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 :-

a. Paper Email :Its common to see most of the senior managers of these IT companies in business class of airlines browsing through files and files of printed emails which they are rapidly writing some notes on. These notes are then passed on to their secretaries who would neatly type out and reply to those emails. When I asked an ‘insider’ he told me that this is a well know practice by the ‘old school’ senior management of these companies... What do they do with the fancy blackberries and email technology which they supposedly build for others and why wast so much paper.

b. Blog PR Stunt : Case in point Indias biggest software company Infosys has a blog the most popular post has 7 comments and 5 tweets. Now a company as big as Infosys with hundreds of thousands of employees its hard to imagine that only 7 people in the entire company had anything to say about this. even after some amount of googling i could not find official blogs of most of the IT companies or ceo’s of the top IT companies.

c. Twitter : You have to see the Twitter Page of TCS to believe it. Someone in their PR department thought it was a good idea to take the entire Investor Call and past it in form of tweets... even a 10 year old can tell you how to use twitter...

d. Facebook = faceless once again i could not find much in Facebook about these companies. TCS has an official facebook page looks like the last time someone looked at it from TCS was in the last century..

e. LinkedIn = could not find a single job posting from the major Indian IT companies in Linkedin . Microsoft is advertising 59 jobs, Cisco 122, HP 47, Google 571 Jobs... however Linkedin has the highest base of Indians on its social network.

Well the point I am really trying to making is that as the world evolves to social media and technology is moving at a rapid speed. It will be encouraging to see the TOP IT companies of India adapt and change and as most of the change starts from the top I would urge CEO’s of these companies to JAAGO RE...and invest their personal time along with their senior management and not leave this to some junior PR or Marketing person who will get you a #FAIL

This is surely one SOCIAL Cause which the Indian IT Leaders should Wake UP to.

PS. There are certainly few exceptions Anand Mahindra, Ganesh Natrajan who completely get this and if you have any other names kindly add to the comments with links to their blogs/tweets etc. Similarly there are companies in the non IT space which have even worst social media plans...but the idea is atleast the IT Guys must eat their own dog food.

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.

However, one area where none of these companies have been able to make a dent is the Internet and New Media space. Leaving a few exceptions in most cases, Internet and New Media ventures of these companies have been a complete disaster. And it’s not that these companies have been not spending enough money or time on the space. I think in aggregate, all the Indian media companies put together over the last 5 years would have invested between $300-$500 million in the space but the result is, we have an online advertising market dominated by Google (over 60% market share), the mobile operators are taking away majority of the moola when it comes to VAS revenue, ecommerce is dominated by players like Ebay, jobs is Naukri, matrimonial is Shaadi, gaming is Indiagames :-), VAS is Onmobile to name a few. There are tons of examples like Makemytrip, Cleartrip, Hungama, Sulekha, Justdial, Rajshri, Rediff , Smsgupshup, who have dominated their respective sectors even though they had to compete head-on with competition with large media companies who had companies in the same space, with high capital, technology and ‘quality people’.

I wonder if these big media companies will ever understand the real reason for this situation and continue to fund their internet ventures by replacing the CEO with an even more expensive CEO who will rubbish all the past strategies and invest another $20m in marketing and brand repositioning :-)

Having interacted with a number of such companies here is my take:

Large Media Companies STRONGLY believe:
1. That they have the ability to create ICONIC brands with the help of their media power and it’s the BRAND which is everything.
2. By hiring somebody from Google, Microsoft, Rediff, Yahoo, Facebook, ebay, or Amazon, to head their business they can build a business equally successful as these companies.
3. By poaching an entire sales and creative team of a startup competitor by offering them triple the salary, they can overnight wipe out competition.
4. By investing millions of dollars on server farms, high end technology from Microsoft, Complex CMS and video solutions, Oracle, SAP they can have a super competitive edge over a startup competitor who is mostly using (cheap) open source software.
5. By offering something FREE over what a startup competitor is charging for they can kill competition.
6. By Exclusive content, movie stars, prizes, tickets and every possible incentive they can make customers switch to their brand.
7. Using their Television, News and other media vehicles they can create enough PR to create viral effect.
8. They have piles of cash and unlimited resources over a startup who is constantly scavenging for funds and resources. That startup will DIE someday on its own.
9. The value of these startups is very high because of the stupid VC investors in the company. Actually, these startups are worth a lot less and one day they will buy it for peanuts or hire the founders as their employees.
10. They can always sell Internet and Online inventories as a bundle with their Television and Print inventories.
11. ESOPS in their media companies are worth a lot more than STOCK in some arbit startup with no revenues and cash.

