http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Software/Tech-Mahindra-in-talks-to-buy-Blore-start-up-Sloka-Telecom/articleshow/4253459.cms

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Tech-Mahindra-in-talks-to-buy-Sloka/articleshow/4251709.cms

@DON : Whatever genuine suggestions you had to Mr. Sujai, the way you have put the comments shows your upbringing. Man, it takes balls to run a company. More than that to run a technology company in India. Others like you sit in the gallery and start criticizing with malicious intent. Be productive, why didnt you try giving those suggestions directly to him via mail. Guess, it would have helped him alot than putting it in an online forum. No..you dont want to see him grow…neither do u want to see tech startups in India grow.. You couldn’t do it..so be it..right ?
There is a collective responsibility on anyone associated with startup ecosystem in India, not to cut the branch where we are sitting. Pls do remember that.

@Sujai: I dont agree fully to your observations about VCs in India. I had read a similar reflection from you in some other forum an year ago. Guess, your opinion hasnt changed yet. Good time for an introspection ?? May be you havent packaged it in the right form to a VC. I reiterate, there is no dearth of Money for a startup in India. Yea, lot of money has been wasted on me-too web startups…but doesnt mean you wont get what you deserve….if you truly deserve.
Sloka is an inspiring story for entreprenuers like us. Am sure, you will go to greater heights. Keep up the good work and position yourself better. There are many well-wishers for you. Ignore Don, but not his suggestions

You seem to know Sujai personally and have been following Sloka. I also happen to be good friends with him. I offer suggestions to him too. But I’ve never felt that I’m not being heard. Rather I think that when put the right way, Sujai is as open to criticism as anybody else here. And I think a lot of people in this community will vouch for it. If you are being forced to hide yourself then something’s definitely wrong with your approach.

@Sujai Please do not take this personally on yourself or your team. You are sustaining yourself, building your product and making revenue today. You are the one who brought Sloka to this point. Everybody here knows how tough is it to build a sustainable business around your product. You have done it! The ‘unwritten rule’ of the VC community is not going to kill you. It will only stunt your growth. You’ll still survive. And that’s a big deal given the state of the telecom equipment Industry and economy in general.

Personal attacks aside, IMHO all these are signs of a immature ecosystem. To think of it, the IT Industry itself is around 20-25 years old in India. A lot of people are still trying to figure it out including the VC’s and entrepreneurs. We are at least a decade or so away compared to the Valley. Even there its tough to raise VC money. Its just a hundred times more tougher here.

On the bright side, now is a great time if you want to contribute to the ecosystem. You can leave your mark for posterity!

I apologize for expressing my opinions on this forum. You have done a good job in denigrating my team and their accomplishments. You have to understand that I did not target anyone in particular, either by taking the names of people or their organizations. I kept the criticism vague enough taking precautions not to isolate anyone in particular. You can know from the train of comments that nobody associated a particular incident or event to any particular partner or VC firm.

I have learnt my lesson – thank you for teaching it to me. I will wait for the day when investors and entrepreneurs can see eye-to-eye and discuss business across the table as mature men. I will wait for the day when they come out of their cloak of anonymity and express their opinions as mature men taking accountability for their opinions and actions.

Till then, good bye! And also, Don – a special request, please stop further slander of my team and my company. Their hard work and passion doesn’t need to be ridiculed like this on an open forum – I take responsibility for putting them such a situation. I don’t think I have criticized you or your team in particular – in fact I did not mention any names in my articles. It would have been nice if you had extended the same treatment to me.

Since I do not know who you are, I am not sure if I have offended you in the past, maybe I refused your term sheet, or did not take your advice, or did not hire you – I apologize for that also.

Thank you,

Sujai

Good to be passionate as long as you do not lose sight of your competitors and industry. There is always a thin line between being passionate and being obsessed over something. Being passionate about becoming the US president does not produce good president; at worst it will harm the citizens.

