e-mag!ne - anniversary (downloadable version 1.2 mb only!)

8/9/2019 E-mag!ne - Anniversary (Downloadable version 1.2 MB only!)

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2/16

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frostsaid this years ago, yet this thought is still young and driving, aswe quote it here, here in this issue of E-mag!ne which has completed one whole

year. They say life comes a full circle and how? Today takes us a year back when

we first incepted this wild ideawhich led to a number of raised eyebrows and

even more number of smirks! All we could do was to smile andwellsmileagain. Our silence was itself confused, whether we are sure of what lies ahead

whether this would be just another random idea that would fume away with

the haze of umpteen cups of hot tea or is this something that would eventually

get entwined with our lives so much so that a 365 days would pass with just a

batting of an eye. We wanted to risk the unusualwe just didn't want to settle

for the ordinary.

And as all great people have said, that hardship owns its reward, our initiative

too reaped a lot of accolades, over the months comprising its journey, that

silenced our retractors. E-mag!ne not only broke across many barriers that had

entwined our lives, but it also forged many a relationship with a world hitherto

unknown to us. It not only did good for the cause we established it for, it also

enriched us & all our stakeholders in ways which never ceased to surprise us!

Slowly E-mag!ne became as integral to our lives as water is to a fish's existence.

The hard stones stepped upon along the journey only made us bask rather

unabashedly and merrily on the fruits we gathered later on. When we say that

E-mag!ne has reached far and wide, we do so with a fair amount of conviction

because we have witnessed its reach touch lives beyond the domain of our

mother land India even!

We know what it feels to dream and when that dream takes a form of of itsown. We identify with the pain and the immense joy that is felt to let it take on

the world on its own. Pain to let it go.. Joy.. to witness it take its first flight and

every flight ever since. Having gone through all of those juxtaposed emotions,

having spent a full year of living this dream every single day, we realize and

salute the spirit of Doing your own thing, the spirit of doing it differently, the

spirit of Entrepreneurship.

This month E-mag!ne comes with an exclusive look. All sections that

you shall see in this issue are anniversary special. Also introduced Is the

blog this! feature. Now you can blog on the articles you read here.Just follow the link on the bottom-right corner of the page. Hope you

have a good read and also that you continue supporting us! cheers!

E DI T ORI A L

We identify

with the pain

and the

immense joy

that is felt to

let it take on

the world on

its own. Painto let it go..

Joy.. to

witness it take

its first flight

and every

flight eversince.

- Team E-mag!ne : Srimoyee Ray & Bikram Sarkar


3/16

C o n t e n t s 01/10FEATURED

04 SurveyA survey on the entrepreneurial

attitude amongst the people of

India.

Entrepreneurs14Nandini Vaidyanathan writes her

experiences on entrepreneurship for

us.

INTERVIEW

06KAUSHIK MUKHERJEEChucking a career at Goldman Sachs,

Kaushik Mukherjee took up the bold

descision to be an entrepreneur.

RAMPRASAD RAJENDRAN

Gaming on social networking sites?

this is the man you got to thank!

09

Tete-e-tete

VISHAL SETHIThe man who revolutionized event

management in India speaks up in

an E-mag!ne exclusive.

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FEATUREDS URV E Y

5 0 1 / 2 0 1 0 E - ma g ! n e> > B l o g t h i s ! e ma g i n e - mh r m. b l o g s p o t . c o m

On asking their preference of the city in India that they

would want to start their venture in .i.e, the city that

would be the base camp and on it the venture would

eventually spread its roots to other parts of the country,

this was the trend that followed :

Kolkata was preferred most in terms of the city ranking.

The reasons that we could ration out was Kolkata being

a fairly cost effective locale, people thought that it

would be a comfortable zone to kick off their venture,

even with a not so handsome capital investment. Only

next preferred location was Mumbai, obviously because

it is the financial capital of the country and consequently

the opportunities and possibilities are immense in the

city of dreams. Delhi followed closely with a host of

other preferred city like Bangalore, Gurgaon and

Chennai.

We also tried to gauge a little of the

emotional/psychological aspect that is entwined with

entrepreneurship in an indispensable way. We asked our

respondents, who is that person or icon that they idolize

when it comes to taking this bold step in the world of

different thinkers? This is what we got :

We noticed that a host of respondents between the age

group of 23 to 25 years idolized stalwarts like Mr.