While the reality for Startup Internet and New Media ventures is quiet the reverse:

1. Most startups were able to build brands with very little marketing spend but more on innovation and word of mouth on the strength of their product.
2. Founders and core teams of startups are driven by ‘PASSION’ and not just ‘MONEY’. Hiring a CEO with a $200k package and saying he is passionate is quiet a joke. Most founders take huge salary cuts over their last jobs.
3. Being low on resources actually drives startup teams to deliver a lot more as they now have to go the same distance with lesser cash. In fact, having too much cash is not good for an early stage business :-)
4. Open source solutions perform better, faster and have proven to be more stable than the expensive ones... a startup with no cash understands this and is forced to find the most cost effective solutions.
5. Having VC’s investors who look at investments very objectively is a boon to startups. As they are able to spend a lot of time mentoring the startups and at the same time if the startup is going nowhere they are unemotional about this and can ‘pull the plug’ anytime. This is a big motivation/scare for a startup team, which once again drives them to perform. Over a media company startup where irrespective of the ‘division’ making or not making business plan the media company can never really pull the plug...since there is a lot more at stake, including stock market expectations, face etc.
6. One of the worst things any startup can do is to hire some heavy hitter from a successful company like Google or Microsoft (unless he is willing to join at a huge discount to his salary with stock in the startup). The concept is simple when you are with Google, Facebook, Rediff and Microsoft you are not doing any selling at all. The product demand is created by the product itself, it is designed developed and managed by the masters in America and your role largely is to create fancy presentations, graphs, business plans, paperwork, strategy and keep the firang bosses happy. That is why these managers do very well at media companies since they can always create a great strategy document and why the last strategy they made did not work.
7. Startups are fast in responding to situations, changing course, modifying business models, modifying product and respond to customer situations. The corporate structures of most media companies make any major change an exercise for which they would require a board approval.
8. The hunger to win, the fire in the belly, aggressive, passion, dedication and terms you would normally associate with a startup how many times can you use these terms for a Media Company startup?
9. Finally, for a startup team there is a lot more at stake. It’s not a job they are doing... which a media company CEO and team can change 4 jobs in one year and no one will blink an eyelid.

So, if these are the facts, why do we still see more and more media companies pumping money in their Internet ventures verses investing in startups or acquire startup companies?

A lot of this I think can be attributed to the early stage our new media industry is in and slow development of the startup ecosystem in India. The good news is that media companies are owned and run by some very intelligent entrepreneurs themselves. I believe that in the next 18-24 months, many of these companies will have no option but to get into an active startup investment/acquisition mode as their counterparts in the west had to do. There had been many examples in the west where establish media companies made the same mistakes in the early 2000 and now we are seeing ventures like Hulu and their participation in early stage startup funds where they don’t want 51% stake in the company but operate like a strategic VC fund and at the right time happy to acquire the company. Sony, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, News Corp, Disney, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Time Warner and many others have largely got into new media ventures by aligning with successful startups.

Will this happen in India?

PS:- I think I have opened a can of worms but have to make an important disclosure that before writing this post I had 20 shots of vodka and was watching some crappy saas bahu show on TV and lost a game of T20 Fever to some guy called ‘BIG Daddy’.

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.

few months post the 26.11 massacre, we received an interesting email and phone call from Bihar, a kid claiming to be a game developer and wanting to meet us to discuss a proposal. We took it lightly however we did agree to meet the kid in person to see what he has. The first meeting was conducted by Sachin Janghel our Technology Head, Samir Bangara our COO and Reena George our Head of Human Resources. They were so impressed that they wanted me to meet the kid. When I first saw Shivam Gupta, I saw this timid little boy, with a smile, a bit nervous who had come along with his dad Mr. Gupta. Initially Mr. Gupta, who is a school teacher in a government school, initially did all the talking. And told us about Shivam’s love for gaming, animation and how he is surfing the internet and learning all these new technologies. The further explained us about a medical condition Shivam is suffering called, ‘Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome’( http://k-t.org/) where one half of his body is growing faster than the other, the first such medical case in India. He showed us medical reports and talked about the help he is receiving from experts in India and all over the world in treating Shivam. His dad is making sure that since gaming & game development seems to be his son’s passion, he is making every possible effort to get this son to meet us at Indiagames. It was a touching story but still we were skeptical what kind of game could a 13 year old kid make? He comes from Patna a city in Bihar, he can’t even speak fluent English, he did show us some demos which he claimed he developed, but anyone can download stuff from the internet and say he made it, I thought maybe we will give him some pep-talk and let him go.

