Entrepreneur August 2012

Surviving the Slowdown PG 60

AUGUST 2012 VOLUME 3 ISSUE 12 `100

MULSHI SPRINGS A WATER WONDER PG 66

INVESTING FOR IMPACT PG 72

KERALA’S 4G VILLAGE PG 70

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52 The Good Sir RichardSir Richard Branson built the successful Virgin Group when the markets were growing at a sluggish rate. After achieving great heights with the Virgin Records label and Virgin Atlantic Airways, the entrepreneur is now preparing for his entrepreneurial journey into space with his venture Virgin GalacticBy Jason Ankeny

60 Shut HappensIndia’s big and emerging businesses both are �nally feeling the pinch of the macroeconomic uncertainty. The dream run may have come to a halt temporarilyBy Ankush Chibber

INSIGHTS16 The Real Purpose of Branding R. Jagannathan decodes the branding choices of a customer

18 Rediscovering the Art of Walking Bharat Banka tells you how to deal with a slower growth rate

19 Nature Vs Nurture Manish Sabharwal delves into two entrepreneurial myths

20 The E-Commerce Holocaust Looms Alok Kejriwal discusses his four major worries for entrepreneurs

22 Charlie Come EarlyAnurag Batra on the growing breed of young entrepreneurs

24 Online Enablers Nandini Vaidyanathan advises startups on why they should bank on tech-aids from numer-ous sources

26 History of Idea Protection Rajeev Surana talks about the evolution of idea protection through time

27 A Million Bosses Now Shruti Kohli says entrepreneurs are always at the mercy of their target audience

28 What’s your ‘Need’ to Grow? Ravi Kiran talks about the need to understand what motivates us

COVER STORY SECOND LEAD

IN CONVERSATION30 ‘We cannot rely only on growth to wash our sins’Nirmalya Kumar, Professor of Marketing at London Business School and Co-Director of the Aditya Birla India Centre speaks about the challenges of shrinking markets, innovation and more

By Sourav Majumdar

32 ‘Jugaad is very active in many emerging markets’Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja, co-authors of the book Jugaad Innovation talk about jugaad’s negative connotation and its role in large and small scale companies

By Shruti Chakraborty

WOMAN ENTREPRENEUR

34 Lady-at-ArmsG Sree Vidhya of Ravindra Services took on some of life’s challenges head on and emerged triumphant

By Shonali Advani

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR

36 Labor LessonsGayathri Vasudevan’s venture LabourNet is creating an ecosystem in India that aids employment generation

By Shonali Advani

SUCCESS INC38 Like a PhoenixRestaurateur Vithal Kamat has de�ed defeat by turn-ing his Rs. 200 crore debt into a success story


GETTING THERE

42 A Karbonn Copy of SuccessKarbonn Mobiles has made its presence felt in the Indian market despite facing stiff competition from global brands


6 Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

IN FOCUS

45 Packed with a PunchSadanand Maiya, the man behind MTR Foods is all geared up to compete with the bigwigs in the pack-aged foods business

By Shonali Advani

48 The Business of Creating HeroesBe! is the country’s �rst risk capital fund for the young who live in poverty

By Bindi Shah

SPECIAL REPORT66 A Billion Drops of FortuneNaveen Luthra’s Mulshi Springs is slowly making its way towards becoming one of the most promising brands of natural spring water in the country

By Ankush Chibber

70 A Village of 4G and InnovationKerala is slowly steering towards the idea of entrepre-neurship, thanks to the efforts of a startup facilitator in the state


72 Investing in ChangeImpact investment funds are making forays into a space where traditional commercial funds are wary of entering


STRATEGY80 Plunge into EntrepreneurshipStarting a business can be daunting at �rst. Carve your way to success while your ideas are still hot

By Nacie Carson

81 Motivate your Sales TeamYour sales team needs to transform your business idea into a scalable entity. Read about ways to facili-tate that from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay

By Carol Tice

SPECIAL REPORTS82 Going global allowed us to do more: Ameera ShahWomen entrepreneurs share their achievements and the challenges they faced to become successful

By Our Staff Writer

83 My entrepreneurship plunge is a calculated bet: Falguni NayarWomen from the corporate and entrepreneurial arena discuss their business lessons and success stories at an event in Mumbai

By Bindi Shah

85 'Learn to let go'Smriti Mudgal discusses the entrepreneurial climate for startups with Kaushik Somanathan, Ravi Kiran and Sourav Majumdar

OFFBEAT

90 Paint the WorldMihir Mody’s Adwallz is putting companies in touch with target markets via rural wall painting

By Sriya Ray Chaudhuri

94 Power Dressing for your Store WindowYour store window is an important factor for driving in sales. Read about how to create winning displays

By Jane Porter

GO FRANCHISE

96 Social CircuitSocial media platforms can aid franchising in a big way. Here are some lessons shared by franchisors

By Jason Daley

ONLINE IDEAS

101 Watch OutFind out how you can promote your brand by creating business videos

By Linda Sedloff Orton

TECH DEPARTMENT

103 Ultra XXXLAcer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 is a great lap-top as long as you don’t take the ultrabook tag too seriously

By Ankush Chibber

104 Porto PhotoThe Epson PM245 is a portable photo printer worth considering

By Ankush Chibber

105 Boost ProductivitySmartphones can help entrepreneurs stay fo-cused on their business. Read on for three ways to do this with your smartphone

By Amy Gahran

7Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012

HOW TO

118 Market a Social GameDeveloping online social games is one thing, marketing them is an entirely different ball game

By Jignesh Jain

120 Manage a Feet-on-Street Sales ForceThis will help you market your products successfully and achieving that sales target

By Pranbihanga Borpuzari

123 Build to SellIt is important to monetize the value you have in-vested in your business. Use a calculated approach to make it saleable

By Bindi Shah

124 Clear Export Consignments at CustomsLearn how to clear export consignments and Cus-toms procedures and watch your business grow

By Bindi Shah

127 Choose a Law FirmYour company needs expert legal advice and protec-tion. Outsource to the right legal �rm

By Diljeet Titus

BOOK EXCERPT

128 The Key Strategic Paths An extract from the book The New Emerging Market Multinationals talks about how emerging market �rms are achieving success

SPEND IT

129 Popular BitesSpaghetti Kitchen has a new menu, which is a compilation of its most popular dishes through the years

By Sriya Ray Chaudhuri

131 Pub GrubMonkey Bar, a gastropub in Bengaluru offers the right options and proportions in its menu

By Shonali Advani

132 Speed ThrillsThe Mercedes CLS combines the thrill and charisma of a coupe with the comfort and practicality of a saloon


REGULARS

10 FEEDBACK 11 RESOURCES 12 ASK

ENTREPRENEUR 14 CAPSULE134 BACKSTAGE

COVER CREDITS

COVER DESIGNArko Provo Mukherjee

COVER IMAGEMarc Royce

MONEY

100 Fix and FactsA healthy mix of equities and real estate is a must in a high-in�ation scenario

By Rajesh Saluja

STARTUPS

108 On the Right TrackManish Rathi’s Stelling Tech is a one-stop source for all train information in the country


110 Betting on the BasketThe founders of FabMart are entering the e-grocery segment with Bigbasket.com

By Shonali Advani

112 Cab on TapEntrepreneurs Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati have developed a technology that is changing the way people hire cabs


114 Not Just a BookwormTabassum Modi and Syed Sultan Ahmed’s venture Edumedia has amalgamated education and movies to bring about a change in the education system in India


116 Sports WareSportingmindz is leveraging sports technology to aid sportspersons, students and national sports teams to excel at their game



TABLE OF CONTENTS

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STATE SPECIAL: PUNJAB IS OPEN FOR YOUR BUSINESS PG 80

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5 hot startups to watch out for PG 107

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JUNE 2012 VOLUME 3 ISSUE 10 `100

