Open and meritocratic, a culture that encourages risk-taking, free-flowing ideas, an abundant supply of mentors at every corner, pitches delivered prolificly in coffee shops, business plans discussed openly with no NDAs. A marriage between technology and gumption, and a cauldron for successful start-ups. These instantly conjure up the image of Silicon Valley even for those who have never been there.Silicon Valley represents the ultimate bastion of entrepreneurial spirit in the 21st century. This is the place disruptive innovations and revolutionary players like Intel, Oracle, Cisco, Yahoo and eBay can call home. Silicon Valley startups are a phenomenon that has changed the way business looks, acts and feels today. The valley has not only been attracting the best and the brightest people from around the world such as the graduates of IITs, Beijing University in China, and National Taiwan University in Taiwan, but also gives these wide-eyed immigrants the license to experiment freely with new tools and technologies for new applications, new customers and new markets.

Any exponent in creative thinking will tell you the secret to creativity : cross fertilisation of ideas and know-how between individuals from different firms and different fields of science. And Silicon Valley has the formula worked out to perfection. Ingredients that make the valley the revered Mecca for entrepreneurs are access to research from reputed institutions like Berkeley and Stanford, surfeit of entrepreneurs who earned their success in the valley and now feel a commitment to helping the budding entrepreneurs succeed, abundant venture capital and a culture of huge tolerance for failure. It was here that the Venture Capital first came to be institutionalised as a mechanism for funding high risk – high return ventures.

As relevant today in the era of the virtual social networks, the valley was a pioneer in fostering the relationships and real social networks that are catalysts of its creative dynamism. It is this combination of venture capital and social networks that engage the intellectual resources of Stanford and Berkeley and brew the many parallel experiments that get the entrepreneurs pregnant and give birth to the success stories such as yahoo and google.

What makes Silicon Valley so unique is also the comfort and confidence that people of different backgrounds and first generation enetrepreneurs feel about progressing in this environment. “If you are in Silicon Valley, it is easy to learn how to network, how to find venture capital, how to start a company, what support infrastructure looks like, how to deal with the V.Cs, lawyers, all the things that make it easy to start a company very fast and succeed.” says Anna Lee Saxenian, Professor at University of California at Berkeley and an expert on regional economies and the Information Technology sector.

The way ahead for India

If an enviornment such as Silicon Valley is to be recreated in India, we have to bring together several communities such as aspiring entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, academicians and researchers, corporate managers and policymakers to address shared problems and devise collaborative solutions. Bangalore seems a fertile place for a replication experiment with several elements present: Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institute of Management, presence of biggest technology companies such as Infosys and Wipro, and Venture Capitalists. Entrepreneurs and Mentors seem not as abundant in Bangalore as in Silicon Valley though. The key is to sytematically bring together these diverse intellectual resources at regular intervals and provide them a platform for free flow of information and ideas, brainstorming on technological solutions to big problems, networking and building relationships with each other. Conferences such as Pan IIT are indeed making progress towards such an end.

One significant concern for venture capitalists in India is about exiting the investment, since seed capital by default tends to be highly risky, and illiquid. The American NASDAQ seems to have solved this problem in the US by not only offering VCs a market for these relatively illiquid investments, but also enabling some companies like Infosys to go truly global, by raising their brand awareness among customers, partners and stakeholders and also facilitating the raising of capital more competitively through ADRs etc. UK has an AIM exchange focused on small companies to achieve a similar end and the UK Government provides several incentives for investors in AIM focused funds such as tax exemption for investments locked up for a period of several years. India could consider a similar option to boost the longetivity at birth for Indian start-ups.

Arifa Khan
Genius Incubator, Unleashing the genius in you…

TIE Entrepreneurship Summit Dec 21-23 2009, Mumbai

My feelings on the morning of the first day of the summit were a pot- pourri : of pride in what my country is evolving to be, excitement about being a part of this revolution called India’s unstymied economic progress, awe at encountering face-to-face the stalwarts who with their extra ordinary feats of grit, imagination and courage, have been making ours a proud nation,  camaraderie of belonging to the ranks that dream of grander and more magnificent visions of India, and passion to be part of this majestic entrepreneurial movement.