However I let our senior programmers and designer interview him to see what this kid really knows. The interview shockingly lasted a few hours and post that the response I got from my team was ‘This Kid possibly knows as much as some of our trained programmers’. Now I was not expecting this, we immediately had an internal meeting and decided that we will do everything to support and help Shivam to fulfill his dream of becoming a games programmer. He was introduced to Varun Bhavnani our lead game designer who along with Sachin Janghel our Director of Technology set to work. Their task was to come up with a game which Shivam wanted to develop. Shivam worked from his home in Patna in between going to school and was connected with our team over email, phone, chat etc.

Fast forward 2 months. Shivam reverted to us with an idea to develop a game on The Mumbai Terror Attacks of 26/11 where you get the play a NSG commando wherein the objective was to fight terrorists and rescue the hostages, re-enacting history. His idea was that since millions of people sat helplessly sitting in front of TV sets the terrorists killing innocent people, he wanted to enable a common citizen an ability to take on the terrorist and at the same time remind people about the Mumbai Terror Attacks. Suddenly my thoughts went back straight to 26/11 and the soda bottle effect. I thought young Shivam has come up with a unique idea in the era of social media and power to the crowd, enabling millions of people to virtually experience the 26/11 incident with an ability to save innocents life would clearly be appreciated by one and all. At the same time the terrorists and bad guys across the world will get the message that even a 13year old kid in India has the imagination and idea to take on these evil men. We immediately green lit the project and the funding for the same. Shivam guided by Varun our lead designer started work on a 3D game to be made available online free of cost. All the programming work was done by Shivam from his home in Patna and he made a few trips to Mumbai to gain feedback from us on how he could turn it better and better. We then thought why not develop a 2D mobile game along the same lines to get a ‘Mass effect’ to nurture this child’s perception, also since we wanted to make sure this game is available as widely as possible

Both games are in hardcore development and we are all set to release it in January. However we thought wouldn’t 26.11.09 be the ideal day to unveil this grand and ambitious project conceived and developed by Shivam possibly the world’s youngest game programmer. Shivam despite all his health issues, his modest background, limited finances & small city upbringing has the courage to dream big and work towards it. I and my team are honored to be part of Shivams grand project. I started my career with a game on the Kargil War, made Yoddha both targeted against terrorism. And I believe with this game and significant contribution towards Shivam’s passion I have grown as an individual, a father and a friend.

I bow my head in respect and regards to Mr D.K Gupta, Shivam’s father who has extended his whole hearted support to Shivam, Mr. Gupta took leave from teaching and stood by Shivam’s side all the time, encouraging Shivam, provided him financial support with his limited income, took him to all the doctors to treat his condition, and unlike other parents who would normally shrug a kids interest in sports, arts or gaming, he has taken Shivam to tread the path which will make everyone in the world proud of him.

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they act on their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”

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.

Most sessions have thin attendance, mostly consisting of journalists organizers people from your company and few competitors .huge round tables with few chairs around them are kept to make the room feel full.. I think some of them have also started using recorded applause :-)

the only place were you meet people is the cocktail party and dinner reception but soon realize that there are six such parties going on and most people are juggling between the parties to hunt for prey.

The sessions itself are boring and mostly nothing but corporate marketing pitches and the panels get really bad when each of the panelists makes a ppt slide instead of discussing the topic at hand.

When i heard about ted happening in India for the first time. I was all excited another big conference circus. When the official website was launched i couldn’t believe what i saw..it had little info on the speakers or content.. A huge photo of infosys ex.ceo nandan and they were asking for applications based on which they will decide to let you in and the cost.. A whooping $2500. This officially became the most expensive 2 1/2 conference in India. The $2500 included food airport transfer and stay at infosys campus in mysore.

I first thought it was a mistake and some one added a zero to $250 well how much could food and stay cost in infosys campus in mysore. (assuming they gave it free) and the organizers are gone nuts..