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MAKING A SUCCESSFUL IT PRODUCT PG 80

Frederick DeLuca on how his $17 billion SUBWAY rede�ned fast food PG 26

MAY 2012 VOLUME 3 ISSUE 9 `100

INSIDE

SanjivGoenka'ssecond coming

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ANAND RATHI ANAND RATHI FINANCIAL SERVICES

RASHESH SHAH EDELWEISS

ASHOK WADHWA AMBIT

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MOTILAL OSWAL MOTILAL OSWAL

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To read more, grab the August 2012 issue of EntrepreneurTo Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in

20 Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012 Photo Joshua Navalkar

DO YOU KNOW WHY you meet so many people called Vijay and Ravi? I am told that the super-hit movie Deewar (1975) inspired many parents to name their kids after the characters in the �lm. In the US, it’s been documented that the most common baby names of 2010 are Bella and Edward, named after the characters of the epic movie Twilight.

Nowadays, in the entrepreneur community, whenever I ask someone, “Dude, what are you doing?” The answer is almost always, “e-commerce”. Now, I have no problems with e-commerce!

For an Internet entrepre-neur like me, the progression from bricks to clicks is natu-ral and welcome.

However, a few concerns in the process have begun to haunt me.

1. Buying a zebraLet’s assume that you want to buy a zebra (why not?). Now, if you ask me for advice, I will ask you to go to a zebra farm, choose and get one of those beautiful animals home.

The challenge you will have would be differ-entiating one zebra from another. Though zebras are striped uniquely from each other (like �nger-prints), it’s very dif�cult to tell the difference between two zebras.

There is no comparable difference. I just searched for online options to buy my favorite book, Autobiography of a Yogi.

On the �rst page (Google), I found 11 websites selling the same book at the same price with the same delivery terms, etc.

The point I’m making is that there is no differ-ence between the hundreds of e-commerce sites in India, and that is a big cause of worry.

Some of these entrepreneurs tell me they are building a ‘brand’ that consumers will be loyal to, but that’s bunk. Great compa-nies become brands; expen-sively built brands don’t become great companies.

Suggestion: To succeed, each e-commerce business in India must have some-thing unique to offer. They all can’t sell zebras and still

pretend to be distinct.

2. Getting a free dinnerThe Zodiac Grill, an upmarket and chic restau-rant that was launched many years ago at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, had a menu with-out prices.

The restaurant left the decision of how much to pay on its patrons. Now, the Zodiac Grill was being very clever. It actually collected hard-to-

E-Commerce Holocaust Looms

[ ALOK KEJRIWAL ]

An entrepreneur shares his four major worries

Though zebras are striped uniquely from each other (like finger-

prints), it’s very difficult to tell the difference between two zebras

THINKING & DOINGIN SIGHTS


solicit information on what re�ned diners were willing to pay for a very classy dining experience in India.

Once they had enough data, they switched to a full-priced menu (err... really expensive) and became a huge success. The Zodiac Grill served a free dinner that was not free after all.

As far as e-commerce sites go, the concept of ‘cash on delivery’ (COD) reminds me of Zodiac Grill’s free dinner experiment, however, with a sad twist.

That’s because data now indicates that almost 40 percent of e-commerce buyers are returning COD goods on �imsy reasons such as, “This is not what I wanted to buy…” and so on. Forget paying for the food, they’re returning it after it comes to the table.

Other challenges include money by courier companies being pilfered, repeat visits to custom-ers’ houses to conclude a delivery (thereby escalating costs), etc.

COD could have been a nice way to get consumers to ‘try’ e-commerce, but not ‘the’ preferred payment engine!

Suggestion: Get consumers to pay 50 percent advance when they buy online.

That way their intent to buy will be proven and they will be around to collect their purchases and pay up the remaining sum.

3. The challenge of the black trousersA few years ago, I happened to buy a pair of black trousers at a store. It turned out to be perfect.

It had an amazing fall, �tted me like a glove and even the color stayed true black after repeated washes.