Dhirubhai Ambani and Mr. Narayan Murthy. Amongst

the other responses were, Mr. Steve Jobbs, Richard

Branson, and even our very own, the greatest Bapu ji.

There were responses that claimed that a lot of their

inspiration was due to their family members who had

already taken a plunge into this interesting world and

emerged victorious and successful.

Based on certain myths that we keep on hearing every

now and then, that out country India, produces

potential minds but however does not support

entrepreneurship when it comes to the opportunities

that are available. So we tried to find out what

percentage of the respondents feel likewise or ratherunlikewise the above. We found that :

39.13 % respondents felt that the opportunities that

are available in India are very good and that India is

very much able and capable to support the minds that

harbor the interest to take the road not taken with a

host of opportunities and amenities.

Inspite of all the planning and the background work, at

times some ventures fall flat on the face or get

handicapped mid way. This in turn creates a sort ofprejudice amongst the people against this particular

field. We tried to find what according to the

respondents might be the reason that lead to a

sudden demise of a plan which was alive and beating

at one point in time.

Poor Planning/research/analysis/study

Poor funding

Lack of vision

Lack of endurance

Power politics Environmental change

Lack of risk taking ability

The above are some of the reasons that was cited by

our respondents as being the primary concerns for a

startup to meet its unnatural death. Respondents

between the age group of 23 to 25 years felt that lack

of enough funds and poor planning whilst our

respondents of 30years and above adjudged, lack of

operational skills and inability to think long term as

the major reasons for failure. The proper flow ofthings that should help a startup in the long run would

be : Right Information, Right Funding and Right

people.

So what are the necessary traits that one should

possess in order to be an Entrepreneur?

Heres what our respondents feel: Focus, Hardwork,

Perseverance, Non -Conformity, Leadership, Patience,

Innovation, Sacrifice are the key pillars on which an

able head rests with a firm foot on grounds. Yes, we

agree too, but E-mag!ne would prescribe just onetonic Imagine !! and that should take care of

everything that follows
http://emagine-mhrm.blogspot.com/2010/03/e-magne-anniversary-issue.htmlhttp://emagine-mhrm.blogspot.com/2010/03/e-magne-anniversary-issue.html


6/16

INTERVIEWE NTRE P RE NE URS


K A US HI K MUK HE RJ E EF o u n d i n g Di r e c t o r , COO : f i n t a c t . c o m

Kaushik Mukherjee, an IIM Ahmedabad and BITS Pilani alumnus gave up a lucrative investment

banking career at Goldman Sachs, New York in 2008 to found Fintact.com a leading online

insurance portal in India. At IIMA, he was awarded the KVS Gold Medal for Best All-round Student. In

his spare time, he enjoys teaching western ballroom dancing, long-distance biking and playing poker.

The decision to be an entrepreneur is a very personal one

for most people who end up doing something out of the

ordinary. Since I had already worked both in India and

abroad in technical and financial domains, I had a vague

idea about how much a regular job would have to offer in

terms of

(a) learning(b) excitement, and

(c) money

The problem is that as life progresses, the dependency

on a stable stream of (c) becomes so important that we

are forced to push (a) and (b) lower down in our priority

list and sometimes erase it altogether. When I started up,

to me (a) and (b) were more important than (c) since

there is only so much money an unmarried male in the

mid-twenties needs to afford a good lifestyle. Hence, I

did not have too much of a hesitation in taking a longer-term bet on my life, since I was confident that the

opportunities that I was foregoing to pursue a dream on

my own was something that I could get back to at a later

date.

In the present, it was more important to do something

different. Engineering, MBA, IT beyond a point, if you

don't differentiate yourself from the people you see

when you look around you you lose yourself in a crowd.

And the way I am I knew I would never be happy if I let

that happen. The small probability of striking gold is still a

chance and I was prepared to take a chance on that.

During my days at IIM Ahmedabad, there used to be

many case contests and personality assessment

events, which gave me ample scope to test myself

against my peers and earn some money as well.

Together my business partner and I had won prize

money totalling to approx 5 lacs. Since this was excessmoney anyways, we decided to invest that in

registering a company and launching our business.

It was a different thing that we blew that money in 8

months and were virtually pushed to the brink of

going back to a job but we stuck it out and the

learning from those days is something that help me

even today. We started out with an eCommerce idea,

but much like most over-educated, self-confident

MBAs we missed out on analysis some of the basic

elements of the business we were getting into whether the idea was right for the time, the market

and us. This turned out to be a self-imposed

internship, which helped us ensure that the next time

we set out to run a company we would be better

equipped and better prepared.

