He has authored, Brush Up Ur Quant, a book for management entrants & Dreams of The Mango People. He is a Global Shaper of World Economic Forum’s Global Shaper Community. Anis is an internationally rated chess player and also mentors students through Yuvolve Youth Forum & other youth platforms. He can be reached at anish.bari@ gmail.com
most cherished parts of my life. There have been days when I have struggled to find time to put the things “Strength lies in differences, not in similarities”--Stephen R. Covey
38 | 39
out of the box
out of the box entrepreneurial ventures | dipti chinchghare | tapmi The Funky structure of Embrace
Embrace was founded by this team in 2008 at Stanford. In 2009, they shifted their operations to Bangalore, India. In 2012 they adopted a hybrid structure. Embrace Innovations, a for-profit entity, provides baby warmers to clinics which can afford them. It is funded by Vinod Khosla’s Impact Fund and Jeff Skoll’s Capricorn Investment Fund. Embrace is a non-profit entity that donates the warmers to the neediest clinics. This structure helps them to fulfill its vision to provide every child an equal chance of life.
The Funky product: The Embrace Baby Warmer
Out of the box entrepreneurial ventures Dipti Chinchghare T . A . PAI M AN AGEM ENT IN STITUTE Sujatha, a lady from a village in Southern India, lost her three babies due to lack of access to health care. One of her babies was born two months prematurely and was hypothermic. She tried whatever traditional methods she knew to keep the baby warm but it died after a few days. It is the same story of many women in developing nations across the world. Four million of the 20 million pre-term or low weight babies are born each year and an estimated 450 of them die every hour. 40% of these premature babies are born in India. There was a compelling need for a simple and affordable solution. A class project in 2007 at Stanford School of Design is now helping these babies to survive. Jane Chen, Linus Liang, Naganand Murthy and Rahul Panicker took the task to design an intervention for neonatal hypothermia that cost less than 1% of the price of a state-of-the-art incubator which is US $20000. They designed Embrace Baby Warmer which, at less than US $200, is simple, does not require electrici-
ty to operate and is intuitive to use.
Embrace has one hell of a story to tell! The Arrival at a Problem Definition Medicine Mondiale, a Nepal based organization asked Rahul’s class to design an incubator at a fraction of the cost of traditional incubators. Their team’s initial research revealed shocking statistics. The premature and underweight babies lacked enough body fat to keep them warm. They were hypothermic. Most of the energy of the baby is spent in trying to maintain body temperature. This energy is not available to develop other body parts mostly affecting the brain. These babies are not able to make it to the first year of their life. Babies which are able to survive have low IQ and are physically weak. Jane and her team visited India and Nepal for their field research. They saw that the incubators were available in urban regions but were conspicu-
ously absent in semi-urban and rural areas where most of the population lived. Here, they came across a women who gave birth to a premature baby. The local doctors lacked necessary equipment to ensure the survival of the baby. Urban hospitals which had facilities were quite far and her baby died before reaching the hospital. The Embrace team also saw the desperate attempts made by parents to provide warmth to their babies. There methods were placing the baby under a bulb, keeping a hot water pouch near the baby, etc. which caused burns and other injuries. Jane and her team understood the angst the parents felt and wanted to give them a means to help their baby survive. They decided to have a design that will have a greater impact. They wanted to add the extreme factor to the ‘Extreme Affordability’ theme. This extreme factor would come from a design that would address issues in the rural areas like lack of electricity, trained staff, transportation, sanitation and affordability.
“We talk on principle, but we act on interest.”--Walter Savage Landor
The Embrace team developed hundreds of prototypes before finalizing the design. The baby warmer was simple, intuitive to use and based on the concept of kangaroo care. The kangaroo care method involves holding the baby close to the parents. World Health Organization recommends this technique for pre-term babies for their survival. Traditional incubators creates a distance between the parent and the child. The baby warmer looks like a sleeping bag with a sealed pouch of wax and a heater. This pouch is able to maintain warm temperatures for long periods without a constant supply of electricity, can be transported easily to rural areas and promotes kangaroo care. The warm pack consists of a phase change material which is wax like and maintains a temperature of 37o C for
needs to be reheated after 4 hours. It has two variants: Embrace Nest and Embrace Care. Embrace Nest was designed for hospitals and ambulances and needs a little power. The heater is used to melt the warm pack. Embrace Care was designed for home care. It does not need a heater and the pouch is placed in hot water to melt the wax. This pack is again placed in the baby wrap which indicates the temperature. When the wrap shows the temperature at 37o C the baby is again placed in it. The entire wrap can be cleaned using soap and water. The bag can be used up to 50 times and costs less than $200.
The Journey from Prototype Development to Production
The team came up with this prototype in 2008. In 2009 they tested this prototype on baby mannequins with sensors designed to give human vitals feedback. Animal trials were conducted on preterm lambs with the collaboration of Stanford University and University of Utah. Baby Nisha was the first baby enrolled for the baby warmer clinical trials in Bangalore in 2010. In the same year, multicenter clinical trials began in 3 hospitals in Bangalore testing 155 babies. It was proved that the baby warmer was as good as the standard care available for preterm babies. Any changes suggested in design to make it more intuitive were incorporated. For example, the parents were not able to understand when to heat the pouch. To resolve this, Embrace incorporated a thermal indicator in the
The Embrace Baby Warmer up to six hours. The baby wrap absorbs heat from the pack and slowly releases it to keep the baby warm. The pouch
warmer. When the temperature was at the required level, it would show a happy smiley. If it’s not, it showed a
sad smiley and prompted the users to reheat the wax. The first production of the baby warmers started in 2011. It has obtained the CE certification and is ISO 13485 certified, which is the international certification for design and manufacturing of medical devices.
The Reach and Impact
Till date the Embrace baby warmer has saved lives of over 87000 preterm babies in 11 developing countries. Embrace global has entered into a global partnership with GE Healthcare in 2010. They both share a common vision to change the world through technological innovations. GE Healthcare will provide expertise and global reach to its partner. It has also partnered with various state governments in India to reach out to the interior parts of the country through government health centres. Their work has been recognized all over the world. President Obama praised the team as an example of the new manufacturing “revolution.” Beyonce donated $125,000 to fund pilot testing of the Embrace infant warmer in Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya, among other countries. At The Clinton Global Initiative, where the plenary panel included President Clinton, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank, and Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan praised the Embrace baby warmer as a preeminent example of innovation. Embrace has also featured in various news channels like CNN, CNBC, ABC News, etc. and newspapers and magazines like Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Forbes, The New York Times, etc. They have also received awards like the Bio Excellence Award from the Government of Karnataka, International Design Excellence Award 2012, etc. The team has also realized that increased infant survival rate reduces population as parents are confident of their child’s survival and have fewer children, which is a welcome side-effect. This startup has created an air of optimism. Sujatha who now has adopted a baby girl wished that this product was available earlier that could have saved her baby. She now guides the new mothers in her village and helps them by providing their baby an equal chance to survive.
“There are two kinds of people: those who finish what they start, and so on”--Robert Byrne
40 | 41
out of the box
Coin - The Miracle Card Startup | Karthik M| SIBM Pune
What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone. Know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.” — Dave Thomas, Founder, Wendy’s
Coin – The “Miracle” Card Startup Karthik M SIB M Pune
QUIZ TIME 1. Born into a farmer family from north Gujarat Mr. X finished his B.Sc. in Chemistry at age 21 and worked as a lab technician, in 1980, Mr X set up a detergent business. This was an after-office business - the oneman company would bicycle through the neighbourhoods selling handmade detergent packets door to door. At a price of Rs. 3 per kg, (one third the price of leading detergents), it was an instant success.Who is the current owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the American NFL team also famous for his stake in a professional football club? 2. M is one of the most significant personalities of the film industry. He is a producer, film director and screenwriter who has created innumerable massive hits. Consequently he is also one of the wealthiest people in the world with a net worth of $3 billion Who is M? 3. She was an American entrepreneur and founder of the world’s leading cosmetic company .This selfmade business woman based her company on a simple dream of women; to look and feel beautiful and glamorous. Being the only woman on Time’s list of ’20 most influential business geniuses’ she indeed held a unique position in the business world. She died in 2004 at the age of 95, leaving behind her empire which is still run successfully by her sons. Whom are we talking about? 4. Z was born on 14th June 1946 in Queens, New York. As a child he was very active and confident. He was sent to the New York Military Academy at the age of 13 to channel all that energy into something more constructive. Z was a shining star from the very beginning showing extreme talent in both academics and extra circular activities. Initially he went to Fordham University but moved to Wharton School of Finance in University of Pennsylvania Name Z and the TV show he hosted around a decade back
ANSWERS 1. Karsanbhai Khodidas Patel, Nirma
2. Stven Speilberg
3. Estée Lauder
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”―Oscar Wilde
In today’s fast moving world, where electronic transactions are becoming the norm, plastic money has become ubiquitous. One cannot imagine life without a debit/credit card in today’s world, where industrialization is moving at an ever-increasing pace.
tiple credit/debit cards, and thus, not being able to use all of them effectively, for the right purpose.
the right amount of heat to melt the strip in a uniform way onto the card. Specimen of a 1960 prototype of
The modern credit card – Invented by accident!
The modern credit card that we use today has an interesting history, dat- a magnetic strip payment card. ing back to the 1960s. A lady named The data stored in the strip was Dorothea Perry, Forrest C Perry’s wife, still readable in December 2012! casually ironed a reel to reel tape strip to the back of a manila card- So, what is Coin all about? board card. She, without knowing, had solved a huge problem that over Coin attempts to solve the problem Coin has taken up a problem that 200 types of glues and pastes failed that has been created by multiple is understated, but exists in ev- at, which was to secure the magnet- credit/debit cards. This is a problem ery developed country: Majority ic strip so that it would not bubble that has existed for years, and there of the population possessing mul- out. Dorothea’s iron box had just has been no concrete solution to this 42 | 43 All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them. ~Walt Disney Coin, a start up, has taken stock of this situation, and has come up with something innovative. Coin was founded by an Indian, Kanishk Parashar. A leadership team comprising 5 members, including Kanishk, now runs Coin.
4.
Donald Trump
out of the box
issue. People use different cards for different transactions, and find it difficult to carry all cards at the same time. For instance, you might want to use your AMEX credit card for that business dinner, your SBI debit card for groceries, and your HDFC credit card for purchasing garments. Many a time, we forget to carry all the cards we need, and end up using cards we did not want
to use for a particular purpose. Coin attempts to solve this in a very novel way. Coin gives you one card, which can behave as 8 different cards. Basically, this means that you have the liberty of taking out your Coin (which is just another card), and choosing which card you want to use for a particular swipe at a merchant’s location. Is there a market for coin?
coin the miracle card startup | karthik m | sibm pu ne remained totally untapped. At a price of $100 per coin, this translates into a business of 22.4 billion dollars! The market potential truly is waiting to be tapped, and Coin will definitely have the first mover’s advantage. Another interesting statistic is that out of all the card holders in the U.S.A., 33% have two or more credit cards, and this translates into a more narrowed, and focused
market of 74 million customers, and translates into a more realistic market of 7.4 billion dollars. So, how does Coin work? Coin basically comes with a card that is programmable, and a small electronic device that has to be attached to your iOS/Android smartphone. To store a card on the Coin, one has to attach the device to the smart-
Statistics say that there are nearly 1.5 billion credit cards in the U.S.A. (Coin is initially being sold only in the U.S.A.), for a population of around 320 million. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that nearly 77% of the population possesses a credit card. The above statistics imply that there are, on an average, 4.7 credit cards per person in the U.S.A. Also, if we consider only the people who actually posses credit cards, which stands at around 224 million, the number of cards per person shoots up to nearly 7!
gled by pressing the circular button. Coin also uses low energy Bluetooth to remain connected to your smartphone. In case you forget your Coin behind after paying your bill at a restaurant, you will get a notification on your phone if you leave the Coin out of the phone’s Bluetooth range. All of the information on the Coin is protected using 128-bit protection, and the Coin disables itself if it is away from the phone for more than 10 minutes. Funding Plan: Coin had a very interesting funding plan, where customers themselves funded the venture. Coin initially built a fully working prototype, and showcased it to the world through an extremely interesting video, which was an attention grabber, trending on many top technology sites like The Verge, 9to5mac, and 9to5google. Then, Coin opened up pre-orders, wherein customers had to pay around $100. This way, Coin would get funding from customers, and can go ahead and use these advance payments from customers towards the fine-tuning and further development of the product. Of course, Coin also had to promise a certain delivery timeframe to the customers, which was the summer, 2014. Coin managed to raise $50,000 in just 40 minutes of the start of their preorders! Y-Combinator had initially backed Coin, with an initial seed fund of $1,20,000.
phone, swipe the credit card across the device, and click a picture of the card. The same is then transferred to the Coin through the provided app.
Coin is presently in the process of raising $15 million through a series A funding exercise, and have reportedly hired new engineers to tweak the circuitry in Coin. Entry barriers for Coin: Being the first mover in a very sensitive, and a highly regulated market, there are two primary problems that Coin will have to overcome:
Once the cards are stored on Coin, one can select the card that he/she would like to use, swipe, and put it away! • Problems at the merchant’s Clearly, Coin has a potential market of Shown above is an image of what end 224 million people. This market has coin looks like. Cards can be tog- • Problems at the payment If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary. ~Jim Rohn
card company’s end
security features
Now, let us look at these problems in detail
This may have an impact on acceptance at certain merchant outlets, as each merchant agrees to examine for these minimum requirements. If the payment companies can prove that the merchant did not check for these minimum requirements, they can hold the merchant responsible for any chargebacks. The merchant can face complete forfeiture of the swiped amount, and can also face a penalty which can run to hundreds of dollars per transaction.
