Entrepreneur 200109

20 Jan, 2009

“Entrepreneurship is not just a career, it's a way of life!” Turn to page 4

Vol 4 Issue 1

The Week that passed... The week burst onto the limelight with the inspirational lecture by Dominique Trempont and Sramana Mitra on the 2nd of January. A packed Netaji auditorium was witness to two charismatic entrepreneurs sharing their ideas and opinions on the entrepreneurial scene in India, and how we as students can make a difference. We broke new grounds with the inaugural Kolkata Barcamp, on the 3rd of J a n u a r y. B r a v i n g a depressing taxi and auto strike, participants from all over the country made the event a grand success, energizing our conviction to carry the initiative further in the years to come. Entrepreneurship Cell's presentation on the ongoing entrepreneurial activities and startup successes in our campus at the Annual Alumni Meet drew unprecedented appreciation from our distinguished alumni. The EBRF conference held on the 8th of January threw up the relevant issue of clean technology. The presence of distinguished guests Dr. Marco Seppa of the University of Jykysvala , Finland and the enigmatic Prof Dhrubes Biswas of IIT Khragpur made the event an enlightening and meaningful one for the students. The sense of energy, enterprise and excitement among the student community was palpable amidst the flurry of events leading up to the summit. Finally the moment that we had all been waiting for arrived. Esummit 09 kickstarted with the unforgettable lecture by Mr. Sanjeev Bhikchandani, CEO & Founder, Naukri.com. This was followed by two workshops ,one by CII and the other by Intel. While the CII one focused on the current entrepreneurial scenario in India , the Intel workshop addressed the “design productivity gap” issue facing the electronics industry today. The opening day came to an

eventful end with the lecture by Mr. Raja Manickum, CEO & Founder, TESSOLVE. The final day unfolded with the informative workshop on the “Role of Analytics in Banking and Credit Risk Management” by Fractal Analytics. It opened up the intriguing field of Analytics before the students, to help them understand and use it. We had Mr. Mukul Bhatia, MD Citec Engineering Pvt Ltd, giving a talk on B Plans, economic appraisals, and the dynamics of VC funding. The summit drew to a close with the one-of-its-kind Startup Camp wherein startups from IIT Kgp as well as outside were provided a platform to interact with the students and answer their doubts and queries relating to working in a startup. The event was a huge success with students jostling for space even at the staircases at Vikramshila. Away from the public eye, we had the final rounds of our flagship events Envision, Eclairez and Pensez being held at the RGSOIPL. The Envision top 3 winners came up with innovative products designs, two of which have been recommended for TEPP funding. Eclairez proved to be the platform for next generation social entrepreneurs, with business ideas related to waste disposal management, and cheaper sanitation for tourists, being brought up. Pensez tested the analytical skills of the participating teams with the case study on web based technology turning out to be a tough nut to crack. This was a year of many firsts in the history of Esummit, with the Innovation camp being organized specifically for the first year students on the 7th of January. We organised REDE, IIT Khargpur's first national parliamentary debate which attracted participation from 18 teams all over the country, and remarkably one from Bangladesh as well! Negocio, the web based Bplan competition, threw up ingenious business ideas in the realm of the web world. Finally, the first years were given a taste of real time entrepreneurship, in the widely appreciated BIZTURKZ competition.

Our Sponsors and Assoociates

Missed IITKGP’s first startup camp? Looking for interns? Get them at yourstory.in! YourStory.in is the first dedicated online media platform for SME and Start up entrepreneurs in India with a focus on creating a strong eco system that enables high visibility and networking opportunities for its members. Within a short period of four months we have been able to profile and connect to a large number of promising businesses and entrepreneurs and the readership response and numbers we have thus far received has been extremely encouraging. We have been able to build a credible media platform within the entrepreneurs community providing not just visibility to the community but also inputs on business management and growth. Contact: Shradha Sharma at [email protected] to apply for interns Turn to page 8 for coverage of IITKGP’s first startup camp