A few months later, I went back to the store to buy another pair of black trousers but was disap-pointed to be told that they had stopped produc-ing that particular range.

The store manager tried selling me the new range, but I just didn’t get the same ‘wow’ feeling when I tried it on.

I left the store without buying anything. In the years to come, I never managed to lay my hands on the ‘perfect’ pair of black trousers. The lesson I learnt was that when you get something great,

buy it in multiples and keep them for later.Now, it seems the same lesson is being applied

in a rather perverse way by Venture Capital (VC) �rms who are blindly investing in multiple e-commerce �rms in India, all of whom are in the same line of business!

When I asked a VC “Why?” he said, “We need a couple of e-commerce sites in our portfolio. It’s just making sure that we have covered the industry.

Sure, we know that many of these guys will fail. But we just need to have e-commerce in the closet.

Suggestion: Entrepreneurs should make sure that they are not those black trousers that VCs are buying blindly, just to stock up!

The fallout is that you become one amongst the many, that will never receive special care

and attention (follow-up rounds of investments, etc) when you need it.

4. Entrepreneur Hara-KiriIn Japan, Samurai soldiers killed themselves in a ritual called Hara-Kiri rather than compromising their honor.

The big worry I see today is that a large swathe of Indian digital entrepreneurs have started e-commerce compa-nies as their �rst ventures. Some of these entrepre-neurs are naive; some have

been misled, some even bribed by easy money into doing this.

I just hope that when massive consolidation happens and lots of e-commerce companies die and perish, these young entrepreneurs don’t give up or slink into oblivion.

We need an army of business Samurais (entre-preneurs) in India, so we can’t afford to let them do Hara-kiri!

Suggestion: Entrepreneurs must not replicate what’s already been done. There are so many business opportunities available, so why settle for starting the 233rd e-commerce site in the country?

E-Commerce Holocaust Looms

A large swathe of Indian digital entrepreneurs have started e-com-merce companies as their first ventures.

Some of them are naive; some have been misled,

some bribed by easy money into doing this

ALOK RODINHOOD KEJRIWAL is a digital entrepreneur and

blogs at http://therodinhoods.com


T he man’s back in action. He may be 63, but his entrepreneurial spirit is not. After a brief hiatus,

Sadanand Maiya, of the Maiya fam-ily behind Bengaluru’s iconic Mavalli Tif�n Room (MTR), is gearing up to venture into the packaged foods indus-try again. And this will, by a quirk of will and not fate, pit him against his once-own business, MTR Foods.

The eight decades old MTR Foods was bought over by Norwegian �rm Orkla back in 2007 in a `500 crore sale. The sale, which was initiated by private equity investors JP Morgan Partners and Aquarius looking for a pro�table exit, also came with a non-compete clause for �ve years, which prohibited Maiya from entering the packaged food segment. Maiya, unlike many others, did not go anywhere else. He waited.

But no sooner did that clause expire in April 2012 than the seasoned entre-preneur returned with a home-grown brand with which to take on the big-wigs operating in his sector.

Strategic stepsMaiya has used his time strategically. He went back to the original family business of running a South Indian vegetarian restaurant. This time it was his son P. Sudarshan Maiya who ventured into the space. Supported by his father, he launched Maiya's restaurant (under Maiyas Beverages and Foods Private Ltd.), which now has

two centers in Bengaluru that also sell sweets and savouries.

The primary reason to get into the restaurant space was to establish and build a new brand—Maiyas—so that by the end of the clause period, he could launch his range of packaged food products, riding on brand recall value. More pertinently, Maiya has used this period researching and developing new food technologies, aided by a PhD from Columbia University (2010) in Nanotechnology and Food Science.

Cut to the expiry date this April, and the company launched Maiyas ready mixes and masalas, which are currently sold through retail stores in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, as well as exported to the US, Japan, Canada, Singapore, Australia, the Middle East and Germany.

