Book Review: Arlene Dickinson's All In

Published in DNA Sunday Edition 08.02.2015.

Beginner’s Guide to Entrepreneurship - Book Review

Book Review (Published in TISA Sep 2013 Issue)

Beginner’s Guide to Entrepreneurship

Subroto Bagchi.

The High Performance Entrepreneur 

Penguin, New Delhi, 2008. pp. 242, Rs. 173 (Flipkart)

This is a good book on Entrepreneurship that is straight and sharp. The author Subroto Bagchi, is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Mindtree Consulting. This book is written by someone who has been there and done that.

The book goes through each step from identifying the opportunity to writing a well – rounded business plan. The author touches upon crucial topics like finding an investor, recruiting good personnel and building a brand. Each chapter is focused on a particular topic thus making the book a comfortable read. The simplicity of language makes it easily comprehensible for an average mind.

One of the key highlights of this book is the chapter on why start-ups fail. This is the segment which readers should probably read first. Start-ups mostly fail in the initial years. The ones who can weather the preliminary obstacles create enough traction to survive and sustain.

What I liked about the book are the first chapter which discusses our readiness to launch a venture and the sixth one which is about how we differentiate ourselves from others. It is vital that we embark on our entrepreneurial journey with a certain amount of readiness to avoid failure. A great idea is simply not enough.

Launching an IPO is quite a critical decision and requires a lot of consideration, preparation and precise execution at multiple levels. Towards the end, the chapter on “From Idea to IPO” provides a wonderful insight though probably not a serious requirement of new entrepreneurs.

The time invested in reading this book will prove valuable for new entrepreneurs or anyone with a great idea trying to crack the idea to execution code. This book has the potential to energize fence-sitters who probably have an idea but not the strength, drive or determination to go ahead on the entrepreneurial path trying to realize their dream and build a name. At times all it takes is a little push and this book is the right dose for such cases.

Startups and Entrepreneurship

Published in SME WORLD July 2013

Few days back I was changing my mobile phone plan seeking a faster Internet service. There was no lack of options and the wait time between deactivating one service and activating another was probably 48 hours. But in that interim I was not connected to my business and personal contacts through WhatsApp; something that I was not even using few months ago. It was a huge impediment in my otherwise efficient way of working. I had to go “old school” and email, text or call people whenever I needed something. That is the power of startups; innovations which are disruptive and change the entire rules of the game. 

When Clayton Christensen talked about Disruptive Innovation in the mid 90s, he probably had not fully envisaged these amazing startups which have effortlessly embedded themselves into our lives. Those were the times of dotcom magic. However, today we have Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, Viber which are all taken for granted as our modes of communication. Leaving aside the controversy surrounding Oscar Pistorius, imagine the advancement in prosthesis which helps a man (without a natural limb) outrun otherwise physically intact compatriots. All these innovations came up through startups driven by people who had a vision, who believed in themselves and their idea and went ahead to take the risk and convert their ideas to reality. The list of such startup is endless and spreads across a lot of industries
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A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology.

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

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In this growing climate of self – employment, business and entrepreneurship; startups are often confused with small business. Let us clear the facts.

Startups are not small business. Entrepreneurship is also not small business.  

Startup Entrepreneurship vs. Small Business

This nation was built by men who took risks - pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, business men who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.  ~Brooks Atkinson on America (American Theatre Critic for New York Times)

A startup entrepreneurship is different from small business. There are three fundamental differences –

1.      Startups take shape due to an innovative idea which has the potential of becoming a disruptor that changes an existing order. E.g. How USB pen drives revolutionized storage from CDs and DVDs.  

2.      Startups are pursued by entrepreneurs as they are ready to move out of their comfort zone and past the tried and tested. Small business can be a beauty parlor or bakery. The rules of the game are established. Business models are in place that can be tweaked here and there to increase profitability. Where startups can take the world by storm and function across borders, small business is restricted by its geographic presence and reach. When Computed Tomography (CT) was developed, that was a startup idea. Manufacturing generic pharmaceuticals using a well documented master manufacturing formula is small business.

3.      Startup entrepreneurs are risk takers. When they start off the vista is unclear. Learning happens along the way. But once startups hit the tipping point, it simply grows in geometric proportions unlike small business which continues to remain small.