Turn to page 7

2

Concipio Winning team: Code green Business concept - The carbon capture technology 'CODE GREEN' is designed to remove CO2 directly from industrial utility/power plants and aims to achieve an enhanced efficiency of 97% of CO2 extraction as compared to 78% in present day technology. It also improvises the H2S (hydrogen sulphide) extractability to 92% compared to current extraction efficiency of 60% in an extremely cost effective manner. First Runners Up: Low Cost Airborne Surveillance System Business concept - Sumit Goswami and his Team have designed the airborne platform on a solar balloon which is cost effective and safe as it uses air heated up by the sun rays. The product is modular, cheap, easy to handle and deploy and has plenty of civil applications like surveillance of college campus, housing societies, industrial complex, farm houses, highways, docks along with defense applications as well. Second Runners Up: Green Hat Ventures Business concpet - Arindam Mukherjee and his team help create the much needed Industry-academia convergence to bring together higher education institutions and employers for developing and matching skills with business needs. Their tie-ups with the corporate houses, foreign educational institutes and Indian campuses provide the platform for our products and services. They also provide customized employer branding solutions to our clients (employers) to attract and retain the top talent and also help guide the young talent in making better-informed career decisions. Footnote: The winners of Code Green have already started their carbon consulting firm, Exergy Consultancy. Green Hat Ventures is also operating out of the campus.

Mentors and Associates

Envision Winning team: Prateek agarwal, final year student from CSE, The product was a multiuser chatroom application "OMERTA" based on j2me using bluetooth as the communication medium. First Runners Up: Amit Beriya, Nurali, Amir Khan.The product was a semiautonomous T shirt folder. The fold to be achieved is accomplished by a series of motion of rods on a conveyer. The idea's feasiblility was appreciated and the jury had recommended them to apply for TePP Second Runners Up (Two teams joint winners): DIGISLATE and TELEROBOT DIGISLATE: Gaurav Shrivastav, Keshav Modi, Vivek Chauhan, Prabhat Rastogi. The idea was to make computer understand handwritten equations and then calculation of the recognized mathematical operations using neural network and digital image processing. The interface is further made interactive by a simple GUI. TELEROBOT: Sanjiban Chaudhury, Kinshuk Bairagi, Nikhil Somani. A remotely based robotic system which can be operated remotely either via the internet or voice calls or even SMS's using intelligent hardware and concurrent message architecture. The idea was commended and was asked to be applied for funding.

Eclairez Winning team: Cleangrellite - VGSOM, IITKGP End-to end solution provider for all the waste disposal issues. They catered to the garbage problem - organic and inorganic waste collection and disposal, providing a long term solution, since the capacity of landfills in cities is limited. First runners up: Krishi Parashar - TISS, Bombay Establishing a Fruit-to-Pulp cum Ready To Serve beverage plant in the semiurban areas of Uttarakhand to effectively utilize and reduce wastage of high production of mangoes in this area. Second Runners Up: Yatri Vishram Kutir - ISMU, Dhanbad A socio-corporate plan for tourists and customers, to provide them with basic sanitation at cheaper rates. This plan will also make use of ETransactions and IMRSS (Individual Message Report Service System).

3

Pensez Pensez 09 turned out to be hugely successful in terms of quality of participation and level of competition. All the qualifying teams were from IIT Kharagpur and were utterly competitive. This year the topic was "Analysis of web based technologies on tech start ups." The topic was designed to resonate with the aims of Entrepreneurship Cell. All the entries emphasized on the existing internet market strategies such as Viral Marketing, Guerilla marketing, e-mail marketing etc., as great source of revenue generators for tech startups. It was a group of five sophomores who made the final cut and bagged the first prize.. First Team name : Pentagon Members: Krishna,Apurva ,Suruchi,Sanjay upadhaya, Prateek A thorough research was made to study the impact of existing marketing strategies on the revenues of tech start-ups and presented in a flawless manner. Every solution/suggestion was backed by concrete data. They suggested mobile marketing strategies to tap the potential rural market in India which has limited access to internet.

Negocio (Web based bplan competition)

Winner Team Name : Detroika Members : Ajay Garg, Ankush Garg Institute : Amity business school, Noida The plan gave IT and software support to healthcare industry, that can significantly affect the way patients are treated.

Second Team Name: Team 4.0 Members: N.Vijetha, Gayatri, Anubha, Gaurav Another great research work on marketing techniques like Viral m a r ket i n g , g u e r r i l l a marketing etc., to study the effectiveness of these strategies and weigh them against each other. The presentation was perfect and they handled Q&A session with calm and ease. Third Team Name: iDEA Members: Nikhil Singh, Aashish Nawal, Eisha Srivastava They were first to present and clearly indicated they mean business. A neat presentation backed by all data and reports, they laid emphasis on surveys to prove the point. They quoted the success of Bookmyshow.com over PVR and INOX websites in booking online movie tickets, explicitly mentioning the marketing strategies employed by Bookmyshow.com.

