It is close to the end of first year. Exams are around the corner. And this second semester has turned out to be the toughest semester. Just started is the process of placement-coordinator selection and today (9th April) afternoon was the first placements related briefing by seniors of CSA. Today is something else too. It is the 3 hours panel discussion organized by EntIISc and Alumni Association at Faculty Hall, IISc.
The placements briefing ended around 03:30 PM and the panel discussion was to begin at 04:00. and that in itself is an interesting succession of events since the notice for the panel discussion showed an image of a queue of humanoids standing on a conveyor and moving involuntarily towards companies and while a single odd-one among them has jumped out of the row.
The moderator for the discussion was Prof. CS Murali, an IISc alumni who chairs of EntIISc and has 30 years experience in IT in companies like TCS, HP, IBM.
In the panel were following people who I am mention along with the key points I could grasp from them during the course of discussion.
Abhinay Choudhari, co-founder Big Basket, IIM passout with 10 years of industry experience. He started some stylecountry[dot]com in 1999 and claims it was as big a thing or maybe bigger then what Myntra/Jabong are today but it couldn't live through the dot com bubble burst.
About Big Basket- It has now been around for 7 years and is expanding in cities. Big Basket will breakeven in Bangalore by the next month and by 2018 overall. There are around 10K employees 60% of which are groundsmen. 25 guys form the tech team and the entire tech is built inhouse. Abhinay told Big Basket looks closely into "detailing" of the process.
About Abhinay- From the answers he gave to various questions posed, I can tell he has a very rational and practical mindset. If I squeeze the zist of the views he presented, I get very simple results
Q) Do you support farmers by buying from them?
A) Will buy if it is profitable.
Q) When should one outsource building tech?
A) When it is profitable.
Q) Why don't you use existing infrastructure like raydiwallas/dabawallas for deliveries?
A) It is good to use existing infrastructure if it suits your needs and is profitable. We needed cold storage / guaranteed deliveries (and hygiene I suppose) which none of the existing services provided. So we built our own delivery network.
Shradha Sharma, a girl from Bihar who did her masters from St. Stephens, New Delhi. After 1.5 years of work with Times of India and 2 years with CNBC she started Your Story. If I remember correctly, she said her grandmother was a IAS officer in Bihar.
About Your Story- She said it well- "News go but stories are to stay". 8 years back she started Your Story without a business model and laughingly claims it more-or-less doesn't have one still. But factually, among those in the panel, hers was the only firm making profit. Some point out that Your Story takes money from entrepreneurs to write them articles. She said they do it but only for bigger firms (say Big Basket) and claimed not even a single small company can say that they took money for their article.
About Shradha- She was confident and expressive. She said girls have an advantage in startups that they don't have an image to maintain.
It would have been interesting to listen to her more but she had to leave in middle of the event.
Pavan Sriram, founder of some ITTIGE Learning which provides on-demand coaching services for firms. I wonder why that stupid name. This was a young boy who had some relevant things to say. First he told how unseen challenges can some in way of startups like the one he faced, when his cofounder backedout while there were number of unfulfilled orders at hand and his wife was pregnant. He said- "The problem is that we think a lot". "Just go ahead and jump without thinking if there is a safety net". Whenever entrepreneurial ideas come we start thinking of what best can happen, but he said, one should start with the thinking that what worst can happen. Mostly being offtrack and jobless for a few years is the worse and in case it is okay with you, then you should go for it.
Vandana Suri, 12 years investment banker- A highly paying and highly demanding job as she puts it. I noteworthy aspect for her startup, TaxShe, a cab service with lady drivers is how the idea originated. She said it was when she heard on TV the Delhi Uber rape victim saying- "this wouldn't happen, had it been a girl who was driving". It is appreciable of Vandana that she was vigilant enough to take this up and attempt to solve the problem. Many entrepreneurs born this way, from an urge to solve a problem they see.
About TaxShe- They started with dropping school kids to schools as parents find it safer to send the kids with lady drivers and also this way the drivers themselves were safe. Started an year back and has around 25 lady drivers now. She admits they are still doing just the school kids.
About Vandana- She was vigilant as she grabbed the idea. And also bold enough to set her foot down and be the first lady driver in Bangalore thereby making it a case that cabs with lady drivers can happen.