The difference is between doing something new and revolutionary or doing something that is generic. As an individual ask yourself Are you aiming do something new and disruptive or venturing into a tried and tested business model with few advantages in your basket to create an edge and remain profitable? 

How Startups Evolve

I have a selective bias towards education and technology. Let us take the example of Edutor Technologies (www.edutor.in). Their website says –

“Edutor's Augmented Classroom Solution enables Schools & Coaching Institutes to leverage the power of Tablets in engaging students – within the classroom and at home . The solution is designed to lighten the school bags of students and drive effective learning – through enriched learning materials and by facilitating individual attention & focus from the teacher.”

We have all been carrying heavy school bags during our childhood and there were no mass availability and accessibility to computers till mid 90s in India let alone tablets. Today the there is a technology available to address the issue which not only reduces the weight of the school bags but makes learning more enjoyable and interactive. All of us have learnt about the water cycle in school. It was a simple diagrammatic representation that we drew in our notebooks. Today students can see a video with a supporting audio to understand the entire process in an interactive form. Which is more effective?

A startup starts with an idea. The entrepreneur (or the team) realizes that not only there is a problem, but a probable solution to address it and convert the entire experience into something more pleasant, efficient and superior result-driven.  Everything is in a state of flux at this stage but the entrepreneur has faith in his idea.

Today there is whole ecosystem available to support startups from its initial stage till it scales up considerably.

The subsequent stage is conceptualizing the idea for roll-out, testing, and modifications followed by retesting. Here the entrepreneurs work out the development of the solution, the delivery process, initial revenue structure etc. Most of the startups slog through these stages with the founder entrepreneur’s funds.

Using a robust model, the startup entrepreneur now tries to convince the investors in taking interest in the idea and support it financially. The model’s efficacy is proven through data and analytics. An idea is an idea till it becomes economically promising with a market ready to be served. Once a startup achieves funding, it is ready to scale up and grow rapidly taking the market by a storm. And as the product reaches out to more audience, it is further tweaked to make it more lucrative and desired. The way Google has evolved as a company and its product basket has flourished need not be reiterated. Look at the success of Groupon or Zynga.

What Startups Need

What startups need is freedom to dream and experiment. An idea can get strangulated if it is not allowed to breathe. An established business with a tried and tested business model that is profit-making can form a small subsidiary and venture into a startup. Once it gains traction, funds can be channelized to create momentum and fuel its growth. Another perceived benefit of this structure is image and network. Interested investors know who is behind the idea and that makes them feel secure about investing. This perception is however debatable. In case of startups, it is the strength of the idea that attracts investors not if a Fortune 500 company is behind it.

A startup benefits enormously through business incubators and accelerators. There are quite a few incubators active in India. Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship in IIM Ahmedabad, Technology Business Incubator at NIT Calicut, Indian Angel Network and National Design Business Incubator at NID Ahmedabad are few examples. Edutor was incubated by IIT Madras’s Rural Technology and Business Incubator. Germany has an association of Business Incubation and Innovation Centers with over 200 institutional members.

The incubation centers provide support and resources to entrepreneurs and startups for myriad activities like accounting, marketing, labeling, designing, liaison with banks and financial institutions to process loans and funding, technology acquisition to name a few functions. They have a network of service providers and they interact amongst themselves to learn and replicate services and fill gaps. They are useful in all kinds of industries. The aim is to not only help entrepreneurs gain a foothold but by helping enterprises survive they help in creating jobs and general economic activity in the area and in better cases down the line investments and entrepreneurship.

SAP pools in their huge knowledge base and case studies gathered over the years of implementation and interaction with clients all over the world into this program to help entrepreneurs through mentoring and training. SAP Ventures is a win-win proposition which has launched the Real-Time 100 Million Euro Fund aimed at startups that are launching solutions for big data challenges leveraging SAP HANA as their application database. The company is committed to investing at the growth stage of IT startups with investments to the tune of USD 5 Mn atleast!

Do you have an idea waiting to intensify?

If you have a fantastic idea that can make a marked difference in people’s lives then this is the age to work on it. Today we are at a stage where there is whole fertile ecosystem that can support an idea and take it to a commercially viable stage. There are investors looking for the next Twitter or Facebook which will create a flurry of economic activities around it. These innovations have changed how marketers are promoting their products or engaging with customers. There are tools like Cloud solutions ready to help accelerate your idea at a rapid pace. Whether you become a small business owner or start-up entrepreneur will depend on your life’s objectives. You choose to setup a mom and pop shop or build the next device which makes you a household name. If there are risks, so is the chance of immense satisfaction and contentment.

