TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2010: How Entrepreneurial Summit Explores?
What does No Boundaries mean in entrepreneurship? At the beginning of the second day of TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2010 (TES 2010), this was the query that Mr. Sridar Iyengar, Chair of the TiE Entrepreneurial Steering Committee put to two seasoned enterprisers in the keynote board.
Mr. Zohar Zisapel, Chairman, RAD Data Communications, a veteran entrepreneur who has 14 companies under the RAD Group, depicted how there are really no boundaries to embarking on.
Mr. Zohar spoke on commencing a booming company in Israel, and then just about to begin several new ones by working on thoughts, introducing great teams to construct and running new firms based on the initiatives.
The most fascinating slide of Mr. Zisapel presentation was a genealogical map of different firms, which the RAD group had engendered. These consisted of firms commenced by people who had left RAD, and then by staff members of those firms leaving to begin novel companies of their own. One of the main constituents of victory is to share the wealth with the groups, he said.
Mr. Deep Kalra, Founder and CEO, Makemytrip. com, demonstrated a range of angles to having no boundaries. Growing geographically was one, he said.
"But remember, it's going to take a long time to build a great company in India, because each aspect of it takes longer than in countries like US or Israel."
Mr. Deep remarked that Indian firms at present benchmark themselves against the maximum industry standards. Some firms can also set new benchmarks for the world to pursue.
Mr. Kalra also spoke about the vast changes, which has taken place in Indian society in the insight of entrepreneurship. From not being a satisfactory option, entrepreneurship is now at a point where it is beginning to be celebrated.
Mr. Sridar also said that while lots of entrepreneurial improvement did happen in these smaller cities, their mainstream media had not done sufficient to emphasize them.
Chaired by Mr. Pramod Bhasin, President and CEO, Genpact, this session on ideas witnessed an uplifting discussion by Mr. Mansukhbhai Prajapati and his inventions related to pottery.
Moreover, he explained his journey, his judgments, the failures, and the relentless commitment to make something new.
Mr. Amit Chugh, Co-Founder & CEO of Cosmos Ignite Innovations talked about having to learn to adapt products to the real needs of the people as against what we perceived their needs to be.
He stressed that the product has to be co-created with the consumer audience. He put the need for business model innovation higher than product or technology innovation, as financing a product becomes the critical aspect for such products.
Mr. Rajat Dhariwal, Founder of MadRat Games spoke about how his conviction about creating an Indian language board game overcame all the resistance their company faced during its buildup. Now the game is on Nokia's phones and will soon find its way on PCs. He shared the huge acceptance of the game they found in various schools in Chattisgarh, and said that they are now taking it to schools in various other states.
The session on Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Mr. Abhishek Sinha, CEO of EKO, that aims to bring financial services to the un-banked by adopting a path breaking retail access and mobile banking model, spoke about his journey so far. The key challenges faced by the company included being asked if they were fraudsters, to not having a level playing field as customer service is dependent on the telecom operators.
Mr. Sadeesh Raghavan from Acumen Fund, a venture philanthropy fund, stated that he discovered that working with the lower-income individuals has shown him that they exhibit more honesty, transparency and self-respect than the more fortunate class.
Mr. Jasjit Mangat of Omidyar Network, also a venture philanthropy fund, heartened the viewers to recognize more social requirements, which needed addressing and make it sustainable as well as scalable.