SECRETS OF BUILDING A WORLD CLASS BUSINESS
SEPTEMBER 2011 VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1 Rs 100
India PRENEURS The country’s top businessmen tell us about the struggle before the success
ALSO INSIDE
10 STARTUPS AND THE STORY OF THEIR FIRST 2 YEARS A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN ENTREPRENEUR
table of contents How
They
Did
66
46
it
Insights from India’s leading business leaders on how to deal with the ups and downs of the first 2 years of a startup’s life
36 AN ENTREPRENEUR’S INSTINCT By Ajay Piramal 52
50
40 CHALLENGES AND OBSTACLES By G M Rao 44 BORN AT MIDNIGHT By Ajit Balakrishnan
46 DON’T GIVE UP SO EASILY By Kiran Mazumdar Shaw 50 STRONG FAITH IN A GREEN FUTURE By Tulsi Tanti 52 THE FIRST TWO YEARS ARE CRITICAL By Raman Roy 54 SELLING DAKSH WAS A MISTAKE By Sanjeev Aggarwal 60 AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST By Phaneesh Murthy
36
66 TO CHANGE MIROFINANCE By Vikram Akula
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40 6 Intelligent Entrepreneur September 2011
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54
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A look at 11 startups that started their entrepreneurial journey exactly 2 years ago — and find out how they are faring today
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72 COMPARE THIS
88 OUT OF CONTROL
79 IT PAYS TO TEACH iProf offers a personal education tablet which delivers study material in multiple formats By Pranbihanga Borpuzari
92 RECHARGED AND READY Mobikwik aims to address the problems plaguing the telecom sector By Pranbihanga Borpuzari
80 AN IDEA CALLED IDEAKEN Two IT professionals branched out to start ideaken, a platform for collaborative innovation By Shonali Advani
94 PEOPLE POWER There is a dearth of practical literature for management professionals in India. People Matters aims to plug that gap By Pranbihanga Borpuzari
82 DELIVERING CONTENT
96 TAPPING SUCCESS Voicetap aims to solve all your problems by connecting you to an expert By Pranbihanga Borpuzari
A bunch of techies join forces to get local vendors online with Pricesbolo - a price comparison site By Shonali Advani
DIGITALLY EC Media has built an ecosystem around e-publishing, starting with its own device called wink By Shonali Advani
86 AN OPEN SECRET Hamara Guru gives job hunters a reallife preview of the happenings at their prospective organizations By Shonali Advani
79
iMO Controller is shutting down. Despite the paradigm shift it brought to PC gaming, where did the company go wrong? By Pranbihanga Borpuzari
82
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100 REMOTE CONTROL
TechSpan Engineering has implemented integrated remote monitoring solutions for the environment By Shonali Advani
102 YOUR SWEET TOOTH With Mithaimate.com, customers can have sweets delivered at their doorstep By Pranbihanga Borpuzari
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96 September 2011 Intelligent Entrepreneur 7
table of contents INSIGHTS 16 THE IMPORTANCE OF NON-LIFE INSURANCE Ranjeet S. Mudholkar on how to avoid possible losses on your assets 18 REACH FOR THE STARS
Richard Branson on the many reasons man must travel to space
20 PROFESSIONALIZATION:
A MARRIAGE OF VALUES Mitali Bose on how the right connection between the owner and professional can work wonders for a family business
22 WHAT’S THE GOOD WORD?
Nandini Vaidyanathan explains on how some common words can take an entirely different meaning in business
106
do it Team Entrepreneur captures in pictures and words a day with the men and women who are building the companies of our tomorrow 104 A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
24 SILENCE PLEASE!
AN ENTREPRENEUR Exciting, exhilarating, busy, worrying, fun, fun,fun By Prerna raturi
Bharat Banka on what reforms may bring to Indian business
110
106 I, ROBOT Ankush Chibber spends a couple of days in Ahmedabad sharing the hectic pace and success of Pulkit Gaur, Founder and CTO of Gridbots
110 SIGHTS AT SEED Pranbihanga Borpuzari spends a day with Anirban Roy, Founder and MD of SEED
118 25
INNOVATORS INC 118 THE SOLUTION TO THE INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA Ben Kaufman already has a successful startup track record. With Quirky, he’s tapped into the power of open innovation and created a place where anyone can become an inventor By Jennifer Wang
ď‚&#x; ď‚&#x; ď‚&#x;
India PRENEURS ! " ! ! ! ! !