Why

entrepreneurship?

How has been your

entrepreneurial journey?How did you start out?

What were the initial reactions

of your family and friends when

you said that you want to start

something of your own?

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I think this one's predictable. They were visibly

disappointed as the job offer I was giving up was one of the

highest grossing salaries in my batch as an Investment

Banker at Goldman Sachs, New York. Hence, for a little

while my decision seemed quite inexplicable to them. But

as they say with parents you can't negotiate, you take

your time and you reason.

So after a week's talk, they did see that it wouldn't hurt my

career if I took a couple of years off at worst to try out

something. And from then on, whether they understand

my business or not they know from the days of bus travel

in 2006 to the days of frequent flight travel nowadays, that

all is well.

Friends were excited of course but clearly divided into

two categories. Those that were worried about how we

did and those that were curious about how we did. Thosethat cared and those that wagered bets on when we

would get back to a 'normal' job.

Fintact.com is an online insurance portal that helps

people choose the right insurance policies for themselves

and their family. We have tied up with a number of

agents across different cities and service our customers

by connecting them to these agents.

Our target market is mostly the age-group between 21-

45 gender-agnostic, who mostly turn to the internet as

the primary source of information. Geographically we

serve 10 cities in India as of now with plans of spreading

into 14 other cities by the end of the year.

The first wave of recognition for any venture comes

when you are planning to raise some funding to

operate it for a specific amount of time. With

Fintact.com we went through a long-drawn and

sometimes-painful VC/Investor-pitching exercise,

which finally closed with us sealing our first round of

funding from Rediff.com. A year from now will be a

good time to take stock since we would have been inmarket for more than a year by then.

All business ideas are replicable. I think our strength

lies in our team and our execution ability. Over the

years we have been able to attract talent from India

and overseas people who have stuck on because

they love the company culture and the freedom they

are given to set their own targets and achieve them.

This is difficult to replicate and as of today, we are

fortunate to have a company where the employees

treat the company as theirs and worked really hard to

beat the service that our competitors are offering.

Learnt my lesson earlier. Answers to such questions

should never be in print. Sometime in the future, they

always come back haunt you in one way or the other.



How would you describe your

venture? Some details about the

business idea that you started

out with?

What would you describe asyour target market?

What kind of recognition has

your venture gained over the

years? Has that been along

expected lines?

What do you think sets your

venture apart?

What are your future

plans ?

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Be ridiculous. No, seriously. Till about a year back, I used to

think that being persevering would be enough but there

are far too many people who exist and fade away without

making a dent. To stand out of the crowd the crowd is not

going to move you have to draw attention to yourself by

being different.

Make a conscious attempt to be different from the personnext to you. Entrepreneurship is a bent of mind that

teaches you to look for arbitrage opportunities in life.

These translate into large-scale opportunities that help you

make money, name, fame and of course spread some

cheer.

It's pitiful. When I started up, it was almost a shameful

thing to give up a job and try something on your own.

Thanks to the NEN, proto.in and organizations like yours

that evangelize entrepreneurship, today starting up is

not considered akin to committing hara-kiri. However, fartoo many people are thinking about far too many ideas

with far too few people who have money.

In India you'll find investors and VCs aplenty who appear

at these conventions and talk nineteen-to-the-dozen

about how amazingly awesome it if to start up and how

they believe in backing people and their ideas. However,

when it comes to putting their money where their mouth

is you'll see quite a different person.

I think the strength lies is the non-conventional channels.There are enough and more HNIs with risk appetite and if

one is able to network effectively, he/she should be able

to tap the right sources to fund his/her dream

venture.



Your message for young

entrepreneurs out there? Which

trait is most essential that you

think an individual should

possess to venture into a startup?

What do you feel about the

current state of

entrepreneurship in India?

What are its strength's and

pitfalls?

Accolades :

In April 2008, Kaushik was awarded theprestigious KVS Gold Medal for the Best

Graduating All-round student of 2008 at IIM

Ahmedabad.

In November 2007, he was awarded the title

of Ashwamedha The Best Manager from

amongst over 1000 participants from 30 of

Indias best business schools at IIM Indores

annual business summit IRIS. In January 2008,

he finished Runners-Up in a similar event,

Olympus at IIM Calcutta.

Social concern :Kaushik has shown his commitment to social

causes by being a regular blood donor,

participating in the Revlon New York Run for

fight against womens cancer and being a

member of the NGO foundation aProCh

during 2007-08.