Merchant: The payment card companies, and associated banks view innovation through a different set of glasses. They establish rules through state and federal laws, and risk management challenges prevailing. One of the first things a merchant should be trained for when they accept a card for payment is to be able to identify a genuine card. The payment companies adopt certain number of security features which help in identifying a genuine card: 1. The payment card logo 2. Hologram 3. Signature panel 4. Card holder’s signature 5. Raised number and cardholder’s name 6. CVV/CVV2 number 7. Expiration date
Payment Card Companies: All cards are issued through banks. This means, any changes or innovations have to go through a long set of procedures, rules, and meetings before they get passed. This is reflected in the fact that the US took over 20 years just to get to the EMV standard, which was being used the world over.
Coin also faces the problem of branding. Visa and MasterCard have spent years and millions of dollars in marketing themselves. The prestige that a Platinum card carries, cannot be replaced by an ordinary looking plastic card which is not recognized. Future Roadmap: Coin is an extremely innovative product, and this start up is a funky venture, which aims at solving an extremely pertinent real world problem, which is the presence of multiple credit/debit cards with individuals. There is great market potential for Coin in the US alone, leave out other countries. However, Coin will need to address the issues brought out above in an effective manner, and try to find a way through the bureaucracies involved in banking, in order to reach the consumer. If these issues are addressed, and if Coin succeeds in finding a way through the generally strict banking laws, then we definitely have a winner on our hands.
Also, a cardholder does NOT own the card. It is used on a contractual basis, and is the property of the bank Typical security features in a card. Coin There are also specific rules does not have any of these about trying to alter the card in any way, and rules about Coin does not have any of the above coding/decoding the magnetic strip If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got. ~Anonymous
44 | 45
out of the box
menstrupedia breaking norms | manisha singh | ximb • “Only 23 percent of Indian women can afford sanitary napkins”
”Menstrupedia” Breaking Norms Manisha Singh XI MB
Ask anyone for a list of things we don’t discuss openly and menstruation is bound to find a place for itself. Though we have moved forward from ‘that time of the month’ to more direct advertising but the question to be asked ourselves is ‘how far?’ It is still mostly asked for in a hushed tone at the store, wrapped quickly in a newspaper or given in a black polythene bag. Are these advertisements even dealing with menstruation the right way? Are they not reinforcing the idea of shame that comes with menstruation? There are people who still consid-
er it a taboo and girls who are still discriminated from, during this biological process. Restrictions on entering a temple, touching certain food items, entering the kitchen etc. during menstruation are practices not just prevalent in rural India but are common practices in urban areas too as they have penetrated deep into our society. So, how are these young girls and women supposed to gain information regarding menstruation? Wouldn’t they be compelled to believe in the age old myths if there was a lack of writing on the matter?
There was someone who did more than thinking and talking regarding menstruation – Team Menstrupedia. Certain startling facts that Team Menstrupedia came across during their yearlong research are • “Lack of sanitary protection causes 23% of girls to drop out of school” – InfochangeIndia • “90% girls are not aware about menstruation at the time of their menarche” -WSSCC • “14% girls don’t believe menstruation is a biological process” • “85% girls practice various restrictive customs”
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill
About Menstrupedia: Aditi Gupta, Tuhin Paul and Rajat Mittal, founders of Menstrupedia have found an intersection of art, menstruation, and technology through their organization. Menstrupedia is a unique organization that is aimed at increasing awareness among young girls regarding menstruation and also shattering all the myths surrounding menstruation in a fun way i.e. through their comic book. Through this, they also intend to decrease the school dropout rates and absenteeism among girls because of menstruation. Considering the sensitivity of the subject, they are extra careful in projecting the information in a positive light that does not test the comfort zone of anyone.
tion and other details regarding the menstruation cycle. • Hygiene management: Team Menstrupedia has not only described the various options to man-
queries. The medical expertise is provided by Dr. Bhide in the Q&A section.
age men
their experiences and anecdotes re
struation flow but also stressed on the importance of hygiene management in this section • Menstrual myths: This is an interesting section where they have put in a lot of efforts to bust age-old myths relating to menstruation that affects many girls till date. Modes of sharing information and igniting discussions: Comic strip: Team Menstrupedia has come up with a 90 page book that beautifully illustrates the real life stories related to menstruation.
Blogs: This is an open platform for people from across the world to share
lating menstruation or anything related to it. These write ups become the launching pad for many fruitful discussions. This not only brings in a new perspective to the group but also helps shed the inhibitions. Interactive videos: Through their videos they want to create an environment where girls can talk about menstruation openly and make them realize that it should have no negative influence on their self-esteem and confidence. To make it more interactive, monthly updates from the organization are
The team ensures that any data they put up on their website is reliable and medically correct. To answer certain technical questions, they have a practicing gynaecologist on board, Dr. Mahadeo Bhide. Major areas they deal with: • Puberty/ physiological changes: In this section, they not only cover the physical changes that girls undergo during puberty but also take up the physical changes that boys undergo during their same time. They also deal with the emotional changes that occur during puberty. This helps young adults understand their body better and be confident about it rather than feeling low self-esteem. • Physiology of menstruation: In this section, Menstrupedia team defines menstruation and female reproductive system. They also go on to explain the phases in menstrua-
It mainly draws attention to menstrual hygiene and menstrual pain management. Their distribution channels include- Schools, Book stores, online stores, Menstrupedia website, and various NGOs. FAQ’s: It functions as a regular forum where people seek answers to their
also updated in the form of videos. Menstrupedia Comic Beneficiaries Girls and Women: Lack of information and discussion on the topic is the reason for many menstrual re-
Opportunities don’t happen, you create them. ~Chris Grosser
46 | 47
out of the box
lated health problems like urinary tract infection and rashes among girls. This ignorance on the topic also leads to lower self-esteem among a few girls. Awareness on the matter would not only bust the age old myths but also help them take care of their health in a much better way during menstruation. Teachers/ Schools: Our education system very briefly touches on this topic and it usually happens later than the menarche. Considering the academic nature of information, the purpose remains defeated most of the times and is of little use to the target audience.The comic strip would facilitate the learning process without creating any awkward situation
quirky new startups | venkat iyer & bhanu p | iim trichy are more than willing to help their daughters understand the hygiene factors to follow during menstruation. NGOs: Organizations working in the field of women health and organizations providing shelter to young girls can especially benefit from it. An experiment with Buddhist Nuns Team Menstrupedia distributed the book among Buddhist nuns and the response they received was overwhelmingly positive with nuns mentioning the comic made them feel more confident about their bodies and made them realize they were not ‘impure’ because they were menstruating. The experiment boosted the
in English and would be ready with the Hindi version by the year end. Future plans Menstrupedia team aims to translate the book into 15 different languages which is right now available only in English and Hindi. This would help a larger section of the society. The future plan also includes modifying the book to suit different cultures across the world. Another medium to share information would be audio and visual comics, which would come up in the near future. The mobile app in pipeline will help women track their periods and receive dietary suggestions. Similar features could be added to make the app a complete package. The team also plans to partner with sanitary napkin producers and NGOs to increase their reach. Workshop kits, which is another product planned for future would help educators in conducting effective menstruation awareness sessions. Menstrupedia team with its grit and determination to help the society is on a road to bring a change.
amongst the learning group. Parents: In their pilot run of 500 comic strips, Team Menstrupedia observed the largest contributors were in fact parents. This demonstrates that parents do want things to change for their daughters. It’s because of lack of resources and inhibitions attached with menstruation that they are unable to discuss it openly with their daughters. Clearly, with little help in terms of communication about the topic, they
confidence of team Menstrupedia too in reaching out to more people regarding such a sensitive topic. Revenue Generation Considering the nascent phase of the organization, the team is currently raising funds through crowd sourcing and mainly follows advertising driven revenue model.
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” - Napoleon Hill
However it wouldn’t be long before it starts making profits as it is out with its first version of the comic book
Good things come to people who wait, but better things come to those who go out and get them. ~Anonymous
Quirky new startups | Web merchandising Venkat Iyer & Bhanu P IIM Trichy Subah ho gayi mamu, reads the cushion cover on my roommate’s chair. Since morning he has been pestered around ten times by people visiting our room as to where he purchased that gem of his. “‘Happily unmarried’ bro!” says he and starts updatinghisstatusonallpossiblesocial networks to flaunt his rare commodity. Happilyunmarried.com and a host of other sites have propped up in recent times primarily aimed at bachelors, who never once before this gave a second thought to buying pillow covers and cushions. Many would term it a Blue Ocean
strategy - creating a new segment in itself. Some would call it disruptive innovation - innovation destroying conventional products and throwing them out of business. For Rahul and Rajat, alumnus of MICA and founders of this website, all that mattered was ‘looking cool’. Their flagship product is the Sandaas ashtray, an ashtray in the form of an Indian toilet. They have a host of product offerings that range from Beer mugs to Key chains to apparel and even shot glasses. Another thing to marvel is the various channels of distribution
that they have adopted for their products. They sell across 47 stores in the country, they have their own site which is the main place of purchase, plus they also sell their products through Koolkart, an online retailer. Managing three distribution channels without conflicts is a huge challenge and thus they do not believe in price discrimination through coupons, a common fad among e-tailers. Primarily, e-commerce sites are focusing on TV and print commercials (Read Flipkart and Amazon) these days to promote their brands but
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill
48 | 49
out of the box
what Happily Unmarried does is more of an on-ground activity. Demand for products that are offered on this site are not inherent, i.e. a buyer does not necessarily possess a need for such products. This is where the on-ground activity comes into the picture. Music in the hills is an annual music festival that is organized by this organization and through this they create awareness about their brand. Such an event always ranks high on the social media scale, targets the youth (their target audience) and also provides a platform for branding activities. Funny how such a niche segment has so many sellers lining up with new offerings. Chumbak is yet another similar brand that has entered this segment. It positions itself as a premium seller of such products. A perfect example of online marketing, this brand has relied solely on social media and Google Ad words to promote itself. 148,977 likes on its Facebook page bears testimony to its popularity. Herein, the product offerings range from magnets, mobile phone cases to coffee/beer mugs and the quintessential keychain. The unique feature here is that it has a B2B model too. This organization also supplies in bulk (customized editions) to businesses. This model has been a huge success with companies lining up to use these offerings for their corporate functions. This is now a ‘status symbol’ for organizations, says an employee of Mu-Sigma, an analytics firm based in Bangalore.
bleacher report | vijay murli & rama krishna reddy | iim shillong on what the urban bachelor wanted. Their primary target was the working class bachelor from an IT park in Bangalore. They raided his living room, conducted a primary research on his mind and came up with offerings that suited his needs. Basically, they satiated a need that was prevalent among our western counterparts. A short analysis of the markets there would indicate how a plethora of such websites already exist there. This seems to be the new strategy for development of new products in the e-commerce domain. Although the idea might have been partially inspired, the creation and customization were purely original. Suppliers started to emerge who manufactured primarily such quirky goods. The channels of distribution started to grow (even Chumbak sells across brick and mortar stores and also through e-tailers) and promotion wasn’t about television anymore. The story of Chumbak gives us an insight into how such a venture takes shape. Shubra Chadda and her husband began the venture by selling off their flat! No lesson or course in new venture creation asks us to sell our flat to gain capital for seeding our venture. But this was the risk they undertook and this is why, for them, everything was at stake.
Crowdsourcing takes a new meaning if we bring in a third player into the domain. Lazyninja is a relatively new entrant for this niche segment, but with a more concentrated vision. It sells merchandise related to popular TV series (American) and leverages on their huge fan base across our country. Earlier, enthusiasts of such shows had to purchase such products only from abroad. This organization, however, follows a single channel strategy up to now, but with recent tie-ups with famous events in line, the multi-channel distribution model might well be on its way. Comic-con is an event, targeted at precisely the same audience that these brands aim for and hence there arises the perfect situation for co-branding. In a recent event for Comic-con in Bangalore, one could easily spot Chumbak and Lazy Ninja stalls selling their merchandise. With such an audience only rising by the minute, one would expect more and more entrants into this field. This supposedly ‘niche’ segment is quickly turning into one that the masses prefer. But how far this will go is a question we need to ask ourselves. The USP of all these models is based on the rarity of possessing such products. So when the market gets flooded with similar offerings, will this model still thrive? How long will the innovation continue? How long till the quirky magnet turns quintessential? These might be the challenges that these organizations need to face in the near future.
Initially, they wanted to brand these fridge magnets (Chumbak means magnets) as souvenirs for travellers who visit India. Thus they pitched their brand at posh localities, boutiques, airports, hotels- basically everywhere But for now, these and many more where foreigners go. Not surprising- start-ups are changing the way we ly, they were rejected at every place bachelors deck our houses. A marSo why do these mod- because none of them wanted to ket is being created where new els succeed? What is so dif- associate with an unknown brand. buyers and sellers are filling up erstwhile vacant spots. Differentiation ferent in what they offer? This is when, by chance, they realized a gold-mine of opportunities. is achieved through intensive social When they set up shop at a famous media and mobile marketing-the adThe answer lies in the inherent mall, their brand garnered eye- vertising mediums of the future and customer need. These firms were balls from that one segment which multi-channel distributions are on highly successful in digging up drives India Inc. - the youth. Thus full swing. These are seeds, start-ups the need for such quirky products they changed their positioning and that are indicators for the future; a with their cleverly targeted camthe rest as they say, is history. These future where opportunities are gapaigns. Their offerings were timed stories tell us something that no lore, where demand is a plenty and perfectly, with movie slogans from textbook can teach us; that peo- where good ideas are respected. the latest released embedded on their ple can actually learn through failkey-chains/magnets. They focused ures and that it is not just a cliché. I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. ~Thomas A. Edison
The Journey of Bleacher Report Vijay Murli & N. Rama Krishna Reddy II M Shill ong
Bleacher Report (www.bleacherreport.com) was founded in 2007 in the United States by four Sports Enthusiasts from Silicon Valley, who recognized that there were several sports fans who would be willing to contribute articles if they had a proper publishing platform to express their views. They launched the website in Beta mode and upon receiving more than 2000 sports editorials, 400,000 unique visitors per month and contributions from readers, they were able to raise their first round of Series-A funding to start their journey. It is a community driven website, which allows sports fans to cre-
ate their profiles and then allows them to apply to the writer program. They are asked to submit a sample of their article which will be reviewed and if it meets the basic criteria, then they are permitted to publish the articles on the online platform. One of the most unique features about Bleacher Report since its inception is that it has a peer-editing system, by which they hope to maintain the quality of the articles. Though an article might have been edited by a peer, the author will still have the authority to revert to the original if he is not satisfied with the changes.
