Bangalore, April 20, 2009
The Economic Times Power of Ideas mentoring session held in Bangalore last week in alliance with the Indian Angel Network (IAN) set the tone for the final shortlisting of ideas, which will happen in May. The mentoring session of The Power of Ideas discussed the solutions and issues that start-up companies and entrepreneurs have to face in the economic downturn.
Of around 12,000 Power of Ideas entries received, 42 percent have come from south zone entrepreneurs. “The first step when an individual decides to be an entrepreneur to me is the most powerful idea. That risk taking animal, who is ready to face the uncertainty of the future is an entrepreneur. It is a very tough life, very painful but at the same time after having been an entrepreneur after 17 years, it is the most exhilarating experience,” Subhash Menon, founder and chairman of Subex said in his keynote address to around 500 budding entrepreneurs attending the mentoring session.
Giving his own company’s example, Menon said that eight to nine years ago Subex decided to become a software product company and venture capitalist and private equity investors did not fund them, as they couldn’t believe in their idea of developing telecom fraud management software product for the world.
Janesh Janardhan, CEO of Robhatah Robotic Solutions company, which started in Singapore in 2004 focusing on electronics, education, entertainment and defence thought it would be easy to be an entrepreneur and ride the wave of success that was coming in his way. “One fine day we got an order for humanoid robots that could walk, dance and play soccer. Our robots were even winning matches organised by Federation of International Robot-soccer Association. There were happy times initially but then we went down as we could not sell humanoids all the years,” says Janardhan. An entrepreneur should look whether customers will fall in love with his product.
Sharad Sharma, former CEO of Yahoo India R&D, said that start-ups have to solve problems and hard times make problems more visible. “My first start up was in the wireless infrastructure space in February 2001. There was blood on the floor and that time our competitors became our partners. That would not have happened otherwise,” he said. If you are a genuine entrepreneur, any time is a good time argues entrepreneur-turned-investor Sanjay Anandram, managing director, JumpStartUp Fund Advisors.