TIE Entrepreneurship Summit in Mumbai

As soon as I stepped into the conference venue, Vijay Mallya was already weaving his charm with his ubiquitous troupes of sultry kingfisher air-hostesses in their comely gear registering participants. Now, that is a display of Indian entrepreneurial creativity. High visibility and PR secured for a pittance – a few hours worth of your elegant staff time, albeit those that strictly warrant a second or third look.  Mallya with his good taste, is a true ambassador of “the good times” that his brand promises..

As I settled into my seat to see Ratan Tata (the legendary CEO of Tata Group) and N.R. Narayana Murthy (Founder and ex-CEO of Infosys) in their apparently first ever tete-a-tete moderated by Shekhar Gupta, I was already feeling revved up.

Narayana Murthy quizzed Ratan on his feelings the first few hours and days he had taken over the Tata mantle from JRD the legend and how it felt to step into such big shoes. Ratan in his typical candidness talked about his amusing story of how JRD would often forgot that he was no longer at the driving wheel, and infact swap chairs with Ratan in the same office like a musical merry go-around leaving Ratan utterly confused about what his new role and duties meant. And then he promptly complimented Narayana Murthy on creating his own shoes and therefore cleverly avoiding the problem of fiiting into someone else’s  shoes. Shekhar Gupta asked the veterans if they ever had encounters of the cladenstine kind with the politicians and corruption, and how they dealt with it. Both leaders had never bowed down to pressure and are famous for always having conducted their business with utmost transparency, highest ethical values and integrity. No wonder they feature right at the top in the recent survey of the most trusted Indians right after the likes of ex President Abdul Kalam and Manmohan Singh. Aren’t we incredibly lucky to be living in such times with inspiring leadership all around us?

Nandan Nilekani on India's Unique Identification Project at TIE Mumbai Summit 2009

Nandan Nilekani then shared the opportunities and challenges on his new initiative UID, a technology project to grant a unique identification number to each of the over 1 billion Indians, which he was handpicked to lead.

Then came the Gurukul session with my hero Kanwal Rekhi, the founder of TIE. Opportunity comes to the prepared mind! I was chatting with Rekhi on my venture Genius Incubator and how to mitigate the risk perceived by foreign investors of investing in India before his session. As he readied to go upto the dais to take questions from the hungry entrepreneurs, the organisers came looking to see if there was a moderator and I readily volunteered. I was only too pleased to officially moderate a session with the man I have admired and read about a lot – thanks to my fascination with the Silicon Valley phenomenon and my passion to replicate the ecosystem in India. Of course I could not pour forth my admiration during what was to be only a Q&A session with the audience, but I could contain it no longer when it came time to thank him for his time with us. My mind and oratory skills have always stood by me and served me faithfully when I have summoned them spontaneously and I dazzled the audience with an impromptu ode to the grand father of Venture investing in Silicon Valley. Of course the impact of the man’s grandness and the appropriateness of my speech only dawned on me when the audience gave a standing ovation. That was the moment tears welled up in my eyes for the great country India has been, is, and always will be.That was the moment I felt the privilege of being born Indian.

After moderating Kanwal Rekhi's Gurukul Session at TIE

We are a nation that shares courage and inspiration through the very air we breathe, without needing words to express. We are a nation of over one billion entrepreneurs, not a mere thousand or a million. We are a nation bound more by humanity and love, than by economic parameters of GDP. We are a nation that has provided spiritual wisdom and the fountain of all things sublime to the world.  We are a nation that stands in unison to hail the superhuman achievements of a Sachin Tendulkar, or the saintly leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. We are a nation that have nurtured first generation entrepreneurs like Dhirubhai Ambani who have left us exemplary tales of vision and ambition. We are a nation destined to create!

Arifa Khan is the Founder and Managing Director of Genius Incubator

To be continued… Stay tuned for bytes on my favorite hero Leander Paes, Dipak Chopra, K.V. Kamath and all the exciting new generation of entrepreneurs I met

Apologies for laxity in correspondence! I hope to make up for my long absence on the blog with an exciting update since launching of this website in October 2009.