While writing this piece one of my most favorite poems by Robert Frost came to my mind.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~ Robert Frost 

SIDBI's smallB.in Promoting Entrepreneurship and Stimulating Growth

Originally published in SME WORLD Feb 2013

SIDBI's smallB.in Promoting Entrepreneurship and Stimulating Growth

This age of information and its vast potential for improving communication, information and effectiveness never ceases to amaze me. Every day around us we see numerous examples of its far reaching implication. Recently, a friend was planning to start his own micro-scale venture. He asked me where he can look for relevant information to understand how to go about it. We generally talked about prerequisites like company name, accounting system, employment issues, obtaining relevant licenses and gathering finance for the setting up the business. Soon we realized that our discussion is going on in an endless loop.

We felt that there must be many such new and upcoming entrepreneurs out there going through similar quest for authentic information. What we require is a genuine source of proper structured information through an open channel.

It is then I recalled that we, at SME WORLD, had covered the launch of Small Industries Development Bank of India's (SIDBI) ingenious initiative – a website for budding entrepreneurs – www.smallB.in

Let us look at what the site has to offer to various segments of entrepreneurs.

What does smallB offer Entrepreneurs?

smallB proclaims that it has content applicable for new, upcoming and existing entrepreneurs. There are specific information broadly in the area of Business Plans, Funding Sources, details of Policies and Regulations, Environmental compliance, Energy saving, Business Management and Exports.

New Entrepreneur

The focus of information is appropriate for each segment owing to their unique challenges. A new entrepreneur lacks considerable fundamental information starting from how to incorporate the business, understanding the long-term pros and cons of proprietorship, partnership, LLP or private limited company. The site provides a fairly reasonable checklist for startups.

Budding and Existing Entrepreneur

A budding entrepreneur as well as an existing one on the other hand lacks time for gathering latest updated information to take their company to the next level. There are lots of changes continuously happening around us in the external business environment. New policies and schemes are floated periodically but it is practically impossible to keep abreast with them while concentrating on day to day operations and running of the business. This is where informative sites like smallB come in handy.

Budding and Existing Entrepreneurs need the following information:

The site has dedicated page for downloading important forms which is quite useful.

The forum is one of the most interactive aspects of this site. It is an ideal platform for entrepreneurs, experts and companies to share knowledge and experience thus enhancing the learning process for others.

Leo Buscaglia said “The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.”

Ironing the Kinks

The site though is quite informative and resource rich but there are areas for possible improvement. Going through the site in detail, the contents seem more useful for new entrepreneurs who have very little knowledge (except about their core business idea). It is at times too generic and bookish. Quite a bit of the information is based on ideal situation which is not really the case in our business environment.

Few sections of this site need to be expanded.

The site should try to create more awareness for people keen on pursuing entrepreneurship. It sounds very good that we want to be our own boss, we want to work on our own terms and create something worthwhile but it is not a cake walk. With great opportunity come greater responsibilities. It is vital to discuss the trials and travails of an entrepreneur focusing not just on the rosy and shiny parts.

Information should be enriched and made more significant for existing entrepreneurs aiming to expand their business. What are the legal and statutory provisions, pitfalls to be avoided and avenues that can be explored need more detailed insight.

Handling government agencies and officials like factory inspector, labor inspector, tax audits etc. are real world cases that need attention. What are the best practices that enterprises should follow to handle these agencies and remain compliant? What are the rights and obligation as an enterprise? What are the rights and authorities of these bodies who visit our factories and shops? The site can develop a compendium of instances that enterprises encounter and how to avoid them. Enterprises in India are bound by numerous laws and it is practically impossible for each entrepreneur to understand each of them. Thus, a good checklist or case list will help entrepreneurs to remain aware and make informed decisions.

Going Soft is the New Normal - My first book

I have self published my first book aimed at Entrepreneurs.
The book is available as Kindle Edition and published by Kindle Digital Publishing.
The book talks about the critical soft skills and areas essential for entrepreneurs to work upon for business excellence. It contains a collection of my select articles.
The book is aimed at a larger, diverse audience through Kindle and Amazon.

Going Soft is the New Normal (Kindle Edition) Available at Amazon