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Design your own personalized merchandise Ravi Kumar, cofounder, DilSeBol, says, “The name signifies what we do – we make what people want to say through merchandise. We also wanted a non-serious name – something easy to remem- ber and something that implies that it is fun, as gifting is supposed to be fun”. “We are always on the lookout for new ideas,” explains Ravi as creative businesses can be taxing for the entrepreneur and could easily turn the customers away if they don’t think there is some- thing novel about it. With the advent of Internet, customized prod- ucts to customer choice has become commonly possible. Motivated by a couple of successes of similar ventures in the United States, a mature market, Ravi adapted the idea to India. “With people getting more and more net savvy in India, it would be a good time to start this business,” felt Ravi as he embarked upon converting his idea into DilSeBol. How can TiE Chennai help creative entrepreneurs like him? Ravi feels that “access to capital through potential investors, access to potential customers, sharing experiences and seeing what other entrepreneurs have done when they started can only help and this is where TiE plays a big role.” DilSeBol specializes in making customized and personalized merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, calen- dars and the like) using designs/artwork that the customer provides, even it is just 1 unit. Users can upload the artwork they want at www.dilsebol.com, and complete the entire designing and order process online. Give us the money - an interview with Venkat Subramaniam hands-on.So, if the company has good growth prospects there is no reason why he/she should look beyond a VC investor. Scenario 2) A small-scale industrialist who’s grown through debt financing and internal accruals, wants to scale up by raising equity, not an emotionally comfortable option for him. What should he do? This kind of apprehension has subsided substantially. By and large the small-scale sector has struggled to meet VC/PE expecta- tions and hence is undercapitalised. The bottleneck is not the discomfort with external shareholders but with the kind of return expectations that VC/PE investors have and the entrepreneur’s confidence in delivering such returns. Scenario 3) How to choose among multiple potential investors offering differ- ent valuations? Obviously, price is the single most important factor for any entre- preneur and the instinctive response would be to choose the one who pays the highest. However, please use a few more filters to eventually decide which one to pick. Firstly, the valuation itself has to be normalised for comparison; check for exit related rights and other onerous clauses. Secondly, take a closer look at the investor, their brand equity, market repu- tation, domain knowledge, operating style and check if there could be any potential issues in the future. Finally, the team that is managing the fund is also a factor. Often, deals are crafted not only on mathematics but also on chemistry! Scenario 4) At the idea stage, how does an entrepreneur arrive at a valuation? In early stage funding, there is nothing called a great plan and a great team. It is all relative. One VC may think it’s great and another may reject it in a flash. Just focus on getting the basics right, which is to ensure that the price discovery process has been managed efficiently. The entrepreneur then has to gracefully accept the final verdict. He can then decide to choose the best or wait for a later date, it’s a gamble he has to take Scenario 5) While raising money, how far down the road should one think? The entrepreneur should not be too obsessed with what could happen in subsequent rounds. But being aware of a few pitfalls could help. E.g., excessive dilution ,complicated deal structures, fancy valuations in Series A can become a bottleneck in future rounds. Balancing the interests of the existing investor, the incoming investor and the entrepreneur becomes a herculean task later on. But then, it’s too much to ask entrepreneurs not to accept fancy valuations when the going is good. Scenario 6) Your thoughts on raising debt, when can debt be raised and some advantages in doing so? Debt has several advantages. Firstly, it ensures more discipline. It is cheaper than equity and can also be smartly deployed as an interim replacement for equity. Obviously, the amount of debt one should raise will depend on the industry, the company, its cash flows, end use of funds, security and the market conditions. Today’s generation of entrepreneurs seem to embrace equity more spontaneously and more debt averse. It is clearly a sign of chang- ing times. S. Prem Kumar, a TiE Chennai member *Source: The Smart CEO Magazine (www.thesmartceo.in) Flexicareer woman entrepreneur to look up to manager’s Interface Network), India’s first career service for enabling work-life integrated careers for women. AVTAR was started in December 2000. The experience of her father as a first generation entrepreneur held her in good stead that she put her faith on people rather than products. The concept of interim managers, called I-winners, did not find an easy passage initially. The I-winners themselves proved to be ambassadors for the concept and word of mouth expanded the network further. Diversity issues slowly started gaining ground and I-winners took off. The precursor to this, AVTAR I-WIN, which provides women with flexi-time and second career opportunities, was a research done by Saundarya in 2005 which showed that 45,000 to 50,000 professionals stepped off their career track owing to marriage or childbirth never to return again! Starting with creating flexi-career tracks within an organization, AVTAR subsequently helped define the process for a flexi-career paradigm in organizations. Saundarya says, “AVTAR works towards a vision of making education and work worthwhile for women. Making women’s careers sustainable is AVTAR’s goal.” TiE Chennai has also hired through I-WIN network, which should be heartening for Saundarya who has won the TiE Stree Shakthi award this year. A seed sown by an unrelated experience some- times becomes a huge business idea. When Saundarya Rajesh visited the UK on a Cheven- ing scholarship in 2005, she had an opportu- nity to interact with interim managers, profes- sionals who worked only on part-time or project-based assignments. Thus was born AVTAR I-WIN network (Interim Women C Venkat Subramanyam, Founder Director, Veda Corp, an investment bank discusses the topic “How should an entrepreneur weigh his different options while raising money?” Scenario 1) Venture capital (VC) investor versus a strategic investor Firstly,the objectives of a VC are vastly different from that of a strategic investor. On the other hand, strategic investors rarely take minority stakes and will definitely be more Jumping onto multiple opportunities This helped him gain entry into MR and later as an entrepreneur, he now focuses on businesses in the research/analytics/insights domain. Since starting his first MR venture , Pravin has moved on from two ventures into his third, Krea, a specialized MR firm with focussed panels. Pravin states: “There is a need for specialists in specially in healthcare MR and Krea fills that need. Krea connects with Indian physicians, nurses, pharmacists and patients for studies that include commercial and social research. Krea leverages tech- nology to connect with the hard-to-reach segments.” A council member at ESOMAR, a global non-profit association for MR, he assists in the propagation of international research stand- ards and creation of a grassroots movement for research. Dabbling also in social entrepreneurship, Pravin is founder-trustee of Social Catalyst, a non-profit trust that works towards professionalizing NGOs. He is the winner of “Emerging Global leaders in Marketing Research” under the age of 40 awarded by the American Market- ing Association. An active charter member of TiE Chennai, Pravin enthusiastically spares efforts to help TiE in organizing events and in mentoring entrepreneurs. For some, entrepreneurship does not stop with one venture. Pravin Shekar is one such restless soul. He wants to keep re-inventing himself every two or three years. What started as a part-time fill during college vacation has morphed into multiple ventures for Pravin. Thereafter, Pravin’s first employer Dun and Bradstreet (now Cognizant) placed him in the accounts of AC Nielsen and IMS Health, both market research (MR) companies. 24th Nov 2011 @ Chennai Trade Center CHENNAI 2011 R Registration Spot Registration: At the Chennai Trade Center between 8 AM to 9 AM. For Queries: Call Ms Latha at 044 6515 4900 or mail her at [email protected] Online Registration: www.tiechennai.org
