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Fun @ IIMLNC – Hard Rock Version

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Fun @ IIMLNC – Soft Version

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This session was held on 5th Feb, 2007 at the Taj Palace, New Delhi. I had the golden opportunity to attend this seminar.

The first technical session started with a panel discussion on “The Indian Energy Challenge.” In brief, it covered topics such as the overview of key energy challenges and regulatory/policy trends in India. The speakers for this discussion were:

• Sudhir Nunes, Investment Manager, Massachusettes Renewable Energy Trust
• Anish De, Associate Director, Transaction Advisory Services, Ernst & Young India
• Deepak Mahurkar – Associate Director, Oil & Gas Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Dr. Leena Srivastava – Executive Director, TERI

The major theme of this discussion is Renewable Energy Resources. Some of the key points in discussion are as follows:

• By 2031, the energy consumption of India would be 1.47 billion and 1.112 kg/capita
• In 2006, the vehicles have increase from 0.54 million to 7.71 million over 34 years
• India imports 75% of the crude petroleum
• Over 9.83 Million petroleum products are exported
• All these were possible with the help of SEZ Act 2005
• Renewable energy from Wind, Large Hydro, Small Hydro, Solar Therma, Solar PV, Biomass and Co-generation (Bogasse)
• There are also lots of Renewable SEZ opening up in India

So what does it mean to VCs? Well, these are the favorable conditions for VCs and Angel Investors to make their investments in Renewable Resources area, especially in India. This discussion is mainly to woo the VCs to invest in India on Renewable Energy Resources area.

The most interesting session was the “Aspirations and Capabilities – Experiences of Venture Funded Companies.” We had three speakers who run/own a VC funded company in India. The speakers were:

• K. Ganesh – CEO & Founder, TutorVista
• Deep Kalra – CEO & Founder, MakeMyTrip.com
• Sanjay Swamy – CEO, mChek

It was very interesting to hear the experiences from VC funded companies. Some brief insights about this session.

Sanjay Swamy – CEO, mChek

mCheck recently got its first round of investments from the DFJ VC. mChek is a wireless startup company. It was built over 7 years. The niche areas for mChek are Mobile Security, Security Authentication and Credit Card to Mobile Phones.

Sanjay believes in setting up proper processes and policies so that even if 100 people leave the company, they have processes and policies acting as the backbone for the company.

Deep Kalra – CEO & Founder, MakeMyTrip.com

MakeMyTrip.com got many rounds of funding. First was an angel funding in the year 2002 and the second round was in 2004. In 2005, SIAF was its investor and in 2006 CFM Ventures was the major investors.

Deep said that irctc.co.in was the starting point for him to look at the MakeMyTrip.com model.

He also said that e-commerce revolution helped a lot for MakeMyTrip.com to become possible.

Next, the Low Cost Carriers (LCC), started by AirDeccan was a major turning point. Followed by lot other LCCs. Apart from this also the tieups with different hotels and travel agents prmised the success for MakyMyTrip.com.

K. Ganesh – CEO & Founder, TutorVista

Ganesh got his first VC in the year 1990 for 90,000 INR. Ganesh posed the following questions to the VCs:

• Can VC’s add value to the company?
• All VC’s have their own ups and downs. How do they tackle them?
• VC’s always look for deals, tieups, mergers, etc. Why?
• VCs are always in high-risk business. It is always 1 out 10 hits and not more than that. Why?
• Will VCs have the patience to build a company?

These are some of the thought provoking questions for the VCs.

If you are a VC, reading this article, kindly respond to these questions by adding them in the comments section.

List of some major companies which might be of some help to Entrepreneurs:

• Palo Alto Capital Partners, LLC
• Fidelity Asia Ventures
• TVM Capital
• Oak Investment Partners
• Shasta Ventures
• NVCA
• Morgan Stanley
• Columbia Capital
• Millennium Ventures Group
• NEA Ventures
• Bessemer Venture Partners
• Indus Advisory Partners
• Fairview Capital
• Stone Water Capital LLC
• US Venture Partners
• General Catalyst
• Quaker Bio Ventures

As usual we decided impromptu to attend the event, two days before the event. Initially three of us booked the tickets but one had to drop out coz of personal reasons and only two of us went to IIML.

Our train was scheduled to arrive at 22.10 at Ghaziabad station and as usual it got late and arrived at 00:00. We reached Lucknow at 9.30 am, 3.30 hrs delay. Got a cab and rushed to the campus. It was a 1.30 hr drive from the station to the campus.

We registered at the counter and got a room to refresh ourselves. Then we rushed to the “Opportunities in Singapore” session conducted by Contact Singapore. We got to know that Software Professionals and Skilled Workers are the most sorted people in Singapore.

Had a sumptuous lunch which was followed by the panel discussion on “Mergers and Acquisitions in India”. It was headed by eminent speakers from ICICI, Citibank and some more financial institutions. One major outcome of the discussion is that there is going to be lots of Inbound Mergers &Acquisitions (M&As) (foreign companies going for M&A’s in India) happening in the year 2007 and few Outbound M&As (India companies going for M&As abroad) mainly because of constraints from Government of India.

As we all know the M&As in 2007 started with the Tata – Corus deal (Outbound) followed by Vodafone buying Hutch (Inbound) and recently the HINDALCO – Novelis (Outbound) deal.

We left early from the campus coz our train was scheduled to depart at 19.30. We reached the station at 19.00 and surprised to hear that the train got cancelled coz of delay. We then rushed to the nearby bus stand and got our tickets back to Ghaziabad (we started from Ghaziabad and our car was parked in the station).

The bus left at 20.30 and the driver assured that it will reach Ghaziabad by 08.30 am. But it reached Ghaziabad at 11.30 am, whereas it is only 497 km from Lucknow to Ghaziabad. The bus dropped us at the highway junction and we took a Share Auto till Ghaziabad Station junction. From there took another cycle rickshaw to reach the parking lot. Finally, we got into our car and rushed back to our homes.

Except for the travel part, we had a great experience at IIML. We look forward to attend more events in the future.

My favorite quote, “If you can manage time, you can manage everything in life” Do you agree?

If you need any article to be added on any specific topic, write to me, will try to add