Runner Up 1 Team name : Artinvestment Member : Kapil Jain Institute : Symbiosis Institute of International Management The plan brought the high and top class art closer to the common man who can't afford to own a piece of art.

Bizturks Mahtab Singh Soin, a member of the winning team of Bizturks, an exclusive first years event organised during Entrepreneurship Summit, talks about his experiences during the event. Each time as I look back on how me, Alhaad, Ankit and Ashish pulled off that amazing win in the final round of the “BizTurkz” competition organised by the Entrepreneurship Cell, I feel a strange joy and thrill at having achieved it the way we did. It was a day pretty high on suspense and emotions. To be completely honest, I hadn't even thought that I'd be winning this contest the day the first round took place. It was through a wildcard entry that my team entered the final, pitted against a “Godly” team, to say the least... Vasanth, Prateek, Arun and Anish were probably the favourites to win that day. Both teams had been called to the Vikramshila Foyer at 09:30 am last Saturday, January 10 for the third and final round of BizTurkz. The event itself, like every other round of BizTurkz, was a surprise, whose rules were presented to the participants just before the event was to begin. The third round was purely business: buy and sell! Each team was issued an inventory comprising bottles of Amul Kool milkshake and different Amul chocolates. The challenge was

Runner Up 2 Team Name : Oxyfresh Member : Deepan Sahu Institute : KIIT institute of Rural Management This introduced an IT layer to the farm produce logistics and supply chain management.

simple: whoever sells the most at the end of the day wins. Both teams would get 20% of whatever they sold besides the winner's prize of Rs. 2000. January 10 being Day 1 of the E-Summit had plenty of activity in and around Vikramshila. The game was to take place in 2 sessions: one before lunch and the other till 04:00 pm. After clearing the rules and discussing the initial team strategy, we made a shaky start at half past ten. It took us a good half hour to get things organised, make posters and get everything in rhythm. Besides, chaos was unavoidable once you're dealing with a place as big as Vikramshila. Since whatever money we had to show finally for the inventory had to be at the MRP, the discounts that we offered were on a very tight margin (It was Math and Eco all day long!). We tried different ways and means to get customers (I think our hawking and “customer-snatching” was a bit indecent at times) but thankfully, they did come in well. (Thank you, please visit again) Accounting for our sales and arranging for the change was a huge headache! Frustration did mount from time to time. At lunchtime, both teams were neck to neck with us marginally in the lead. We did some rethinking over lunch... finally deciding to sell some of our wares to the neighbourhood friendly Tikka and JCB canteen (shrewd businessmen!) upping our sales substantially. Getting more of our friends to buy from us was another strategy (contacts help!). With less than 5 minutes to go and no clear lead in sight, we finally decided to buy some of the inventory ourselves, exhausting all stock and winning by default. It was a tense finish which brought both happiness and relief. In retrospect, now that the feeling has completely set in.... well, that where I'd started!

4

Guest Lecture: Dominique Trempont and Sramana Mitra “A journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step.” Enlightened students of IIT Kharagpur took that momentous step towards an entrepreneurial voyage of their lives, during the lecture by Dominique Trempont and Sramana Mitra, at Netaji auditorium, on the 2nd of January, 2009. Rarely have the students of IIT Kharagpur had the privilege of listening to two stalwart entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley together sharing their views and ideas on what they think about the entrepreneurial scenario in India. This was one such special occasion and the packed auditorium at Netaji bore ample testament to that. Sramana began on a highly optimistic note by urging the students to think beyond reality for a moment, and imagine themselves to be entrepreneurs at the very outset. She recollected how the scenario at IIT KGP was 12-13 years ago when she was unable to recruit even a single student for one of her ventures. She went on to list the important areas/sectors which are as yet untapped and are potentially huge opportunities for our generation. The first of these areas of opportunity was WATER. At this point, Dominique stepped in to explain the seriousness as well as the entrepreneurial potential of “Fresh Water on a Shrinking Planet”. Sharing with us the business secrets of Silicon Valley, he illustrated how crisis management strategies can be translated into successful business propositions. “Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was in the 20th century”- a scarce and valuable resource that determines the wealth and health of nations. India spends close to 3% of its GDP on the treatment of water bourne diseases. So it is a huge treasure chest that entrepreneurs can tap into and invest in. Citing the example of Energy Recovery Inc., a billion dollar company that is the leading manufacturer of energy recovery devices used for seawater desalination reducing energy consumption of up to 98%, he said that India has mammoth opportunities for desalination plants along its huge coastline, which must be exploited. His primary objective was to impress upon the students the fact that by concentrating on problems in India , and coming up with innovative solutions, we can export them to the rest of Asia and thus capture international markets. It was now Sramana's turn to provoke the audience into serious contemplation with her candid yet persuasive presentation . Sramana rightly pointed out that India has a pool of talent in the IT & Telecom sector that is yet to come out with an indigenous & innovative product. Now is the time to make the paradigm shift from a service based industry to an innovation driven product based one. SAAS, Enterprise 3.0 , microfinance, micropayment and Rural BPO'S were marked out as key areas that will be the engine for growth in the days to come. Her point was, India can be in software what China is in manufacturing. Health care and education were signaled out as two lucrative areas which hold unparalleled potential for innovation and upgradation.

