Hi everyone,
I am new to this blog. For a quick intro, I am a student pursuing the Sloan Fellows program in Innovation and Global Leadership at MIT (http://mitsloan.mit.edu/fellows) and was most recently in a startup called AirTight Networks (http://www.airtightnetworks.net), venture-backed, HQ-ed in Mtn Vw, CA and incubated entirely from India, where I ran Asia-Pac BD, Mktg Support and Program Mgmt.
I am doing a study on VC and Entrepreneurship in India and was wondering if any of you can point me to some human sources (other than google, venture intelligence India), who can talk authoritatively about the nature of early stage startup dealflow in India. To give you an idea, some questions I have are:
1. Where are most of the startups getting created ? (Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai or Delhi ?)
2. What are the spaces in which these startups are starting up ? (Web 2.0, mobile internet, enterprise sw) ?
3. What is the nature of the founding team (returnees from abroad vs. residents, campus bred (e.g. IIT/IIM) vs. large corporate alumni like Infosys) ?
4. How are they funded ? (self, angel, vc) ?
5. what is their business model ? (services, product, consumer, etc.)
6. how many are in stealth mode ?
You can write to me at shivav@sloan.mit.edu or skype me on shivav999 or yahoo me on shivav99.
– Shiva
- Rajat Gupta’s article: a classic - July 4, 2006
- How do founders meet and decide to “DO A STARTUP”? - July 2, 2006
- Startup Culture Report: Emailed to everyone who had asked for it - July 2, 2006
hi there . i was interested in talking to alok and prashant and was wondering how to get their contacts ( mbile no.s preferably) , I am an architect from IIT Kharagpur and am doing my MBA from XLRI jamshedpur . I need some info about the working of venture capital funds and the problems they face on their way . Also , what all help does it require from financial institutions such as NBFCs and Banks . Kindly reply at your earliest .
Hi Shiva
i am Prashant . i got you id from your posting at venturewood . well here is answer to some of the questions you asked
my replies are in italics
who can talk authoritatively about the nature of early stage start up deal flow in India.
i think if you talk about software startup dealing in “shrink wrap ” product space there are very few VC in India who bet their money on software products .primarily due to lack of technical know how . still Mr. Mahesh Murthy of passionfund.com is well known for his choice you can get his contact info from his website . Mr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT Chennai is also a good person to talk he runs a incubator and nurture product companies only . he can also help you . you can also get in touch with Ray Starta of Analog Devices
in service and BPO space chrysil capital and teamseak venture is well know . Ashis Dhawan of Chrysil Capital is a sort of deal maker in BPO space . ICICI venture is also investing in this space .
Where are most of the startups getting created ? (Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai or Delhi ?
again it depends on the kind of business you want to get in to .there are clusters ,primarily because of proximity to skilled manpower in that space. if it is a BPO biz Delhi ,Gurgaon ,noida is the place to be . for service companies Bangalore & Hyd is the place , for Product and R&D poona is fast emerging as a proffered destination . in fact pramod hauque said poona is going to be India’s silicon valley .
to some extent Hyderabad is known for outsourced product development and contractual R&D type of work
What are the spaces in which these start ups are starting up ? (Web 2.0, mobile Internet, enterprise sw) ?
sorry to say but in my view there is alack of orignal ideas here . most of the web 2.0 start up is nothing but me-too version of some us products. in mobile space its all about content and ring tone . sadly here telco keep 80-90% of the price as thier cut where as in japan DoCoMo keeps only 10-20% . so little margin and so much companies .part of the problem with mobile space is that all the action in mobile space is at bottom of the pyramid and in that space you need to be either ambani or sunil mittal .
in enterprise software only ramco systems and newgen software ,webplains are the companies worth tracking .
What is the nature of the founding team (returnees from abroad vs. residents, campus bred (e.g. IIT/IIM) vs. large corporate alumni like Infosys) ?How are they funded ? (self, angel, vc) ?
some startup like WebPlains ,Amdale ,CashEdge are in first type some of them are backed by VCs but most are self funded by people like Mohan Bhargava 🙂 . resedent folks in the space are lvery few to the best of my knowledge . angel money is non existing . and getting VC Money is more about connection and IIT / IIM tags then sound business plan .
there are some good campus companies like herald logic, e infinitus, securesoft etc. e infinitus was acquired by Cisco in early stage . large corporate folks tends to open risk free ,network dependent consulting firms i don’t call them venture and i don’t think you want to discuss in your research .glorified staffing firms are very much masquerading as venture .
how many are in stealth mode
i don’t know of any such firm apart from Geodesic which is said to be working on a IM for Google and Riya.com which is hardly indian or hardly stealth
i think this will help . you can find out more about start up trends in india by meeting folks ar Barcamp Delhi conference . c if you can make it .
good luck for your thesis and do share the finding with me (if it is OK to do so ). let me know if you need some more specific info . i will try
cheers
prashant
http://www.knowprashant.blogspot.com
Hi Shiva,
Wish I could capture the complete talk of Mohan Lakham Raju(from DFJ) where he gave interesting statistics on where b-plans came from for TiE DFJ IVC.
I don’t have those numbers on the top of my head but the general trend was at the first position it was bangalore( i.e about 30 – 40% of b -plans were recieved from there. Then the number two was hyderabad in the first and the third stage of the compeitition (around 20 – 30%). In the second stage it was muumbai who was the second.
Other cities that were represented were pune, chennai, ahmedabad and others.
If you can get in touch with mohan he may or may not depending upon his preferences share hist PPT itself containing the stats with you. His email id I think is mohan AT dfj DOT com.
So my answer is that most of the startups are getting created in bangalore, hyderabad, mumbai, pune, delhi , others in that order.
There are quite a few web startups that are being created but are labelled web 2.0 incorrectly as they want to catch onto the buzzwords. They are pure web 1.0 though.
Also there are few web 2.0 startups which are coming up in India but are having a slow start as compared to the valley.
There are lot of mobile startups that are upcoming and some are getting funded as well, Check out contentsutra to track this, Karat does a good job tracking this.
Enterprise software is something that I don’t track and thus have less knowledge so can’t add much on it but you can check out Sadagopan at http://123suds.blogspot.com who does a fantastic job of tracking action in enterprise software.
Nature of founding team is in many cases so far has been return from abroad.
.
There are also many cases of residents and campus bred
Among the technology institutes IIT B absolutely rocks(you might be interested in my post on IITians (B) http://rajan.wordpress.com/2006/02/21/iitiansb-winners-of-tie-dfj-contest/ ) and IIT M is close behind in churning out startups.
Among the mngmt institutes IIM – B is leading the race, there is very little action in ISB and even more little in IIM-A ( I have’nt heard anything interesting from there at all from ‘A’ in a very long period of time)
Stealth is not a very popular concept here in India, startups that are IDC’s of head office in valley may call themselves stealth. One example that comes to mind is webaroo.
Cheers,
Rajan
http://rajan.wordpress.com
Shiva, will be happy to talk to you — i am in the venture capital business and have some view on what’s happening.
Alok