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9/16



RA MP RAS A D RA J E NDRAN

Co - f o u n d e r : Ha s h c u b e

Hashcube is a social gaming company started by school friends Deepan (26) and

Ram (25) that makes popular puzzle type games on social networking sites and

mobile platforms like the iPhone.

I've always been fascinated with entrepreneurship. I

worked in a few companies before I ventured to start on

my own and got a feel of how companies work. There is a

lot of freedom when you are on your own and you get to

explore and try out your own ideas and the ideas that

you believe and trust in.

Deepan(my co-founder) were schoolmates. We did a

bouncing ball game back then and during Deepan's

college he made a sudoku puzzle application and built a

website around it. It started to gain traction and after

that we started out. The entrepreneurial journey hasbeen fun and tough. There are multiple lessons that

we've learned over the years and we've had the chance

to meet and interact with a lot of interesting people.

There have been mixed reactions. Some people

encouraged and motivated while the others had their

doubts. We would have never know the result until we

start out.

HashCube is a social gaming company that makes fun

to play puzzle games on social networks like facebook.

We initially started of with building games on

standalone websites but later realised that gaming on

social networks was a new and a bigger industry and

we shifted focus.

Everybody who uses social networks and plays games

Why entrepreneurship?

How has been yourentrepreneurial journey?

How did you start out?

What were the initial

reactions of your family and

friends when you said that

you want to start somethingof your own?

How would you describe

your venture? Some details

about the business idea

that you started out with?

What would you describeas your target market?

What kind of recognition

has your venture gained

over the years? Has that

been along expected lines?

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HashCube was incubated as part of the iAccelerator

program that happened at IIM Ahmedabad. Our userbase

has significantly grown and we've been featured by

bloggers and the press.

We want to continue to make games that are fun and are

played by millions.

Start out as early as possible. Patience and perseverance

are necessary along with other traits.

Entrepreneurship is booming in India. There is a lot of help

that you could get from mailing lists, fellow entrepreneursand there are also multiple events focussed on startups

and entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is

booming in India...



What are your future plans?

Your message for youngentrepreneurs out there? Which

trait is most essential that you

think an individual should possess

to venture into a start up?

What do you feel about the

current state of entrepreneurship

in India? What are its strength's

and pitfalls?

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Tete-e-teteE NTRE P RE NE URS

There is a lot of learning in the

entire startup process...

VISHAL SETHIFounder : Meraevent.com


Vishal Sethi is the founder of MeraEvent Interactive Pvt Ltd, one of theiaccelerator 2009 companies, an initiative by CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad, whichhe describes as a 'platform to connect the event stakeholders'.He is also anInstitute of Management Technology and St. Xaviers college, Kolkataalumnus. He, a first generation entrepreneur, shares his journey andexperiences w ith us...

Tell us something about yourself?

I had my schooling from DPS,Farakka, around 300 kms from Kolkata. After that my family settled in

kolkata, then i took admission in B.com (hons) at St. Xavier college. After passing out from St.Xaviers, i

worked a bit for companies like ABN amro and Cadbury India Pvt Ltd. Then i Did my MBA from Institute of

Management Technology (IMT). From there i got a job in Idea cellular, There i worked for around 19-20

months. I had a business idea from my MBA days,won few business plan competitions also.

In fact, my enthusiasm towards these competitive events led to the initial idea for my entrepreneurial

journey. I used to miss out on a lot of these events due to lack of proper information. So i came up with

the idea of having an event directory, i.e an medium to spread information and awareness about these

competitive events. Later on this business plan was refined and remodelled to take its current shape.

I decided to work for couple of years,get some work exp. and savings.

I quit my job in january 2009 ,jumped full time into my venture.Then in march it got selected in as one of

the iaccelerator companies 2009 - initiative by CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad..

Sir, how did this IIM-Ahemdabad thing happen? A little bit more detail?

CIIE at IIM Ahmedabad runs a program called iAccelerator. 5-6 start ups are selected which are then

mentored and seed-funded.

We had to stay in IIM campus during this prog.which was a great learning for me.

Sir, a little bit about your venture?

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Its called Meraevent Interactive pvt ltd.Its a platform to connect the stakeholders of events and

entertainment industry. There are basically 3 parties related to an event, The user- who watches it, the

performer, and the organizer.

It gives the opputunity to all event vendors to expand their business and increase their reach and also

ease to users who want to get an event done across all categories.