One brilliant idea she suggested was Doctor-For-Sure: Health Insurance for everybody. A corollary to DFS is Doctor-On-Wire: Regional healthcare franchise with tele-medicine facilities. Coming to the education sector, she asserted that the education system in India is highly overrated.” While we have the IITs, IIMs, BITS and a few good NITs and other colleges, the higher education framework is far from being considered sturdy. And the school level education industry stinks! It is a case of the blind teaching the blinds.” This remark of her drew a thunderous applause from the audience. She spoke about initiatives such as MIT India and Harvard Medical School Franchise which aim to make teaching a more rewarding career for the talented teachers. Talking about sensible ideas, edutainment takes the cake. Sramana suggested coming up with educational games that are addictive as well. “All one needs to do”, in Sramana's words, “is to understand ‘The Psychology of Addiction’.” She also highlighted the example of Harish Hande, Social Entrepreneur of the year 2007, whose company SELCO, provides solar energy services for villagers without electricity. “Can there be a better example of a social enterprise that successfully gets past so many goals, solves so many problems, causes so much social upliftment, and yet, is for-profit?” The best as they say was reserved for the last . Dominique gave us a rare glimpse into the mind of Steve Jobs , as he shared with us the famous story of NeXT's turnaround. Labeling Jobs as a maniac for perfection , he explained what high pressure leadership, which characterizes Steve Jobs, is all about. In this context he quoted the remarkable comment that Steve Jobs had once made “ The real risk for an entrepreneur is not to take the risk.” For an entrepreneur, it is absolutely essential to keep taking chances, keep testing and questioning one's beliefs and assumptions. “The moment you become closed , you will become obsolete”, was Dominique's pertinent observation. The lecture came to a logical end with the highly interactive Q&A session with the students. They shared their own i d e a s a n d ambitions with Dominique and Sramana. Thought p r o v o k i n g questions related to the role of entrepreneurship in India, as well as political and economic issues were raised. Sramana's parting message to the students was to always think out of the box . Young students need to have the courage and conviction to come out of their comfort zone and start something new. After all “Entrepreneurship is not just a career, it is way of life.” Point taken Madam!

5

Sanjeev Bhikchandani, CEO & Founder naukri.com “Entrepreneurs are those who can swim against the tide.” says Sanjeev Bhikchandani, co-founder and CEO of Naukri.com, India's largest web-based employment site. In his interactive session he laid bare his life, his struggles and experiences and what made him the man he is today. According to him entrepreneurship is not about money, valuation or lifestyle, they are in fact the incidental outcomes; it is about the intangible benefits - doing things your way, and being your own master. If you want to do it, go take the plunge. In terms of funding your venture, he was candid in saying that in most probability, you would not get a VC. But that is not the end of the road; most successful companies like Microsoft did not raise venture capital. Angel funding and bootstrapping would be best, but you have to be ready to put every penny together. He himself struggled for ten years, worked as a journalist, editor, taught in a management school and what not. To simplify things further, he said that you need not have a vision while getting started, the vision evolves with time. “Now that I'm successful, people call me a visionary as well”, he said. We need to get the small but important things right. He stressed on having a deep customer insight before getting started. Ask yourself, is my business solving the problems of the customer? He reiterated the fact that as entrepreneurs we have to think different, and INNOVATE. “If the idea is obvious, it is already too late. And beware, you might have to just live with your idea for a quite a while.” He lived with his for 7 years! He advised the gathering to focus more on cash flow rather than profits, on execution than management. Talking about the importance of scalability, he said that products are more scalable than services. Initially things might not turn out to be as rosy as you might expect, but you need to persevere, stick around. Success might be just a block away. On questions about Naukri.com, he shared with us his side of the story, how he raised revenues for it, how he managed it against all odds and kept improvising. In conclusion he urged us to protect the culture of innovation. “You need to join the dots; understand what you are passionate about and implement it” he said. “Success is sure to come if we have the passion to plunge in, commitment to cruise over and faith enough to fly on.”

