Category — Technology & Business

I gave a talk last Saturday at IIT Roorkee titled - ‘Conducting a Market Study & Developing the Business Model’. This was as part of a lecture series that is being organized by EDC (the Entrepreneurship Development Cell) at IIT Roorkee. The talk was about a generic approach to conducting product feasibility studies and the way to go about developing the business model. I fell back upon our slideshare experience to explain some of the points in the presentation. The slides from the talk are shared below.

Roorkee incidentally, is India’s oldest engineering school and it was taken into the IIT fold in 2001. Before the talk, I had some time to spare and I spent that time going around the campus and took some snaps with my mobile camera (shared below).

Its great to see how most engineering & MBA schools in India now have an entrepreneurship cell and are making efforts at promoting it. This certainly was not the case a decade ago (when I graduated from engg).

If you wish to understand the intricacies of the venture capital funding process, here’s something that will come in handy. I read about (or hear) lots of VC jargon all the time (e.g. Series A investments, term sheets, management fees, exit valuations), and while I have a rudimentary idea of what it means, I don’t get many parts of it. Partly, because one needs to experience it firsthand, before you get the complete picture. Still, if somebody could explain all that jargon in simple, uncomplicated English, it’ll help a lot. So I was delighted to stumble across these two presentations, while performing the daily quality drill on SlideShare.

The first presentation is titled – ‘Everything you need to know about Venture Capital‘. It was delivered by Ben Holmes from Index Ventures at the Future of Web Applications (FOWA) summit at London last week. The presentation is stunningly clear and straightforward. It explains the how, why, when, when not, etc of venture funding in all of 22 slides. DON’T MISS THIS.

The second slide deck is titled ‘Sex & the Investor‘. It is from John Wilson of Folio Partners and he delivered it recently at BarcampLondon2. He talks less about the VC jargon and more about the underlying motivations behind getting venture funding. This is great as well.

I recently gave a talk on funding options available to Indian technology startups in front of a gathering, consisting mostly of MBA students and academicians. Of course, my own slides would pale into insignificance compared to these two presentations. Wish I seen these beforehand.

The BarCamp fever is revisting Delhi once again. Delhi’s second tryst with this unconference is scheduled for the 9th of Dec (venue still not decided). And as before, this is likely to be a don’t miss event for Delhi’s tech, startup & entrepreneur community.

The event is still gathering momentum. Since its a one day event, the number of slots available for presentations are likely to be limited. Hence if you plan to make a presentation, you should book your place NOW.

If the previous Barcamp (held in March05) is any indicator, this one should be well attended as well. I am looking forward to any product demos, live code-in sessions etc as they tend to electrify the proceedings rather than plain powerpoint style presentations.

This is the wiki where all the action is folding out.

See you there!

.

Ques- What warning sign is written on the boundary walls of the TCS office in Madras?
Ans - ‘Beware Trespassers- If you are not careful, you will be recruited’

That was a common joke for us, way back in 1996, when I graduated out of my engineering college. At that time, TCS was the only Indian software company which used to hire by the truckloads. But now, it is getting stiff competition from the likes of Infosys, Wipro, IBM, Accenture etc, all of whom are hiring armies of engineers every year. Every fifteen days or so, you get to see headlines like these (I have become immune to these headlines now)

Rediff : Infosys will hire 25,000 people this year
Zdnet : 30,000 job vacancies at TCS over the next 12 months

Without being biased, I must say that such headlines are great news for a lot of people. For instance, it is great news for Infosys or TCS; it is great news for these companies’ investors; and it’s also great news for NASSCOM or the Indian Govt. But software engineers (specially those who are particular about the kind of work they want to do) should be a trifle careful before taking these headlines at face value. Here’s why-

- When a company has to hire 25000 engineers in a year, it’s impossible for it to hire 25000 quality people. It will hire just about anybody, who is acceptable, and who they can get their hands on; which means that if you, (a fresh engineer) are getting hired as one of those 25000, you are going to a place that has lowered its standards considerably. You are being hired by a body shop, which, when you leave that company, will simply replace your body with somebody else’s body. Infosys is in fact, experimenting with hiring BSc graduates in place of engineers. The feeling of being part of a herd will surely be a huge blow to your self esteem.

- Secondly, when you join a company along with thousands of others, this could have stunting consequences for your future career progression. You will have to compete with all those people for every promotion decision, every opportunity. Its a very scary thought.

- Thirdly, most of the companies that hire these huge army of engineers are not necessarily doing very challenging or rewarding work. They are simply encashing the business oppurtunity created by labour cost differentials in different parts of the world. Which usually means that they are doing low grade work. Next time you go to face an interview at Infosys or TCS, ask your interviewer this simple question- How much intellectual property does your company actually own? I bet, he will want to hide behind the curtains than answer your question.

- Fourthly, don’t get shocked if you are asked to work on 1980s software platforms like COBOL, Pascal etc. Many of the business applications that these companies service and maintain are of that vintage. I am aware of a few cases where employees left in sheer desperation because of these issues. Its a small chance but it could happen to you.

In all honesty, there are definitely lots of advantages in working for these large firms. But while deciding on these issues, don’t fall for these glitzy headlines, but take a informed decision.

The Pune edition of BarCamp happened last Saturday. And while it has not been covered extensively in the blogosphere, here are a bunch of posts, that capture some of the sessions rather well.

With the Pune event, BarCamps have covered the entire Tier I cities of software/IT hubs in India (Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai & Pune). It remains to be seen if the tech communities in TierII cities (like Chandigarh, Kolkatta, Lucknow etc) can muster enough enthusiasm to organise it in their cities.

In fact, Hyderabad is taking a lead and planning its second BarCamp in July, this time focussing specifically on the mobile space. Thats the way to go! Cheers to the Hyderabad BarCamp organisers…

At this juncture, I can’t help but laugh at our initial skepticim when we were planning for BarCampDelhi in March.

Sometimes in life, even your most optimistic estimates prove to be grossly undervalued.