As this Entrepreneur issue goes to print, the �rm’s range of ready-to-eat (RTE) products are slated to hit the shelves. “The domestic market size for RTE is `250 crore; it grew 25-30 percent in 2010-’11. MTR Foods occupies a 15 percent share as lead-ers,” says Pratichee Kapoor, Associate Vice-President, Food Services and Agriculture, Technopak Advisors.

'Frozen' futureMaiya’s biggest bets lie in the frozen food segment, a category he’s con�dent will be a major growth driver for the food processing industry. For starters,

[ BIG BITES ]

PunchSADANAND MAIYA gets set to compete with the bigwigs in the packaged food business. Again...

SHONALI ADVANI

PACKED WITH Ahe’s made heavy investments in the back-end, pumping in `60 crore for a plant spread over four acres that is cur-rently producing instant ready mixes and masalas and will soon produce RTE foods.

Snacks production will be shifted here with newer machines. The entre-preneur has also identi�ed another 18 acres for the second phase of expan-sion next year, where he would invest 4̀0 crore in a plant which will produce

frozen foods. However, the staff of 200 won’t change as he’s relying heav-ily on automation.

“For frozen food, we are initially con-centrating on south Indian items,” says Maiya, who now serves as a Director at Maiyas Beverages and Foods. Back in 2000, he had attempted the same using blast freezing technology. “But it was too early to introduce frozen variants in the market,” he recalls.

This time round, he’s adopting the spiral freezing technology, which results in faster turnaround time. “It drops the temperature of food, say a freshly-fried vada, from 75 degrees to -35 degrees Celsius in 15 minutes. The food quality will remain unchanged when it’s reconstituted by thawing, heating or putting in a microwave with no water molecules on the surface, as was the case with blast freezing,” he explains. “The idea was to imbibe nanotechnology-based products, espe-cially frozen foods. In 15-20 years, this will be the norm, and RTE items will taper down,” he points out. Technopak Advisors estimates that the frozen food market at `700 crore (2010) is growing at a CAGR of 15 percent and will reach `1,400 crore by 2015. “Currently, frozen peas hold 45-50 percent market share followed by cut vegetables, fries and meat and poultry which make up the balance,” says Kapoor.

The drivers for changing trends include increase in nuclear and double-income families seeking convenience, and rise in the number of expatriates and international travellers which has led to more awareness and adoption of western eating habits. Deeper pen-etration of modern retail has changed


IN FOCUS


[ HIGH FLYER ]

THE

SIR RICHARDFueled by frustration with the status quo, Richard Branson built his Virgin Group empire

attacking verticals that had long been dominated by lumbering legacy companies. Now he’s

extending his entrepreneurial philosophies to a new market

that’s out of this worldJASON ANKENY

COVER STORY


53

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME TRUE: Richard Branson

53Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012Photo Credit Virgin AtlanticTo read more, grab the August 2012 issue of Entrepreneur

To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in

[ DOWNTURN BLUES ]

The macroeconomic strains are finally showing on India's big and emerging businesses both. It's time to put on your game face

ANKUSH CHIBBER

Intelligent Entrepreneur August 201260

SECOND LEAD

IN the 2008 �lm drama August, Josh Hartnett plays Tom Sterling, a young, abrasive CEO of a recently-

gone-public startup, Landshark. The year is 2001 and the month August, and as a promoter, there are only a couple of months before he can sell his shares and make some money.

Sterling stalls. He wants to wait a bit more. But his main client is also stalling and investors pushing. Eventually, it's a moment of caution stretched too long. The market plunges, investors pull the plug, and a month later, 9/11 happens. It all goes horribly wrong.

The movie August is really not a movie made for emerging businesses anywhere, be it in the US or India. But the lessons, or should we say warnings, from this motion picture are very real and dangerously close.

It’s not 2001 yet. Or for that matter, the even worse 2008. But only a fool would deny that there is not an air of disappointment mixed with equal parts of uncertainty and slowdown �oat-ing about now. There might be many views you would hold about where the economy is heading, but really, there are only two dominating views

– bad and really bad. R Sriram, the Co-Founder at Next Practice Retail, a retail consultancy �rm, and former CEO and Founder of the Crossword chain of bookstores, is one of those who believes that even though its not 2001 or 2008, things are really bad.