There are many fans who wish to express their opinions on their favorite teams but did not have the platform which gave them instant readership to their articles. For example, if one was to start his blog, it would take considerable time to establish decent readership and in addition to the same, it would require the person to constantly keep posting articles to enhance his readership. On the contrary, Bleacher Report offers instant audience of thousands even to new writers depending on the article, which is a huge incentive for new writers. Also, for the writers, it provides in-
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. ~David Brinkley 50 | 51
out of the box
bleacher report | vijay murli & rama krishna reddy | iim shillong
novative ways to present their articles. Apart from the standard article, writers can present their articles like a Slideshow or in case of live games, Bleacher Report offers them the opportunities of typing in live feed. For the readers, it provides a way of connecting with fans of the sport they follow from around the world and read various fan perspectives on the various issues associated with their
teams. There are several sports fans for whom the content and coverage by expert writers on established sports sites such as ESPN and Yahoo Sports are not enough and for that segment, Bleacher Report offers immense amount of content which sparks interesting debates and discussions within the community. As Bleacher Report started gaining popularity, there were more writers who joined the site but in order to keep up the quality of articles being published on the website, they approved less than 15% of the applications they receive per month. Also, the writers are provided with desig-
nations based on the quantity and quality of the articles and a points system is employed for the articles in order to incentivize the writers to continue posting articles. When the articles are published on the site, Bleacher Report updates the number of reads for a particular article in addition to having a separate space for comments and discussions. The cumulative statistics along with all
the articles and the achievements of a particular user is displayed on the profile page of the user (as displayed in the picture below). Bleacher Report ensures visibility for users based on the keywords and tag words attached to articles by employing good search optimization strategies. In addition to this, for each sport they have a team to identify the latest topics trending in that field for which it will draw most hits from the sports’ fans. They also have a concept of paid writers, where they choose some of the best and consistent writers from a particular sport and pay them on a weekly basis in order to write on specific top-
ics, which will generate maximum number of hits. Through this, they are able to publish plenty of content based on current topics and by promoting the same, they generate plenty of interest from the sports community resulting in increased number of hits. For example, during the summer transfer window of Soccer or during NBA Draft window, the transfers generate massive publicity and are extensively covered by Bleacher Report’s lead writers. The site has established several important partners in its network which are mutually beneficial for both. They syndicate their content using local co-branded edition of recognized partners like Los Angeles Times as well as other partners such as NBA.com. They also invite respected journalists to create profiles and write on Bleacher Report, which enhances the reputation of the site in addition to improving readership and visibility. Since its beginning, Bleacher Report got obvious thrust in its popularity through social media with the site being actively involved on Facebook and on Twitter in particular. With more than a million likes on Facebook and around 797,000 followers on Twitter, it helps the site popularize the latest articles posted on the site. Also, in order to adapt to the latest technologies as well as take advantages of mobile applications, Bleacher Report has come out with its app named “Team Stream by Bleacher Report”. The users can download and customize the app such that
if you’re going through hell keep going. ~Winston Churchill
they receive regular updates on the teams that they follow. It helps the users stay updated on the latest breaking news, opinions and other articles relating to their team. In 2012, Bleacher Report was acquired by Turner Broadcasting Systems Inc., an American media conglomerate, reportedly for around $175 million. This is because they see Bleacher Report as potentially expanding even further and generating immense revenues. They already have a number of sports related offerings in their portfolio and the addition of Bleacher Report will help them in leveraging greater advantage. Many live sports events covered by Turner are also covered extensively at Bleacher Report by their paid writers who ensure quality of the articles. Advertising on the site is one of the main sources of revenue and they have utilized the same to great advantage. In 2012, even before it was acquired by Turner Sports, Bleacher Report’s revenue was estimated to be around $30 million. The website offers a variety of innovative modes
of advertising such as full page skin advertisements as well as customized programs like sponsored editorials and event packages. Also, Bleacher Report has a system of compiling newsletters according to the various teams and sports and sends it to the users according to their interests. These newsletters are also used as a method of advertisements and are sent on a regular basis to the users. As per stats from comScore in April 2014, Bleacher Report had 189 million visitors to the site across all platforms. Out of the same, 35.6 million were unique visitors with a YOY growth of 64%. Bleacher Report’s Team stream App has had over 8.5 million downloads, signifying that a significant number of users are accessing the site via mobile platforms. These statistics show the impressive achievements of Bleacher Report in its journey in the last seven years. However, the challenge is to keep improving and developing even further. As more and more users start using Bleacher Report, the main concern is that quality of the content
being posted will reduce because of the number of amateur contributors are increasing exponentially and it is difficult to monitor each article published. However, the editors are now following stricter guidelines and informing the users of the standards and the quality. Also, writing privileges are not easily granted unless they meet the guidelines and by these methods, they hope that they can maintain the quality for the future as well. Thus, Bleacher Report is an example of what four enthusiasts could achieve when they applied their passion and technical knowledge to meet the needs of the target audience – in this case, sports fans. By constantly improving the site, they have been able to not only bring in more users but have also successfully expanded across various sports. Though it is yet to be seen as to how it will further progress in the future, if they can continue with the same philosophy they have followed since its inception, then there is every chance it could become even more successful in the future.
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.~ Oscar Wilde
52 | 53
the rising star
Ques 1. What was the motivating factor for you to do take up entrepreneurship? I wanted to experience the joy of creating something from scratch. I worked in corporate sector for 5 years with 3 different companies and it was a happy (and rather successful) experience. But I always felt that a start-up would allow me to explore my potential to the fullest and expose me to the opportunities and learning that would take years to happen in a regular corporate life. The thought of leaving a comfortable well paid job to charter on an unknown territory, while scary, had a strange adventurous feeling to it that lured me in.
Ques 2. What is/are the major distinguishing factor(s) between internshala.com and its other major rivals likeletsintern. com? I want Internshala (http://internshala.com) to be known for 3 things and believe that we have covered good distance on these 1. Quality - In every smallest thing that we do. Be it the internships that we post (for example, except
Samsung | Pratik chakraborty | IIM SHILLONG for NGOs, we do not post unpaid internships), the student profiles we reach out to, or each and every communication that goes out from Internshala to its users. We are obsessed with providing a world class experience to our users at each interaction and believe this would hold us in good stead as we grow. 2. Simplicity - An offshoot of the point above, at Internshala, we believe in keeping things simple - be it the way our website is designed and structured or any marketing campaign that we bring out. The focus is always on solving a user's problem and not on bamboo zling with them with too many features. Users care about solutions and not about features. 3. Sincerity - Internshala hearts the cause of internships in India. We genuinely believe in the power of internships and wonders it can do for a country like India and this belief drives our day to day actions. This has led to Internshala becoming the thought leader in this space despite being the youngest of all the market players. Thanks to our sincere efforts to bring a culture of meaningful internships in India, today students see Internshala as a brand that they can trust, a friendly senior outside college. Internshala also happens to be completely free for students where they do not have to pay any money to search and apply for internships, ever!
Ques 3. Could you please elaborate on your business model and the major sources of revenue? Internshala has 3 revenue streams at the moment. Internshala Resume Service (where we help students make awesome resumes, see http:// careerservices.internshala.com/), Internshala Virtual Training Centre (a state of the art online training portal for students to learn new skills such as Analytics, Digital Marketing, Web Development etc. Seehttp://vtc. internshala.com/) and advertising.
failure if any, faced during your journey of setting up and establishing the business and how you were able to tackle it? Like any other business, the biggest challenge has been building a team. This challenge is more amplified for a start-up where you do not have the benefit of a big brand name or cozy perks to offer to prospective candidates. But that in a way is a good thing also because in absence of these, you know that people joining you are joining you because they believe in the idea and want to enjoy the ride irrespective of the outcome. We have been able to solve this just like we have solved other challenges, by being persistent and not giving up. What started as a one person team back in 2011 is now a 20 members strong business. For each team member who has joined, we would have interviewed atleast 50 others. Ours is an ever growing team and even now we have many positions open that students with interest in joining a fast growing start-up would find intriguing. You may check them out at http://internshala.com/careers
SAMSUNG Pratik Chakraborty II M Shill ong
Ques 5. Any word of advice for our budding entrepreneurs? Focus on solving a genuine user problem and not on building a cool product. As a customer, I care more about whether you solved my problem than how you solved it. Other than that, it is perhaps the best time to start up in India. The economy is growing, hundreds of problems are waiting to be solved, the government seems entrepreneurship friendly, and the parents and prospective in-laws are more understanding of entrepreneurship as a career option - just do it!
Ques 4. Please share your experience of a major setback or
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. ~Bruce Feirstein
Ever been so upset you wished to burn everything down, hoping that would change all that was wrong? To be like the proverbial phoenix that rises from its own ashes? It turns out that this actually happened once to one of the biggest corporations in the world! Read on to find out. Samsung Electric Industries was founded in 1969 as part of the Samsung Group, even then one of South Korea’s largest chaebols (business conglomerates, which wield far more political clout than similar conglomerates around the world), headed by Lee Byung-chull, who founded it in 1938 dealing in seafood and noodles.
The subsidiary’s first products included modest home appliances like TVs, refrigerators, etc. Lee realized that the growing popularity of such appliancs held much promise for the future. Samsung at that time was only assemblingthe products with compnonents shipped from Japan. Lee decided that this dependence on foreign imports needed to stop soon. To this end, Samsung group acquired Korea Semiconductors in 1974, one of the pioneers in the chip-making industry in the country. This decision wasn’t supported whole heartedly by all of the group’s top brass which meant that Lee had to finance the deal from his own pocket. This had a ma-
jor role to play in the company’s rise over the years. It also took over Korea Telecommunications, a switching system provider, in 1980 and branded both with the Samsung name. Over the rest of the decade, Samsung Electric gained a lot of traction abroad with its low-priced black and white and colour televisions. In 1983, Lee spoke of Samsung’s intention to become a DRAM (dynamic random access memory) vendor. It became the third company in the world to make a 64kb DRAM, and it continues to be one of the world’s major producers of the device.
Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. ~John D. Rockefeller
54 | 55
rising from the ashes
The subsidiary slowly became more adept at producing electronic gadgets but due to a poor marketing and promotional strategy, it was unable to compete with its highly branded competitors like Sony. What compounded the problem was that the products themselves suffered from various defects due to shoddy production practices. After Lee Byung-chull’s death in 1987, Lee Kun-hee, his youngest son, succeeded him as Chairman of the Samsung Group. He integrated Samsung Electric and Samsung Semicondutors and Telecommunications in 1988 into Samsung Electronics. The new subsidiary forayed into the mobile phone market the same year by launching its first mobile phone, the SH-100. Sales were disappointing though as public awareness of mobiles was low and the quality was lower than its competitors. It’s main competitor, Motorola, held over 60% of the market by the early 1990s. Kun-hee was not chuffed to say the least. With a lot of enthusiasm for taking the company to even greater heights, he was having none of
the flagging standards of Samsung Electronics. In 1993, he had recorded an hour-long speech which he gave to his subordinates while on a flight to Frankfurt so that those not present would get to hear it. After he landed, he called up about 200 of his executives and delivered a speech of his plan for the future. “Change everything but your wife and kids!” he proclaimed.
jolla | MANAS MENDIRATTA | IIFT DELHI
dards were dropping off again. The final straw, as the story goes, came about early in 1995 after he sent out a few of Samsung’s newest mobile phones as New Year’s gifts. To his embarrassment, he received replies that the phones weren’t performing as they were expected to. Kun-hee then decided on drastic action. Comparing the quality reduction to a cancer, he decided that it was time to burn. At Samsung’s factory in Gumi, in the south eastern part of South Korea, he ordered all the mobile phones, TVs and other appliances to be stacked together and smashed. The board and Kun-hee himself went about smashing the heaped up hardware and then lit a bonfire to burn everything up! Estimates put the value of the destroyed goods at $50 million. The 2000 workers present cried as the top brass went about their rampage. Samsung adopted the ‘Quality first’ approach from that day on. The workers began to put in all their effort in achieving that standard. Samsung Electronics appointed a new CEO, Yun Jong-Yong in 1996 to oversee the company. Under his
leadership, Samsung emerged from the 1997 Asian Financial crisis relatively unscathed, though he was forced to reduce fat by selling off nearly $2 billion in corporate assets and shut down factories temporarily. Samsung also laid off more than 20,000 workers in the period.
awareness (it began to sponsor major sporting events such as the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan) paid off as the public began to take notice. By playing the percentages in this way, combined with the fact that Samsung was actively involved in producing electronics from the bottom up due to its semiconductor base, rather than assembling components, meant that it could gain an edge over competitors at a fast clip. By reinvesting funds and proceedings into research and production, it was able to increase its technological prowess and it came up with many breakthroughs in the field, including the world’s first 8Gb NAND Memory chip which led to the inking of a manufacturing deal with Apple Inc. It has seen many records fall by the wayside such as becoming the world’s largest producer of mobile phones in 2009, a record it holds till date. Samsung Electronics’ has gone through its fair share of success and failures in its journey to become one of the largest and most wellknown company in the world. Like the phoenix, it literally emerged from the ashes to fly higher than it ever had before. It has also faced its fair share of controversies during the ride but on the whole it remains a fascinating example of the power of dedication and hard work in turning around a company’s fortunes.