Swami Manohar, is a great man. He was professor at IISc during 1995 - 2005 and is creator of Simputer and cofounder of multiple businesses including the famous Strand Life Sciences (famous for sure within IISc). I was totally awed to know about Simputer. Quoting from wikipedia- The Simputer is a self-contained, open hardware Linux-based handheld computer, first released in 2002. The word Simputer is an acronym for "simple, inexpensive and multilingual people's computer". The device includes text-to-speech software, it has a stylus operated touch sensitive screen, and also has a simple handwriting recognition software.
Ii surely was a cutting-edge technological pursuit and I am astonished but proud that it was designed and developed completely in India and that too within IISc, by seven Indian scientists and engineers led by Dr. Swami Manohar.
This was something which when it came was far-ahead-of-time and hence didn't get the required acceptance in market. But this was surely real work- bunch of IISc profs making a hand-held computing device by fabricating hardware and modifying linux themselves and that too back in 1990s. Swami Manohar said, in those days they were working on virtual reality with his lab funding being like $0.5 million. News says the project failed but he surely succeeded in proving that a complete device with all hardware fabricated inhouse and with use of technology form the frontier can very well be made within the universities of India.
During the discussion, Swami Manohar mentioned that in the list of top 25 startups he was looking at, he found just 2 to be tech startups while the rest were tech enabled startups.
He was concerned on the fact that India as of today leads the world in not even a single technology.
He has now joined a front line research group at Microsoft.
This combination of patriotic concerns and the joining Microsoft was something I couldn't digest together. I sent my confusion to stage posing it as straight personal attack pointed at Swami Manohar-
"Sir, you developed such ahead-of-time technology for India.
Also you show concerns about India not leading the world in any tech.
And then you join Microsoft research.
So are you disillusioned -or- its part of a plan?"
I am sad the moderator, Prof. CS Murali toned down the wording a bit but still it conveyed what I wanted. I am happy Swami Manohar chose to reply. With that he already won half of me back.
"It has been 12 years of tiresome running. I was running for all sorts of things like fundings to keep the salaries of my employees rolling. And now I feel like going back to my field of work, Virtual Reality, something I was working on long back. "
And btw he also mentions that the research group he is part of in Microsoft looks into how leading technologies can solve problems in society. So its like during a long battle you now plan a little rest and get Microsoft to back you while the pursuit is still as holy as it always was.
For me, that reply clears all my confusion and I am back to awe.
That is totally understandable. Only if you have real interest in your subject can you build wonders like he did. And when you have real interest in a subject it is totally understandable that it pulls you towards it.
All these knowledgeable entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds formed a good enough panel and a good panel discussion was bound to follow. From the questions raised and arguments which followed, I could draw some key learnings:
1. "2 years of savings is a must, before you do anything. " -Vandana
2. "Do not bring in your personal assets on the table. Let the company finances remain separate. You have already given much in the form of your time, and we may let alone that little money thats left in your account. And hence registering an LLP is preferable over a Pvt. Ltd " -Vandana & Swami Manohar
3. "Show a solid and diverse team. Maybe call up your class 8 friends and check what they are doing. A single person team won't do. What of the investor and his money if something happens to you? " -Prof. CS Murali
This resonates with Nelson Vasanth when he suggests that investors don't like at all a 16-hours-a-day-chap who single-handedly does everything.
Another quality I found worth building is from Swami Manohar.
4. "I have never, for even a month, delayed the salary of his men. It is very important. It is their livelihood. There is a family, waiting, back at the home. It is, maybe your sport to start a company and ride through the bumpy way but for them its their daily bread. Its your passion but they are here because they trust you. "
So the take-away is to never every let your employee down. When you are the captain of the boat, ensure in every possible way that there salaries don't stop.
I wish TinyOwl's Saurabh Goel had this lesson and his employees would never have to take him hostage.
5. Someone quoted Steve Jobs- "Whats the point of living, if you don't make a dent in the universe"
6. It was not just the case with Abhinay's Myntra but almost no urls of that time could live through the bubble burst. Thats why Cockroach startups are promising.
7. A person from the audience shared his life experience. He I guess is a prof at IISc.
In 1986/1987 he was working with Wipro. Was frustated with the job and wanted to start something. His senior Virender Gupta took him out on lunch. It was a roadside dhaba. After the lunch,
Virender paid the bill and asked- "Will your family ever come here to eat"
(our guy replies)- "No. Never"
Virender- "Then don't start anything"
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