God in Chief

Physically, the brain uses dopamine to create a ‘good’ feeling. This is normal and natural. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that the brain uses during its normal functioning. Drugs of addiction cause the brain’s cells to excrete and flood the brain with the chemical dopamine or conversely, block the chemical from being reabsorbed into the cells.

U are Stupid! This was the most common sentence I heard for a long
time from friends, family and early investors when I used to describe
to them my weird plans on how gaming is going to be big in India. That
was in an era when PCs were just introduced to India....and no one had
even heard about the Internet.

And recently we all witnessed 3 Idiots become the biggest Indian
blockbuster. I thought there is really something special about Being
Stupid! I want to take you through 3 of my learnings on the same.

Having started my business career at the age of 16, I had a great
handicap, the handicap of not knowing many of the basic fundamentals
of business and finance. What I was doing during my early days could not
really be classified
as business. I would call it a way I had adapted, to keep paying for my
pocket money, a source of income I had created to fund my hobbies and
have fun with my friends.

India has traditionally been a society where we have heard stories of the King and his Subjects, Gods and Mortals, the British Raj, and somewhere in our minds we have the concept of being submissive or being a follower to someone of higher power. And it did not help to have a Licence Raj. I grew up hearing stories of how these men of power could turn anyone into winners and anyone into losers.

Every new day brings new experiences and in my case new surprises. In my role as a mentor and investor I meet many entrepreneurs each of them with a story, unique business, passion and blind belief in their business. Many of these entrepreneurs have good backgrounds and generally well prepared for the meeting. They are able to share a crisp presentation on the plan and in my case within 5 mins of the presentation they start getting a volley of questions and we discuss, debate, agree, disagree and generally it ends up to be a 1 to 2 hour meet. While few of these meeting convert into a funding event in most cases I love to keep in touch with the entrepreneurs and keep advising them if they come to me with any query.

The brains of the VC’s are wired differently and startups should know how to deal with them.

A venture capitalist is a person who invests in a business , providing capital either for start-up or growth. Venture capitalists aim for a higher rate of return than would be given by more traditional investments. My years of interactions with VC’s have made me come to a conclusion that their brains are certainly wired differently. Just like entrepreneurs demonstrate certain common traits across the world VCs have certain traits. And when it comes to India I think the breed goes through another generation of transformation. To help entrepreneurs and startups better understand how to deal with the complex brains of the Indian VCs, I have put together my version of their brain map. Of course this is generic and there are many exceptions to the rule.

NASSCOM the premier software body of India is once again organizing the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2010. Overall a great conference, mostly attended by senior level executives of most top software companies of India, global Industry leaders,CEOs, Entrepreneurs etc.

Outlined are few of my observations related to how Indian IT Leaders are adapting to social media and traditional email :-

India has witnessed a tremendous growth in its media and entertainment business. In the past decade, we have seen the growth of billion dollar home grown media conglomerates like Network 18, Zee, UTV, Reliance ADA, Yash Raj, NDTV, Bennet & Colmen, and Hindustan Times to name a few. At the same time the foreign players too have done extremely well either directly like Star TV or via investments and partnerships with local players. Today Disney, Viacom, Turner, Sony, you name it and they have a large presence in the Media and entertainment business. When it comes to Television, Newspapers, Magazine, Sports, Movies, Theaters, DTH and entertaining over 700 million people in India, these companies rock.

Mumbai Terror Attacks on 26/11 has impacted thousands of people directly, millions of people across the globe who saw the event unfold on television, internet, twitter & facebook were also deeply impacted. For the next couple of months there were public demonstrations, media reports, blogs CEOs, Politicians, Teachers, street vendors, taxi drivers housewife almost everyone had a viewpoint. We got mad at the media, abused the government and politicians, blamed corruption, lack of planning, bad equipment, no coordination between agencies, Pakistan, Raj Thackeray, Shiv Sena, America, George Bush and everything under the sun for the Mumbai Terror Attacks

I must admit I too was suffering from the soda bottle effect, where initially it was all the bubble fizz of agitation but slowly things started to settle down and life got back to normal and 26/11 became a phrase Indian’s started to use with a bit of ‘pride’ it was India’s 9/11 and became a much popular topic of discussion whenever I met friends and business associations abroad.

For the past 10 years i have attended over 100 conferences in India and abroad. In most cases while others paid hundreds of dollars to attend. I used Juggad and almost always got in for free mostly being a speaker. The format for attending such conferences became quiet standard. Before the conference you setup number of meetings with people you know. Attend the keynote speech where you meet many random but sometimes important people. Setup more meetings with them.

Its almost like a jungle where different animals are looking for different prey. Startups looking for investors, established companies looking for business, many looking for jobs, everyone seems to be having a different agenda and the conference is just an excuse for everyone to get together under one roof.