Sir, is there any minimum amount that a user has to have as a budjet for the

event he/she is planning in order to be able to access meraevent.com?

No, we cater to customers with all kinds of budgets. Someone might have a venue budget for 10 lakh

rupees, while for someone the entire event budget might stand out to be 50k. We have arrangements to

meet both these requirements.

How much potent does an online business model have in today's world?

See, in India Online is not as big a thing as it might be in other parts of the world. Shaadi.com, Naukri.com

all started off with their online models, slowly down the line they have ventured into offline models in big

way like Shaadi centre's Naukri Centre's etc. Our business model will have a 50-50 online/offline focus.

Where are your branches located?

As of now we are present in kolkata and Mumbai.....we will soon be starting off in Delhi and Bangalore.

What about advertizing?

Most of the start ups fail due to money issues, so spending too much on promotion is not IN OUR right

now. More importantly we are trying to partner with major events that are happening to let our

presence felt.Then there is social media...we are planning some interesting activities too but i believe the

best marketing is word of mouth one...nothing beats that.

Our aim is to reach each and every Family, because every family has an event.

Its known that certain states are more active in terms of the number of the

number of events that happen there. So which are the states that you are

targetting majorly?

We have chosen 6 cities to be present in by the end of 2010.

How important would kolkata be to your operations?


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Kolkata is obviously very important, We are currently head-quartered in Kolkata, but also its true that a

major part of the operational work is being done in Mumbai.

Yes, region wise East is definitely very important to us, not only Kolkata but surrounding areas like

Jamshedpur, Shillong etc are also vital to us.

Who do you think are your competitors?

I would say as a venture meraevent does not have any direct competitors. Yes, information directories

like justdial can be taken as a competitor, but we focus only to events and entertainment industry.

We will have a lead time of atleast 1 year to any other player who enters this market..thanks to our

major tie-ups and network.

Why do you think start ups fail?

Lack of proper mentoring and funding....Though number of incubation cells have come up but still its a

long way to go...But there is a lot of learning in the entire startup process....even a startup fails the

founder learns a lot from mistakes and helps him/her to rectify those later.

Your word of advice for budding entrepreneurs out there?

Have a holistic plan and talk to someone who can give blatant opinions before you start implementing it.

Be open and flexible and take a look at market demands while running the business

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FEATUREDE NTRE P RE NE URS

NA NDI NI V A I D Y A N A T HA N

Me n t o r o n e n t r e p r e n e u r s h i p

Professor Nandini Vaidyanathan, an alumnus of Delhi School of Economics and

London School of Economics, spent twenty years in the corporate sector in MNCs

across all inhabited continents.

For the last four years, she has been teaching entrepreneurship in premier biz and

engineering schools around the world. She is passionate not just about creatingentrepreneurs but a mentorship institution for building a vibrant entrepreneurial

India.

She has set up Entrepreneurship Development Centre at PES School of

Engineering, Bangalore, which along with its sister institutions has over 17,000

students. The Centre has an incubator attached to it and provides pre-seed

capital, infrastructure and mentorship to aspiring entrepreneurs.

She is a Mentor with New Ventures India, which is a joint venture between World

Resources Institute, Washington and Godrej Green Building Hyderabad and

promotes clean tech entrepreneurship.

She is also Mentor with MentorPartners, an online mentoring platform for

entrepreneurs.

She is co-founder of two companies, Startups (forstartups.blogspot.com) and

CARMa (www.carmagroup.in).

CARMa works with SMEs in getting them investment-ready, helping them raise

capital and providing them exit engineering, post capital-raising.

She writes a regular column in the magazine Entrepreneur called Your CARMa.

has written a series of books on entrepreneurship which will be in print sometimethis year. Following is an insightful article on entrepreneurship penned by her.



15/16



verybody has a 'wow' moment and if one is

lucky, several of them during a lifetime. I'mEpossibly one of the few really privileged oneswho meets amazing people literally most days of the

year. Which means I have a treasure chest of wow

moments.

But I can tell you this,- if I were asked to pick this one

heirloom which i will want to pass on to the future

generations, it will easily and uncontestably be 2nd Jan

2010 at TCS campus in Hyderabad at the TATA Jagriti

Entrepreneur Rail Yatra. Nothing had prepared me for

what I was going to experience here.

Jagriti is a foundation involved in a number of

developmental activities but this train journey is the

brainchild of Shashank Mani and if you want to know

more about how and why he designed this yatra, just

pick up his book : India : A journey through a healing

civilization, published by Harper Collins.