It focused on production prowess and speed, churning out one new product after another, a strategy which, This had the desired effect but only combined with increasing focus on for a while. Within two years, the stan- marketing and creating customer Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. ~Steve Jobs
The Rise of Jolla Manas Mendiratta IIFT Delhi
olla, a Finnish smartphone maker born from the ashes left behind from the Nokia-Microsoft partnership. Nokia, realizing that it would soon be dethroned by Google’s Android OS, made a move that not many anticipated. It was February 2011, when the then Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced that Nokia would be going “all-in” in a deal with Microsoft to develop their Windows OS based smartphones. What most people saw was the demise of Nokia’s Symbian platform, but no one could see that there was more to it. The Finnish giant planned to shift its focus to its new baby and abandon its existing projects. One of such projects was
J
Nokia’s Linux based open source OS, Meego. Although Nokia allowed the product to be released, it was to be the first and the last from Nokia’s house. Nokia’s market share plummeted and their sales dropped as people waited to see what Nokia had to offer with its windows phones. The Finnish giant started shedding staff and one among these was Marc Dillon who worked on Meego along with a few thousand other engineers. Marc realized that Meego, a product developed by Nokia and Intel, had something different to offer, after all they had invested six years into it. In the July of that year, the old team of Meego started thinking over how they would go about starting their own
venture. Marc Dillon took the lead and established a flat organization. He hired people who were in to make a mark for themselves, those who were hungry for success and not money. The ground rules were laid. The whole company would meet once every month and discuss their progress and check if everyone is in sync. Their plan or rather their big plan was to launch its first product by Q1 2012. This was a bunch of ambitious people who aimed for the sky but needed results to show for their hard work in order to get some financers or business partners. This would happen only after they launched their own operating
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. ~Thomas Jefferson
56 | 57
rising from the ashes
system, Sailfish. They made their first appearance in front of the world press at the Slush 2012, Helsinki. They gave the audience what it wanted to hear, a theme where everyone was equal and worked together in a transparent manner. The audience saw the entire company of 60 odd people taking the stage and thus Sailfish became the talking point of the conference. Having the world take notice of their OS, next up on their to-do list was a hardware of their own that would run on their own child, the Sailfish OS. Their plan was to create something that was not only powerful but easy to use as well. They partnered with a Taiwanese manufacturer to have their hardware released in six months. The end product scored 10 out of 10 on performance but its user interface was new and took some time getting used to. Not expecting a huge response they still launched the phone named Jolla. They realized that their product lacked a few features and went back to the users for review and feedback. They did not pause to celebrate and continued improving their product along with serving those who had bought the product.
been ported include Google Nexus 4, Google Nexus 5, Google Nexus 7 and Samsung Galaxy S3. The AlienDalvik code enables Sailfish OS to run Android applications. Users can run their favourite Android apps on Sailfish OS run handsets. This allows users a double benefit of having the best of both the worlds. Although Google Play store is not supported there is a Yandex store which provides the apps. Jolla aims to have further integration across apps and services as it looks to
MOTOROLA | DIKSHA AGARWAL | IIM INDORE home screen and it doesn’t plan to stop there. It is a button less phone and uses gestures for control. One of the biggest advantages, particularly for the software geeks is that the entire code is open source and one can make as many changes or additions to the software and customize it according to them. It intends to add more content and more features as they move on. To motivate developers in helping them improve they have already added a section to their website where developers can contribute. The story does not end here, Jolla plans to launch two new smartphones at the start of February along with a monthly update of Sailfish OS. By announcing this they have clearly sent out a message that they are going to take a pit stop to assess their performance but keep on building on the foundation already laid. They would be entering the Indian market with their flagship phone by next month and have partnered with Snapdeal to sell the handsets in India. At Jolla, it is believed that through hard work and determi-
Jolla did not stop here and realized that in order to capture more market share it needed to invade into the nation, anything is possible, let alone market space occupied by Android. capture more of market share. Some releasing a phone in six months. Jolla In line with this, its next major target of the distinct features that come with has a herculean task ahead but it can was to make its OS compatible with it include multi-tasking wherein we be motivated by the fact that it is now Android. This was a big step forward can have a smaller dedicated win- the largest Finnish phone manufacwhich enabled phone manufacturers dow for every task available on the turer after Microsoft took over Nokia. to develop devices which ran on Sail- home screen. They have a window for fish and supported Android. Some music player, another for reminders of the devices to which Sailfish has and another for updates, all on the Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out. ~Robert Collier
Motorola - “Back with a Bang” Diksha Agarwal II M Ind ore
Motorola is another firm that has made a remarkable re-entry in the mobile phones and gadget industry. It was founded in September 25, 1928 as Gavlin Manufacturing Corporation. The company’s first manufactured product was not a cell phone but rather it was the “B” battery eliminator, a device that enabled battery-powered radios to run on household electricity. But graduDumbledore ally it entered the mobile phone market of the United States in the 1980s. Before actually jumping on to how it captured almost the 58 | 59 All progress takes place outside the comfort zone. ~Michael John Bobak
“They burst into flame when it is time for them to die, and then they are reborn from the ashes. Ah, fascinating creatures, Phoenixes.” - Albus
Phoenix, a symbol adopted in early Christianity is not only a bird, rather it is regarded as a thing uniquely remarkable in some respects. The whole idea of being reborn from ashes is very fascinating in itself. In today’s era, when things are changing at a fast pace, there is a cut throat competition between firms for the top position. An organisation which can make space for itself in the market after falling down is in the true sense legendary. Philips and Nintendo are the perfect examples which have emerged as true heroes after their initial failure.
rising from the ashes
entire cell phone market, let us take a look at how it all started.
The brand name Motorola became renowned after its production of first car radios in 1930. The word ‘Motorola’ is a combination of word motor (since the company was a producer of car radio) and ‘ola’ (taken from “victrola” which represents sound). Motorola also introduced portable television, pager, walkie-talkie, large screen cordless. It was starting just then and consumers were confident that a lot more could follow.
In 1973, Motorola launched one of the greatest and the most remarkable devices in the history of mankind; the world’s first cellular phone. Ten years later, they reached a landmark when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the world’s first commercial cell phone, the DynaTAC 8000X. At
that time, a cellular phone was equivalent to a rich man’s toy with a degree of utility but nobody knew it would soon become a necessity. Motorola spent a hefty amount of around $100 million to develop 8000X without having any idea of whether people would like to buy it or not. Due to the large dimensions of this phone, it was nicknamed “The Brick”. From Motorola’s point-of-view, the 8000X was a runaway success. “We didn’t design them for teenagers, well, unless it was a
teenager with $4,000, but we couldn’t build them fast enough. Businesses started taking them on and it became something else, a part of business not a convenience, but a necessity. We didn’t expect those kinds of volumes.”As said by Rudy Krolopp (Motorola’s legendary design master). After the company’s huge suc-
cess it didn’t stop there and they went on to make ‘MicroTAC’ in 1989 which became the world’s first pocket phone with an innovative flip design. Nobody ever expected for something like this to arrive in the market. Motorola decided not to rest and surprised the country in 1992 with their new invention “Motorola International 3200”, which became the first palm-sized digital mobile phone that used 2G digitally encrypted technologies. After the success of ‘MicroTAC’ Motorola went on to introduce
the lightest phone in the market, the ‘Motorola StarTAC’. It came in the year 1996 and was inspired by the communicator from the original star trek series. Up till then, Motorola had established itself as the greatest and strongest player in the cell phone market. After its
You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing. ~Philippos
huge popularity and success, people at Motorola were quite sure that no other competitor would ever be able to stand against them. As an overconfident attitude is much likely to bring trouble, it did so when it lost its top position to Nokia in 1998, which was nothing less than a nightmare for the owners of Motorola but it did not give up. In 1999, it was back with a bang with the launch of world’s first smartphone featuring web browsing and email capabilities, the This handset was the first phone to combine a digital phone, two-way radio, alphanumeric pager, internet browser, email, fax and two-way messaging. The success story of Motorola is never ending. In 2004, it again proved that it is an invincible player in the cell phone market with the launch of Motorola RAZR. It was marketed as a “fashion phone” selling 50 million units by mid-2006. Because of its rich features, it became one of the best-selling phones in the US market and is the best-selling clamshell phone in the world till today. Bill Gates rightly said that “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose”. This is what happened with Motorola - one of the leading companies in gadget and smartphone industry. By the end of the decade, the company failed drastically and got split into two parts: “Motorola solutions” an enterprise and government facing wing, and “Motorola Mobility”, another group specializing in handsets and set-top boxes. After the split the company was on the verge of extinction. Motorola which had been the king of cell phone industry was then fighting for mere survival in the market. The time came when the laid
MOTOROLA | DISHA AGGARWAL | IIM INDORE back attitude of the Motorola of hope for the company, which and emerging new players in the could contribute remarkably to market further worsened the sit- the emerging face of technology. uation of the company. It was left It is truly said that “history repeats behind in technology cycle which itself”. The sun which seemed to was not right. It made many mis- set forever shone again for Motakes the consequences of which torola. Motorola suddenly made were really severe. It missed the a comeback in the market with its movement to 3G i.e. it focussed new low cost smartphones after on its products when every other being acquired by the tech giant company was focussing on inno- Google. It launched a whole new vations and was catering to the range of smartphones which are customers’ demands. At this time currently being sold across difcostumers wanted more features ferent countries except in China. like calendars, customizable ringtones, games, calculators, clock, Motorola has re-entered the maretc. Suddenly there was an in- ket with its new product Moto G, crease in the employee turnover which has impressive features and rate at Motorola because of the ability to give tough competition emergence of new and better to the major players of the market competitors in the market. Mo- like Samsung, Sony, Apple, etc. torola lost an already won battle The tables have turned. Mobecause it could not identify the torola has been reborn from the changing needs of the customers. ashes. People who once heard of Motorola can now see it comMotorola was struggling badly. ing back and leave its mark. MoThe awkward limitations of the torola is all geared up to regain system, such as the inability to its lost position and this time it detect more than one button is even more powerful because on the keypad being pressed at of its association with Google. once (generally needed in games Those having the will and the when the player wanted to move passion for something, never and fire at the same time) fur- sit quietly and the hard work ther aggravated the problem eventually pays. There are someand the company started losing times struggles in the beginning its stock value tremendously. but with strong determination The biggest shock to Motoro- the things could gradually turn la came in the form of the in your favour. As the sun nevWindows Mobile OS which lit- er stops shining, similarly hard erally buried Symbian in an un- work always ensures suctimely grave. So Motorola was cess though slowly but surely. left with no option but to sell their share in the venture and see Nokia rising in the industry. “Failure is only the Motorola almost collapsed due to these setbacks. With this, the incredible reign of Motorola came to an end. People had to bid adieu to the company, which was once ruling not only the market but also the hearts of its customers. There was not even a single ray
opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely.”
-HenryFord
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absense of fear. ~Mark Twain
60 | 61
rising from the ashes
TYLENOL CRISIS 1982 | ROHITAKSHA PANDA AND SHRUTI RAY | xIMB Once the product was removed from the market, Johnson & Johnson had to come up with a campaign to reintroduce its product and restore consumer confidence in the product. The following are some of the steps undertaken by Johnson and Johnson in their bid to re-enter the market and rebuild the brand almost from scratch:
Tylenol Crisis 1982: From Zenith to Nadir and Back Again In October of 1982, Tylenol, the leading off-the-counter pain-killer medicine in the United States at that time, faced a tremendous crisis when seven people in Chicago were reported dead after taking the extra-strength Tylenol capsules. This created an uproar and a sense of insecurity throughout the country: A trusted brand that was kept as a stock medication in every household suddenly became a suspected mass murderer. The initial reaction was that the seven deaths were triggered by side effects from consuming Tylenol. However, as the tampered-with bottles had come from different factories, and the seven deaths had all occurred in the Chicago area, the possibility of sabotage during production was ruled out. It was later reported that an unknown suspect/s
Rohitaksha Panda and Shruti Ray X IM B
had put 65 milligrams of deadly cyanide into Tylenol capsules, 10,000 times more than what is necessary to kill a human. By that time, however, the damage to the product was already done. In 1982, Tylenol had controlled 37 percent of the painkiller market with revenue of about $1.2 million. Immediately after the cyanide poisonings, its market share was reduced to 7 percent (Mitchell 1989). Even though the product was cleared, there was large scale public apprehension on using Tylenol. Customers shifted to other brands like aspirin as a substitute. Johnson & Johnson was faced with the dilemma to deal with the problem without destroying the reputation of the company and its most profitable product. They used Remediation and
Rectification, both forgiveness strategies, which is a strategy that seeks to win forgiveness from the various publics and create acceptance for the crisis. Negative feelings by the public against Johnson & Johnson were lessoned as the media showed them take positive actions to help the victims’ families. The company’s first actions were to immediately alert consumers across the nation, via the media, to not consume any type of Tylenol product. Although Johnson & Johnson knew they were not responsible for the tampering of the product, they assumed responsibility by ensuring public safety first and recalled all of their capsules from the market. Johnson & Johnson’s willingness to accept losses by pulling the Tylenol product developed sympathy with the public.
We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret. ~Earl Nightingale
1. Before the crisis, Johnson & Johnson had not actively sought press coverage, but as a company in crisis they recognized the benefits of open communications in clearly disseminating warnings to the public as well as the company’s stand (Broom, 1994). Several major press conferences were held at corporate headquarters. Within hours of the crisis, an internal video staff set up a live television feed via satellite to the New York metro area. This allowed all press conferences to go national. Jim Burke got more positive media exposure by going on ‘60 Minutes’ and ‘The Donahue Show’, and giving the public his command messages (Fink, 1986). 2. Tylenol products were reintroduced in triple-seal tamper resistant packaging. It became the first company to comply with the Food and Drug Administration mandate of tamper-resistant packaging. (Mitchell 1989). Furthermore, they promoted caplets, which are more resistant to tampering. They also developed new random inspection procedures before the shipment of Tylenol to retailers. 3. In order to motivate consumers to buy the product, they offered a $2.50 discount coupon on the purchase of their product. They were available in the newspapers as well as by calling a toll-free number (Mitchell 1989). J&J dropped more than 80 million newspaper coupons good for $2.50 off any purchase of Tylenol, and sent its army of sales representatives from all divisions of the company to ask doctors and pharmacists to rec-
ommend
the
brand.