However having watches the ted videos online. My simple ideas was if these videos which i have watched for free can give me so much knowledge and inspiration, getting to meet some of those speakers and being able to exchange notes with even one of them would be worth $2500

reluctantly i filled a 3 page form with all kinds of questions and soon got a seal of approval from the organizers and i finally paid the $2500 with no idea what to really expect. I convinced myself by Calling it a gamble..

Fast forward to when i reach the Infosys campus on day 1 of the event. The registration process was super fast and smooth i checked into my room fast and in no time was roaming in the Infosys campus.

I must say there was something about the atmosphere which was electrifying i could see hundreds of people from different counties, some in formal suits, some in t-shirts and shorts all intermingling with each other. While the softbot army of Infosys was zombie marching across the campus..guided by smart guards with whistles.

The night started with a gala dinner at some palace where we were taken in buses. Saw a lot of familiar faces there mostly venture capitalists, successful silicon valley entrepreneurs, consultant and investor banker types, successful Indian entrepreneurs, senior corporate executives, you could not miss the huge Google presence, industrialists and people from the media. But the striking difference was when i saw many bloggers, twittes, newspaper tycoon, startup entrepreneurs, artist types, professors and musicians.

Now that was different.

The dinner was nice the wine was flowing and i had quality interactions with prof hans, a classical piano player, an industrialist who wanted to use gaming for developing skills in illiterate peope, abhay deol who bashed me on why film contracts are one sided :-), Chris Anderson the organizer of ted & a young film maker from Cairo. Now that was some time well spent.

You will soon be able to see videos of about 50 sessions which were delivered at TED online but what you will not see in those videos was the electrifying energy in the room, the sparks which were flying amongst the Potpourri of people from very diverse backgrounds. I started by thinking oh i will attend a few sessions but ended up attending each and every session 100% during the course of the 2 1/2 days. In each session I made sure I sat next to a new person and once again managed to spend time with a technologist, a wine expert, senior bureaucrat, an entrepreneur, a doctor from New Zealand, a MIT graduate, a social entrepreneur just to name a few.

The dinner events made a good setting to interact with many others net net... unlike other events where you meet the same set of people talking about the same boring stuff, at TED India it is fresh...I met new people, made new friends, gained knowledge from bells, to bees, to snakes, to planet, to technology, to women’s liberation, to arts, to architecture, to world economics, to bottom of the pyramid, to top of the pyramid, to technology in rural India, to technology from MIT.....all in a short span of just 2 1/2 days. And believe me when I say that no a single sales pitch...everyone just interested knowledge sharing and brainstorming.

The 18 mins format of TED is like Twitter where you are forced to communicate your pearls of wisdom in 140 characters similarly TED makes smart people communicate their years of wisdom in 18 mins.... with lots of entertainment and light moments thrown in.

If University is like Test Cricket, 1 Month Executive MBA Programs like One Day Match, TED is the 20-20 version of going to the best university in the world and learning from the best teachers all in 3 Days..... though I missed the Cheer Girls :-)

My journey way back was also equally eventful with me and Film Make Shekhar Kapoor having a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere and missing our flight. Now that’s a different story to tell.

So why am I calling TED a absolute waste of time and money...simple because I learned from a professor Hans at TED that people like to read negative stories. The actual headlines should have been from 14th July 2026 all Schools and Colleges will switch to TED Education System :-) and the people who did not attend TED even though they could afford it would just read the headlines and move on...

Hear are the 10 things you should know:-

1. Hotel Infosys: Infosys Resort (Campus) is huge and has over 15000 employees. About 7000 on projects and 8000 always under training. All the delegates are housed in rooms which are originally designed to house the trainees. However, if Infosys starts a hotel chain, I bet it can beat Taj, Hyatt or Marriot. The arrangements are top class, the staff is very polite, rooms are good feels like a professionally managed hotel.

2. Big Jumbo Badges: Normally, conference badges are in small print and boring. It’s difficult to read them while you are attempting to have a conversation with a random guy. But TED has though it well and their badges are 3x the normal size with information on your topics of interest. A great way to break the ice and super effective. The conference is well designed to facilitate networking.

3. No Sales Talk: Almost all the talks are about content, knowledge, creativity, art, talent and raw knowledge. Unlike other shows, you don’t have speaking slots reserved for sponsors and MBA types presenting their corporate decks. A refreshing change indeed. The topics spoken are very diverse from arts music, creativity, technology, economics, social well-being, a great fusion of knowledge.