Raja Manickam, CEO & Founder tessolve Listening to a KGP alumni speak about “Those were the days” is always an enriching experience. More so when the person in question is Raja Manickum, CEO & Founder of Tessolve, the world's largest test solution provider for semiconductors. Esummit 2009 gifted the students with such an occasion to listen to one of India's leading entrepreneurs in the field of electronics, share with them his views and opinions on the scope and potential of the semiconductor industry in India, as also the story of how he made it big. He began by reminiscing about his hostel life at IIT Kharagpur when the food was bad , the ragging worse, and fun meant Spring Fest! Talking about his stint at Texas Instruments , he said “I learnt a lot at my first job. I realized I was a pretty good test engineer.” He then went on to work for Fairchild, where he increasingly started to find everyone around himself incompetent. It was his wife's teasing challenge to him, to go and start his own company, that led to founding Tessolve in 2003. He had the belief that what they had been doing in the US could be replicated in India. He then went on to highlight the Taiwan and Singapore model of the semiconductor industry, two countries that collectively manufacture upto 50% of the semiconductor devices produced in the world. Explaining the methodology that enabled these countries to succeed, he also talked about the engineering and infrastructural challenges these countries are facing in recent times, which can work to India's advantage. The current Indian semiconductor ecosystem he feels is evolving from design to knowledge based services going into manufacturing products. Excellent R&D facilities coupled with our numerical strength and the Government's initiatives to turn India into a manufacturing hub, he believes, will enable the Indian semiconductor industry to grow as slated from $3 billion to $ 15 billion by 2015. Elaborating on how Tessolve evolved, he emphasized on the importance of building a technically adept and motivated core team, which is the key to success in any business. Today, Tessolve is the world's largest semiconductor test solution provider with a state-of-the-art 50,000 sq ft testing facility in Bangalore and over 400 employees both in India and abroad. Outlining the key factors that helped Tessolve succeed, he said a clear understanding of the customers’ needs, passion & commitment to dominate their field of operation, and their highly integrated Tessolve team, enabled them to differentiate themselves from the rest of their competitors. His advice to the budding entrepreneurs of IIT Kharagpur was, “Think what you can do that will be unique and different, and have the confidence to confront failures. Only through failure will you be able to figure out your strengths and weaknesses.”

6

Workshop by CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) India is a fertile ground for entrepreneurship. With this theme Entrepreneurship Cell organized a workshop on “Entrepreneurship: Emerging Opportunities” by Confederation of Indian Industry. Mr. Saugat Mukherjee, Eastern Regional Head, CII, spoke about two career opportunities that everyone is faced with: wage employment in which one does routine job, and the other is entrepreneurship in which we are our own boss. It is a fact that India is a country of youths. Our population growth rate surpasses that of employment creation many-fold. Entrepreneurship and economic development are closely related. Entrepreneurship leads to creation of wealth through production of goods and services which results in increase in real per capita income. Motivations for becoming an entrepreneur are diverse: seeking independence, challenge, dream desire, or family background, market opportunity, idea driven, etc. Data regarding sources of startup phase funding throws some interesting results: 63% are self financed, 22% by banks, only 3% by venture capitalists (VCs) and another 3% by angel investors. Financing by VCs is very risk oriented as only one out of five ventures succeeds; hence they try to offset the losses from the one that succeeds. Steps of making an enterprise comprise sensing entrepreneurial opportunities which can be old product in old market to new product in new market. As a part of enterprise planning and resourcing one must be alert about working capital requirements, sometimes it just dries up. Functions of an entrepreneur include inculcating a culture of innovation for a system to survive. Only a risk lover can become an entrepreneur, so one should have the risk and uncertainty bearing capacity. For an organisation it is very important to have a shared vision from top to