Down. Down. Down. Down“Retail spending is certainly down. Overall, in�ation has been high while salary raises have not been as high. People’s aspirational incomes are thus low. This has affected their spending capacity,” he says. Though he agrees that India is de�nitely doing better than other parts of the world, he says that there “is a mismatch between expectations and reality”.

This mismatch could have its roots in what you may think is the prime indicator of the Indian economy. In April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released data which said that India's gross domestic product in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms stood at $4.46 trillion in 2011, marginally higher than Japan’s $4.44 trillion, making it the third-biggest economy after the US and China. Good news?

Now take a more on-the-ground medium of assessing economic health, Burgernomics, the foundation of which is the Big Mac Index devel-oped by The Economist. The index is an infor-mal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies using the Big Mac, which is a standard product offered by McDonald’s across the world.

This index was further worked on by Prof. Orley Ashenfelter of Princeton University in a

MEHER PUDUMJEEChairperson, Thermax

HOW MANY BIG MACS CAN JOE, IVAN, LIU, ASHOK, DAITO, AND ALAIN AFFORD?

BMPH 2007

BMPH 2011

0.00U.S Russia China India Japan Western

Europe

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

61Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012Photo Neha Mithbawkar 61To read more, grab the August 2012 issue of Entrepreneur

To Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in

H ow many rural entrepre-neurs have you met at inves-tor-startup summits and

gatherings? Leave Sulabh aside; now, is there a name that immediately springs to your mind when you think of social entrepreneurship in India?

Many Indian entrepreneurs have charted out business plans for ven-tures that will focus on social chal-lenges. Some of them have succeeded in building notable busi-nesses. Yet, many others have ended up remaining con�ned to a few villages or towns. The truth is that there just aren’t enough social ventures in the country that have scaled up high enough to be noticed immediately. One of the reasons for that could be a lack of access to capital.

For social ventures that face the problem of access to capital, one trend that has caught on rapidly in the last few years may come as a cause of relief. Names like Omidyar Networks, Acumen Fund, Aavishkaar Venture Management Services and Unitus Seed Fund are

leading what is being called the impact investing foray in the country. Harvey Koh, Associate Partner in the Monitor Inclusive Markets India practice, a con-sulting �rm that works actively with impact investors and social ventures in India, says: “Social ventures mostly work in very tough environments in India; this makes it important for them to innovate more.” He adds that it is important to build businesses that

[ POSITIVE IMPACT ]

INVESTING IN CHANGEImpact investing is a trend fast catching on in India. Venture capital funds focusing on social ventures and businesses targeting the base of the pyramid (BoP) are making deep forays into this space

SHRUTI CHAKRABORTY

are pro�table. For example, an orga-nization which works with something that the entrepreneur believes is the need in a particular area, but is some-thing that people don’t want, may face a challenge. Organizations that work with social issues need to come up with new business models and entre-preneurs who can build pro�table busi-nesses are of great need in the social sector, he says.

Impact investing made most of its initial forays through investments in micro�nance institutions. Before the micro�nance model became a pro�t-able business model attracting invest-ment from commercial venture capital funds and other eager investors, for a long time, impact investment funds and philanthropic capital were the ones taking the sector forward.

A study conducted by the Monitor Group and Acumen Fund says that the MFI sector received $20 billion in subsidies from philanthropists and aid donors to re�ne its model over two decades. In November 2010, a report by JP Morgan, Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) estimated that the potential pro�t for impact investors across just �ve sec-

tors of inclusive businesses could range from between $183 billion and $667 billion over the next 10 years around the world, with invested capital ranging from between $400 billion and $1 tril-lion. A survey by JP Morgan and the GIIN in late 2011 found that the 52 impact investors surveyed intended to deploy $3.8 billion of capital collectively over the next 12 months.

