TieCon Chennai ’08 – important learnings from eminent entrepreneurs!

Here’s how I will sum up what I learned from the discussions and stories shared by leading entrepreneurs:

1. Great work is inspired by great cause – think of what problem are you trying to solve.
2. Dare to dream
3. Find the right people with correct skill sets to start with rather than looking only at people whom you know.
4. Bootstrapping is the best solution, get help from people you know or loans and keep funding as your next best option.
5. Perseverance is a must – most entrepreneurs have been through stages where quitting was an easier option but they stuck to it and out through all the challenges.
6. Entrepreneurship is all about ideas but its also important to know which one of the many ideas that come to one’s mind needs to be followed and the rest to be forgotten.
7. Sometimes it is also important to know when to quit if you realize down the line that what you initially thought was not the best solution – the dream should be followed in the light of what you can solve rather than the fact that you have already put in so much efforts.
8. Build values in your team from the beginning and also develop relationships with anybody whom your business touches.
9. Building a business is like giving birth to a baby – if selling it off is your only motive then there is something seriously wrong

It’s not that I don’t realize what I heard that day, but its good to be reminded of it through people who have already been through these challenges and have come out successfully. And meeting other entrepreneurs makes you think that you are not the only one out there in the ocean (as it sometimes feel when you are sitting alone in the office) and gives us all some confidence back. TieCon makes a great platform for entrepreneurs and all of young business people like us – who are greatly benefited by coming in touch with eminent leaders. Sharing is believing!

I was not sure if I did want to attend as the date was coinciding with proto but then when I looked at the speakers and panelists I thought lets give it a shot. The first few hours was the inaugural address by eminent entrepreneurs and our honorable chief minister Dr M. Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi spoke about reaching the common and making them the focus of our innovation through technology. A category of awards were given recognizing the efforts and achievements of various successful entrepreneurs form the state of Tamil Nadu. Shri Gopal Srinivasan, director of TVS Electronics summed this first session well and requested the chief minister to come up with similar award concept to success the spirit of entrepreneurship from this state which had yielded so many of them.

Then we had a bit of focus on the retail industry. Hemu Ramajah, the founder of Landmark had come back to Chennai when she started her venture as she believed that this city gives due weightage to knowledge. So she started off with books and now Landmark is becoming a one stop store for books, music, gifts and other household items alike. Then she spoke that how the retail industry is emerging and with this trend there are greater opportunities in the field of outsourcing for the store – right from security to training.

Shri Vivekanand who was a pilot in the US always liked the organized fitness industry in the US. He spotted the gap in the Indian industry and came back to Chennai to start FitnessOne with investment from his brother and his friends. Today it has built into a chain of gyms across the city and stands apart for its service class and provides facilities like swimming pool and yoga within the premises. One of the points he made was that any business can focus into pricing, service or innovation as its core competency. This doesn’t mean that the other two fields are neglected but to be successful at a greater level the driving factor has to be one and only one. He rightfully gave the example of Sony for innovation, FedEx for service and AirDeccan for pricing.

Then came Captain Gopinath, founder Chairman of AirDeccan who has changed the face on India with his dream “Every Indian can fly.” This was a breath taking speech about how he has been able to change the face of Indian aviation industry and touching every Indian therewith. He retired from the army and returned back to his hometown in Kerala. All his family had some large pieces of land in another part of Kerala. Thinking that he will do something out of there, he took the land from all his relatives only promising them to return it after 5 years with much bigger interests.

Gopinath spent his time in a tent on the fields and kept on knocking the doors of all the banks for a loan to do farming there. It was all in vain until one day a banker visited him as he had heard that “mad” person lives on the field and he is looking for financial help – the lesson for all of us being “Never give up.” One of Captain’s friend, an ex helicopter pilot was looking for a job but landed up as a manager in a small time trading firm. This is when Gopinath realized that with such a vast population India had only a mere handful of helicopters and that also were in the private hands or with the defense. So he set out to start with a helicopter service company in India – it took him a lot of pain to get a license from the government and to raise the money to import helicopters and start with the services.

While flying one day, Captain realized that the common man in India cannot avail this service and this effecting the economic growth as well. With this realization he set out to form AirDeccan which aims to enable every Indian to fly and has the highest destination coverage today in India. What a story!

Then after lunch was an interesting discussion by leading VC’s in regards to “Are VC’s looking beyond Tech companies.” Shri Ganesh, founder and CEO of Tutor Vista gave statistics that in the year 2007 nearly 70% of the funding from VC’s went to tech companies. Mahesh Murthy, partner of Seed Fund, rightfully argued and gave another set of statistics and examples of funding in other fields. Though all agreed that till now the VC’s have been largely investing in tech companies as they bring about less capital investment and also there is a greater chance of making money for the investors in a span of 4-5 years – a standard period for a VC to get his money out.

After a coffee break we settled down again and now the place was a little empty. Sri B. Soundarajan, founder and MD of Suguna Poultry spoke about his success story first. He was primarily into trading of chicken and now after a span of 10+ years he has developed one of the biggest chicken supplying unit of India. This was a very fine example of how somebody who is not from a big city and doesn’t have any degrees started off with a mere small amount and has rose from there – all hard work and perseverance which are the driving factors for any entrepreneur.

Things were getting dull when Kunwer Sachdev, founder and CEO of Su-Kam Power Systems came on the stage to talk about his story. Like me, I don’t think many of us have heard about Su-Kam. To my surprise I came to know that it is today one of the world’s leading manufacturers of inverters. Kunwer after finishing his graduation from Gurgaon went on to work with his brother only realizing that they two have differences in working style. Then he left and was looking for a business opportunity when he realized the growing trend of cable network. He started providing cable TV connection when one day he realized that amidst power cut offs the inverter stopped working. He got it repaired many times but still it didn’t work when finally he opened it to realize that the system on which it was built was wrong. Then started his journey of exploration when he bought all leading inverter brands in India and from US – only to realize the flaw in all of them.

This gave birth to his idea and dream of coming up with an inverter which he thought will work more efficiently, cost less and produce more power as well. Kunwer kept working from there and today he is the No. 1 brand in India and across the continent of Africa and has also started exporting around the globe since last year. This story was electric and woke up all in the audience. A guy who hasn’t studied in English medium school and is confused even today as to what he wants to exactly and has build such a Multinational firm.

In the Q & A session, somebody from the audience asked as to if he is not afraid of the fact that anyone can open his inverter and copy his technology – to which he replied that in fact everybody is copying but if they were not then he will think that there is something wrong with his technique. Wow! Simple and practical thoughts – a must for every entrepreneur.

This had set the right pitch for the next panelists where the topic of discussion was “from an idea to the first million.” Satya Prabhakar, founder and CEO of Sulekha talked how he came up with this idea of building a community around readers and kept it alive without any external funding by doing web design services initially. Rajesh Jain, who had founded khel.com, khoj.com, samachar.com and bawarchi.com sold it off to Sify to start with his new venture – netCore.

Then came the budding entrepreneurs with their pitch to the group of VC’s. It was exciting to see the range of ideas that spans through their mind and how they bringing it alive. Mahesh (VC) asked some really practical questions to all of them which might have sounded critical at the offset but I believe are prominent for every startup.

The long day ended and we all took the opportunity to network again.

Note : This post has been written by Rajat Bhadani - Co-founder of BloggingSaurus.