25 TWO WINNERS; TWO METHODS Michael Dell and Ram Shriram. Top entrepreneur and top mentor. Both weigh in with their views on entrepreneurship with Shereen Bhan 127
REGULARS
YOUNG TURKS
COVER DESIGN
NIRMAL BISWAS
8 Intelligent Entrepreneur ď‚„ September 2011
10 FEEDBACK 11 RESOURCES 12 SME DOCTOR 134 BACKSTAGE
SPEND IT 127 QING UP
Audi wants a slice of the X1’s lucrative pie By Sirish Chandran
resources [Info that’s handy]
IIM KOZHIKODE E-SUMMIT 2011
I
ndian Institute of Management (IIM) Kozhikode will host Entrepreneurship Summit (E-Summit) on September 3 and 4, 2011, at IIM Kozhikode campus. The Summit seeks to facilitate interaction between venture capitalists, seasoned and upcoming entrepreneurs, academia and students of IIM Kozhikode. It will involve the participation of esteemed business leaders and will be an opportunity for startups to access IIM Kozhikode’s talent pool. E-Summit 2011 will include a gamut of activities such as entrepreneurial guest lectures, workshops, panel discussions with experts, startup fair, investment fair and the entrepreneurship train journey from Bengaluru to Kozhikode—Sahkarita Express. The Sahkarita Express is a one-of-its-kind initiative by any B-school to mark a foot forward on the journey towards entrepreneurship. Swapnil Dixit—co-founder of Tata Jagriti Yatra, Irfan Alam—founder of Sammaan Foundation and the winner of Business World’s Most Promising Entrepreneur Award, Mansukhbhai Prajapati—creator of Mitticool and listed in the Forbes seven most powerful rural Indian entrepreneurs, Shradha Sharma— founder of YourStory.in, one of the most followed online platform for first generation Indian entrepreneurs and also the online partner of CNBC TV18 Young Turks, Bipin Chandran— Editor of business magazine Entrepreneur of Infomedia18, the publishing arm of the
Network18 group and Siva Cotipalli—cofounder of Dhanax Microfinance will be part of the guest lecture series. Workshops on “How to expand your business” by Muralidharan R and on “How to reduce cost in a start-up business” by Mukesh Hans will also be conducted as a part of the summit. A panel discussion on “Raising investments for a startup business” with inspirational people such as Nitin Gupta, Nitin Agarwal, Vikhyat Srivastava and Avira Tharakan will also be held. Furthermore, an investment fair will be conducted, where IIMK students will help the invited startups to pitch in their funding requirements in front of venture capitalist firms. Meanwhile, the Sahkarita Express will witness active participation of students, entrepreneurs, startups, mentors and other stakeholders of society. During the journey, the participants will not only join in entrepreneurial discussions but will also contribute to the society by making the locations enroute cleaner and better. The journey will officially mark the launch of E-Summit 2011 at IIM Kozhikode. It will capture the institute’s vision to be a center of idea generation, facilitating social transformation and inclusive growth. Date: September 3 and 4, 2011 Venue: IIMK campus email: ecell@iimk.ac.in Website: http://esummit.iimk.ac.in.