4. Diversity of Delegates: The quality of delegates is amazing and in a short time you will notice that TED has the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the industrialist and the student, professors, sportsmen, painters, singers, Gamers :-) , gay, lesbians, a 6.8 tall German, quiet a few midgets, bloggers and journalists, people from traditional media and new media, movie stars, filmmakers across many counties of the world, VCs, Angel investors, CEOs, Startups, Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs.... never seen such a potpourri of exciting people under one roof.

5. Quality Interactions with Speakers: Most speakers are staying till saturday and spending quality time interacting with the delegates - on Day 1 I had quality interactions with Mukul Deora, Shekhar Kapoor (an old friend), Pranav Mistry (very humble and down to earth guy), Hans Rosling, Anil Srinivasan and many fellows. Many other delegates had similar or even more quality interactions. This has never happen before.

6. Corporate presence: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Nokia, Times of India, UTV, Network 18, Cleartrip, Makemytrip, Intel, Cisco, Murugappa Group, Infosys, Great Eastern Shipping, Yes Bank and many more Managing Directors, Presidents, CEO’s, Business heads.. surely not a show where some juniors were sent to report back to top management a paragraph on how good or bad the show was. However did I missed someone from the Reliance Group???

7. Super cool Programme Guide: The quality of programme guide, pictures, speaker Bios is out of the world.

8. Personal touch from TED Organisers: The most helpful TED Staff were personally meeting and greeting the delegates and gave an excellent personal touch. Chris Anderson had a good interaction with me and one could see him and Laxmi making an effort to reach-out to all the delegates. Nice very nice.

9. Listen not Talk: A noticeable difference is that people are at TED to listen. Most people who are heavyweight speakers in many ‘normal’ conferences are seen as silent spectators, rapidly taking notes and trying to grasp. You can walk up to almost anyone and he is willing to listen to your story.

10. You can’t get all this by seeing the free Videos on TED: After seeing the wonderful TED videos most people (including me) thought that this will be more like live attending the ‘event’ and won’t be much different than the knowledge you can acquire by seeing the cool videos. My fiends, I was WRONG... TED is like being on a moon mission and actually landing on the moon and exploring uncharted areas... while most people think they have seen is all when they see a 5 min clip of astronauts moon walking and waving back to earth.

TED India is worth every penny and you just cannot put a price to the knowledge and interactions and networking.

Folks from IIT and IIM very cheering up the fact they they now have 4-5 startups coming up every year to which i brought my point. Do you really think we should be happy with 4-5 startups coming from the Dozen IIT and IIMs and the thousands of MBA schools in the country ? NO WAY

According to me if we really have to be serious about startup space in India we need to have at-least a 1000 startups over the next 5 years. Here is the math if we have to aim for 200 startups a year for the next 5 years and these 200 startups are coming say from the
5 Metros Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai @ 30 per year
5 Cities Kolkatta, Chandigarh, Indore-Bhopal, Jaipur, Ahmedabad doing 10 each year.
Other cities too can contribute say total 5-10 per year

Now based on established startup funding models it is clear that most western startups operate at a $25k to $50k seed funding level and therefore it is fair to assume that a typical seed round in India can easily be in the 10 Lakhs $20k range. Which make a total funding requirement over 5 years of 1000×10 Lakhs = 100 Crs. approx $20 million.

That’s not such a big sum in the funding world however the challenge is how to actively manage, guide and mentor these 1000 startups and what kind of an organization is actually equipped to do so. My answer is simple what about the local entrepreneurs. If corporate funding is able to combine with local ‘Angels’/ Entrepreneurs say 50:50 where 5 lakhs comes from central fund and 5 lakhs comes from a local angel who is the lead on the startup and takes active personal interest in developing the idea and mentor the startups. The startup get the advantage of personalized mentoring as well as access to the larger network of contacts and knowledge which can help take them to the next level

At the same time I may be totally wrong too maybe India just needs a 100 high quality startups ?? which much higher funding ?

While I am still working to develop this idea further taking inputs from friends, incubators and investors across the globe would be happy to get your ideas and how we can get to 1000 startups in India ?

As usual most of the laptops claim that they are the most powerful, most sexy looking and most affordable... so how does one break from this clutter and target a segment which has the money, the need and is currently undeserved.