4. To recover the loss in market availability of physical stock from the crisis, Johnson & Johnson made a new pricing program that provided a 25% discount to retailers who agreed to buy as much Tylenol as they had before the crisis. (Mitchell 1989) 5. Over 2250 sales people made presentations to the medical community to restore confidence in the product. (Mitchell 1989) On the company’s credo written in the mid 1940’s, Robert Wood Johnson stated that the company’s responsibilities were to the consumers, the medical professionals using its products, its employees, the communities where its people work and live, and its stockholders. Therefore, it was essential to maintain the safety of the public to keep the company alive. Johnson & Johnson’s sense of responsibility to its public proved to be its most efficient public relations tool. It was the key to the brand’s survival. Scholars have come to recognize Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the Tylenol crisis as an example of success when confronted with a threat to an organization’s existence. Berge lauds the case in the following manner – “The Tylenol crisis is without a doubt the most exemplary case ever known in the history of crisis communications. Any business executive, who has ever stumbled into a public relations ambush, ought to appreciate the way Johnson & Johnson responded to the Tylenol poisonings. They have effectively demonstrated how major businesses should handle a disaster.” The Tylenol case was the bases for many of the crisis communications strategies developed by researchers over the last 20 years. Berg’s Suffering strategy and Benoit’sRectification strategies both were developed from doing case studies of how Johnson & Johnson handled the Tylenol poisonings.
Tylenol’s market share rebounded sharply in 1983, as Mr. Burke led an aggressive marketing effort to reintroduce the product in its new triple-seal packaging. Tylenol’s share of the $1.3 billion internal analgesics market fell from nearly 37% before the crisis in 1982 to under 7% during the depth of the crisis and recall in 1982. By September 1983, after a TV campaign on the theme of “You Can Trust Us” that the company had launched early that year, the share was back up to 29%. The Tylenol crisis is used as a classic example of a company that came back from rock bottom to win back its market and go on to improve customer trust. The effective management led by James Burke dealt with the crisis using sympathy and forgiveness strategies. Despite the predictions by many market experts that the Tylenol brand was all done for, Johnson & Johnson weathered the storm. Just like the phoenix rises from the ashes of its past self and once again restarts it mystical growth into a creature of beauty, similarly Tylenol weathered its downfall from the crisis, rose back to claim its lost market and is now again the market leader of the pain killer segment. Mr. Burke, in his interview for Lasting Leadership, famously quoted for saying, “Trust has been an operative word in my life. [It] embodies almost everything you can strive for that will help you to succeed. You tell me [if ] any human relationship works without trust, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a social interaction; in the long run, the same is true for business.” Johnson and Johnson first won the trust of the media by being truthful and not selling half-truths to salvage its sales. This resulted in a positive media coverage of the crisis rather than one that might have eroded the company’s image further. They then went onto recapture the trust of the consumers which is what restored them to their previously owned position as market leaders.
The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same. ~Colin R. Davis
62 | 63
chaitanya aggarwal
chaitanya | expert speak is going to make money. The also consider the exit strategies, whether I’m going to sell it or go for an IPO or merge with another business. Is it going to produce enough cash flows that it will produce enough dividend for my investors? What is the vision? How will investing $1today give me $10 tomorrow? You should have very sharp answers to convince the investors. A passionate answer would not suffice. You need to differentiate your business and think big. Is the concept of social selling at Juvalia just a different name for multilevel marketing? Social selling comes from the merger of three different aspects. First, for
Chaitanya Aggarwal What triggered you to start a venture just after graduation? I started while I was in college in the first year. I was 17 and the family business was going south. I just jumped in, you might say, due to family obligations or a sense of responsibility. As I had grown up in an environment where business was discussed day in and day out, you kind of are trained from birth. It came naturally. The first venture that I started when I was 19 came out of the logic that you will be able to create a lot more wealth by having many people operating under you than if you don’t. Today it seems
a very smart decision but at that point of time it seemed like the right thing to do. Anything you build you need to make sure that it is sustainable. The single biggest mistake that we make is copying. The Intellectual Property (IP) in the business world today is tremendous. Using the moat concept (metaphor of a moat around a castle), businesses need a moat to survive. Whenever you jump into entrepreneurship make sure the business has a sustainable IP. If you are creating a me-too product than you would have a metoo business which at some point of time is going to be copied.
Funding is the nightmare for a startup or entrepreneur. You have been associated with some of the Venture Capitalists. How to you think is the expectation of a VC fund from an entrepreneur. What are the challenges a start-up faces. The expectation of any VC firm is please make a lot of money! They also see whether the market’s good, is it scalable, the amount of competition, the business model and lastly the team you are working with. They ask whether these people can actually deliver what they promise to do and how the venture capital
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. ~Ralph Nader
some reason girls never go shopping alone. If they are trying something then it is important that everyone approves. Even if one person disapproves the buying decision is over. There is an element of trust involved in taking the person along with you. We said, who would you trust the most when it comes to fashion? Somebody you look towards for fashion advice. The second thing is social selling which was the aim of Style Show, which is the crux of our business. Here you are creating a shopping experience in a house, office or anywhere. The idea is to perform peer to peer selling. For direct selling, every stylist in Juvalia has a personal website. We acquired people offline but we migrated them on-
line. Every order in Juvalia is entered on the website. You have an app to place the order quickly. We have basically digitized the Multi-level marketing. We have brought technology to an industry which for years known as the grandmothers’ industry. Social selling is way to bring all three together. We are the first multilevel marketing company to ship directly to the customer. If you are a stylist, Juvalia is in the middle, you place an order and the product is shipped directly to the customer and the commission is credited to the stylist’s account at the end of the month. Do you think being a first mover gives Juvalia an advantage?
Yes it does help because I am not grabbing someone’s market share but creating a market. It is an industry that nobody really knew. We are actually going out and educating people. In Shillong we have got around 500 stylists. Who would think such a large workforce exists in a city like Shillong? You have created a market who have adopted a product and a way of doing business. As long as you continue to provide the experience and the product it doesn’t matter what the distribution is and what the entry barriers are. The e-commerce industry is growing rapidly. There’s a low entry barrier. How do you see the
challenges and opportunities for Juvalia in the coming future? The low entry barrier in e-commerce is distribution. That is the only thing the e commerce is providing that’s new. There is no capital expenditure in online business; anyone can create a website. If we look at the supplier side, what matters is whether or not you have created a different product or a brand experience. If you have created something that your customer will repeatedly come back for then the distribution is almost inconsequential. You don’t go to makemytrip just because it is online but because you know you will get the cheapest price.
Looking at almost all of the ecommerce start-ups in India, the sustainability of the businesses is being debated. As of now Juvalia does not have competition but when it kicks in, when the big brands get into the imitation jewelry business, what will be your strategy to have a sustainable business model. A lot of large vertical or horizontals, the Flipkarts and Amazons are looking at scale to break even. The market is growing exponentially. The adoption curve is incredibly steep. They are at the first stage of business where they are acquiring customers. Flipkart started its business with books and electronics where
The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. ~Bruce Lee
64 | 65
chaitanya aggarwal
there is a very low probability of you being dissatisfied with the products. They give great discounts and service. So you became an adopter. Now they are moving into apparel and accessories. They have got many customers and daily visitors. Now I will give them the product that I know I can make money from. Now Flipkart has become a destination. When it becomes a destination
cult for the ecosystem to make money. We can say at the end, maybe in 8 or 10 years, there will be only two or three players who will lord over the market. If the investors decide that will take the profitability route it will happen in the next two or three years. If they decide upon a winner takes it all strategy, it will take another 5 years. The only thing that is sure is, it is a good time for the shopper.
Talking about consumer behavior, we see that nowadays consumers are more vocal. Juvalia is in fact capitalizing on peer reviews. How do you see the challenges in acquiring and retaining consumers and living up to their increasing expectations? I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the consumer behavior has changed. My mothersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; used to love haggling. We love discounts and discounts are the way to go. That is what we have capitalized on. Consumer knowledge has changed significantly. Consumers have much better access to information today. You just ensure three things: great product, great product, great product. That is what matters at the end. Also you need to ensure that the brand matches your values. Again, that changes because the brand values keep changing. You need to make sure that your brand remains an aspiration for the people you are targeting. What valia
you are going to go there and buy mineral water and phones. You are also going to go buy suits, which is where they will recover the money they lost on mineral water and phones. E-commerce is going to become profitable when there is scale. The second thing which is important is that as of now there is a price war. Till it ends the ecosystem is not going to make money. The situation is similar to the Cola war between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. They had a crazy marketing strategy wherein they brought down the prices to very low levels. The same thing is going to happen here till they all decide that they are here to make money, which is fundamental reason why a business is run, it will be very diffi-
Coming back to Juvalia, I genuinely believe that reason to do business is make money. You got to have profitable and sustainable business. There is fine balance between growth and profitability and efficiency. You need to decide which one you are going to compromise on. If you grow furiously you will compromise on efficiency. If you become very efficient you will compromise on growth. If the products are accepted, there is no competition and category is good, then you need to decide what the equilibrium you are going to get is. I feel that in the next 12 to 18 months we will start moving into the zone where it is more about profitability and sustained business as opposed to focusing just on hyper growth.
is the vision of Juin next 2-3 years?
First is to make sure that the entire country is covered. The second is technology. There will be a convergence of technologies: I call it SOLOMO i.e. social, local and mobile. How this will happen is the question. Your mobile is going to become all the more powerful. In the social domain, we are increasing our use of Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and using word of mouth to reiterate our purchase decision. For example, Airbnb is a 10 billion dollar start-up that uses the power of network to sell room nights. Local, I feel the maximum amount of innovation is going to occur here and then they are going to converge together. When I move into a hotel someone should be able to tell me these are the restaurants that you can go to along with the Zomato reviews. That is how shopping is going to happen. When is the question but when it does I want to make sure that we cover it.
Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time. ~George Bernard Shaw
COVER STORY
the cover story
digital darwinism | dibyajyoti & rahul goyal | iim shillong Africa. As far as the revolutionary movement of India is concerned, the foundation was not laid by guns and explosives but by newspapers. The 60s ushered in the era of the television. It was the most powerful and exciting means of communication devised by mankind before the arrival of Internet. The audio-visual format was a much needed and appreciated improvement on the audio-only format of the radio. During the 80s when the foundation of the Internet was being laid, very few would have bet that 20 years down the line it would become the most powerful media tool. Today Internet has become the convergence of all mediums of communication. It has become the epicenter of all information. The Media Industry is moving towards digitization and it has opened up a world of opportu-
Digital Darwinism Dibyajyoti Saha and Rahul Goyal II M Shillong
“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” -malcolm X in the world. the last two decades, which has revHuman Being is a curious creature Media as we know it today was not olutionized the whole landscape of and has always showed interest in always like this. Like any other liv- the Media Industry. what happens around him. Media ing organism, Media also had to go There was a time when Newspaper has been as an integral part of our through the stages of evolution. A used to be the whole and sole of daily life from a long time ago. This lot has taken place from the incep- Media Industry. It was the prime inwas responsible for the empower- tion of mass media by Gutenberg, strument of nationalist movements ment of human race. It has evolved majority of which has happened in of countries such as India and South to become the most powerful entity You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them. ~Michael Jordan
of this changing trend and adapt accordingly. Social Media has transformed how businesses interact with customers. There has been a shift of power from the businesses to the consumers and the consumers have gained the right to be heard. Businesses can no longer ignore the fact that Social Media as a tool is the future of modern business. Customers own brands now. Social Media channels represent a huge opportunity for businesses in terms of word of mouth referrals. Social Media removes the barriers that existed in the past in traditional word of mouth such as location, time and access. In 2004, Facebook happened and within a decade it has changed the way we interact with the world around us. It has created a virtual world which mimics our interactions
outside world and feel threatened that they may fall in the trap of the content that they knowingly or unknowingly share on social media front and which might get circulated and prove to be embarrassing and disastrous at the same time. This fear gave birth to Snapchat which allows users to set a 1 second to 10 second expiration of the content. So, users can send time limited content that gets automatically deleted after the time frame. It has transcended teen sexting and has become a valuable tool for people to manage the overabundance of media in their lives. On the contrary there are people who would like to share their secrets with the outside world but still would like to maintain anonymity. For them, Whisper, a two-year-old secret-sharing app was created which doesn't disclose user numbers. Write a few
“Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. --Qualman nities for entrepreneurs. The earlier they realize it the better positioned they would be in the future. Emergence of Social Media and relevance in today’s scenario When Canadian computer programmer Jonathan Abrams came up with the concept of Friendster there were hardly any virtual communities for networking. Little did he know that it would be the foundation of a revolution so strong that it would disrupt the whole landscape of the Media Industry. The manner in which human beings communicated with each other has gone through a tremendous change since the emergence of Social Media. The dynamics of human relationships has taken on a new perspective. Today, companies have to take note
in the real world. When the question was posed to a large audience that ‘why they use Facebook’, many replied that they want to stay connected to their friends all around the world, they want to stay updated with latest happenings in the lives of their loved ones and others use it as a medium for gossip. Blogs are phasing out, social media sites that enable rendering short messages such as Twitter and Whatsapp are gaining more and more ground. Twitter showed us the power of brevity. It taught us how we can fit the world of information in 140 characters. With more than 430 million monthly active users, Whatsapp is no longer a new kid on the block. It has gained momentum and is now a must for every smartphone user. There are people who do not like to share certain secrets with the
lines, choose an accompanying photo, and release your secret into the world. Fellow users can "heart" the images, and a staff of guardian editors keeps the tone positive. Redifining the Indian Media Landscape
The fast paced lifestyles along with the urges to stay connected with the world have led to rampant developments in the mobile phone market. We have seen a surge in the use of smart phones which has necessitated development and delivery of mobile campaigns, mobile apps and mobile ads. Founded in 2003, Mobile2Win have established them-
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ~Herman Melville
68 | 69
the cover story
selves as first movers in the India Mobile VAS (value added services) space and started to develop and deliver mobile campaigns, mobile apps and mobile ads for its customers. Consequently, it has emerged as a leader in providing the ultimate mobile experience to its customers. The first Indian Idol voting platform had been successfully handled by them (and ever since) and Sony India has made them a long-term partner. Many industry segments such as FMCG, Retail, Banking & Finance, Insurance, Manufacturing, Automobiles, Healthcare, Telecommunications and Media have been partnering with them to conceptualize and deliver mobility strategies. They have already worked with brands like Nestle, Pidilite, Epson, Max Life, Whirlpool, Ceat among others for their mobile initiatives.