STARTUP SATURDAY FOR REAL ESTATE ENTREPRENEURS
H
eadstart Network Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on creation of a startup ecosystem in India, is conducting an event for real estate entrepreneurs on September 10, 2011. The event is part of the organization’s project Startup Saturdays. Startup Saturdays are platforms where entrepreneurs, professionals and students are seen interacting with the veterans of the startup industry. The Startup Saturday interactions are held across nine cities on the second Saturday
of every month. The organization aims to research the trends of entrepreneurship in India and report top needs of a startup in India and regionwise trends on technology startups via this project. Date: September 10, 2011 Venue: SPJIMR, Andheri (E) Entry fees: Rs.100 email: Mumbai@headstart.in Website: http://headstart.in/
THE STREE SHAKTI ANNUAL CONFERENCE & AWARDS In 2007, a Women’s Special Interest Group was established by TiE to mentor women who run micro, medium and large-scale enterprises across the manufacturing, services and social sectors. On March 10, 2009, the initiative was titled TiE Stree Shakti to salute the growing role of women in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem. It recognizes women who have broken the glass ceiling and enables aspiring women entrepreneurs to overcome societal and gender disparities to realize their dream of running an enterprise. It aims at connecting women from various socio-economic strata and celebrates “Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs” in India. The second TiE Stree Shakti Awards are scheduled for September 30 and October 1, 2011. If you are a woman entrepreneur, get in touch with TSS to give your application. The conference will see Chanda Kochhar, Malavika Sarrukai, Preetha Reddy, Shobhana Bhartia, Sudha Murthy and Vinita Bali as speakers. Date: September 30 and October 1, 2011 Venue: Mumbai Program Director, TiE Stree Shakti: Zankhana Kaur email: zee@tiemumbai. org
September 2011 Intelligent Entrepreneur 11 To read more, grab the September issue of Entrepreneur To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
young turks [expert+speak]
26 Intelligent Entrepreneur ď‚„ September 2011
‘DON’T WAIT FOR
THE PERFECT PLAN’ From assembling PCs in his dorm room at the University of Texas to creating a computer empire that is worth over Rs.270000 crore today, Michael Dell has always believed in doing things differently. By Shereen Bhan
Differentiating his PC business which cut out the retailer, the “Direct from Dell” approach helped Dell earn his first billion in 1992. By 2001, Dell became a global leader with 30 percent market share. But the last decade hasn’t been smooth. Dell stepped down from the post of CEO in 2004 and subsequently the company lost its leadership position. This prompted him to return to the helm in 2007 and, in three years, Dell is back on track.
SHEREEN BHAN (SB): Today everybody is talking about creating billion dollar enterprises. Is it easier to create these today as compared to what it was when you started off? MICHAEL DELL (MD): When I started, the industry was certainly much smaller and the place where we started with the micro-processor based computers was really in its infancy. What you see now is a much larger industry; it’s a Rs.90 trillion industry. Just given the size and the change dynamics; you see a lot more new companies and entrepreneurialism, creativity and innovation. The kind of cycle of new ideas and new companies is as active as ever in our industry.
SB: Do you think these companies will actually survive the highs and lows of the economic cycles? MD: Markets always tend to get a little too excited, and that happens in any growth market. But if you look back over the last few decades, there are only about five new companies each year that become significant. Many other important companies get acquired or carve out niches here and there. But I think the turbulence and dynamics is not
going to slow down at all. You can argue that it’s accelerating as the ingredients are changing, as we have more globalization, more consumers actively playing with and having information in a much faster way, all the trends around social computing and mobility also add to it. It’s just accelerating.
SB: We’ve seen the LinkedIn IPO, there are a couple of other blockbuster IPOs in the pipeline. What do you feel about the kind of valuations people are talking about? MD: Valuations can be very disconnected from reality. Certainly, if you look at the fundamental basis, people are pricing in incredible assumptions about future growth. The amount of capital that’s been thrown at these new ideas makes investors very excited. We at Dell are at a different stage. There are certainly exciting new things that we’re doing. But we are also in the well-established income producing type of business today.
