I’ve been spending some time with a friend who raised an Angel round late last year. Like all smart entrepreneurs, he raised sufficient funding to get him through the following 18 months. Now 6 months post funding, we sat down to take stock of the situation and plan for the future. Its no secret that […]
State of mobile retail
Cognizant has an interesting infographic on state of mobile retail availability. Summary – very disparate usage, with little by way of trends and whats working/whats not. 0
Walk down Silicon Alley…
Last week I had the opportunity to spend time with startups and tech companies in New York, aka Silicon Alley. The excitement in the startup and venture circles in the city was impressive. Previously where finance used to dominate all conversations, now its about ad tech, social/mobile and Pinterest clones. VC’s seems to around each corner – […]
How much revenue does it take to be a billion dollar company?
Techcrunch has a good article on the subject – in essence, emphasizing on quality of revenue. The mantra suggested is recurring revenue, low churn, high LTV and operating leverage. For consumer companies equally, the notion of high lifetime value, repeat behavior, and margin structure are the key. A CapitalIQ analysis shows a strong correlation of […]
Real stories of Startup Failure
Readwriteweb has a review of The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup . Based on extensive research of 10,000 startup founders, this book draws upon the reasons of successes and failures. Top reasons for failure – people issues, equity issues, and investor relations. Seems like a promising read. 0
India Expansion – Acquire & Manage Culture not just the Business
In recent months I have had the great opportunity to work  with organisations from around the world who have expanded their global footprint  through Joint Ventures/strategic Buyouts or Acquisitions.  I am happy to share, based on my experiences, some of the key elements/experiences which are important steps in business success in these types of situations […]
What’s NXT : Digital Content – Where is Money – 3rd April 2012,
Digital Content : What’s NXT – Where is Money Britannica closing down its print publication after 244 years to focus on online version!  The number of Internet users in India – estimated at around 140 million today – exceeds the number of TV sets in our homes. Facebook, with its 44 million Indian members reaches more of […]
Missing Link – the HR plan
Having managed HR departments for over 110 companies in last 5 years, I am amazed to see the consistent absence of comprehensive HR plan inside or even alongside the annual business plan. And this remains the top reason why goal alignments, reviews and resource agility remains perpetual challenge. Most managers end up reacting to situations […]
A Different VC Model
Having made a number of investments in very young technology companies in India over the years I came to the somewhat obvious conclusion that it is relatively easy for startups  here to become ‘ramen profitable‘, but relatively difficult for them to exit. Making equity based investments in this scenario is problematic for the obvious reason […]
Indian Microfinance – Infographic from Legatum
Interesting infographic from Legatum on impact of AP ordinance on Indian microfinance industry. 20120313 infographic indian microfinance View more presentations from Alok Mittal. Apart from effective blacklisting of millions of poor women in AP from access to private credit, the ordinance has impacted availability of credit across the country. All in name of protecting the […]
Export Import Business Online-Business Idea
 Logistics is big business.And freight forwarding (export -import) contributes significantly to logistics business. Having worked with Air India Ltd at its Cargo SBU, I wonder whether are there any companies in world which facilitates export and import business online.This business can be classified into 2-3 ways.First is via air or sea.Second is big shipments (in tons) […]
The New Model of ecommerce (is the old model of business) – Profitable
 (This post was triggered by Alok’ s recent post about  new capital efficient, profitable models of ecommerce) The current crop of poster boys of ecommerce ventures in India – FK, Snapdeal, FnY etc are all horizontal – sell everything to everybody. They have built a business which has scaled – they have served millions of […]