bottom in the set-up. Google story is a perfect case to be analysed. The entrepreneurial role encompasses perception of market opportunities i.e. how best one grabs opportunities. In view of scarcity of resources it is a challenge for an entrepreneur to substitute one resource by the other. One needs to market in the mind space of the customers. Entire customer and supplier chain has to be managed efficiently as they will be of use in times of crisis. Managing finance is of utmost importance, it is the oxygen of the system. The entrepreneurship pyramid in India has its base on agriculture. India being an agrarian economy provides a lot of opportunities in primary sector like food processing which are still almost unexploited. One must always follow the core principle that aspirations have to be greater than resources; resources will always fall in line. As an individual, each one of us must have high and shared aspirations. The other core principle is folding the future in rather than extrapolating the past. If we cannot imagine our future we cannot create it. We need to focus on next practices which bring innovation rather than best practices which is a traditional thought. The workshop was quite interactive with India’s premier business association reiterating its focus on inclusive competencies. CII in association with Department of Science and Technology helps in evaluating technical ideas, helps in patenting them, and provide funding to them. The workshop was a truly enriching experience for the participants who got a feel of Enterprising India!!

Credit Risk Management by Fractal Analytics Prof. P.P Iyer had jokingly remarked at the last summit that “ Entrepreneurship is like jumping off a cliff with a parachute not knowing how to open it”. Indeed , risk and uncertainty are inherent aspects to being an entrepreneur. Besides , when it comes to risk management and profitability, it is not difficult to appreciate that a banker’s job bears strange similarities to that of an entrepreneur. Workshop on “ The role of analytics in banking and credit risk management” by Fractal Analytics, during Entrepreneurship Summit ‘09, gave a better insight into this thought. Analytics is the science of extracting knowledge and useful patterns from raw data. It is essentially the science of decision making. A bank, in managing its assets and liabilities, has to encounter various kinds of risks. These can be business risks, credit risks, market risks and operational risks. The job of risk analytics is to develop credit scoring models of customers, which enables a bank to make prudent portfolio management decisions , thus minimizing loss. Application scorecard allocates points to customers on the basis of personal information provided by them such as age, nature of assets, number of dependent family members, etc. A behaviourial scorecard

reassess their credit risk based on their recent behavior. Collection and recovery scoring helps banks identify those customers who are likely to become defaulters or commit fraud. These tools act as customer filters enabling banks decide on the differential rate of interest to be charged, and their loan recovery strategies. This is known as risk based pricing. Coupled with debit scoring, these applications constitute the customized loss forecasting model for investment banks and insurance firms. Credit scoring, i.e. generating functions which convert the various elements of customer information (vectors) into a single number (scalar) risk score, reflecting the default probability of a customer, is the most important Analytics employs. Inherent differences exist between the credit scoring model of the corporate, SME, and the retail sector .The corporate sector is closed from credit scoring model because the functions as well as the factors used are fixed in nature. Whereas in the retail sector, the function is fixed but the input parameters keep on changing. The workshop also highlighted the Basel II loss forecasting model which guides banks in allocating some provisionary capital to incorporate expected losses into it’s pricing strategy. The main aspects of credit scoring are stability, strength, and predictability which measure the stability of the platform on which the risk assessment process is based, and also the accuracy of the predictions generated. The highly interactive nature of the workshop wherein the participants freely came out with all their doubts and questions & even suggested possible modifications to improve upon the existing model clearly illustrated the relevance of conducting the workshop. We hope to organize many more workshops devoted to finance in the future.

7

EBRF conference It was a red- letter day for IIT Kharagpur, which witnessed the launch of Global Ventures Lab (GVL), a collaborative effort of IIT Kharagpur, University of California - Berkley (UCB), USA and University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, to promote Entrepreneurship and Innovation. It kicked off with an i n s p i r i n g s p e e c h by o u r honorable director Dr. Damodar Acharya. He expressed pleasure and sincere hope that this will turn out to be a great initiative. Prof. Marko Seppa of the University of Jyvaskyla, put GVL as a tribute to the students of IIT Kharagpur. It was followed by discussions on various topics at Gargi Auditorium. Prof. Seppa delivered keynote speech on ‘Knowledge as Capital’. He focused on a shift from VC (venture capital) enabled world to a V2C (venture to capital) model. A new paradigm shift is taking place from ‘cash is king’ to ‘knowledge is king.’ Prof. Kalyan K. Guin (VGSOM, IIT Kharagpur) spoke on how open innovation can change the way R&D (research and development) problems are solved in today’s world.