SB: You spoke about valuations being perhaps disconnected from reality. Are you beginning to get worried? Do you see a sort of irrational exuberance building in as far as the technology and internet side of businesses is concerned? MD: If you look at the valuation differences among the new shiny objects—I refer to the new small startups in certain very attractive categories versus the well-established companies—then you find that the gap is as great as it has ever been and it is probably quite unsustainable too. It creates all sorts of challenging dynamics and certainly you have different kinds of investors that are attracted to you. September 2011 Intelligent Entrepreneur 27 To read more, grab the September issue of Entrepreneur To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
CLICKED TO PERFECTION
44 Intelligent Entrepreneur September 2011
Photo© Mexy Xavier
Born at midnight
‘
As the clock struck the bewitching hour on Christmas Eve 1995, my life changed forever… Ajit Balakrishnan
IT
was nearing midnight that just green text on a black screen designed to Christmas Eve in 1995. I was frighten everyone other than an ardent comhuddled with an engineer and a puter programmer. I knew I had to wait for a handful of journalists in a 600 more graphic and simple-to-use screen. square feet room in one of the lanes off Mumbai’s That happened when the University of Pheroze Shah Mehta Road. Illinois team announced their Mosaic browser We had been wrestling the past few months in 1992 and after the first glimpse I had of its with the intricacies of getting a Sun features I knew a new world was computer system installed, batabout to open. A CLASS APART MANTRA tling with the telecom bureaucracy I used an AOL international If you believe in an to string up a high speed data line account to download a copy of the idea, you must have between our tiny office and VSNL’s commercial version of the browser. the patience to bring gateway that was a few hundred In 1994, VSNL announced that it it to market. yards down the road. would start providing internet I had grandly announced to all access services in Mumbai. concerned that come what may we’d be the I hired a skeletal team: one programmer, first webserver in India and that we would get one visual designer who knew Photoshop and it done before Christmas Day that year. got together half a dozen journalists. What had set me on this path? First there We ensconced ourselves in a single room I’d was the microcomputer; that was what it was rented off Pheroze Shah Mehta Road. We chose called at that time. I was fascinated with what that location because it was close to VSNL and it would mean the moment I set my eyes on a getting a leased internet line from them would Macintosh. I had even labored for a few years be a lot easier. I wrote personal checks for the with some friends in Bengaluru to manufacnext few months to keep going. ture them but the 1989 recession trashed those But on that day, all I thought about was dreams. By that time I was fascinated with the how to get our website working. As the clock early experiments in the U.S. to build informahand edged towards 12 that Christmas Eve, I tion services companies. hit the control key, and www.rediff.co.in, the Sears, the giant U.S. retailer, had teamed first website on the Indian subcontinent, was up with IBM to launch Prodigy, a service that live at last! offered news and online shopping on timeshared computers. It didn’t take off because AJIT BALAKRISHNAN is the Founder and CEO the computer terminals of that time had of Rediff.com
THE ONE ACCESSORY WE OVERLOOKED. A ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ SIGN FOR THE DOORS. THE MOST LUXURIOUS CABIN IN ITS CLASS.
September 2011 Intelligent Entrepreneur 45 To read more, grab the September issue of Entrepreneur To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
AGAINST ALL ODDS
46 Intelligent Entrepreneur September 2011
Photo© Maximage
“I don’t give up easily” The never-say-die spirit has helped me taste success in a venture which was a pioneer in its time. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
T
he beginning of any entrepreneurbusiness model. I had neither of these: I was ial endeavor is always the most chala 25-year-old entrepreneur, a woman at that, lenging, as we take the first steps on and one with no business experience, and no the journey, feeling our way forcollateral to offer. ward through unfamiliar territory. However, To make matters worse, I was promoting facing these challenges with ingenuity and a high-risk, unknown business based on a determination to blaze a trail is an infinitely relatively unknown science. It took me three rewarding experience. months to obtain a Rs.5 lakh credit line in When I started Biocon in 1978, I was a pio1979 which saw me knock on the doors of neer: not many people in India had five banks before one brave banker heard of biotechnology, leave alone finally decided to fund me. A CLASS APART MANTRA envisaged it as a business. The Beyond the financial challenges Entrepreneurs must obstacles I needed to navigate in the was the business of biotechnology challenge themselves first two years of building Biocon itself. Enzyme extraction and proand the status quo were manifold–ranging from infraduction, the biotechnology with always. structural hurdles to issues related which I started, was a new concept to my credibility as a businessperand there was skepticism about son. I refused to let them intimidate me and the commercial viability of eco-friendly but decided to chart my own path. expensive enzymes to replace cheap chemical I was trying to sow the seeds of a biotechprocesses. nology enterprise in India–which was, at that My challenge was to get the market to time, an underdeveloped economy where accept biotechnology and change old pracbusiness was bound by red tape, gagged by tices. Moreover, enzyme manufacturing for sub-optimal infrastructure, and held hostage industrial application involved sophisticated by a precarious foreign debt situation. deep-tank fermentation which demanded With no access to venture capital, money uninterrupted power supply and precision was scarce and high-cost debt-based capital process control. was all I had. What I required to start my busiThis was not something I could manage to ness was collateral security, a demonstrated do in India given the unreliable power supbusiness track record, and a well-understood ply situation and the limited resources I had.
