The WSJ reports that eBay has quietly opened its classifieds site, Kijiji (what a lousy name!) to the US audience, positioned to compete against the wildly popular Craigslist, in which it owns a 25% stake. One wonders why eBay doesn’t just buy Craigslist; the answer to that question is that Craigslist’s founder, Craig Newmark, has
Investing in a conflict area is risky business, but there are resources in Kurdistan which will draw in Oil producing companies. Microfinance structures could also benefit the agricultural region. However, in order for a “boom” to be sustainable, there will need to be a significant investor confidence in security – particularly for the finance industry
While these first two events were rather fortuitous, the next two, both concerning the Infosys journey, were more planned and profoundly influenced my career trajectory. On a chilly Saturday morning in winter 1990, five of the seven founders of Infosys met in our small office in a leafy Bangalore suburb. The decision at hand was
When The New York Times entered into a deal with Monster Worldwide this February to display Monster’s job ads in NYT’s career sites, it became yet another example of how vertical portals like Monster’s job-related one has come to prominence. [We have recently covered the Online Jobs vertical in detail.] Prior to the NYT deal,
SM: Please describe some of your team building experiences. Is your management team complete now? It seems like you’ve had a founder transition, and the company has already burnt a lot of capital. These are indications of problems with the team, normally. MS: Yes, we’ve had some problems, but they were not with Founder transition.
Political stability must be viewed as a precursor to economic development. How else do you explain the success of microfinance in places such as India, Mexico, South America, and its failure (for the most part) in Africa (aside from limited success in places such as Kenya – which is a rather stable government for the
The next event that left an indelible mark on me occurred in 1974. The location: Nis , a border town between former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, and Bulgaria. I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore , India , my home town. By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9
SM: How did you finance the different phases of the company? MS: The early stages of the company were funded by an Angel and subsequent capital has been raised through VC’s. The first 2 rounds (Angel and Series A) were raised by the Founder, a total of $8.2 Million. I raised 2 rounds. One within