Coverage of Entrepreneur Summit organized on 2nd February, 2013 and 3r by IIT Bombay

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Opening Speech by Nelson McKenzie Chairman Mr. Adil Zainubhai

“If you don’t make mistake in your first venture then you are not part of Entrepreneur club yet “, This opening statement by Nelson McKenzie Chairman Mr. Adil Zainubhai who is alumnus of IIT Bombay with MBA degree from Harvard Business School, set the mood of 2 day long enthralling Entrepreneur- Summit hosted by IIT Bombay on 2nd February, 2013 and 3rd February, 2013. Mr. Zainubhai was underlined the importance of Entrepreneur ecosystem comparing with successful Israel Pattern to breed young Entrepreneurs. The ecosystem with easy accessibility to the network of angel investors and venture capitals to guide young budding entrepreneurs to raise money which is absolutely must for converting an idea to reality.

Mr. Zainubhai also mentioned having role model like Infosys founder Narayan Murthy or Ratan Tata before starting up venture is necessary for self motivation. Answering to a question asked by one of the aspiring entrepreneur’s regarding the latest opportunities Mr. Zainubhai was optimistic with respect to telecommunication sector with mobile user going to increase exponentially in near future there is great potential in the mobile apps and services industry. He mentioned few successful entrepreneurs like Vinod Khosla who left McKenzie and started his own venture inmobile worldwide.

 

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Silicon Valley & Indian Ecosystem

The seminar anchored by IIT professor Mr Anand Khusre with international guests like Mr. Jim Beach, Head faculty of School of Startups, US with Mr. Sam White Co-Founder at Promethean Power and Mr Nishith Desai founder of Desai Associates brainstormed the fundamental strategies which implemented successfully at Silicon valley generating league of brilliant entrepreneurs with billions of revenue to United States government. The ecosystem at Silicon Valley evolved by various venture capital fund raisers and angel investors.

According to Mr. Beach silicon valley is currently saturated with the additional professional tax and around 50% taxes on earning so young entrepreneurs are moving towards other states to avoid tax burden in early stage of venture.
Mr. Desai were optimism on investing on start-ups in India and China which might be more fruitful than investing in countries like Canada and US where taxation is quite high. Mr. White currently staying in India since long time were contradicting Mr. Beach comments on US taxation and were of the view that if person earns more margin then increase in taxation wont be an issue since the money invested will be used in betterment of society.

The final outcome of brainstorming session was all the speakers agreed on different ecosystem and business models of India and Us so Indian entrepreneurs should not directly copy the Silicon Valley model of entrepreneurship. This is worst time to start-up an venture at Silicon valley so entrepreneurs are concentrating on investing in developing nations like India and China. Speakers were concerned about the fact that large amount of food spoilage taking place in India and optimistic to see new ventures to control food spoilage in near future.

 

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Workshops conducted by Mr. Jim Beach, Faculty head of School of start ups

How to Network..?

%u201CNetworking is like hunting, not gathering%u201D was the opening line from the Mr. Jim Beach young, energetic entrepreneur from US who has total 20 successful startups on his account. Jim gave three phase mantra for networking and connecting with people who can be helpful for your startups:
1. Form Perception of yourself with what kind of help required from others and analyze local competitors before you move forward.

2. Analyze what is your target. Be realistic in that. Search for PR agents in place of sale coaches and consultants because they are waste of time and money.

3. Last phase will be to search for the targets. The most probable point of contact will be Linkedin.com or any other professional networking site.


Social Media Marketing

The social media marketing is recent and most probably best way to reach people in low cost. Many companies and celebrities are hiring PR agencies to manage their facebook page and Twitter account.
For budding entrepreneurs it is necessary to have video resume to have edge over others. They should create video channel to get noticed. The focus should be on social media optimization instead of search and sale optimization. The blogs, videos and audio, newspaper advertise are cheapest means of advertising. The usage of facebook and twitter should be as minimal as possible.


Bootstrapping
Bootstrapping is the means of finding small firm through highly creative acquisition and use of resources without raising equity from traditional sources or borrowing money from bank. This is just definition of bootstrapping but there are many meanings and hidden secrets in process of bootstrapping.

Jim shared interesting experience of his life. When he was young at the age of 14 he planned to start to organize summer camp for students of his town. He just spent 250$ initially for advertisement in newspaper. After getting overwhelming response on phone he actually planned everything and the summer camp was successful. In next 15 years this business grew to $ 5 million organization with 700 employees. Then he thought this is getting saturated so he sold of his business and started an insurance brokerage company with $ 10million ( $ 5 million from borrowings) set up huge offices and hired highly skilled MBAs and spent a lot on branding and promotion but in next five years the business was super flop with $ 10 million loan from banks. At one period of time Jim was asked to vacate his living home by bank but he was adamant and he started some small businesses from $ 5000 he had. For example importing antique chairs from Pakistan and selling them for 500%u0025 profit in US. The morale of story is Jim tells us to start from small things, make small mistakes, and invest around $5000 initially to check your capability.