Looks like our friends at Dell got the plot correct... they did what they should have done long time back... and finally launched the Alienware Laptop MX17x the most powerful laptop in the universe NO DOUBT. BRAVO...Dell

Alienware is to laptops what Ferrari is to Cars. It is extreme, it is macho, its cool, its exclusive and yes it is expensive. My love with the Alienware laptops started over 3 years back since then I have been using Alienware regularly for gaming....many of the games on demand users have been using Alienware and will surely be excited.

We went to the extent of offering Alienware laptops as prizes to users on our Games on Demand service, we had to specially ship them from USA. I must tell you that these laptops were the most sort after items by the gamers.

Therefore it was no surprise that I was invited by Dell for an exclusive look at the machine and a unit to review the same. I will be posting my detailed review on the machine once I am able to fully play with it :-)

Till then chillax.. and finally I will be happy to see Indian Gamers gaming on real gaming machines and not sissy Pink and polka dots laptops.

And sorry we gamers dont need Shahrukh and Saif to sell us sissy Laptops... Indian Gamers love Alienware bring it on!

This launch will go down as a big milestone in the History of Indian Gaming.

Proto.in was very well attended I was told over 500 people were present and I could see every seat in the auditorium and all the corner stairs fully occupied there was hardly any space left. The place was bustling with people present were top entrepreneurs, Angel Investors, VCs, Incubators, Government Officials, TV Channels, Investment Bankers, Bloggers, Twitters, Facebookers, Journalists, Software Companies,Small companies, Biggies like Qualcomm, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Sun, Incubators, Wannabe Entrepreneurs, Enthusiasts, Self Proclaimed Experts, HNI’s absolutely the who’s who of ecosystem. However the best part of Proto was maximum time of the event was dedicated to the startup showcase and they had only a few other panel discussions.

The startup showcase was amazingly next gen..with great music, strobe and disco lights it had all the sex appeal and glam any major entertainment event could have. However it was plagued by sound and projector issues... which was a bummer which the organizers should surely fix next time. Now talking about the startups itself they were presented almost like rock-stars each one of them had a unique entry and exit sound track and all the flashy lighting effects. My take on the Startups:

Vardenchi Motorcycles: AKA. Sexy Looking Custom Bikes 

They Rock bcos: Their cool looking bikes, Price range from 2.5 to 15 Lakhs, Fully Customizable

They Suck bcos: Difficult to Scale, Competition from Imported Bikes

Bankbazaar: AKA. Get Loans like Airline Tickets

They Rock bcos: Airline ticket like platform for Loans, Integration with Back-end Systems of Banks, identified customer pain point while getting loans

They Suck bcos: Thousands of Direct Sales Agents trying to sell Loans, Actual Loan process too long, They are just a fancier lead generating tool

GoVasool: AKA. Paisa Vasool Group Buying

They Rock bcos: Group buying cool concept never really exploited, good idea to collaborate with local stores and not try to shut them down like other e-commerce portals

They Suck bcos: Too many sites and stores trying to sell cheap, Getting people in groups to actually commit.

Vigyaapan Technologies: AKA. New Twist to Viral Marketing

They Rock bcos: Their idea of Queen Bee sounds great, Mobile Operators can find a new way to send marketing spam

They Suck bcos: Difficult to establish link between queen bee and drone purchase, Privacy issues, Simple to replicate by anyone who knows maths.

Automotive Robotics: AKA. Viagra for your Small Car

They Rock bcos: They can make your Maruti run like a Honda, Bolt on Kits so scalable

They Suck bcos: Indian Roads, Consumer education now how many people know the difference between 120BHP and 190BHP, Value for Money ?

ConWizta: AKA. Ebay for Tests

They Rock bcos: Enables almost any one to start giving tests, unique concept

They Suck bcos: Cluttered Space, Without credibility of teacher difficult to attract students

Vrixx Education Solutions: AKA. ERP your College

They Rock bcos: ERP for colleges looks like a need of the hour, Focus on education segment

They Suck bcos: Long sales cycle, Do colleges really want this and have they money?

English Seekho: AKA. Number Ghomoo English Seekho

They Rock bcos: Rural Focus on VAS, Aspirational English learning segment

They Suck bcos: What happens when Novelty wares out?, Easy to replicate by big well established players, Can someone really learn on the phone?

