Quick Link: All About Acquisitions

Jeff Seibert, a techie who founded one company while still a student at Stanford and sold it to Box and then founded and sold another company to Twitter (where he still works), describes - in this returning to campus talk (at Stanford eCorner)  - "what went well and what didn't during the acquisition of his earlier startups by big-name technology companies, stressing the importance of culture fit, maintaining your team's trust throughout, and continued investment in growth after being acquired. Seibert also explains how an acquisition isn't always the best exit strategy for a promising startup.

Enabling the Exit - Special Peer to Peer Discussion

The Venture Intelligence APEX'14 Private Equity Summit on March 6 at Mumbai saw an amazing coming together of Founders and executives as part of this special "peer to peer" track to share some amazing experiences and strategies to create exits in the Indian context - both via M&A and public markets.

The discussion started with Pangea3 Co-founder Sanjay Kamlani relating how the company's board decided to provide Thomson Reuters - a vendor to the company which had been tracking it closely since inception - a minimum valuation expected and a deadline, only after which it would start approaching other potential buyers. Sanjay also related why, despite going an existing partner - with whom all the stakeholders were very comfortable - Pangea3 still hired an investment bank to facilitate the transaction and, also brought in the good offices of its non-executive chairman, to sort out "hairy issues" that cropped up. Since the founders and other top executives would need to work closely with members of the buyer team post transaction, it is key to have such buffers during the deal negotiation. Other speakers in the insights filled track included:

• Sesh AV, MD, Basiz (Session Chair)
• Sandeep Parekh, Founder, Finsec Law Advisors & Formerly Executive Director at SEBI (who provided the legal and regulatory perspective)
• Raman Gopal , President & Head - Business Development, Hinduja Group
  (who provided the acquirer’s perspective)
• Pramod Maheshwari, CMD, Career Point
  (which provided a successful exit via an IPO in the Indian markets for its PE investor)
• Neeraj Bhargava, CEO, Zodius Capital & Former CEO of US-listed BPO firm WNS
• Ajay Bohora, Co-founder & CEO, Credila Financial (majority owned by HDFC) & formerly Co-founder of ClaimsBPO (acquired by WNS)
• Chandu Nair, Co-founder, Scope eKnowledge (acquired by Quatrro BPO) 

The session is a must view one for entrepreneurs - especially ones planning an IPO or M&A for their firms.

Entrevista with Palem Srikanth, Founder of logistics software maker Four Soft

In this audio interview ("podcast"), Palem Srikanth shares his amazing entrepreneurial journey - from a Stanford educated logistics executive with Hewlett Packard to returning to India and starting a Dosa restaurant chain to the tough lessons from making cross-border acquisitions to the recent sale of the logistics software business (to US Private Equity firm Francisco Partners-backed Kewill) for about Rs.275 crores. The interviewer is fellow entrepreneur Chandu Nair.

The Podcast can be downloaded from here.
(Use Right Click > Save As to save the file to your desktop)

Highlights:

• Importance of Financial Strength in the Enterprise Software space
• How persistence and investing in technology (to ensure Four Soft's products were cutting edge)  provided the maximum return - much more than the expensive acquisitions the company made 
• Managing the confidentiality of the transaction involving a listed company - so that there is no misuse of insider information to trade in the stock 
• Tapping of Ex-Colleagues/Bosses for Angel Capital 
• Advantages of going public 
• Pitfalls in acquiring an overseas company - how buyers need think through not just "how to bite it, but  also to swallow it and digest it". For example, issues like whether the target company is entrepreneurial enough to meet aggressive growth expectations; the regulatory issues in laying off people; conflicts of interest involved in buying a company (from a financial investor) where the management team aspires to itself own the company, etc. 

As if creating an Enterprise Software Product out of India has not been challenging enough, Srikanth now has a parallel career in active politics - he is running for Parliament as part of the Telugu Desam Party. You can follow his political career into the 2014 elections and beyond on his web site at http://www.srikanthreddy.com.