The touch screen features have become commoditized; they are no longer a point of differentiation and have rather become a point of parity. Hand held device manufacturers across the world are looking at ways to differentiate their offerings from the competitors in order to imbibe brand loyalty amongst their customers. Interpretation of human gestures and understanding of human emotions is the new fad. Cube26 is the maker of gesture technology which allows devices to recognize users and interpret their gestures. One year back it started shipping “Look away to Pause” technology, integrated with default android video player, and later it developed features like “air swipe” to change music, take picture, and browse through gallery pictures. Its gesture recognition software runs using just the standard sensors available in phone making it a formidable player with respect to competition. It is working on a self-funded model with founders investing their own money and
digital darwinism | dibyajyoti & rahul goyal | iim shillong revenues flowing as license fees collected on a per device basis. Within this short span of one year, it has already signed deals with 6 Indian local OEMs including Micromax and it has surpassed the one million mark in terms of devices containing its gesture control software. It is looking forward to expand the application of its proprietary algorithms spanning video player and other spheres of smartphone experience.
Pinstorm has changed the way organizations view their advertising spends in the digital space by building 100% accountability. They do it on the brand awareness front through display campaigns, web and mobile presence, online communities, viral advertising and the like; on the response front, through search engine marketing, search optimization, SMS, WAP, email marketing and more. This has helped it to become a leading pay-for-performance marketing firm and being awarded the prestigious “Red Herring Global Top 100” award at a ceremony in San Diego, USA in Jan’14. Founded in 2004, it was among the first pay-for-performance digital marketing firms worldwide. Pinstorm has grown to be India’s first multinational ad firm, with 6 offices across 4 countries. Pinstorm offers digital brand management services to brands like Nestle, HSBC, ICICI, NIIT, Standard Chartered, Yahoo!, Jet Airways and CNN.
Founded in 2012 with the aim to democratize information related to media options for mid-sized companies including small enterprises, which
don’t have access to media agencies, The Media Ant has become a popular Marketplace that brings advertisers and offline media owners together. Mayank Bidawatka, Samir Chaudhary and Mukesh Agarwal co-founded this company to create a single platform to help users with all of their media challenges. By creating an ebay of sorts for the advertising world, The Media Ant is creating a platform to get the two crucial elements the “advertisers” and the “media owners” in a single place. It is a culmination of online and offline mediums to not only connect these elements but also provide some consultancy in order to identify best options for their businesses. They are working to remove the inefficiencies in media business and are trying to bridge the gap that has been created out of the information asymmetry. They are providing information for suitable media options for the brand/product of the advertiser. It updates them with more than 3000 media options and offers them media at discounted rates. Media owners can list their media on the portal for free and can use The Media Ant as their free online sales channel. It charges 15% commission on the media spends from the media owners.
attention. It would be a fierce fight of content and innovative ways to deliver the same in order to grasp the audience’s attention. Customer managed relationships will foster the foundation for “connect”, personalized communications, tailored to ones needs. Social media will create the wealth of information in terms of Big Data. CRM tools will refine it to bring the world at fingertips.
Gone are the days of bulky monitors and large screens, the future belongs to small screens of smart phones, phablets and tablets. People will like to stay mobile and would like to carry their daily dose of entertainment in their pockets. Apps market will continue to boom. Media companies focusing on user generated mobile content and innovating in the social media today, will bore the profits tomorrow. A strong
focus on glocalization instead of globalization to create new markets will increase the reach. Integrating marketing efforts across media vehicles and channels would be a good proposition. The paradigm shift is underway and the companies which are not reading the signs will be left behind.
“Opportunities in social media marketing seem boundless; the best do not seek to disrupt conversations but to integrate – to add something useful and compelling.” -- Nuri Djavit, Founder and CEO, Last Exit
The Future of Media On one hand the attention spectrum of consumers is on the rise and on another, their attention is getting fragmented. This is resulting in a fragmented audience, and hence, creating an uphill task for the marketers to aggregate them for targeting. Consumers no longer want to be the passive receivers but are emerging as active participants in generating content and forming networks to make their voices heard. The convergence of digital media and technology will felicitate the blurring of boundaries between the traditional media and the new media. The media will be shaped by digital bits and Internet Protocol delivery which will have plentiful of distribution and scarce audience’s
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it. ~Washington Irving
Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. ~John R. Wooden
70 | 71
akosha
TURNING ADVERSITY INTO OPPORTUNITY | ANKUR SINGLA | CEO AKOSHA
Turning adversity into opportunity Ankur Singla CEO, Akosha
Akosha is an online consumer forum platform for consumers to lodge their complaints against any brand in India. It takes up the consumer complaints with the escalation departments at leading brands. If a consumer does not get a resolution to their complaint and insists on approaching a consumer forum, then Akosha helps the consumer in approaching consumer court across India by providing them the required assistance.
I started my professional career with Linklaters in London as a corporate law advisor after I graduated from NLS, Bangalore. The work was decent and life was cushy but there was still something that was missing – I was never in the thick of the action; always at the fringes. After a point, the long-
ing to do something on my own got too much to contain and I quit three months before the end of my contract. I came back to India and asked my father for a room in his office where we, I and an MCA grad from Delhi University, could work from. We started off in
September 2009 with a very different idea. The plan was to sell legal documents online which was a bit similar to LegalZoom in the USA but we decided to start with wills in the beginning and called our venture wasiyat.com. We just closed ourselves in a room and
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” ― Lou Holtz
started working. In the early days, we hadn’t heard of the minimum viable product concept and continued to build features. I collected information on major startups from blogs around the world and tried to understand what went on behind them. We wanted to build for scale and used to ask ourselves questions about the robustness of our website. We kept working and built the product in about 6 months and then launched it by sending it to 20-30 friends. The responses were that it did not appear too good and chances of anyone buying a will online were very low in India. Since the wills idea had not really worked out, we thought that maybe it was time to try out a few other documents focusing on consumers and small businesses. We also did some Google search keyword analysis and came up with 4 documents like wills, rent agreements, power of attorneys and employment agreements. As all this was happening, someone suggested us that we should also offer consumer complaint help for Indian consumers. Though there was skepticism in the beginning because I thought it was all too complex as the simplicity of computer generated documents wasn’t available then. However, we still decided to add it because we weren’t making much revenue anyway. We got complaints from few customers but we still had no clue about what lay ahead. Around this time, two lucky things happened. First, I had a really bad customer experience with Airtel and I so wished that someone could have handled that whole experience of calling, waiting, speaking with an incompetent agent, trying to escalate but unable to, call dropped in the middle, and the starting again from the beginning for me. The thought that came was that I wouldn’t even mind paying for such a service. The second stroke of luck was when Rediff reached out to us saying that they liked what we were doing and wanted to write about us and they went on to write this really nice story titled ‘How this startup simplifies law for the common man’. We got a LOT of traffic in a single day. Everyone clicked on the consumer complaint help button and then we knew that it was time to change our focus again. So, it was only a lot lat-
er and after lots of iterations that the current model of Akosha came about. We started Akosha in its current form in October 2010 with an intention
of building India’s largest customer service platform. I needed to make sure that we are moving forward on the things that matter and that we are constantly improving and growing. I also needed to ensure that the team works together and that they have everything they need in order to make Akosha a long term success story. During this journey, the biggest obstacle I faced was getting a technical person on board. I wrote about it in detail in a blog entry titled – Saat Developer Maaf. After trying out seven developers, none of whom stayed for long, I got down to cold calling technical people who I felt could help me out. Finally, I was able to get my CTO after conducting 109 interviews! With some amount of luck and a lot of hard work, Akosha has come a long way. Starting with 10 customer service issues a day, we hit 100 daily issues in 2012, 600 in 2013 and today we get more than 2500 issues daily. From a single person in a 2 BHK in Kalkaji, Delhi, we have grown to 130 people with a nice office in Okhla, Delhi. Our vision for Akosha is to make it that singular
place where people facing all kinds of issues against all sorts of companies can come and file their complaint, with an assurance that something will be done about their problem. We want to
be a household name in that regard. My opinion about taking a step in the direction of entrepreneurship is that one should certainly go for it. Although as an entrepreneur, one always carries the risk of turning the prime years of your life into dust if the venture fails and a lot of effort is required in crafting a success story. Owing to the work that lay ahead, I couldn’t find the time to watch movies, meet friends, spend as much time with family or pay attention to my health. But these are things that you don’t even think about at that time because you are so absorbed in working for your true love – the venture. There is a lot of material already available related to startups. Go through them and you will be able to avoid the most common mistakes that young entrepreneurs make. Keeping at it and one will be able to break through most of the problems that most of us face. So, if you decide in the positive direction, then don’t hold back – give it your all and commit fully. You will regret it later if you don’t.
“When all is said and done, more is said than done.” ― Lou Holtzdan Belfort
72 | 73
specials
SUSTAINABLE CORPORATION | ASHMITA SENGUPTA & SURESH BOMMISETTI | NMIMS MUMBAI
Percentage of corporations still operating after 4 years 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
From Start-Up to a Sustainable Corporation BY Ashmita Sengupta & Suresh Bommisetti NMIMS-Mumbai
B
usiness start-ups are notoriously known for not lasting.In most cases one third of them won’t last beyond two years, while only half will remain after four; and finally just 29% start-ups will be functioning at the end of its tenth year of existence.
to offer. These small businesses are filling in almost every gap in the market imaginable. So then why do startups fail? Why do they find it difficult to sustain them?
In today’s age, with technology revolutionizing our understanding of innovation, it’s easier than ever for a start-up to germinate into a corporation. The lack of need for brick and mortar for someone to open up their new venture proves exactly this. Today all that you need to launch a company is a good idea and a medium in form of a telephone, website or even just a Facebook page.
The characteristics of any sustainable corporations are very similar at the elementary level. Sustainable entities conduct and govern themselves with ethics and transparency; they care for the well-being of their employees, value their customers, make eco-efficiency and resource-efficiency a priority and always look for growth through constant innovation. These value systems lead them to a state where they become averse to economic instability and sustain their brand image. Building such value systems and maintaining them are easier said
Such a scenario has led to the sudden boom of start-ups everywhere, across industries. There are start-ups with new products and new services
What makes a corporation sustainable?
than done. Before any start-up reaches such a state, they all broadly go through the same three stages of existence – 1.Create 2.Growth 3.Sustain
Create The inception of any start-up is on the basis of a good idea. Any entrepreneur worth his salt would ensure that his idea is addressing an unnoticed want of a consumer or a business. A basic misconception that occurs at this stage is that most entrepreneurs think that they’re selling their product and not the idea behind the product. This idea behind their product is the essence of their competence and the element that creates value. This is what forms their Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Beyond having clarity on your val-
“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”- Albert Einstein
ues, it’s essential to maintain a long term plan throughout your venture. This vision will ensure that your company’s growth direction remains in check. When something very critically important to your start-up is in question, the entrepreneur should be certain that this vision is engrained and appreciated by his team and not just himself. When Sushrut Munje, the founder of Hammer & Mop – a premier cleaning company is asked about the importance of a long term plan; he says, “The core idea with which I started has evolved multiple times already. Hammer and Mop is bigger than any of the team members, and it grows with each individual dash of personality. As times change, our growth plans and priorities change. Long term vision is crucial so you know where you’re headed, and the short term goals align with the objective. I hardly feel things can be achieved without a long term plan in mind.” When you have a clean slate at the start of your venture, the possibilities are endless. It is only natural that any entrepreneur would want to explore various ideas and try out new things. More often than not, following up on these choices will lead you away from your initial path. This digression will do any venture more harm than good at this nascent stage. Above and beyond the aforementioned points, the essential need for a start-up to survive and co-exist in a competitive environment is money.
Financials can pose as a problem for any start-up either as a scarcity or as an abundance. The solution to both these situations is judicious use and accountability for the money spent. Investing money at the right places and at the right time is paramount.
Growth Having crossed the initial hurdles, there comes a day when the company realizes that they’ve finally been able to put their footprint on the market. All of the efforts have finally been rewarded by the snowballing of their growth. This exponential growth, surplus attention and accolades are the venture’s first taste of success; but could possibly be the last. This first success comes with a false sense of security. It is vital for any venture to not let this false security lead them to a state of complacency. Remaining grounded and disciplined, at this stage, is key. This becomes an easier task once you have the right mix of people on your side. This sudden thrust into the limelight comes at a price. This attention will suddenly give birth to a flurry of imitators. These imitators are mostly driven with the sudden success of the venture, failing to realize the underlying efforts. It’s important to not get frazzled at such a juncture. Innovators, who have believed in your venture and catapulted you into the growth stage, are very important for your business. Impressing them with your product is not the end-all; creating a brand image
is just as important to turn these innovators into loyal customers and then rope in the early adopters as well, to slowly and steadily build your loyal customer base. Frustration, fear of failure, and heavy competition may lead to many ventures open to the idea of being acquired by a bigger fish. Looking at the other side of the coin, Sushrut Munje finds acquisitions as an “amazing way to exit.” He says that “For many, being a lifestyle or a serial entrepreneur is a matter of choice, and I’m keen on being the latter.”
Sustain At the last level, to achieve a measure of sustainability, innovation is key. Not just innovation in terms of your product – but also to be socially responsible, achieve a high level of production line efficiency and adopting eco-friendly practices. This innovation need not only come from the founding team; when the concept of intrapreneurship is encouraged within a company it enables each employee to think differently and add value to the existing setup. From a financial stand point, it’s very important to have optimum balance of operating costs and profit margins. This enables the company to be averse to economic instability or any downturn in the industry. Being aware of your competitors is essential. Many of your competitors may have arisen from the early set of imitators who might have approached the same idea as yours in a different way. To have a constant and consistent footprint in the market is essential, to ensure that you are not overtaken. At the end of the day, there is no template to achieve success. Every company takes its own path to success, but the few points mentioned above are the bare minimum every company needs to follow in its march towards sustainability. What the company chooses to do above and beyond that to reach success is what makes every company and its story unique.