GOOSEBUMPS COME STANDARD.
INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED SAFIRE90 PETROL AND QUADRA JET90 DIESEL ENGINES.
To read more, grab the September issue of Entrepreneur September 2011 Intelligent Entrepreneur 47 To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
NOTHING’S IMPOSSIBLE
60 Intelligent Entrepreneur September 2011
Photo©Maximage
‘‘I am an eternal optimist” When you start walking, you must aspire to run and when you start running, you must desire to run faster. Phaneesh Murthy
FIRST TWO YEARS AT IGATE My own philosophy in life has been that you should have varied experiences. My first experience at Infosys is that of growing a company purely the organic way. I was excited at the prospect of fixing a broken company and taking it from sub-zero levels to significantly higher margins. Hence, I looked at iGATE as a very different kind of experience and thought I would learn a lot from it. I also thought I could contribute a lot to it. I must say that I am quite pleased with the results and outcome. iGATE was -8 percent (negative) profits when I took over in 2003 and certainly was not in good shape. The fact remains that we grew to 40 percent Gross Margins and 20 percent Operating Margin: in line with the best in class companies. Our multiples probably became the highest for any mid-sized company. To be a good leader and try different things, you should be an optimist. I am one of those eternal optimists who, upon falling from a 60 floor building, will most likely say after 55 floors, so far so good.
EXTERNAL CHALLENGES When I started at iGATE, I had severe challenges in the first six to eight months but I was
quite confident that I would be able to turnaround. You can call it engineering basics, but I believed that when you are trying to fix something, it is important to minimize the moving parts. In this case, it was important to stabilize revenues in the first few months, a large chunk of which was our GE contract accounting to roughly 45 percent of our revenues then. This had to be renewed within three months under certain risky circumstances. That was a big challenge. Holding on to them would give me the early stability in the company to work around and discard the non-core businesses and clients. The contract was indeed renewed, marking the first signs of stability.
INTERNAL CHALLENGES iGATE had seen five CEOs in four years before me. Initially, I was actually a bit surprised to see our plans not being put to action quickly. I later found out that some of the employees were waiting for me to leave going by their past experience of fast moving CEOs at iGATE! So, for them, reviews didn’t matter, as they thought I wouldn’t last a quarter. I had to actually tell them that if they didn’t move at the right pace, their existence was definitely uncertain beyond a quarter! It worked.
A CAR THAT’S DESIGNED TO ANNOUNCE YOUR ARRIVAL. (EVEN WITHOUT THE MOTORCADE.) NEW T YRIAN WINE COLOUR WITH CHROME DETAILING.
To read more, grab the September issue of Entrepreneur September 2011 Intelligent Entrepreneur 61 To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
MOBILE SOLUTIONS
Recharged & Ready Mobikwik aims to address the problems plaguing the telecom sector. By Pranbihanga Borpuzari
92 Intelligent Entrepreneur September 2011
Photo© Dileep Prakash
A
fter seven years of experience in consumer hardware products as a Platform Architect at Intel, Nvidia at Bengaluru and Freescale Semiconductors at Noida, Bipin Preet Singh was not enjoying his work. “The work culture in north India was completely different from that in Bengaluru and it was a rude shock to me. While there was not much to work on at Freescale, they paid good money. I realized my career was going nowhere and, by 2008, I started thinking of what to do next. I did some work in advertising with a friend of mine as a Partner at Star Auto but there was something else playing on my mind. Mobikwik was an idea that I had though of during my BTech days at IIT Delhi. In 2008, I started work on it and, by August 2009, I managed to get a website running on this,” says Singh. He saw an opportunity and did some quick market research and found a good opportunity. While it is true that internet penetration in the country is not very high with the mobile market being pegged at 600-700 million and internet users numbering 40 million, Singh was not deterred. According to him, these 40 million users was a good enough marketplace for him to operate in since the number will only grow. “It was a struggle for us mainly because it was my first venture away from a regular salaried job. There were lots of mistakes from day one. We were too unrealistic in launching a product which was not 100 percent ready. But we went ahead because there was already one competitor in the space and we did not want to enter too late. We though if we launched customers would come automatically,” says Singh. Since he had limited resources to play with, the focus was to get search customers to the website and at the same time handle customer services personally. “This ensured that even the smallest complaints got addressed; goodwill spread through word-of-mouth,” says Singh. Mobile recharge through internet has existed in some form or the other but Mobikwik’s focus has not been only on that. “We realized that most mobile services today work in ‘push’ model where the operator pushes down the services to customers and then the customer selects what he wants. Customers have no place