It’s not important that how long are you running a company, more important is how good are you running the company. Sujai still brags about 24 month old France deployment. Reality is that it was a test deployment after which Sloka was rejected and it was granted to Alvarion. There are no more paying customers for Sloka.

VCs are not morons as it was persuaded to believe, they do their homework. If you still feel this is a personal attack, take your VC buddy for beer and substantiate these views.

For all those people out there, we few people lost our jobs in one of the MNC Company, due to SLOKA is much ahead of us in the same product. We hate Sujai for that. I hope you understand.

Sujai, take this piece of advice, when you roll with a pigs, for them it is play. It is you who gets dirty.

Lesson learned from this post: If you are an employee you will tend to making enemies in your team, max in your company. If you are an employer you will make enemies in the outside world also, especially for reasons not known to you. The more the years you are an entrepreneur, the more the enemies you will make.

Last but not the least: DON, you are always the KEY man. You always have the extra KEY with you.

case 1:- Be related to managing partner or a senior partner at VC firm best case, get married to one ..:-) (Wannabe entrepreneurs , take note … quickly) .

Case 2 :- Every VC partner has a failed dream of doing some obscure business like “something in security” or “something in mobile payments”. If you happen to be close enough to the VC and create a half baked business plan for the dream .. bingo , you will get funded most often than not ..

Oops did I let out another “VC world’s unwritten decision”?

Man look at the world around you .. millions are poured in “me too ” businesses with absolutely confused leadership like m$#g*%b@x, g@r%j$,s#$g&^s$%p and ones that takes the toast like m%$j, or j&%y s#$%&s at obscene valuations.

And other businesses with much solid ground based on great technology and revenue paying customers remain abysmally under funded sloka is just one example and there are many many more.

@Ashish, instead of hottest startups , let’s have a competition, which one according to your audience is most deserving and still unfunded / underfunded startup? You/panel gets to choose the nominees I imagine Sloka has already made it’s case .. who else .. ?

Another thought which is the most undeserving but heavily funded startup ?

Let the bitch-fest begin

-Ashish

Lets stick to finding out some facts :
1. Is Venture capital reaching people who need investments ? If you look at the amounts of money VCs have funded their portfolio companies with, and poll 200 startup companies (as a sample), you will find out where the need is and where money is getting delivered.

2. Is VC funding in India coming too late ? Take Twitter versus SMSGupshup for example, or a Minglebox versus Facebook. How much funding did they attract in their first rounds of funding ?

3. Even as I suspect over-capitalisation of startups funded by VCs in India, what is the record of returns on investments from India VCs ? We can compare amounts invested and exits both dotcom era VCs (Indocean Chase, Infinity, Global Tech Ventures, Chrysallis, Walden, etc) and the current era VCs are returning. I am assuming that Indian VCs will return superlative RoI because they seem to be investing in later stages and investing lots of money in low cost businesses in India, am I right ?

It is wrong to accuse Sujai on account of him trying to raise funding and running his company with difficulty for 4 years. If anything, it shows his grit, passion and perseverance – qualities that every startup CEO should have.

@Don, You articulated your points very well and I do not deny (neither endorse) since I do not know the complete facts, but for the sake of discussion, let me accept those.

As you mentioned, Sujai was not able to position his products. Don’t you think he could have been if he could have got the money and right people at the right time? 2005 was the right time when people were investing in WiMax. Despite of that, why Indian investors did not invested? (802.16e came much later) Anything to do with risk taking ability? The irony is that we are living in a country who gave the brightest engineers and technologist to the world and VCs from the same country are shying away from taking technological risk.

While Sujai’s approach may be wrong in bringing up his opinion in public and tirade (as you call it), but then what are the options left with him? If he would not have, then somebody else and if no one, this will continue.

Let’s be fair, if you think he (or any entrepreneur) is doing wrong in bringing up his opinion in public, why don’t you do the same thing, be blunt and tell us at once what we bunch of jokers (Indian entrepreneurs) are doing wrong? We will gladly listen and work to improve. At least it will make the oven clear for the next bake and everyone to have their share of pie.