I flew to India in November 09, in order to network with entrepreneurs and the investor community. What a productive tour that was! As soon as I  had landed in Bangalore, I had secured an invitation to address HR managers at HR Share 09, organised at Orchid Hotel, Bangalore on November 20th and 21st by International School of Business & Media, Pune.  My welcome address was on ‘Aligning Indian HR with international practices”, and was very well received by my Professor and friend Dr Pramod Kumar, HR managers and MBA students alike. I will post the content of all my talks at a later date.

Addressing HR Share at Bangalore, Nov 2009

at HR Share 09 in Bangalore

I visited my alma mater IIT Madras on November 27th to meet my Professors and Dr L.S Ganesh in particular who I had been corresponding with on my vision for nurturing entrepreneurship in India, and fortuitously noticed the TIECON Chennai poster on the institute notice board.  As luck would have it, I was told that Prof LSG, as he is fondly called, may also be found at the conference. I headed straight to the conference at Chennai Trade Centre and spent a couple of hours networking with the organising committee of TIE Chennai, and a few other participants like Arun Balachandran, who was running the incubator at Vellore Institute of Technology.  I also ran into my classmate from IIT Madras, Anil Kumar, who had come down from Chicago in his bid to launch his career as an entrepreneur with a premium match making portal! Anil introduced me to Singularity Ventures. When I left Chennai for Kadiri, my hometown, my inbox was overflowing with messages from entrepreneurs who wanted to meet me, business plans and an invitation to speak at an entrepreneurial conference in Cochin, courtesy Mr Balachandran I had met in Chennai.

I accepted the invitation for Cochin and left home telling my mother not to expect me back for long, and gave a talk there on 15th December. My first trip to Kerala and a long-awaited one was thus an eventful one! I ended up inspiring a lot of folks there with my experience in the Private Equity world, and snippets from my life. Among the people I met were Mr K.C Chandrasekhar Nair of TechnoPark, Mr Arun Balachandran, CEO of Innovation Lab, who was following his calling to inspire the masses, shunning the safety of a corporate job, and Yathish from Nasscom.  Sanjay Vijayakumar,the young CEO of MOBME Wireless Solutions regaled me with his tale of spunk on how he started his business from college, and raised his first round of funding of Rs 8 million from Mammooty or Mohan (I cannot remember now, but yes of course the f amous celeb from Malayali cinema or Kollywood).  Goes to prove once again – Where there is a will, there is always a way! Sanjaya also sits on the board of Technopark incubator.

Inaugurating Innovation Lab at Cochin Dec 2009

I left Cochin the same evening for Mumbai, my favorite city! Something about Mumbai electrifies my core being and always gives me the confidence that I can do anything I set my mind to, almost! I requested meetings with the British High Commission and UK Trade and Investment, indulged my old passion of fashion design, shopped for dress material, ate to my heart’s content, and met up with old friends, while waiting for the TIE Entrepreneurial Summit in Mumbai. Actually, the first thing I did in Mumbai was to contact the office of my friend and mentor, Mr R.Ravimohan, ex-Chairman of CRISIL. When I was told that he was no longer with CRISIL, my system went into shock as I had always been used to his presence there as CEO and later Chairman, ever since I knew him as my boss from my days as a Rating Analyst at CRISIL. Anyway, I was glad to learn that he had become Executive Director at Reliance Industries Limited, re-established contact and set up a meeting immediately after my TIE conference. My heart stoops down with weight, whenever I recall my luck and privilege in receiving his guidance as an extremely able, curious and willing mentor, as passionate about my success and achievements as I myself can be. He has never failed in providing me the right advice, be it personal or professional. Of course, we all make mistakes and on occasions I did not bother to consult him on important decisions. But, independence of thought was something he appreciated too!

Then came the much awaited TIE entrepreneurial summit in Mumbai Dec 21st to 23rd 2009. Nothing prepared me for the conference though! Right from the vast open space of acres of barren land in BKC where the dismantleable venue was erected overnite as the organisers claimed, the number of entrepreneurs or Indians who passionately made or were about to make a difference to India, to the eclectic ensemble of the famous faces I was just about to see, or the very significant life changing connections I was about to make!

Entertainment at TIE Mumbai Dec 2009

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Arifa Khan is the Founder and Managing Director of Genius Incubator

A Warm Welcome to Genius Incubator!

We are inspired to unleash the genius in you… Are you ready?