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”- Ayn Rand
74 | 75
specials
INDIAN STARTUP ECOSYSTEM | CHAHAT SHAH & YASH KUSHAL SHAH | IIM SHILLONG year growth. I agree that the success rate is very low in startups but that is no reason to stop following your dreams. There are hundreds of success stories in India too and I strongly believe that if you give your heart and soul to something you can never fail in that. Naveen Tewari’s InMobi mobile ad network is one of the many great examples. Naveen and his team survived by paying the minimum due on about 14 credit cards (that’s right!), until they raised the initial capital to sustain themselves and grow. It was his persistence and belief that kept him going and now saying that InMobi is a brilliant success is an understatement.
‘Indian Startup Ecosystem’ Stil a long way from Silicon Valley BY Chahat Shah & Yash Kushal Shah IM Shilong
G
reg Chappell, a former coach of the Indian cricket team, said India lacked leaders because from an early age our parents make all the decisions for us, then it’s our schoolteachers and later in life we become so used to this idea that we always look at others to make decisions for us. This is one of the many problems that the young, restless entrepreneurial generation of ours is facing. We are expected to follow the traditions and the footsteps of our elderly and follow the safe path. The good news is that many among us are finally succeeding in breaking these chains and following our heart
& passion. The change in mindset is definitely a step in the right direction but the question that arises is whether it’s enough. Well, as you correctly guessed, NO. There is a need to provide an ecosystem that not only encourages people to work on their ideas but also ensure that these start-ups flourish to become corporate giants that provide jobs to thousands and improve the economy of the country. There is a huge difference between the kind of support that the start-ups receive here and in the west. The start-up culture is really flourishing in the US. They have
the Silicon Valley, home to thousands of startups, something which India also needs. We have a startup hub in Bangalore but it’s still not up to the mark. As mentioned above, people in India are scared to take risks because they have never been taught to take decisions on their own. They lack the confidence to face the consequences of their own decisions. The fear of failure is so much that we don’t even give it a try. Everyone suggests the safer route e.g. obtain an MBA education, get a good high paying job and stay happy with the 10% year on
The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”–Benjamin Mays
Another strong barrier is the amount of social pressure we have here in India. The common fears like – If I fail, my family will look down on me, my friends will make fun of me, society would react adversely if I start something like a dating app or a small food joint? It’s this social pressure which really scares everyone and one of the main reasons that brilliant students don’t even dare to think of starting something on their own. It is something that our western counterparts don’t even take into consideration. Their upbringing allows them to take their own decisions and bear the consequences without getting much affected by the society. My own sister (born & brought up in US) after completing her school, came and spent a year in India with an NGO as she needed more time to think about her future plans. I can bet that no Indian kid would ever even think of doing such a thing. This was all from the entrepreneurial side. Let us now look at it from the ecosystem we have, mainly focusing on the funding and the kind of ideas which find support. Every startup needs funding in its initial stage. Funding is comparatively easily available in the west than in India. I’ve worked for more than a year in a startup and that’s how I know how difficult it is to find funding here. Venture capitalists in the
US easily fund even crazy ideas like Snapchat, Twitter, Daily Candy, etc. during the stage of their inception but such ideas find no takers here. The VCs here want a clear roadmap of revenue from day one. When Snapchat rejected Facebook’s offer of $3 billion, there was a lot of buzz and gossip. “Are they crazy?” was a common reaction about them in India. India also has some really good startups with pretty decent valuations but we haven’t seen any monstrous success. There is an underlying reason behind the success of startups in the US. To sell “crazy ideas” revenue is never a problem. Some of the biggest examples are Google, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare and Lightbox. There is a large list of ideas which on the face of it looks ridiculous but are definitely worth investing in. Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal, announced the Thiel Fellowship in September 2010. He paid $100,000 to the selected candidates to not complete their college education. He wanted students to think big and create world-changing companies instead of wasting their talent at school and being burdened by an “incredible amount of debt”. I am not saying that everyone should drop out of college. If you have a really good idea or if you are really passionate about something you should surely give it a shot. People in the US have an easy access to cash. And yes, it’s probably ‘easy’ to obtain at least the seed capital. When the co-founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, visited a cocktail party of one of the start-ups in Silicon Valley, he got an opportunity to meet two people from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. One of his colleagues from Google, where he worked earlier, introduced them. Systrom writes on Quora, “I showed [them] the prototype, and we decided we’d meet up for coffee to talk about it. After the first meeting, I decided to take the dive and leave my job to go solo and see if Burbn (which would eventually be-
come Instagram) could be a company. Within the two weeks of leaving, I raised $500k from both Baseline and Andreessen Horowitz, and started working on finding a team.” VCs in India are still not as mature as their counterparts in the west. They still don’t ask the right questions. Take the example of users vs. revenue. When people pitch their ideas to the investors here, the first question the investors ask is how you will earn. If the same pitch is made in Silicon Valley the first question will be how you will get the first 1000 users. This difference in the mindset affects the startup world. If you have your first 1000 users and you know how to grow the base, then finding a revenue stream is not a problem. Having a large number of users and not able to monetize them is a hypothetical problem. The problem is in getting the initial funds. Facebook, Twitter, and others have proven it, so why can’t we. But no, the investors here want to know up front how we plan to earn revenue. The real question here should be how we would grow rather than the revenue stream. In the words of Andrew Chen, the question should be “Could this product engage and retain 100s of millions of active users?” There is still some hope left and the scene is not as bad as it might sound. Budget 2014 has been good for Indian startups. Finance minister Arun Jaitley has allocated Rs 10,000 crore to develop a better startup ecosystem in the country, much to the joy of all the young entrepreneurs. Indian start-ups are finding takers from the US, Japan etc. This will make the Indian VCs also change their mindset, though the process will be slow and gradual. I would like to close this article with one of my favorite quotes by FarrahGray:
“Build your own dreams, else someone else will hire you to build theirs”
“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.”–William Arthur Ward
76 | 77
specials
LIFE CYCLE OF AN ENTREPRENEUR | HARDIK SHAH | IIM SHILLONG
of time it becomes the part of the individual’s life Thought process to generate a solution Once an individual identifies a problem and decides to solve the problem, he is through the first stage of the entrepreneurship lifecycle. In this stage, individuals need to do the most difficult part which is ideation. We believe that though it has been used many times, the concept of “out-of-the-box” thinking for problem solving has a very fundamental flaw: • Out-of-the-box thinking is really difficult to come by • Most problems can be solved through common sense and does not call for an out of box thinking
Figure 1: Life Cycle of an entrepreneur
Life Cycle of an Entrepreneur Hardik Shah II M Shill ong
“Life of an entrepreneur is one that is full of ambitions with a trade-off between high risks and high returns”
L
ife of an entrepreneur is one that is full of ambitions with a trade-off between high risks and high returns. In a way each and every individual is an entrepreneur in his/her own regard because each one of us deals with risk vs. return tradeoff in our
day to day life sometimes by choice and many times otherwise. However, the life of an entrepreneur goes well beyond the traditional theories of risk and return. Empowered by ambitions, an entrepreneur is one who thinks like a leader, who is
innovative and processes abilities to either come up with new ideas or apply existing ideas to newer dimensions of life and makes a living out of the same. The life cycle of an entrepreneur in its simplest form consists of the following phases:
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”–Maria Robinson
• This problem would be faced by many and I need to do some thing about it which would help not only me but “many others”
To bring the above points home, we would like to reiterate the famous incidence of writing notes in space: where while the Americans spent millions of dollars to design a zero-gravity pen while the Russians used a pencil instead.
Identification of a problem: The above stages of lifecycle are misguiding!This is because it gives the impression that a thought process can easily be developed while designing The individuals who have the fourth the solution to a problem. However in thought process or method of today’s world people find it more diffi thinking are partial entrepreneurs. Here we recommend a logical and cult to identify the problem rather step by step process of thinking; thanlookingforasolution.We sayprob Why problem identification is so many times the repeated questionlems exist everywhere and anywhere- difficult? ing of each level of the problem can but identifying a problem and con- • Usually this happens because throw light on a solution to a probverting it to a real challenge for which people take things the way they lem while many other times the solutions could be figured out to im are instead of questioning why solution may require more detailed prove the life of many is still a task that things are the way they are in analysis. In the existing literature, is tamed only by the entrepreneurs! the first place. The problem is it is recommended that it is always The individual who identifies a probwith the inherent mentality of better to divide the problem into lem typically has one of four thought human beings of avoiding the pieces and work on individual piecprocesses running in his/her mind: questioning by stating: “It was es one at a time. But we suggest to • This is just a problem for me and there when I got here” and this go one step further: it is good to not all are bothered by it and mode of thinking ignores the have the problem divided into small hence there exists no solution to cause of the problem even when pieces which makes it easier to work tame the problem it could be easier to solve in the upon them but equally important is • This is just a small problem and first place to have a bird’s-eye view on entire the cost of finding a solution for solution to the puzzle so that we can the problem would be far more • This also happens because of rest assured that the way we dividthan bearing and living with the people’s attitude of “living with ed the problem, we can also come problem it” towards the problem. This up with a solution which could be • This is the way of living but not prevents people from thinking merged again. an actual problem, if I change of a problem with the the pur my style of living the problem pose of solving it. Instead, they would no longer persist part with it and over a period 78 | 79 “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.”–William Arthur Ward
specials
STARTUPS SMES AND BUDGET | MOHIT KUMAR & KAUSHAL SINGH | IIM SHILLONG
Taking the solution to the masses A solution designed should be easy, affordable and accessible and nowadays secure to the target segment in order to extend the solution to the mass and realize the ultimate dream of providing solution for the masses. This is necessary in order to make organizations profitable. We have discussed and debated a lot about the concept of “economies of scale” in management books; it is at this place when it comes into actual practice. It is because of this reason that whenever a product is designed it should be tried, tested and experienced from multi-stakeholder perspective because that would give the various scenarios in which a product would be used and experienced.
However, a product design which is easy and accessible at the same time should be difficult to copy by the competitors else the vision of long term sustenance would be threatened. This is done with the help of patents, copyrights, trademarks etc. It is this dual nature of offering which makes this step complicated and life of an entrepreneur challenging! Re-visit and improve solution to changing needs It is a well-known fact that only “change” remains constant. People change, environments Change and so does the problem addressed or to be addressed. If an entrepreneur does not keep his/her offering up to date with the changing needs, it takes no time for the offering to wither. This problem is more pertinent in modern society where invasion of technology has made the product lifecycle smaller and smaller day by day. It is at this place that “core competencies” of a company becomes “core rigidities” and “product myopia” causes resistance to change and ultimate phase out. In order to avoid this, it is necessary for an entrepreneur to be clear about the assumptions about environment, regulatory conditions, customers, competitors (and all and any other stakeholders which can affect the product demand) which were made by him/her while designing the product offering and continuously see if they still hold true. If they are violated it is essential to revisit the offering as the very base on which product design took place becomes irrelevant. Think of a scenario where firms are coming out with cars running on fossil fuels which are on the verge of being exhausted while technology has already moved towards fuel cells and solar energy or hybrid cars. Though the design of the automobile may be perfect but would it be accepted in the market?
ality and the sustenance of this vision is what makes the entrepreneurship lifecycle and thereby the life of an entrepreneur challenging but thrilling and motivating.
QUIZ TIME 1. Which famous entrepreneur started off his billion dollar business by selling stolen gasoline to his army unit’s commission officers and later tripling the amount of a wedding gift by investing in the smuggling of black market goods? 2. This Padma Bhushan awardee left his first job at Cooper Engineering of the Walchand Group in Pune and began a company that made office copiers. This company later went to produce another product and became famous all over the country. Name the company 3. With an IQ of 144, many might be surprised at the career he has chosen for himself but he’s about the world’s most well-known personality in that field. He has recently launched a Youtube channel called the RIDE Channel. Who is he? 4. Whose first start-up, a web software company called Zip2 was sold to Compaq for US$341 million in 1999? ANSWERS 1. Roman Abrahamovich 2. HCL 3. Tony Hawk 4. lon Musk
Design and implementation of the solution Once an individual is ready with the “golden idea” which would empower him/her to solve the problem, he would be ready to enter the next stage of the entrepreneur lifecycle which is design and implementation. Research suggests that 30% of startups fail during the design stage while 40% of those who design successfully fail in the implementation of the stated solution. The main reason for this is that the design and implementation is a team activity and a complex task. It is here that the visioning and re-visioning exercise carried out by entrepreneurs come into play. An entrepreneur should be able to convey his or her idea to the team successfully because considering the number of tasks going on at a time. Entrepreneurs cannot concentrate on all the tasks with desired level of insights and the bird’seye view (discussed above) may fail to reveal the inconsistency between the various modules till the time it becomes too late. So we believe that an entrepreneur should first have the ability to sustain a long term vision for the company and secondly should be able to convey that vision to his team and make sure the team members continue their commitment and efforts with the core vision in place.
