Future of Indian Entrepreneurship in Light of Current Worries

The Economic Times has published Sramana Mitra’s article, Future of Indian Entrepreneurship in Light of Current Worries. You can read it here.

Success Story Of An Indian College Drop Out

You can read Sramana Mitra’s latest column for Small Business Trends, Success Story of an Indian College Drop Out, here.

The Indian Startup Eco-System Wants Acqui-hiring!

I spent large chunks of time in the last two days with my friend Sharad Sharma, one of the true deep thinkers of the Indian startup eco-system. I first met Sharad when he invited me to co-chair the Nasscom Product Conclave in Bangalore with him in 2010. I really enjoyed working with him, and over the years, have come to appreciate what he is trying to do for the Indian eco-system.

Sharad, by the way, is one of the 20 odd effective angel investors who invest in the technology sector in India. While the total number of angel investors is much larger, many of them come from outside the sector, and hence are not capable of leading deals. If you look at Indian Angel Network or Mumbai Angels, for instance, a vast majority of the angels made their money elsewhere (like real estate), and often find it difficult to fully grasp what’s happening in the software, mobile or Internet businesses, let alone networking or semiconductor. Thus, these lead angels are critical for the eco-system to mature.

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Celebrate Entrepreneurs Helping Entrepreneurs In Chennai

In the true spirit of giving back, a community of Chennai entrepreneurs has come together to award partial scholarships to the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) global virtual incubator to three local startups.

The scholarship recipients were selected after participating in TiE Chennai’s Start-up Super Saturday in early March, during which Sramana Mitra gave a keynote talk and helped with judging a business pitch competition. To ensure full commitment to make the most of this opportunity, the recipients have also paid for a portion of their 1M/1M memberships. For one year, Vineet Neeraj/Kobster, Manigandan V/DACAM Systems, and Sathish K/Yakkay Technologies will each receive extensive incubation support to make sure each venture lives up to its potential.
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Indian Product Companies – An Emerging Trend

As you might know, India is a country firmly positioned on the global IT map, but as a service destination. For years, outsourcing has been the nation’s primary IT activity. I deliberately provoked a debate on the subject in 2008 with Death of Indian Outsourcing. India, however, hasn’t built many IT products.

A brief primer would perhaps help put things in perspective. “Product” companies build once and then market and sell the same thing multiple times to multiple customers. “Services” companies that do custom software development have to use “bodies” to do customer-specific development over and over again, with limited leverage. Theirs is a head count-based business model. Recently, popular software-as-a-service companies have come up with the model of “renting” software over the Web, thereby offering “products” as “services” while maintaining the scalability advantage of products.
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An SEO-Driven Bootstrapping Success: Benchmark Email CEO Curt Keller (Part 5)

Sramana: You are in a very competitive landscape. How are you navigating the competitive pressures?

Curt Keller: We are expanding our product mix. We are coming up with creative solutions around our software as a service offering. In some ways we are following the lead of competitors such as Constant Contact. >>>

1M/1M Video: Building India’s Entrepreneurship Pipeline

How does India go from 2000-3000 entrepreneurs to a pipeline of 100,000? Based on presentation at ISBA 2012.

Friday, March 23: Rendezvous With Sramana Mitra In Kolkata

Sramana Mitra will be speaking about “Building Kolkata’s Entrepreneurship Pipeline” at a TiE Kolkata event on Friday, March 23, 2012. The event begins at 6:00 p.m. at the DPSC Centre of Excellence in Kolkata, India. Pradeep Udtha, Strategy Lead for Cloud, Devices & Startups, Microsoft Corporation, will also be giving a presentation. To register, please contact Munmun Banerjee at munmun.banerjee@kolkata.tie.org.
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