So, you are contemplating a leap of faith into the inviting world of entrepreneurship? Congratulations, you have come to the  right place!

Here you will find inspiration, advice and tips from the veterans screened by the eagle eye of Genius Incubator. Afterall, we are in the business of incubating newborn ventures. When you are dealing with something as vulnerable and precious as your new born, you don’t need as much advice as you get. You need tried and tested advice from experts you can trust your newborn’s life with! Read on..

I recall writing in my MBA essays about my zeal for entrepreneurship and how that dream was born.

The essay is a long piece of writing but to put it concisely I was shaken to tears by a childhood friend I met after a long gap of a decade and his adversity as a migrant worker in a Middle Eastern desert. I was moved to do something about creating employment opportunities for the poorest strata in rural India if ever I became wealthy and successful.  Eventually when I found myself at Wharton, like a starved eatomaniac facing a mind boggling variety of delicacies at a banquet dinner, I was afflicted with a lack of focus – something that I am usually never accused of. What is an insecure MBA to do in the face of such a dizzying array of career and other choices? Secure a hot job first like I-Banking/ Private Equity to repay your student loan and then worry about rest of the MBA itches, network like mad and then figure out how to put that network to use, get engaged because you are not going to find the same density of eligible potential partners anywhere else in future, or dip your toes in things like Business Plan Competitions and take a shot at the real thing?

I promised myself some adventure and proceeded to ‘test’ my entrepreneurial leanings and aptitude in the real setting of a business school, albeit risk free. It was important for me to prove to myself that I could found a real organisation, get my hands dirty, lead a team, and deliver what I promised I would.  Thus began my entrepreneurial journey. As they say – the best ideas find you! I had a special knack for the arts like music, dance, and fashion design since my childhood even though largely untrained. Ever since I can recall, I have always been finicky about my dresses. As a child, I used to lose track of time sewing away and creating really fancy designs on my mother’s Singer machine, browsing through fashion catalogs and issuing detailed instructions to my bewildered and much harried tailors. I was simply passionate about design – though I ended up studying Chemical Engineering at IIT Madras and  choosing the financial services industry for a career.

A tryst with art - by Arifa Khan

I had been secretly dreaming of launching my own designer label Arifa Khan some day. So, I founded the Wharton Culture Club to celebrate the rich cultural heritage and ethnic diversity of our student-body and went on to organise Wharton’s first ever Fashion Show. I thought it would be cool to showcase amateur designer talent like my own, and also give hidden models an opportunity to strut their stuff.

Fashionista - by Arifa Khan

Apparently, I had accidentally hit an incredible product-market fit! Everyone loved it, including the models, professors, MBA spouses, organisers, designers, and sponsors. We gave everyone a chance to be a part. Once I had mobilised a dynamic team almost possessed to see this take shape, the rest pretty much took care of itself. Goes to show, the founding team is more important than anything else. I am glad I did it as this remains one of my most defining experiences of B-school. I could mobilise a large number of people with shared interests for a shared cause and the resources took care of themselves. My friend Suzette Sugathan, who is currently the Brand Manager of India for Ponds at Unilever took care of the day-to-day details.

The team behind Wharton's first ever Fashion Show

Check out our fashion endeavor and the team at   www.whartonfashion.com. Read more on the lessons we learnt in “Learning to Lead:  Reflections on the Creation of a Fashion Show” – Wharton Leadership digest

http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/digest/02-04.shtml

Wharton Fashion Show

I had a background in Finance prior to my MBA, and therefore decided to learn the real complex stuff about finance at Wharton taking courses like ‘Speculative Markets’, ’Bond Markets’ and so on. I took a real fancy to derivatives and came up with a business idea for a Movie Derivative which would hedge against the vagaries of the box office. We formed a team and spent several months in pre product development phase, which lead to nowhere in the end. It will be interesting to see if anyone else will think of this. I guess the student loan looming in your face tends to make anyone but a rich heiress like Ms Ivanka Trump (who was incidentally at school at Upenn the same year) plain timid and risk-averse. But, it was fun and a great learning experience to bring together a team of serious people to consider a serious business proposition.

