Entrevista with Raj Nair, Founder of Avalon Consulting

Interview with Raj Nair, Founder-Chairman of Avalon Consulting, the Mumbai-headquartered, international consulting firm and also research and analytics firm Ugam Solutions and artificial intelligence software firm . Interview begins with how Ugam Solutions' founding & funding - especially how the company "pivoted" to completely new business in 50 days flat! The interviewer is fellow entrepreneur Chandu Nair. Chandu earlier founded, successfully raised venture capital for and exited from Scope eKnowledge, one of the earliest KPO firms in India.

The Audio (podcast) version can be downloaded from here 

Highlights:

• Striking balance between Flexibility & Measurement in the Early Years: In the initial years of starting up,  it’s important to have the flexibility to course correct and not put pressure on the business with a rigid business model, ambitious target, etc. “There is (however) a difference between chaos and experimentation. Every day, you need to check if things are ‘happening or not happening’. You cannot be like Christopher Columbus saying 'I somehow want to reach India' and set sail without doing any homework. For every Columbus who got lucky, there are probably thousands who just lost their way.”
• Pricing based on Value: How even with no relevant experience behind them, Raj and his team decided to price their market research services at double the prevalent rates and got away with it.
• Spotting Entrepreneurial Opportunities - in the Pre- Liberalization Days (Market Research) and in Today's Social Media Driven Days (Germinait which mines Social Media for market research using technology tools). Very interesting accounts of the work that Germinait did for measuring the impact of a well known teleco's ad campaign and how it's helping an leading kids TV channel measure social media conversations to decide which characters to promote.
• Experience brings Empathy: “When I started my journey, I used to view colleagues as fellow professionals and it was all about delivering results to clients. Today, I look at them as individual persons - someone whose wife had a migraine in the morning and he had to deal with it before coming; another whose child did not get admitted into a school or that he deserved to and so on. One understands how the environment affects an individual’s behavior, output and productivity at the workplace. In one word, Empathy. And that is something that can’t be taught in a business school.”
• Don't tell your children what (career) path to take. Only if they decide for themselves, will they will own up to the responsibility for what they do!
• Parting Wisdom: Make sure you are having fun! "When you are enjoying, a lot of the hardships don’t seem that big. When you are not enjoying what you are doing, even a small thing becoming a big issue. So make sure whatever you are going to do will give you tremendous satisfaction and happiness. Don't do get into some line of business just because 'the money is great' (and) unless you are going to enjoy the journey." 

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.

Entrevista with Ratish Nair, Founding-CEO of Interactive Avenues

Interview with Ratish Nair, Founding-CEO of Interactive Avenues (IA), the Mumbai-headquartered, Sequoia Capital India-backed digital marketing agency which was acquired in March 2013 by US- and Europe-based ad agency Interpublic. Interview focuses on the company's founding (5 co-founders who earlier worked at another digital agency Mediaturf); Angel Funding (from Anupam Mittal of Shaadi.com); VC Funding and relationship with Sequoia Capital; and, of course, the Exit (how IA ran the process, the role of the VC, the role of the intermediary, internal dynamics, etc.).

The interviewer is fellow entrepreneur Chandu Nair. Chandu earlier founded, successfully raised venture capital for and exited from Scope eKnowledge, one of the earliest KPO firms in India.



The Audio (podcast) version can be downloaded from here 

Other Highlights

Synergistic Co-founding team

How, having worked together in the past (at Mediaturf which they left as a group to found IA), the co-founding team knew each other' strengths and weaknesses and were able to hence work in a synergistic manner.

Leveraging the Brand & Network of VC Investor

How IA tapped Sequoia Capital not just for the money, but also to add to the startup venture's credibility (when pitching for clients) and also for generating business from the investor's other portfolio companies.

Advertising as a way out of small town

Interesting vignettes about a small "mining town" upbringing and how advertising was seen as an escape to the exciting world of the "big city".

Also how the lectures by Prof. Subroto Sengupta at IIM-Calcutta served as an inspiration to join the world of advertising

Advise to other Entrepreneurs

"Never raise more money than what you need - else, you might relax and 'miss the bus'."