India with Sanjeev Bhaskar

Yesterday evening was good TV watching experience. Some good talent on American Idol (i've placed my bets!) and Sanjeev walking around at the Infosys campus in B'lore.

If you haven't seen it - you should. It's on Discover T&L - something NDTV good times are trying hard to imitate.

Anyways, so Bhaskar is roaming in the Infy campus and comes to this magnificent modern glass building where he is told that Dow Jones' market data is managed.

Bhaskaar goes on to say two things:

"When people think about India, the still think about Snake charmers and elephants..."

He's right - India has changed.

"....what they don't realize is that THIS is what India has become."

Sorry dude - that's what living in Hounslow does to you - you lose touch of what you really are. India is not like that glass walled Infy building you saw at B;lore. India is far from that. She's a spring lodged between mainstream politics and regionalism. She is trying to breathe and there are people who won't let her. Unfortunately for many of us, it's the country we live in and moving away from the metros - this become all too much apparent.

It's Apple all the way - yet again !

Check out this new ad of the Airbook 2008 from Mac.

i rest my case ! See the ad here

HotORNot Approach vs Deliberation

I read this very interesting blog this Sunday about why startups should stop chasing angels and move to work with VCs and try to raise only institutional investments.

For the time being I will assume the VCs have no personal agenda here. I will also assume that the VC markets in India are at an almost level playing field as that of the valley.

The fact of the matter still remains that the time spent on trying to raise institutional investment is far greater than an accept/reject decision at lunch with a HNI. Often this 'deliberation time', i.e the time from the first presentation to funds transfer, results in an opportunity loss. Especially in case of niche services or lateral technologies, where the founders don't really want to step out of their labs/sales offices and keep doing lunches or dinners with portfolio managers to negotiate term sheets and time lines.

This time lost can not be gained back and if the product or service is already beginning to pick up traction, the founders may not really have the bandwidth for such 'deliberation time'.

This 'time' is more apparent in Small to Medium service companies who need the money only to scale. Infrastructure, skill sets, technology and marketing. The know how much they want, how they want it dispersed and where and what are the returns like. This accuracy of investment often pushes them to opt for debt and especially in countries like India, debt financing is a very popular choice due to the short funding cycle and the speed with which the money comes into the bank.

Another reason why markets like India can work very well with angels is because of the lower valuations. A VC wants its floor investment to be $5M. Startups in India find it difficult to match these valuations in their first year of business. So unless they build cash flows touching $1M in the very first year or put in their own USD 500K to develop a technology , VC funding is pretty much out of the picture. And this is almost certainly impossible to see in startups being founded by young entrepreneurs below the age of 30. For technology startups this is all together a much bigger issue due to the bloating salary structures that defy logic and sense.

Orifice and the Client

Guy Kawasaki writes this awesome blog about Orifices that become your clients. You can read it here.

But how do you know it? Fear not - there is a nice little test to know. It's quite nice...

Street play on US markets

Just got off the phone with a good friend in CA. I asked him what's the scenario there like - are technology companies laying off people, cutting costs, reducing expense account limits? In the wake of some of the Indian ITES giants tightening up budgets and preparing for slight turbulence, are the American businesses still pulling all strings? TCS went on to even start the laying off early this season !

His casual response was - 'well on the street, people are still wearing Gucci suits and driving around in porches and ferraris'. Pretty profound i think ...