I also made it a point to attend every entrepreneurship conference in the vicinity (of course as much as the hectic schedule and the budget of a non-heiress MBA student would permit) like the TIE conference in Dallas and the HBS conference in Boston. I was keen to learn as much from others mistakes as I could, and network.   I reproduce below some of what I learnt at these events.

Distilled wisdom from the entrepreneurs who have been there and done that: From The HBS entrepreneurship conference, Boston 2003

How does it feel to be a ‘Desh’ DeshPande – one of the most successful VCs of the Internet era, and founder of Sycamore Networks that revolutionized broadband, or an Atul Nishar, the founding father of digital education and Aptech, and now Hexaware Technologies? One did not know until one donned the hot shoes of entrepreneurship oneself. Well, Wharton changed all that. Being here means you can demand to get under their skin, to know about their failures and their earth-shattering insights.

“Entrepreneurship is not just about the impolite five letter word ‘greed’ but about making an impact, be it at a large organization, at your start-up, in a broader community, or anywhere” pondered Gurcharan Das. “If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, find the best person in the industry you are targeting for sales and make him the CEO. He will get you the first customer and the rest.” Increase your threshold of pain and take more risks if you want to increase your chances of success, goaded Desh. While Atul Nishar drew on an example of coy fish that grows in size according to its environs, from less than a feet in a pond to over 10 feet in a flowing river. So he argued, we MBAs have an entire ocean to swim in, in a borderless economy and that we must really think BIG.

One learns to ascend the precipitous inclines of entrepreneurship, by conquering the fear of the unknown. “An African Impala, which can jump up to 10 ft high, is curtailed by a wall merely 3 ft high as it hates to touch down on an unknown territory. The challenge for an entrepreneur is to court the unknown. If I can do it, Narayana Murthy of Infosys can do it, so can each one of you” inspired Atul.

But, for those who did not inherit a business to run or money to render VCs redundant, how exactly do you ensnare the elusive VC if he does come in your ambit of influence, say in an elevator?

Give him THE perfect pitch – your story on how you cannot sleep before you see your baby up there in the Fortune 100 or whatever hallowed list. However, desist from all temptation to talk about the solution you have discovered to the billion-dollar problem plaguing your chosen industry, and instead talk about the problem advises Dr Nick Morgan of HBS. “The lower the need your message is based on, in Maslow’s hierarchy, the more viscerally effective it gets!” In any event, you perhaps have only a couple of minutes in your first chance-encounter, just enough to arouse the VC’s curiosity for your idea!

In the process of captivating the VC in a protracted courting, don’t forget to give him an exit option. You can even get away with a moderate return of say 30% with a exit option as it is bound to excite him more than the one with a 200% return with no exit. Contrary to popular perception, VCs do chase entrepreneurs, at times even when the entrepreneur in question doesn’t have an idea. Gil Hechst, the founder of Savantis systems, for instance claims a VC spotted him and offered him the moolah to go start a business! There does seem to be light at the end of the tunnel, and hopefully it’s not of a train that cometh to run over the entrepreneur!

How hard is getting that last buck from a VC?

It depends on how much control you are willing to lose for mitigating your risk of not being able to raise all the capital you need. ‘Beware the angel who promises you 100% funding’ caution some who have just embarked on their entrepreneurial ventures, for the angle may not be as angelic when it comes to his deadlines and stipulations. He may lay down terms and shove down decisions your throat that may not be all too palatable. Just as businesses like to spread risks across several vendors, we must extend our bowls across many VCs, angels and perhaps other sources. The lesser each one contributes to your venture, the more you are in control of your baby!

It was an impressive confluence alright. Of brilliance, practical wisdom, and of an acute naiveté to discard even a remote possibility of failure. But, isn’t that what entrepreneurship is all about? Enterprise and gumption with abandon was there for all to see. Take the battle of business plans for instance where the theatrically gifted HBS grads locked horns with the technology obsessed MIT grads with their ‘next best invention after sliced cheese’ in 30 seconds flat. If you have doubts about your ability to pull it off in 30 seconds, seek out Noah Shanok, WG04, who battled it to the top 10 ideas with his Axis 360, a novel idea for snowboarders. Some call it ‘fire in your eyes’; the phrase literally helped a budding entrepreneur clinch the deal from right under the nose of the likes of the mighty IBM.