Prof. Dhrubes Biswas (Prof-in-Charge, Incubation & Entrepreneurship, IT Kharagpur) put his views on GVL: An Indian Perspective. He envisaged it taking the role of a co-entrepreneur. Marie Suoranta (Assistant Professor (PhD), University of Jyvaskyla) focused on research in entrepreneurial marketing: motivation/rationale. She said, “There is a need of combining intelligence of Einstein and imagination of Picasso.” P r o f. K . D . R a j u ( A s s i s t a n t P r o f e s s o r, RGSOIPL, IIT Kharagpur) expressed his views on creating and managing new ventures. He stressed that the government does offer a lot of incentives to small and medium enterprises. The conference saw the presentations of many potential innovative products and services. The conference concluded by a panel discussion on Green Technology. The conference, which was being held outside Finland for the first time, was definitely a glorious moment for the

INTEL: Bridging the design productivity gap Intel’s highly technical oriented workshop, discussing entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of Electronic Design Automation, was kickstarted by Mr. Biswadeep Chatterjee, an Enterprise Architect at Intel. He started off comparing Intel India to a start-up, and themselves as entrepreneurs selling Brand ‘India’ within the safety of their parent company Intel. He emphasized that new start-ups in the area of chip manufacturing should aim at selling design solutions to large chip design companies like Intel, and that such solutions will not be capital intensive as most problems have to be solved at conceptual level and need at most one computer. He explained that as the complexity of the design of chips increases, the computing power required for its verification increases and hence the cost. He mentioned the ‘What-Else’ phenomena which manufacturers are facing today, wherein

the customers keep hinting at this question repeatedly, be it in computers or cell phones. So what are the problems faced by giants like Intel today? It goes something like this - for every rupee spent by Intel on its Server Platform Development, it currently spends Rs. 3.80 on procurement of software from companies like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Novell, etc. Another 46 paise is spent on cooling its Data Centers and other Network Costs. He concluded by giving an insight into start-up opportunities for wanna-be entrepreneurs. “A mechanical engineer can earn millions, if he can find a way to reduce this 50 percent recurring engineering cost which is largely unproductive. There is also enough scope for software start-ups to provide software solutions to large corporations like Intel at cheaper prices.”

Alumni talk: Mukul Bhatia Mukul Bhatia, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and a successful entrepreneur gave a talk on bplans, economic appraisals and how VC’s invest in various projects. He started off by telling us about equity or debt- two ways to go about starting a company. In debt financing you don’t relinquish any ownership over your enterprise and pay a constant percentage to the bank irrespective of profit and loss. While in equity financing, other parties purchase a stake in your business. He said that you need decide which would be the most efficient way to capitalize your company. The first step is preparing a thoughtful business plan that identifies the opportunities for growth and outlines the financial costs of pursuing such opportunities. “Banks will be willing to pay you only if you have enough profit, not only to take care of your expansion needs but also to clear away your debts” he said. Then he went on to explain the types of loans. Often a small business will use the cash from a term loan to purchase fixed assets such as equipments, land, buildings, machines, etc. used in its production process. Such a loan always has a specified repayment schedule and a floating interest rate. He emphasized that the debt equity ratio i.e. a measure of a company's financial leverage must be maintained. Coming to working capital loans, which are short terms loan to buy earning assets, he explained the working capital cycle; and that the smaller we keep it, the better.

Moving on to B Plans he said that before drafting it you need to decide your company structure whether you want it to be a public or private; individual proprietorship or partnership. Explaining each, he pointed out the disadvantage of latter- liability of the business is unlimited. Further, a partnership could be registered or unregistered, he said, differentiating both. To raise capital, he briefly talked about the options- going public, ECD route, FDI and FII. In the end he made it clear that while banks are conservative and finance for working capital; VC’s gamble and go for the kill- equity in your project. He satisfactorily answered various queries of the students, during his session. “You need to do your homework well, have faith in your idea and be practical; things will work out for sure” were his closing words.

8

Startup camp IIT Kharagpur had never before seen an occurrence like this one. On the afternoon of 11th Jan, we had with us a myriad of successful entrepreneurs. Most of them were recent alumni of Kharagpur. These startups are based on highly innovative ideas and address the need of the public. A few of them are – Minekey, which currently operates as an opinion sharing software is at the core a software that uses discovery technology to personalize content for each user; Data Resolve, which prevents and detects data leakage; P2Power Solutions, which provides superior technology for industries at a cheaper rate, enhancing efficiency and quality of power delivered to them; Intinno, a company that is dedicated to development in the field of education and e-learning. Answering the very basic question of why they chose the unconventional route of entrepreneurship, they vindicated that they threw all security and protection of a conformist nine-to-five, in order to embrace the challenges and freedom that entrepreneurship brings with it, as a path

