Will SKS’s Improvements Be Enough?

SKS’s troubles do not seem to be coming to an end soon. In addition to increased microfinance sector regulations driven by Andhra Pradesh state politics, the company recently saw their founder and chairman, Vikram Akula, leave the organization. Market rumors suggest that issues with the management team led to Akula’s resignation.

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Indian Product Entrepreneurs: Your Time Has Come

We have discussed the topic of technology product companies from India on this blog for many years now. In 2012, finally, we will see the first major crop of Indian entrepreneurs playing on the global stage. I can say this with confidence based on my first hand experience mentoring a number of serious and promising Indian product entrepreneurs in the 1M/1M program, one of whom, Freshdesk, has just raised financing from Accel Partners.

To put this evolution in context, let me offer you both some historical commentary, and also a bit of a blue-print of what is working, and why this is going to be a major trend, as opposed to a one-off happenstance.

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Is Capitalism The Right Answer for Emerging Markets?

Given our extensive presence in emerging markets and the implosion of Western-style free market capitalism, the following question is becoming relevant and important: Is capitalism the right answer for emerging markets?

I would like to open up the topic for discussion. Please use my recent piece Restructuring Capitalism as context, and share your thoughts on where countries like India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, Africa, and so on should be heading.

India, for example, has a long history of family-run businesses. Its conglomerates are all family-run, and even in the SMB sector, family-owned and -operated businesses constitute a fair share of the economy. Today, with the advent of angel and venture financing, albeit still small in its impact, India is starting to change.

China is practicing  a hybrid model of communist capitalism – state run, efficient, and extremely high growth.

The financial markets, the discipline of speculation, and the comfort level with debt, otherwise known as leverage, are all timid in the emerging markets compared to the West. Perhaps that’s a good thing in the long run.

What are your thoughts?

Calling All Indian Entrepreneurs

One of my readers suggested that he would like to see more coverage of Indian entrepreneurs on this blog. Well, we’d be delighted to oblige. Here are the pitching instructions, if you have a story-worthy venture. (Please feel free to forward to your friends and fellow entrepreneurs)

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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2011: QuadMo Solutions, Bangalore, India

Rewards programs have been around for a long time. Gartner reports that systems that leverage social and mobile concepts have seen rapid growth recently, and increasing global adoption of employee recognition systems is expected over the next three to five years. >>>

Nightmare At SKS Microfinance

Andhra Pradesh state politics in India concerning the MFI sector are continuing to hurt the performance of the sector in the country. According to Credit Suisse, India’s leading MFI, SKS Microfinance is seeing loan recoveries in the state to be as low as 12% compared with the industry’s average recovery rate of 22%. SKS’s bad debts in the state have soared to 39% compared with 2.5% a year ago. The researcher expects that the company may have to write off Rs 1,100 crore (~$232.14 million) of bad loans over the next two years.

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Sramana Mitra Speaking At The Commonwealth Club On Thursday, August 11, 6:30 p.m.

Sramana Mitra, Founder of One Million by One Million, will look at the current challenges facing India and the untapped opportunities in technology, technology-enabled services, rural and slum development, energy, infrastructure, health care, film and education. Author of Vision India 2020, Mitra will discuss start-up companies in India developing into billion-dollar enterprises over the next 10 years. She will also speak about her global initiative, One Million by One Million, which aims to help a million entrepreneurs each reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond by 2020.

Location:  Silicon Valley Bank, 3005 Tasman Drive, Santa Clara, California
Time: 6:00 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. book signing
Cost: $20 standard, $12 members

Find more details and REGISTER HERE.

1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: Monarch Media, Santa Cruz, California

Online education and training continue to grow in popularity. It costs less for students to get bachelor’s and master’s degrees online. Employers, too, save money by arranging for employees to take training courses online and on their own time.

Monarch Media has provided e-learning solutions, including online and mobile courses, educational software development, learning management systems, and instructional design for more than 13 years. The Santa Cruz–based company serves a client base across both the private and public sectors. The top target segments are educational publishers, universities, government agencies, nonprofits and corporate training departments, and the company follows a traditional business-to-business approach. Within the educational publishing market, Monarch Media focuses on serving large and mid-sized companies ranging from the largest in the industry, such as Cengage Learning, Elsevier and the National Institutes of Health to specialty publishers like ETR Associates, a provider of specialized public health training materials. Monarch Media also plans to launch new product lines of skills training courses for mobile delivery.

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