to go to actively look for what they might want. It means limited choice and lower quality services. Mobikwik attempts to start a new ‘pull’ model in India. Whether you want mobile recharge, check out a new plan or a cool offer, or find premium apps for your handset, you can do it all at on the site,” says Singh. His vision was to create an online store where all the needs of mobile owners can be satisfied. These include three major verticals: voice, data and applications. “We believe these would be the three pillars around which customer touch points would evolve in the next 4-5 years,” says Singh. Mobikwik.com also brings an e-wallet, Mobikwik Balance, which simplifies recharging friends’, families’ and employees’ mobiles. One needs to pay once to load the Mobikwik Balance and it supports all leading mobile operators across India and accepts payment by bank, credit card, debit card and cash card. Mobikwik brings together multiple handsets, multiple operating systems and different operators under one roof. It is a platform which is independent of any device or operator. “For every transaction that happens on the Mobikwik platform, we keep a certain percent of the sale price and pass on the rest to the application developer or operator,” says Singh. Started with an investment of about Rs.20 lakh, the company today is profitable and seeing good growth. “There was a time in 2010 when we looked for investment naïvely. While most of them were willing to talk to us given my background, all of them wanted us to validate the business. We did not get any funding but ironically I think it was best that way and today we do not need funding,” says Singh. With five full-time employees, the company does revenues of Rs.50 lakh per month and is growing at 15-20 percent month-on-month. “The overall mobile recharge market in India is about Rs.10,000 crore per month and not more than one percent is online which happens through banking channels and operator sites. There is a huge scope to grow and we hope we can leverage this to sell other high margin products. This is similar to what happened to air tickets before travel portals came online,” says Singh.
To read more, grab the September issue of Entrepreneur September 2011 Intelligent Entrepreneur 93 To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
MITHAI MAGIC
Find Your Sweet Tooth With Mithaimate.com, customers can have sweets delivered at their doorstep. By Pranbihanga Borpuzari
102 Intelligent Entrepreneur ď‚„ September 2011
PhotoŠ Shamik Banerjee
A
khilesh Bali joined Accenture in 2008 as a software engineer only to realize within six-seven months that he was not made for a 9 to 5 job. Deciding to quit, Bali wanted to start something which was easy on capital, easy to set up and unique in itself. “That is when we hit upon the idea of Mithaimate. Everyone is selling flowers online, books online and we realized that if we go anywhere in India, mithai shops or sweet shops do really good business. The same thing, however, was not done online and India being India, I thought if we can give people a platform where they can choose any mithai from anywhere, get it within a time frame and at a reasonable price, it could become a good business opportunity,” says Bali. He teamed up with two of his friends and towards the end of 2008 the idea was conceived as they went about finetuning it and getting to know the market better. “We all knew how to make a website and we knew if it is an idea
I am comfortable with my situation now but expect to need funds when the company starts scaling up. which would click, in the online medium one does not need a lot of capital. We decided to give it a try as the initial amount involved was less than Rs 20, 000,” says Bali. A market survey was done and issues like freshness, quality and apprehension on health risks if the sweets are spoilt were some areas that needed considerable brainstorming. “We decided to partner with known offline stores and aggregate such stores that are famous and people know them for their quality. For example, in Delhi we partnered with Nathu sweets and people instantly recognized what they had to offer and quality was never an issue,” says Bali. “We went about other cities in
