Introductory post – Entrepreneurship in India
I am excited about writing a series of posts on “Entrepreneurship in India” for the readers of PluGGd.in.
Here’s whats on the menu for the coming weeks:
- So you have an idea, how do you go about developing the business case for it
- What are the basic activities for you to do at the early stage of your venture
- Practical things to know when you start thinking about pitching to a VC
- Legal and accounting activities that can affect your venture’s future
- What questions should you be asking a VC when you get to the funding stage
- People and compensation issues – hiring, ESOPs, salary hikes
- Infrastructure issues – office rentals, leases, equipment, permits
- Money saving tips – ideas to conserve cash and use others’ generosity
- Advisory boards, mentors and networking – celebrity advisors or accessible ones
- Any questions or topics that readers raise that would be useful to discuss
Let me tell you a little bit about myself and what these posts are about. My business partner, Dhruv Agarwala, and I were classmates at business school in the US (our backgrounds are at the bottom). We used to joke about wouldn’t it be nice if someday we got the opportunity to move to India and do something entrepreneurial together. Well…as they say in downtown Shanghai, “Be careful what you wish for” – because that is exactly what happened.
We returned to India a couple of years ago and the “something entrepreneurial” turned out to be a financial services business called iTrust. We’re an advisor and seller of different financial products using a hybrid offline and online model, you can check out our site www.iTrust.in.
In the last one year, we have hit enough milestones from raising funding to building a 75 member team. More importantly, we have learned a number of lessons through our numerous mistakes, lessons which would be worth sharing with other early stage start-ups.
What follows in this series is a collection of thoughts and tips for start-up entrepreneurs in India based on our experiences at iTrust, wisdom that others shared with us and our experience of mentoring many first-time entrepreneurs in India. I have clubbed these thoughts under the topics you read in the list above.
No doubt, entrepreneurs in the western hemisphere who are more experienced and accomplished than us have written reams (or posted enough online) on starting a business and what to do in the early stages etc.
We are humble enough to admit that we can hardly raise the bar on all that’s been written by these entrepreneurs in the west. But, what we can add value to is further building the body of entrepreneurial knowledge on what works in the Indian context.
Just to set your expectations, lets quickly go over what these posts are intended to be:
- Some thoughts on how to think about your venture in India and actionable items that will help your company during its early stages of existence
- A list of things, unique to India, that we wish someone would have given us a heads up on that would have saved iTrust time and emotional energy (e.g., why on earth do you need a Shop and Establishments Act license). This list is in no way a complete one, so we hope that these posts will be….
- ….A catalyst for other entrepreneurs to share their own lessons (and best practices) and for readers in general to get a cue to think about some important issues associated with the start of one’s entrepreneurial journey
For those of you who are always in search of that ultimate blog post, lets clarify what these posts are not:
- English essays with bestest grammar, spelings, or; perfectsyntax
- A test of Ashish’s editorial abilities. He is doing enough already on this blog. All errors and omissions are mine
- A discussion on a single formula or secret sauce that will get a VC to fund your venture or even take your phonecall. Don’t read these posts if you are expecting that one right answer. iTrust is yet to find that answer, but we’ll tell you as soon as the tooth fairy tells us
Finally, for those of you wondering what in Dhruv or my background qualifies us to share our learnings in these posts, don’t hold your curiosity any more – nothing qualifies us, as you will see from our backgrounds below. We are not even pretending to be experts in entrepreneurship. I just happen to have pictures of Ashish in a compromising position from when he was in college.
And now just for the sake of completeness, some background on us. Dhruv was the CEO of GE’s Infrastructure business in India. He also led Institutional Sales for GE in the country. Dhruv earned his spurs as a rock star operator by improving the performance of various GE businesses around the globe. So, don’t challenge him on anything about Six Sigma. He already has to his credit two successful start-ups in India. After completing his engineering education in Materials Science, he built from scratch an iron ore mining company, back in the day it was still fashionable to get ones hands dirty. He then also started and exited an education business. And, he did all this before he deservedly went to business school to catch up on rest and sleep. Dhruv holds a BS from Northwestern University, an MS from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard. I can also add that he is the leading connoisseur of bitter chocolate this side of the Suez Canal.