Jayant Sinha, Managing Director of Omidyar Networks’ India fund says India is the hub of equity oriented impact invest-ing. This, he says, is mostly due to the number of causes. Besides the vibrant venture capital industry and exciting innovations, he says that the scale of the problem is such that there is a scope for a lot

100

80

60

40

20

02007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Investment in $ million

BoP IMPACT INVESTMENTS SINCE '07 (EST.)

Source© VCCEdge Database ON Analysis

SPECIAL FEATURE


of social ventures to emerge and work with people at the base of the pyramid. “The base of the pyramid is so large here. There are 850 million people who are surviving on less than $2 a day.” In India, companies focusing on the base of the pyramid have received less than $300 million since 2007.

Aavishkaar Venture Management ServicesTo be called an impact investing fund, a venture fund should be ready to do

what commercial capital is not going to do, says Vineet Rai, Managing Director of Aavishkaar Venture Management Services. “Impact investing funds should be ready to take risks that commercial capital is not willing to take,” Rai says. The company invests in entrepreneurs based in rural India at a very early stage. “Some of the compa-nies we invest in are at a stage wherein they haven’t even started generating revenue,” adds Rai .

By December 2012, Rai says Aavishkar is likely to have invested $180 million. The company has created four funds so far and has invested in 33 companies through the four funds.

Aavishkaar I achieved its �rst clos-ing in August 2007 at $6 million, and its �nal closing in January 2009 at $14 million. The fund invested in 22 com-panies, putting in $50,000 to $500,000 per company. Aavishkaar 2 has a target size of $120 million and has achieved its �rst closing at $70 mil-lion in December 2011. The other two funds are Aavishkaar Goodwell 1 and Aavishkaar Goodwell 2.

Aavishkar Goodwell 1 was formed in 2006 and had its �nal closing in May 2008 at $18.3 million. The fund gives equity capital to micro�nance startups and micro�nance institutions that are in the transformation or growth stage. It has invested in seven companies in India so far.

Aavishkaar Goodwell 2 had its �rst closing at $10 million and has a target size of $80 million. Rai says the target is to invest $1 billion in the next 7 to 10 years in 300 companies. The company focuses on about six sectors, including agriculture and dairy products, health-care and sanitation, education, energy and micro�nance amongst others.

“The average return we get from our companies is about 20 percent,” Rai says, adding that some fail, while others generate very high returns.

Omidyar NetworksFounded in 2004 in the US by the founder of eBay Pierre Omidyar and

73

“IMPACT INVESTING FUNDS SHOULD BE READY TO TAKE RISKS THAT COMMERCIAL CAPITAL IS NOT WILL-ING TO TAKE.”— VINEET RAI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, AAVISHKAAR VENTURE MANAGEMENT SERVICES

73Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012Photo Neha Mithbawkar To read more, grab the August 2012 issue of EntrepreneurTo Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in

Y our window displays are like billboards for your store. They can be the make-or-break factor in whether a customer

enters your shop or walks on by. Yet too often, small retailers create windows that are boring, cluttered or poorly lit.

"If you just put some thought in it, it doesn't cost much," says Noelle Nicks, who oversees visual merchandising for Cole Hardware's four

stores in San Francisco. Although she has never spent more than $100 on a single design, her windows rarely fail to get attention. Her displays have included a farmers market with light bulb carrots and radishes and a beach setting com-plete with real sand. Nicks and other design experts offer these seven tips on how to create affordable window displays that will lure cus-tomers into your store.

[ STORE SCORE ]

Here are 7 tips to create winning displays

JANE PORTER

OFF BEAT

94 Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012 Illustration Chaitanya Dinesh Surpur

Tell a storyWhen Valentine's Day rolls around, you might be tempted to grab every red item off your shelves and cram them in your

display. That's too simplistic. "Start with a theme �rst," Nicks says. "Then plug in the pieces." One Valentine's Day, she chose the theme, “how to mend a broken heart," painting a black jagged line down a giant plywood heart and attaching hinges, chains and other hardware. For Halloween, she hung more than a dozen types of brooms against an orange backdrop with the words, "Which broom?" across the glass beneath them. The dis-play not only played on the traditional witch-on-a-broomstick theme, but it also showcased the store's large broom selection.