TestMerit: AKA. Another Online Test

They Rock bcos: Different twist on the Online Test space

They Suck bcos: Cluttered space, Very little differentiation between competitors

PebbleTalk: AKA. Company Discussion board taken to next level

They Rock bcos: Interesting communication and social engagement software, SMS and Outlook Integration

They Suck bcos: Focus on  Enterprise segment makes growth restrictive, can be hit by the Google Wave

Aerosoft Systems: AKA. Credit Card Revenue Reconciliation

They Rock bcos: Saves companies money, Credit Card reconciliation real problem!

They Suck bcos: Services model, Easy to replicate

HyCa Technologies: AKA. Science Fiction made to solve real problems

They Rock bcos: Real IP at work, Cheaper, better, faster

They Suck bcos: I don’t fully understand what they actually do!

Intsolvers Technologies: AKA. Pipe Cleaning System

They Rock bcos: Real IP at work, Cheaper, better, faster

They Suck bcos: Dont know how big the market is, Need good mfg. support as product still in prototype

TouchMagix Media:AKA. Interactive Out of Home Media

They Rock bcos: Allows high level of interaction in retail spaces, Brands looking for new ideas to engage with customers

They Suck bcos: Advertising model not scalable, Expensive, More a novelty will the brands try it again?

The day ended by a Facebook developer event followed by Drinks and Dinner with the startup companies at a cool party hangout near Osho Ashram (for the sex appeal ?).
Net net very impressed with all the companies which presented at Proto this time. Won’t be surprised if about 10 of them get some kind of funding within next 6 months.

Now back to my discussion with Michael Arrington. All I have to say to you Michael is the Indian Startup Ecosystem has finally arrived, the above startups, hundreds of audiences, investors and sponsors like Microsoft, Facebook are indicative that these events can be run in a professional and hopefully profitable way. For now Proto.in is the king of startup events in India and we would need events like Techcrunch50 and Demo to come to India to raise the bar for Proto.in and the startups which attend it and benefit the entire ecosystem.

So should I say Welcome to India Mr. Arrington?

photo curtsy- BIG Pictuers

Now lets compare this to the biggest show on Indian television Rakhi Ka Swayamvara on NDTV Imagine, where men wishing to get married to Rakhi have to register themselves with the show. After selecting the 15 grooms of her choice, Rakhi is staying with them under one roof. During this time, she is giving her prospective grooms various tasks to perform. The ones who fail face elimination every week. The final week will see Rakhi marrying the groom of her choice. While millions of viewers are watching the show everyone have doubts in their minds if at all Rakhi will actually marry. There is news that Rakhi Sawant is not going to get married to any of the contestants. The whole thing is a sham. Rakhi is no fool to get married to a reality show contestant. While the speculation is still on this really got me thinking that how similar or different are Indian startup events from the TV Show?

In both cases there are passionate contestants all trying their best to impress their future ‘partner’. In both cases its the long term prospects and not the short-term sexiness which is being considered, in both cases there is a lot of due-diligence going on and finally in both cases there is a lot of trust and mis-trust.

However IMHO one BIG different in both cases is the credibility and track record of Rakhi Sawant and Mr. Venture Capitalist. And I believe that if past data has to be believed that the probability of Rakhi Sawant getting married to the winner far outstrips Mr. Venture Capitalist actually investing in the ‘hot’ startup.

The answer is simple for Rakhi this is about her personal credibility and future trust with her fans and audiences when she agreed to come on the show it was with an explicit intent that she is going to get married to the winner. Not honoring the same will in the future make the people stop trusting her and her word.

Now lets compare this to Mr. VC after many emails and phone calls by the organizers they finally agree to attend the start-up event, almost in all cases they crib about travel outside their home city, they know that they cannot invest in deals less that $5m even though their website say they fund startups, they don’t believe that Indian startups are as matured as silicon valley startups and finally do they really care as they believe that a good startup will ultimately get funding from some angel and they will look at it when they need $10m. Then when do they even attend these events when they really have no intent to fund ?? Simple, its for the free publicity, ego massage and reporting back to HQ in USA that they actively tracking startup space.