a similar way and in the initial phase started with Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru. This was, however, the easy part. The difficult part was in reality approaching the sweet shops and convincing them to do business with us. All of them were doing brisk business on their own and we asked for preferential pricing for our site, which made it a difficult proposition for them to offer,” he adds. Bali was, however, able to convince most of the sweet shop owners, as for the first time, he offered these players a pan-India reach. “For example for a sweet shop in Delhi, his customers were mainly from the NCR. With my platform, even a person sitting in Chennai could now order his sweets.” Starting the business around April 2009, Bali banked on expensive logistics companies like Blue Dart and FedEx to deliver sweets. A mithai delivered to them at 6 in the evening is with the customer by 11 in the morning. Mithaimate also delivers within 24 hours in all the metros and takes around 48 hours to deliver in smaller cities. In this case, both Mithaimate and the sweet shop are accountable for the products. In case a customer says the sweets were broken or were not fresh, they are given a free redelivery and in case the customer is not pleased even then, a refund is usually given. “I got to know of Mithaimate one day when I was randomly browsing the internet to check ways to deliver sweets within Mumbai. I was impressed with what a bunch of young guys were doing and got in touch with them. Mithaimate has done much better than what we expected and quarter-on-quarter has been churning out good numbers for us,” says Anuj Goyal of Mumbai-based Brijwasi Sweets. Today the site has grown from getting 1-2 orders every week to about 40-50 orders in a day and the festive season is a good hit. A back of the hand calculation shows that an average order on the site is about Rs 600 per customer, which pegs Bali’s monthly revenues at about Rs.7 lakh-Rs.8 lakh. “We have stayed cash flow positive on every order. I am comfortable with my situation as of now but expect to need funds when the company starts scaling up,” says Bali.
To read more, grab the September issue of Entrepreneur September 2011 Intelligent Entrepreneur 103 To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
special report
Spirit of
Entrepreneurship How to build sustainable enterprises?
N
ashik entrepreneur’s forum is an initiative by Sanjay Lodha and Ajay Bohora. It celebrated the spirit of entrepreneurship in August at the second edition of the ‘Building Sustainable Enterprises’ series. The day long event, anchored by Krishna Tanuku, Director, Wadhwani Centre of Entrepreneurship Development at the Indian School of Business, had speakers like Mahesh Chauhan, Founder of Salt Brand Solutions, Manoj Chandiramani, the President and CEO of SAIMAA Global Solutions, Sunita Ramnathkar, Founder of Fem Care Pharma, Gautam Chainani, Chief People’s Officer of the Aditya Birla Financial Services group, Rajeev Samant, Founder of Sula Wines and Ishwarlal Jain, Head of the Rajmal Lakhichand group. 114 Intelligent Entrepreneur September 2011
opportunities
To read more, grab the September issue of Entrepreneur September 2011 ď‚„ Intelligent Entrepreneur 115 To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
innovators inc
SHARP-MINDED: Ben Kaufman
118 Intelligent Entrepreneur ď‚„ September 2011
QUIRKY THE SOLUTION TO THE
INNOVATOR’S
DILEMMA
At the age of 24, Ben Kaufman already has a successful startup track record. With Quirky, he’s tapped into the power of open innovation and created a place where anyone can become an inventor.. By Jennifer Wang
Ben Kaufman was on the subway in New York City in 2005 when he had his lightbulb moment. He saw a girl—a stranger— sporting a pair of headphones he designed at mophie, the iPod accessories company he founded the day he graduated from high school.
To read more, grab the SeptemberSeptember issue2011 of Intelligent Entrepreneur Entrepreneur 119 To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in
back stage THE LIFE OF AN ENTREPRENEUR This is what life is all about... By Ankush Chibber
1.No matter how hard you try to get them to admit it otherwise, all angel investors and venture capitalists are “sector agnostic.”
5.There are just too many social media agencies than are needed in a country that still has hand-pumped dynamos for power in many parts.
2.There are no venture capitalists left by the way. They are all private equity guys with very good disguises.
6.There are startups whose long-term future looked very rosy to us, till we were proved wrong by their downed shutters. Do not take us to a poker game.
3.To get funding is as hard as getting your first customer. 4.Every startup unfortunately has a “game-changing”, “innovative” and “mind-blowing” product as per their pitch.
134 Intelligent Entrepreneur September 2011
7.Entrepreneurs are the new horses every media house wants to ride on. Lest we forget, Entrepreneur magazine got their first. Boo to these newbies.
Illustration© Chaitanya Dinesh Surpur