As for me, most recently I have been an investor, first managing investments for the Ziff family and thereafter at Europe’s leading hedge fund, TCI Fund Management. Before investing, I worked on Wall Street at a mergers and acquisitions investment bank called James D. Wolfensohn, Inc. way before the time analysts were able to outsource their financial modeling responsibilities to some BPO in India.
I went to business school among other things to get some free time to start a Formula 1 racing team. Alas, I fell a $100 million short and, if that was not bad enough, I then suffered the ignominy of all the 10 teams on the grid rejecting my overtures towards them.
During my undergraduate education I managed the operations for India’s largest theatre company, Stagedoor and acted in 11 plays. I have attended Delhi University, London School of Economics, Harvard Business School and Universita Per Stranieri Di Siena. I want to write an opera when I grow old.
Until the next post….you can send your questions to startup@iTrust.in
Hey kartik , good to see you on Pluggd, would request you to kindly consider my points also
> show how a Entrepreneur can succeed without having to Pitch for VC.
> Why is VC always self regarded fro every startup, wouldn’t’ the Idea alone succeed??
> If someone has a derivative idea what would be the right time fro him to join hands with others ?
> lot of synergy is been created for VC activities in INDIA, but how many of these efforts are successful.
> We have seen VC investments from early 2004, but yet more are pro US centric products [i might be wrong] but the feeling remains same.
> Is the Servicing industry scenario fo Outsourcing reaching the Startup cases also, like Develop products here [cheap labour], sell it elsewhere
> I am always perturbed to hear everyone stating about VC funding, but yet please say to World,would it be possible in early stages to concentrate and take a new stage without being able to spend time fro preparing presentation & Docs for a VC pitch
> Earlier youngsters were driven towards servicing Industry since the earning was lucrative with stock options, should youngsters take same step by quiting jobs, since VC would Fund??
> very confusing out there in the Indian sentiments, clarify few of these
thanks ahead
Sri
http://www.yulop.com
Great !! I just can’t wait for the posts. I have my questions ready…really weird and stupid ones, but hey , do you know of any other kind ?
Looking forward for the posts.
Cheerz
Shri
Hey Kartik, I am badly waiting for your next post.
Just to keep things in perspective, plz post your age.
36
Hey Amar, mine is 23
Just can’t wait to get next post.
sumit: Good concept for your venture..good luck. If you want to verify the users and avoid bogus registrations, use what google does to verify its local listings. they usually send a postcard with a code and the user enters that to activate profile.
Hey Amar. Thanks for the appreciation of the product. and thanks for the suggestion of nice approach to avoid bogus entries. We are planning to do shortly.
[...] case around it. For those of you who are new to this series, please read what these posts are about here. This post is long, so you might want to stretch your legs every few minutes to avoid deep vein [...]
Hi Kartik,
It’s nice to see someone sticking to their guns on using ‘advice’ to distribute financial products and laying a stress on ‘managing’ client assets rather than pushing products. It’s a tough thing to do.
I went through your website – iTrust has signed up with multiple players for distribution of insurance, MF and loans. There were other services like estate and tax planning.
A few areas I’ve noticed where the space is not crowded (in India) is remittances, SME services, alternate investments for NRIs, trusts etc. Are you exploring these areas or would you be keeping iTrust a purely retail affluent and lowerHNI player in the market (this means more competition with existing banks and other financial consultants)
Warm Rgds
Shankar
[...] The process of raising institutional money can be one of the more physically and emotionally draining parts of starting a business. It can drag on for weeks or months, taking away your focus from your business. And even after all this time, the deal still might end up collapsing. So, before you jump into this process, you better have some clarity on the whether you and your idea are both ready for VC money or not. [For those of you new to this series, please read the introductory post here.] [...]
[...] [For those of you new to this series, please read the introductory post here.] [...]
I was reading this post for the second time and I don’t believe I actually missed out on the Formula 1 Team venture you wanted to stared , the first time.
Is there any way, Karthik, you can write a blog post on what and how that was all about ?
Looking forward for next posts and learn
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