In 1997, Shashank conceived of an idea to discover

India beyond her sophistication (his words) and

urbanity and experience her home-spun 'genius'

(again his words). He called it Azad Bharat Rail Yatra.

This was the germination of an idea which is all poised

to open the floodgates for an upbeat entrepreneurial

India. It has now morphed into a train journey for

practising and aspiring young entrepreneurs from

what they call the Middle India, middle not in the

geographic or class sense but in the economic sense.

Shashank, Raj and Revathy (whom unfortunately i did

not get to meet as she had stayed back in Chennai) are

responsible for designing an experience for the

entrepreneurs which will stay with them for the rest of

their lives. This is an 18 day train journey through the

length and breadth of India, where people from

different climes and cultures travel together, discover

reach other and in the process manage to hold a

mirror to themselves.

400 young vibrant hungry unmolded minds coming

together, meeting entrepreneurs of different shapes

and sizes and hues, understanding the challenges of

being an entrepreneur, not to be daunted by them but

to convert them into a laundry list of do's and dont's.

God what a divine moment!!!

Let me start the story from the beginning

In mid- December, 2009, I received mail from Ananth

Krishna who introduced himself as the co-ordinator

of the Yatra and invited me to be a panelist either in

Kanyakumari on 28th december or in Hyderabad on

2nd January. I chose Hyderabad.

I had heard of this train journey in 2008 and I was

completely delighted to be invited to be a small part

of it this year.

On 2nd January, at three thirty I walked into the

reception of TCS at Hi-tech city. The security guard

manning the reception just pointed to an area

behind him and asked me to proceed there. I did and

nothing had prepared me for what met my eyes.

I walked out of the reception into an open atrium

built like an amphi-theatre, steep and cascading,

with stone steps going all the way down,

interspersed with bushes and trees. On the steps

were some 400 odd people, youngsters, bright eyed

and bushy tailed notwithstanding the ardor of a train

journey, waiting expectantly, as if they were in

Woodstock, waiting for their favorite rock band to

perform!!!

wilder? What can I say to them that will inspire

them,- these were the big questions that came

flooding my mind and for a moment I lost it and just

wanted to scoot out of there.

But the goose bumps took over thankfully!!! and I

Tata Jagriti Rail Yatra for Entrepreneurs

400 young vibranthungry unmolded

minds comingtogether, meet ingentrepreneurs of d

ifferent shapes andsizes and hues,

understanding thechallenges of being

an entrepreneur, notto be daunted by

them but to convertthem into a laundry

list of do's and

I got goosebumps just

looking at them

and believe you

me, for a minute

I was tempted

to turn on my

heels and run

for dear life

from there.

What is it I can

offer them thatwill make their

eyes twinkle

more, what do I

have in me that

can make them

hungrier and


16/16


16 0 1 / 2 0 1 0 E ma g ! n e> > B l t h i ! i h b l

walked down the steps in awe, in humility, in

anticipation. And that was the beginning of several of

my wow moments.

Since last year Tatas and CNBC have been phenomenal

partners in this event and on the panel were Dr

Krishna Tanuku, ED, Wadhwani Centre forEntrepreneurship, ISB, Mr Mohan Rao, State Director

for Small Scale and Khadi Industries Commission and

myself. The discussion was moderated by Suresh

Venkat, Exec Producer, CNBC. The subject for

discussion : funding for small entrepreneurs.

I wont go into the discussion here, many of you must

have caught it on CNBC last month.

Suresh turned out to be an intelligent, witty

moderator, not one of those who talks more thanthose he moderates!!! We covered a whole gamut of

subjects in the panel discussion.

This was followed by a Q&A session from the audience

and I was astounded at the questions that were asked.

My favorite of course was from an overseas

participant who asked : Everyone talks of what

investors look for in the entrepreneur. What should an

entrepreneur look for in an investor!!!

Once the discussion was over I was mobbed

completely and can you believe it, they even asked mefor my autograph on t-shirts, on paper, on their

palm!!! I was dying of embarrassment.

at the end of it all, i was completely exhausted and

completely, overwhelmingly innervated!!

Shashank, Raj and Ananth? how can I ever thank you

enough? May your tribe increase.
http://emagine-mhrm.blogspot.com/2010/03/e-magne-anniversary-issue.html

e-mag!ne - anniversary (downloadable version 1.2 mb only!)

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