I witnessed the business pitches that got their message through in 30 seconds at The battle of business plans, and made it to the 3 minute second round and finally to the “Let me invest” round by real VCs. More perplexing was the revelation by “how to make the perfect pitch” presenter that the best way to start a pitch is with a fable! And, all stories can be categorized into 5: Quest, Stranger in a strange land, Boy meets girl, Revenge, Rags to riches. He promises a $1000 to anyone who can invent a sixth story type that meets with his approval. Frankly, I wouldn’t bet my success with a VC on a pitch starting with any story, despite all my hard-to-camouflage raconteur instincts.

The key take-aways, of course, were the networking strategies by Keith Ferrazzi – the networker who got invited, even as a student, to present at the national level business federation conferences where his senior partners at the top 5 consultancies never got to -despite their best attempts. All because he networked!

The piece de resistance was from my celebrated alum Desh himself “ Entrepreneurship is like juggling with several balls like family, friends, work, life balance. Most of them are crystal and break once you drop them, the only rubber ball among them being work which you can pick up anytime and get going.” So, the lesson is do not drop other balls for a rubber ball which is unbreakable anyway!

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I met Sam Pitroda at The TIE conference at Dallas. The Indus Entrepreneurs (www.tie.org) is the largest non-profit organisation in the world fostering entrepreneurship, founded by Silicon Valley’s successful entrepreneur and angel investor Kanwal Rekhi.

Sam Pitroda is the architect of policy on Information Technology industry in India and currently Advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Read more about him in my article published in Wharton Leadership Digest – Selfless Mission – India’s Sam Pitroda.

http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/digest/07-03.shtml

But for inspirational stories such as these, one would perhaps be content to pursue the (relatively) less risky path of a highly paid job, and forget grandiose dreams of looking beyond one’s own life and creating employment for others. Luckily, everyone’s life is rife with stark eminders  that gently nudge you towards your ideal goal. To some it is the credit crunch, to some it is some back-to-the-wall adversity from which you cannot escape any other way, and to some it is public reminders like the one below.

I once had a chance to acquaint myself with N. Ram, editor of ‘The Hindu’ who was doing a story on IITs around the same time that I was feasting on all these conferences at Wharton. He asked a free-spirited MBA student, a simple innocuous question “How is it going for you at the business school?” I replied and found my quote making its way into the ‘Frontline’ article. So, there are friends in the public domain who will keep me on track even if I should stray! “IIT for me was life transforming in a true sense… a strong reason for my being here and my pursuits of entrepreneurship and other material success are a byproduct of my love for IIT, and my ambition to give back glory and pride, if not much else.”

http://www.thehindu.com/fline/fl2003/stories/20030214007506500.htm

Lesson: if you have friends in the media, visualise the headlines before you are tempted to be eloquent with your private views and opinions

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I have observed a common theme among all the super achievers I came across. The higher they are in the achievement ladder, the more conscientious they are about their job, work ethic, and personal credibility. Also, they tend to be more hard working, passionate and determined, the more important their position in life. I do not know which is the cause and which the effect – whether these traits lead them to these positions or if with every step they ascend towards their cherished dreams, their resolve just becomes stronger as the stakes get higher! I met Catherine Claydon in September 2009 in London and was inspired to learn that like every other beginner she was also a bundle of nerves at her first job and would have an anxiety attack before every sales call, but with sheer determination she went on to become an MD, Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs. Read her tips to become a super sales person in Entrepreneurs page under ‘The Entrepreneuress section.

http://geniusincubator.com/home/article/13

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Arifa Khan

Genius Incubator, Unleashing the genius in you…

Get a taste of the spirit of enterprise. Watch the live telecast of The Global Entrepreneurship Week at The British Library, london, Nov 16th – 20th 2009

www.gew.org.uk/events/the_big_launch

How to pick a co-founder?
venturehacks.com/articles/pick-cofounder

What to do at networking events? - Tips from the 17 year old entrepreneur and millionaire, Mark Bao

weblog.markbao.com/2008/11-things-learned-from-gnomedex-speaking-and-networking/

Stay lean as long as you can. Lean is good when it comes to startups.

venturehacks.com/articles/cheap-startups

How to hire employee #1, when you are ready!

blog.asmartbear.com/startup-hiring-advice.html

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