to personal satisfaction. Though minting money and being innovative were significant reasons contributing to their choice, it was apparent that they all wanted simply to be independent, creative and free. Most of them had started off on their own money, or by means of angel funding, and expounded on the importance of a venture capital in a business - adding on a lighter note, that only when their venture got funded, would they ever get a salary. However, some of them believed that a really good venture, with a great idea and correct execution, could run fruitfully without external funding. Also touched upon were the issues to be taken care of by current students at IIT Kharagpur, who would want to manage their entrepreneurial career simultaneously with dexterity. Peer pressure was another issue that was briefly discussed, and all of those present agreed that discouragement will pour in from all directions but the key is to push on forward relentlessly. We also got an insight into the qualities that entrepreneurs look for in new recruits. Sound technical knowledge or marketing skills and strong sense of dedication topped the list. Another feather in the cap of this unique and interactive event, was the fact that one of the students from Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur, was selected for an internship, by one of the participating start-ups at the startup camp, namely Nature Admire. Altogether a enjoyable, inspiring and enriching event, the StartUp Camp was definitely the highlight of the Entrepreneurship Summit 09.

One on one with Dataresolve The Entrepreneur recently had a chat with co-founder of DataResolve Technologies, one of the recent successful start-ups from inside the campus, Mr. Vikram Kumar. Mr. Vikram Kumar is an alumnus from the 2006 batch with a B.Tech in Industrial Engineering and Management from IIT Kharagpur. His company DataResolve Technologies with their products aim to provide simple and cost effective Information and Data Leakage Prevention solutions to Consulting, Telecom, Banking, Data Centers and IT\ITES firms. With the launch of their latest product coming up we spoke to him about his beginnings and what plans he had for his future. With the prospects ever brightening, in the form of numerous grants and funds coming through and their product launch coming up, a visibly upbeat Vikram spoke to us. Excerpts from the interview. TE: Tell us about how you started off with the idea of Data Leak prevention. Vikram: Well from early on I was always interested in computers and computer security. I went on and graduated after that and took up a job. The job wasn't proving satisfactory and I knew that I could do much more on my own. So with the little money that I had, I headed back to Kharagpur and co-founded DataResolve Technologies with Devesh Mittal, 2006 Batch Alumnus from IIT, Kharagpur, then working in British Telecom. TE: And the challenges? Vikram: Oh! There were many. I left my job in April and came over to Kharagpur. I didn't have too much money back then but I was confident about my company. I moved in B-112 in Patel hall and well as staying in Kharagpur goes, the room was all damp. So after quitting my job I was back here again and I didn't have too much money as well. We financed the initial running of the company through my Axis bank Gold Credit Card which people will tell you wasn't a very bright thing to do. But I had no alternative. We then got our Directors in place. Each of them left profitable jobs and come over because they believed in this venture.

TE: How did you receive your initial funding? Vikram: We got our first angel investor in January of last year. We also met Mr. Koustava Ghosh, VP of Operations at Connectiva Systems and he became our Chief Mentor and Advisor. We also had help from STEP under the guidance of Prof. Biswas. He helped us understand the true meaning of Entrepreneurship and with that we rose form strength to strength. TE: Tell us something about your new product. Vikram: We will be releasing uHook 2.0 at INFOCOM EXHIBITON at Kolkata in January which will be the first product from our stable. It is an end point data leak prevention solution to protect your files from getting stolen or accidently leaked out of your PC. Our products are fully customizable according to customer needs and highly cost effective. USB Data Leak Security Product (uHook Personal 2.0) is free for private use by home users and ensures that the customers data not be taken away without your permission. TE: What is the competitive scenario like? Vikram: Large companies now realise the values of DLP and there were numerous acquisitions to showcase this. Take for example, the $350 million takeover of Vontu by Symantec, the owners of Norton anti-virus. There were several other acquisitions by McAfee, Trend Micro and even RSA. Fortunately for us, we were ahead of the competition in India and therefore the sector is ripe at the moment. We will soon be partnering large MNC's who will be our first clients. TE: Is there any way the students here could make a difference? Vikram: Now that you mention it, there is. We wanted to upload our product, which is free for home users, in different download sites like download.com and rapidshare. So if a student can get us a list of 100-150 different upload sites then we will give him an iPod Shuffle. That way they can do us a favour and be rewarded for that as well. TE: That would be brilliant. I think we won't take much more of your time. Thanks a lot and best of luck with uHook 2.0

Mail us a list of 150 unique upload sites, such as download.com or rapidshare, and win an iPod, courtesy DataResolve! Mail your list at [email protected]