So what is my suggestion to organizers to these events ? If you are calling VCs take a $100k escrow-deposit from them which they will commit that they will fund to a startup in next 6 months as as soon as they fund you release that money that’s the only way to make sure that only the ’serious’ one attend. And finally I think its better to call family & friends of each of the startup,angels, people who spend money on social causes, High Net Worth Individuals in partnership with banks who handle premium clients portfolio, Top Government Officials :-) , Senior Banking officials the chance of they putting together $20k- $100k is far higher than Mr. VC and will be able to add far greater value as they will be investing their personal money and not belonging to some pension fund in America!

Finally only time will tell if Rakhi Sawant will marry the winner of the reality show or Mr. VC will fund a startup at proto.in ! my money is on you Rakhi!

Having spent a lot of my time with startups their entrepreneurs, the teams, the investors both in India and Silicon Valley. I thought to put together a comprehensive list of the key differences I noticed between the culture of these startups. For clarity sake by Startups I am referring to pre VC funded early stage companies..

Startup ecosystem in the Silicon Valley has evolved over the last 25 years and today the ecosystem is very evolved with colleges, angels, VC investors, entrepreneurs, employees etc all working in harmony no wonder startups like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo etc have born and nurtured from there.

The Indian Startup Ecosystem is still in its nascent stages. At this stage I am not commenting on business models, ideas and execution but more the Cultural aspects. Here are 4 key points of cultural differentiation.

Open v/s Closed
Silicon valley Entrepreneurs are generally very open in most cases a lot of information about the Entrepreneurs and their products is available on their websites, blogs. Having been involved in a much more matured startup ecosystem they understand that while Ideas may be many they key is the team and execution. The only way they can recruit great talent, get top investors, create buzz around their company is to be OPEN. Everyone in the key management team is clear about the product, strategy and what they are trying to do.

Indian Startup Entrepreneurs are generally very Closed very little information is available about the startup and in most cases the ‘About Us’ section of the company has no or little information. Except for the CEO most other team members have little idea about the company and its vision. Generally very secretive about what they are trying to do.. and are very protective about their ‘Ideas’

Outgoing v/s Timid
Silicon Valley Startups are very aggressive. Regular press releases, company and founders blog, update emails, Invitation to Close Beta and many other activities to actively engage customers, investors and employees are very common. Most of their entrepreneurs are active in all major industry events not just startup and investor events. Their are a lot more articulate in their presentation and overall packaging of the company and themselves. Their plans are deep,detailed and well researched. At the same time you experience a very ‘Cowboy’ like attitude entrepreneurs

Indian entrepreneurs are generally very shy not very good with media and public interactions. They are all present at investor and startup show but rare to attend relevant industry events. During your talks with them unless you are a VC or investor information from them is hard to come by. Very few of them involve external group of people to interact with their product in form of private beta. Quality of presentation and overall packaging is much toned down with a lot more emphasis on numbers and excel sheets. Most plans are superficial and lack attentional to detail. You normally get a conservative and guarded feeling once you meet these entrepreneurs.

Logical v/s Emotional
Silicon Valley Startup entrepreneurs are more logical than Emotional about the company, the idea and the overall approach. When confronted with alternate ideas, theories, suggestions they reaction is more positive as they don’t tend to take suggestions or advice ‘personally’. While negotiating with clients, VC’s, investors they tend to take more rational decisions.

Indian Startup Entrepreneurs are very Emotional about everything. In most cases you have to given them any advice or suggestions at your own risk as they tent to take these things personally. Its very difficult for them to accept criticism about their company/idea as they get emotionally attached to their ideas. Also they are a nightmare to negotiate with investors as their emotional side always tends to be in conflict with the realities of the market.

Social/Lonely
Silicon Valley Startup entrepreneurs are generally ’social’ its not uncommon to see competitors CEO hanging out together. A lot these Entrepreneurs bat for each other, share booth space in events, keeping their homes open to other startups, share office space, lobby together for common causes, have co-sponsored parties and events. They are active in openly supporting other startup companies and entrepreneurs

Indian Startup Entrepreneurs are a lonely bunch living in their own little worlds. In most cases Each one is to its own :-) very little co-operation among non-competing startups.

A lot of the above differences are also partly due to the early stage of the evolution of the startup ecosystem in India. I am sure 20 years back Silicon Valley would have been similar. But with every year and with organizations like TiE, NeN , Angels, incubators and startups events like startup proto.in headstart etc. I see our young entrepreneurs learning very fast. And I think eventually the ecosystem in India will be a hybrid system a mix of western and Indian values! The success of Indian Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley is probably a good indication of this trend.

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