To conclude, entrepreneurship is a path of converting a vision to re-
“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”–Lyndon Johnson
Startups, SMEs and Indian budget 2014: A disconnect Finance ministry, during its budget speech, said, “SMEs form the backbone of our Economy” and rightly so. SMEs account for nearly 75% of employment and create a multiplier effect for the growth of the economy. If the Government of India wants to target fiscal consolidation and high GDP growth in coming years, problems in the SMEs and startups need to be addressed. While in the last few years, the SMEs and startups have suffered a setback due to the policy paralysis in the economic environment of the country, there were high expectations from the budget by this sector. But are the expectations met? Are the entrepreneurial concerns well addressed in the budget? Can SMEs be assured
Mohit Kumar and Kaushal Singh II M Shill ong of deliverables by the Govt.? Are we really considering SMEs and startups the back bone of the country? The answer to all these questions is ‘not really’. The budget, though, can be hailed for many steps taken or promised by the government but it largely lacks the desirable and concrete steps. The budget has clearly shown an intention for growth of entrepreneurs but then actions are required and not intentions. To lead an SME is undoubtedly a complex task and an entrepreneur faces tough challenges from every corner of business space. One of the challenges an entrepreneur faces is to compete with the already existing players. Already existing big market
players can play on credit but such thing is not possible for entrepreneurs. In case they provide goods on credit or in case of defaults, the venture goes bankrupt. There is an utter need of an organization for them which could handle and resolve such issues in a given time period. Another problem SMEs face is how to market and sell their products. With a tough competition from China, the problem has become worst. Not only is there a no-level playing field for new players but the existing players are also moving out. Though the Finance Ministry has taken steps at product level like exempting EVA sheets, solar back sheets, solar tempered glass, etc. from excise duty, these are concentrat-
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”–Winston Churchill
80 | 81
specials
ed only towards the sector of solar energy. Others steps like reducing basic customs duty on LCD and LED TV panels of below 19 inches from 10 percent to Nil, exemption from SAD on inputs/ components for PC manufacturing, imposition of education cess on imported electronic products for parity etc. are too little to give SMEs a head start in fighting our neighbors. Instead what is required is commitment and action for changing the draconian industrial laws which stops the entrepreneurs from encashing seasonal opportunities like woolen clothes in winters. Chinese firms have taken this advantage, due to flexibility in their industrial laws, by increasing the proportion of workers on temporary contracts. The environment in India is still not entrepreneur friendly and a lot needs to be done by govt. in that aspect. Needless to say, getting clearances, bureaucracy and litigation matters in India act as encumbrances in many sectors. Executive Director K. Srikrishna, National Entrepreneurship Network says in this regard, “If countries like Singapore can incorporate a company in a day, we should better it from the nearly 40 days it takes at present.” Being a technology loving person, a direction for a one stop E-platform for all the clearances and litigation matters within the given timeline was expected from the Prime minister but it is absent. Also, there are factors like high and multiple taxes in the initial phase of the startup that embezzles entrepreneurs and have not yet been addressed. The promise of implementing GST has been made but that promise has been an annual event for the last 5 years. This time proposal was expected to be backed by a fixed and trustable timeline. The buck does not stop here. On asking what would be the most difficult part in growing as an entrepreneur, Mr. Rajul Pratap, Co-founder and head, Operations & Marketing at After School Education Solutions, Faridabad, says that “One of the most difficult area for startup is hiring and retaining good talent because you are short of both (Money and Brand Name)”. Government could easily help in this by a simple verification of credibility of organization and linking various unemployment exchanges with startups like this. One of the major problems for any venture in its nascent stage is of the funds
life cycle of an entrepreneur | sudhanshu gupta | iim raipur required at each and every step. The government should be appreciated for its vision of addressing this problem. A fund of 10,000 crores for the SMEs and startups is a welcome step by government. If implemented with right intentions, the fund is expected to boost the entrepreneurial eco-system encouraging more private investments in the startups. However, the detail about implementation of the funds has not been shared and as such its effectiveness is yet to be analyzed. Another welcome step is setting up entrepreneur friendly legal bankruptcy framework for the SMEs to enable easy exit. This will provide incentive to many entrepreneurs but government should keep a close eye on numbers to see that they are not very high and that the framework acts only as an incentive and not the need. However, while there has been a push for IITs and IIMs by the government, the Entrepreneurship Development Institute is not talked about in the budget. We have just one EDI and that too is not being given the required attention when visionaries like our Ex-president and author of the book India Vision 2020, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam holds a view that “India needs employment creators not the employment seekers”. While USA produces entrepreneurial ventures like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp with a valuation of over $ 10 billion in each decade, India, a country with immense talent appears to be far behind. All these firms had something in common. These firms had founders with deep technical know-how and people who would take a sense of pride and respect in the work they were doing. But in India, people are given a meager amount, just enough to survive, during their researches. It then should not come as a surprise that researchers in India tend to get demotivated and lack the stature their counterparts in developed countries enjoy. The government needs to bring the change. It needs to provide a culture of entrepreneurship where good brains are encouraged and trained in the futuristic technologies like 3D printing, cloud computing etc. Only then can we expect a future for India envisioned by Dr. Kalam. To conclude, the government has tried with good intentions but the required
connect is absent. The need of the hour is to conduct an in depth analysis for the problems of SMEs and startups by the government. As the budget is prepared after a discussion with big industrials magnates, ministry of SMEs should form an organization with representatives from SMEs and start-ups and they should be appropriately taken into account while framing the budget and other policies. Only after achieving a strong connect like this, we can expect some ground breaking measures from the government that would help us to encash the much talked about demographic dividend of India. While USA produces entrepreneurial ventures like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp with a valuation of over $ 10 billion in each decade, India, a country with immense talent appears to be far behind. All these firms had something in common. These firms had founders with deep technical know-how and people who would take a sense of pride and respect in the work they were doing. But in India, people are given a meager amount, just enough to survive, during their researches. It then should not come as a surprise that researchers in India tend to get demotivated and lack the stature their counterparts in developed countries enjoy. The government needs to bring the change. It needs to provide a culture of entrepreneurship where good brains are encouraged and trained in the futuristic technologies like 3D printing, cloud computing etc. Only then can we expect a future for India envisioned by Dr. Kalam. To conclude, the government has tried with good intentions but the required connect is absent. The need of the hour is to conduct an in depth analysis for the problems of SMEs and startups by the government. As the budget is prepared after a discussion with big industrials magnates, ministry of SMEs should form an organization with representatives from SMEs and start-ups and they should be appropriately taken into account while framing the budget and other policies. Only after achieving a strong connect like this, we can expect some ground breaking measures from the government that would help us to encash the much talked about demographic dividend of India.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost
Life Cycle of an Entrepreneur: The Reality, the Challenges and the Mentality Sudhanshu Gupta IIM Raipur
Abstract- The article takes you Who has not imagined him/her- fade with a lucrative job offer from through the roller coaster ride of an self sipping a long island ice tea on ‘The bank’. Then, who are the people entrepreneur so buckle up the seat a hammock in the Bahamas with who have succeeded in doing what belts and let’s look at the real picture that Victoria Secret model, who has many have smitten to ash while trywhich isn’t so rosy. The article is also just jumped out of the ramp and is ing for, you ask. Let me take help about the multiple mental stages, eager to apply tan lotion on your from Gurbaksh Chahal, a serial enthrough which any common man/ chiselled muscular body? The asso- trepreneur on this one. He tweeted: woman will pass to attain the hal- ciated thought is ‘I don’t have that “When there’s an opportunity to lowed satisfaction from life like an ea- kinda money!’ Let me make it simtry something new and become ple. If your motivation behind the gle or to fade away against the winds like an ostrich. So, which one are you? entrepreneurship flare is money, a better person, don’t think twice. Introduction: The Bubble fame or status, it is likely that it will Be ambitious. Be open. #BeLim82 | 83 You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky
specials
life cycle of an entrepreneur | sudhanshu gupta | iim raipur
itless.” @gchahal 24 July2014 So, if you have the calibre to do it, if you think you can stand while others are on their knees, and most importantly, if you have that ‘Next Big Idea’, entrepreneurship is your ship to sail. The Bird Hypothesis The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of entrepreneurship is freedom. Freedom to fulfil my dreams, freedom to make decisions, freedom to fly. So, let me classify the population into various types of birds: Everybody starts as a Sparrow. No experience on the field and we just have a faint idea about flying. We sure have some feathers on our back but that is where our surety ends. But we have the horizon in our sights and a seed in our mind. Now, the sparrows can turn out to be any of the following: Eagles are the selected elite few who make it big the first time. Generally they do so with a lot of zeal, unmatchable hard work, sleepless nights of planning and a small pinch of luck. Ostriches run fast but that is all they do. Though it may seem initially that they might fly high, but with the first sign of trouble, they would either surrender or will run away. Enthusiasm is overwhelming in such people but as the old Chinese proverb goes, “Only amateurs think that enthusiasm will suffice.” Humming Birds are hardworking and consistent. They lack in charisma and out of the box thinking. They do not make it ‘large’ but they survive. Their attitude do not let them starve but they do not aim for apples either. Now, any of the above may become victim of situations and end up on the dinner table of fate, half-cooked. But some rise from the ashes and shine with glory. Phoenix are the long term players who seek knowledge and experience from life. They are the ones enjoying lemonade with life. But it comes at a cost. Some important years of life are full of struggle and all sorts of troubles.
It is very difficult to predict about someone or to categorize one in the above segments as the orientation is very much dependent on the circumstances faced by the individual. Expectation vs. Reality When you start thinking about the start-up seriously, surprises become as rare as palm trees in Kerala. Murphies will strike you on every nook and the corner of the maze and you need to be ready with your wits and guts to face them. Following is a comparison of the reality and the expectations of a yet to be entrepreneur. So, it seems that it is not that fun now. Though it is limited, you most certainly will enjoy the autonomy that comes with it. What more? You will see a direct proportional between the efforts and the rewards, unlike what is generally not experienced in the corporate world. The Life Cycle Learning to be a successful entrepreneur is like learning to ride a bike. You will have bruises and you will have cuts. But the end result is highly rewarding. It is the experi-
Expectations
Time - Success graph describes such multiple stages. Refer to Fig. 1. The Eureka Moment- There comes a moment when you think that you have found the ‘Next Big Idea’ and then come a lot of such déjà-vu moments. The first challenge is to filter those ideas and align your ideas with your passion.
Resource Accumulation - Now that
you have finalized your dream project, you start collecting the resources. It is not as easy a job as it seems. Raw material procurement may prove to be a back breaker. Maintaining the quality and sustaining the supply are the two most difficult tasks.
The Big -Bang - Now you enter the
market with an explosion and theme song playing in the back. There are two possibilities. First, the market will knock you out with an uppercut and simultaneous yawn on its face. Or, it will allow you to sit on the next table and will share some experiences like
Reality
My idea is unique. I am the first one to think it. My idea cannot fail. There is huge demand for the product.
It is highly probable that hundreds of others are thinking the same. Ideas are vulnerable to failure. Demand is dependent on multiple factors. I will be enjoying the monopoly in Now that you have paved the way, the region. many will follow easily. It will get easier. It NEVER gets easier. You may get habitual of the hard work. Or you may even start enjoying. I will be the CEO and I will not You will have to work as CEO and as a work 5 days in a week. Janitor. That too, more than anybody else. I will not compromise on my values It will be a miracle if you pull it off and believes at any cost. without a compromise, considering current scenarios. I will decide what to do and what Your strategy will often hinder your not to. childish ego based decisions. ence that teaches you and prepares you for the upcoming challenges.
As visible, those who have the passion for it, tried again and utilized their experience. The percentage of people who sought employment is also considerable as the ostriches are easy to spot. Are entrepreneurs born or made? The age old question of Nature vs. Nurture can be answered in a simple manner. There is no entrepreneurial gene which you can inherit to become successful. It depends on your perception and more importantly, your attitude towards failure and learning. For those who have got passion for autonomy and who want to change the status quo, the whole life cycle works as a repetitive assembly line or a revolving door.
Depending upon the genre of the plan (social, serial, or profit based), it is highly subjective and varies according to the plan and places, but a general pattern can be observed.
an oldie in a battered bar. This stage eliminates what are termed as ‘Fool-
The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart
Fig. 1
ish Entrepreneurs’ by the experts.
Sustenance
and
Expansion:
Just when you thought of taking a vacation in the Europe, the sudden realization of responsibilities overwhelm you. Now the entire project is so dependent upon you that leaving it is like leaving your two month old daughter in an under-construction building with a Rottweiler for its security.
- Business Today (May 29, 2011) The Eureka Moment Ver. 2.0 - Now that the beginner has evolved as the veteran, he has gained the confidence
The ever existing dilemma between the size and the quality again pops up. It is very difficult to maintain both. For example, Naturals Ice Cream, a Mumbai based company with an out of the box approach has not expanded out of the west coast. “The means Natural uses to enforce quality control, however, impose their own limits on the brand’s expansion. All the temperature control in the world cannot preserve the taste - and more importantly the freshness - of ice cream beyond a specified number of hours, during which Natural’s trucks can cover only a finite distance. This explains why Natural’s outlets are largely in Western India, and it has no outlet yet in the national capital, despite the obvious business opportunity Delhi presents. “The National Capital Region has remained an elusive destination,” admits Girish Pai, head of Retail and Production. “
Fig. 2
and the perception that is required for identifying the pulse of the market, he is able to look for the bigger picture. He has now reached the point where a new idea will pave the road ahead and their resilience and adaptability will take them far.
The Closure - It is possible that survival becomes the priority and the only way out is closure. Now, what happens to those who surrendered? Refer to Fig. 2.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.” - Peter Drucker
Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone
84 | 85
crossword
By Bharti Das
Incubator 14
Across
Down
3. Alan Turing played a major role in deciphering the codes the Germans developed using this machine in WWII
1. The maker of the Telecaster range of guitars
4. Creator of '2048', Gabriel______ 6. Started as PC’s Limited at the University of Texas, Austin 8. Asterix’s tribute to the creator of Mickey Mouse
2. Best known brand of the Inditex fashion group 5. Someone who takes an idea to its conclusion 7. The third founder of Apple who left 12 days after its formation, Ronald _____ 9. Sunshine Press of Iceland started this website
11. Former name of Google
10. Formerly the Computing Tabulating Recording Company
12. Set up in US in 1948, pioneered and popularized direct marketing
13. Programming language named after a famous British comedy group
16. Developed in 1888, billed as the world’s first commercial deodorant
14. Creator of the best-selling product ever 15. Invented the quadruplex telegraph
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
We value your comments/feedback. Send them to: e-cell@iimshillong.in Our website: www.icube-iimshillong.in
Š i-Cube, Entrepreneurship Cell, IIM Shillong