I completely agree with your point about ‘Informed Risk’. Everyone is here to make money. However, I will be very interested in knowing the names of few startups where any Indian VC took the informed risk and succeeded. I am sure you will have a hard time. People here can name hundreds of so called ‘informed risk’ you took and went down the drain. I am sure companies like Sloka would have given you much better returns, is your vision button working properly?

To be honest, if VC puts some effort, entrepreneur will gladly work with them to identify and minimize the risks. But it never happens, the discussion usually remains superficial and biased with pre-conceived notions and if progresses, shrinks to dilution, valuation and some US company already ventured into same field so how will a poor Indian will succeed. Let me ask, did any VC ever took pain to speak with Sloka’s customers?

Someone mentioned 3D compression, ConnectM etc. Please get your facts right. They are funded because they are backed by big names, ConnectM (Sasken), 3D compression (IISc). Does this mean, VCs need big names to venture into and not relatively unknown people like Sujai? Hey Larry/Sergey, don’t choose India for your rebirth, you will be sorry (I am serious).

I had a chance to hear Sujai couples of time and I must say, he is passionate about anything he does. Name me a single technology entrepreneur who ran company in India for four years without any funding. You will have a hard time. He may not be perfect but who is? That’s a journey, don’t pursuit for the perfect.

All we need an environment to grow this ecosystem, VC and starups working as a team to make next Google or Microsoft rather than finding each other’s fault (like Israeli investors). Both are needed for each other existence, VCs are here because there are startups and the vice versa.

People have bright ideas; you just need to believe in our people. If you can’t help with money, help them with business and connections. I am sure entrepreneurs will never ever ‘tirade’ again.

Have invested in 3 companies Perfint (healthcare) and 3D-compression
(graphics related) and ConnectM (telecom).
I donno what they are doing in-terms of business but their starting point
of investment were on IP.

Hope this serves your search for one-indian company .

Don came out with valid points but concurrently too harsh – he could have shown maturity to settle it one-to-one instead of ripping off a reputed CEO.

Sujai is a repeat offender on every opportunities he gets & his stories are becoming so ho-hum now (and incredible too, read dons comment). I think maybe this humiliation will make him understand.

Admitted that some VCs are not treating startups fairly, a few startups blanks out on a fact that raising money is like a sale process. It takes a significant investment of time, energy, and intellect to sale it to them. and if you are failing there, shows your incapableness to handle customers.

Whatever the case may be, startups in this country are in regretful state.

1) I agree with Sujai about very few VCs even trying to learn enough about your business/industry/customers/team before taking a “view” on it.
2) Indian VCs tend to waste a lot and lot of time discussing things immaterial to an early stage deal. I spent months and months with them but closed it with the Singapore fund in 4 weeks.
3) Having said that, I think given the stage the ecosystem is in, the quality of dealflow, the size and number of exits being seen, and the fewer no. of investors, this is normal risk-averse behaviour.

Ideally, all that should matter at a very early stage investment is the quality of the team, the investor’s chemistry with the entrepreneur and the vision/potential the idea carries. If we wait till companies learn to stand on their own feet, build their own business models, and start generating decent traction, we might miss out on the next Google here.

Entrepreneurs – generate cash from customers – it’s the best funding there is !

I am ashamed of some of us who are not able to have balanced view. There is one principle. And, if you fail to apply that one principle fairly to both sides, then you are not principled. If we expect ‘Don’ to go one-on-one, same applies to Sujai.

One thing i am sure of that Sujai looses credibility in my eyes.

@Don were you working with sloka before? you just ripped off the whole article… why r u so angry about sloka’s CEO? U still think the
company is great producing great products and only the CEO is not good??

WiMax is considered a disaster by all major players…unless Sloka
does that differently (either in making…4X is not a good number
OR for different set of audiance which the biggies left).

But, i can’t digest this article about a company which won so
many awards are not able to attract a decent funding….
something fishy!!