First-Generation

Entrepreneurs

Introduction
They say that India is the youngest nation in the world now with about 500 millions of
youth population. The greatest challenge faced by India is to who will provide jobs to all
these youth, spread from cities, metros to villages?

The answer lies in the question itself. The youth alone. What it means is a great many
young people have never-before opportunity of becoming a job-creator rather than job-
seeker.

Freedom in true sense comes from being an Entrepreneur.

Even while in Job, one can aspire to be an Entrepreneur through sharing one’s surplus-
time, surplus-capital, expertise, networking-ability, and developing business for other
enterprises.

But then opting to chuck a job, drying one’s kitty from source of regular monthly
income, is not always easy. It requires mental conviction and some strategic initiatives,
to ensure that one succeeds eventually. This is where we can be of help. In more than
one ways:

Your Gains

• Expand network and connectivity, thus enabling greater opportunities and

breakthroughs; through developing personal relationships, based on mutual trust
and collective goodwill
• Enhance your overall competencies and enhancing your chances of success
• Find Strategic Advisors who would help minimize assumptions and avoidable
risks from proposed business plans and ideas
• Facilitation for tying-up with Senior Knowledge-Partners who would be available
for regular knowledge inputs, to “enhance value-propositions” for the proposed
enterprise
• And many more……

Whether you are in job now, or a student now ; there is a way for you to be owner of a
business enterprise in future. Just Read on ….

Register as
Fist-Gen Initiator if you wish to chart-out a new course gradually, while in job. You can
hope to become minor-partner in someone else’s enterprise if expertise and ideas
complementary. At the least, being active in entrepreneurial circuit would enhance your
chances of increased opportunities and multi-dimensional progress in job and life, in
general.

Fist-Gen Plunger if you are ready now to chart-out a new course full-time, by
discontinuing job right-away. You can hope to garner greater strengths through
collective wisdom, decreased risks, and increased opportunities.

First time entrepreneurs (FTEs) – Building businesses in India

Posted by: sameer in MVP, entrepreneurship, startup, startup essentials
Add Comment
Just read the couple of articles written by Paul Graham : Y Combinator (answers what
exactly does YC do? or Seedcamp, Techstars, MVP etc ) and Equity (explains why should
you give 5-6% equity to a program like YC)
The thoughts expressed got me thinking about how should First Time Entrepreneurs (FTEs) go
about building businesses in India. While a lot is in common between the approaches of YC,
SC and MVP there are a bunch of things unique to the Indian Ecosystem which FTEs should
consider.
Uniqueness of India
First things first, only during the last 10 years India has started seeing bootstrapped or garage
startups by talented, educated, experienced and passionate folks who dont have access to a
lot of capital but have the skills, will to solve problems and the staying power. The number of
successes out of these have been limited and have not been really publicized for folks to get
inspired by or learn from.
The VC industry is just about 8-10 years old in India as compared to 50-60 years in US and
Europe; among them majority of the funds in India are under 5 years old. VC being a long
gestation industry we are a good 5-10 years away from seeing major VC success in India.
Most of the firms are focusing on the existing pipeline deals in the market and there are quite
of few of these available – companies by serial entrepreneurs, companies started by
Executives (CXO, VPs) from large companies, some of FTE companies where the traction is
fairly significant, also since PE sector has performed very well and the bigger funds are shifting
time and money to PE deals. Clearly all of the above are the right things to do for the Indian
VC firms, since the firms need to perform for their investors. None of this directly supports the
FTEs, which is where the gap that needs to be filled in. We need to create new pipeline of
deals that will become successful startups and will feed into the VC pipeline 1-2 years later.
That’s the role folks like MVP, iAccelerator, Upstart.in and others are attempting to play.
Another dimension of difference is IT / internet. The penetration of Internet and PCs in India is
quite limited (9 computer for every 1000 people, as compared to 700 for every 1000 in USA).
On the other hand the awareness and usage of IT in companies, specially SMEs is limited as
well. There are a lot of other fundamental needs to be fulfilled in India (remember we are a
developing country).
FTEs in India: What to focus on ?
First thing to ensure is to build a cash flow positive business within the initial capital that you
have managed to raise (self, friends, family, fools). Keep lowest possible costs and create
early revenues. Expenses should ideally be below 50,000 INR and in no circumstances higher
than 1,00,000 INR a month.
Dont think of funding as a validation for your venture. Be prepared to wait longer, to build
your business to the 50-100 crore revenues in 7-10 years, with VC funding coming after 2-3
years of being in business or no VC funding at all. If this does not appeal – don’t do a startup.
Internet only business models targetting indian market are not going to viable for atleast 2
years ( or more). View internet as a cheap way to build products and get the initial users with
zero marketing budgets. From day one build alternate channels : mobile, call center, SMS,
kiosks , shops , sales team into your model. Use technology as a enabler to drive costs down
and to drive quaity upwards, but do not depend on customers using it directly via internet.
If your idea only lends itself to internet, think about doing it for developed markets like US
and Europe. India still has lower costs and we are very bullish on build here – sell to the
developed world model.
So while you take into consideration the universal wisdom of building businesses, paying
attention to the uniqueness of India can make an big impact on the outcome of your venture.
Tags: entrepreneurship, First time entreprenuers, FTEs, indian startups, Paul
graham, Startups,Y combinator
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 2:04 pm and is filed
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