Think in visual planesBefore arranging a display, Nicks runs a line of blue tape across the window to mark eye level from the street. That

isn't something you can simply estimate from inside a window because the �oor often isn't at street level. "You want to concentrate the key pieces where the tape is," Nicks says. At the same time, you may not want to keep everything at eye level. Susan Jamieson, a Richmond, Va., interior designer, suggests suspending items from the ceiling or lowering them close to the �oor, while maintaining a focal point at eye level.

Surprise customersIf you want to get noticed, avoid the predictable. Debbe Hamada, owner of Tilde, a Portland, Ore., gift shop, likes

to incorporate unexpected, whimsical objects in her windows. She has used large papier-mâché acorns, forest animals cut from foam board, and giant lockets made of muslin and heavy chains to catch customers' attention. "People come by to look at the window. We get a lot of people [who] take pictures," she says. "It also brings them into the store."

Use bold shapes and colorsYou don't have to be crafty to be good at window design. It's all about bold colors and shapes. In her next window

display, Hamada plans to hang giant fuchsia and grey puffs of tissue paper around a few display tables of jewelry—something customers can see from a distance, even though the showcased

products are tiny. "Two out of every 10 people come in because they've seen something color-ful in our windows," says Hamada, who usually spends less than $30 on a window arrangement.

Keep it cleanYou don't want to clutter your windows with an assortment of products. "We've found that less product �ts with a better

quality product," Hamada says, "as opposed to a discount window where you might see a whole bunch of stuff crammed in." That said, you might consider using mass quantities of a single prod-uct, says Jon Schallert, a marketing consultant in Longmont, Colo. "A single or a double of anything is not going to get someone's attention. But if you put a dozen of something out, it's going to get anyone to look." A Christmas tree made of tennis balls, for example, is bound to draw more atten-tion than a lone canister of them.

Update your displaysYou want to change your windows as often as possible, but it doesn't have to be a costly, time-consuming effort.

Schallert suggests printing a dozen large photo-graphs that represent your store—images of your products or customers using them, for example—and rotating one or two of them in your window every few weeks. At the very least, update your displays every one to two months, says Linda Cahan, a West Linn, Ore.-based retail design con-sultant. "The more often you change your win-dows, the more people will look at your store."

Use lighting to stand outWindow lighting shouldn't be an after-thought. "You can draw a customer in if you have the correct angle of light

on your product," says Schallert, who advises against hanging lights directly above a product to avoid creating shadows. Instead, use lighting to highlight focal points.

Cahan recommends investing in a few spot-lights you leave on after you close for the night. "If you are the only place with your lights on, then you will be like a beacon of visual stimulation," she says.

©Entrepreneur Inc. All rights reserved.

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JANE PORTER is a freelance journalist based in New York


AT the heart of all train services-related informa-tion is a portal, trainen-

quiry.com, operated by Noida-based Stelling Tech Pvt Ltd. While the site was operational for a number of years under Indian Railways, Stelling’s US-returned techie founders Manish Rathi and Sachin Saxena have quietly gone about revamping the site.

Trainenquiry.com is a platform that allows passengers of Indian Railways to search and �nd information on trains running across the country. Information such as train timetables, live running or status of a train, coach position etc is available with a simple search. The search can be made through either the 5-digit train num-ber, train name, to and from station names and codes or simply through the intermediate station name.

Rathi, 32, who was born and bred in India, did his dual masters in the US and then worked at Bell Labs for �ve years. Quitting, he worked in a string of startups in the US before moving back home to work with a startup, Bengaluru-based July Systems, in 2004. “I was exposed to mobile systems and Indian startups. Till then I was on the product side,” he recalls.

After two and a half years at July, Rathi joined Delhi-based IndusLogic (now GlobalLogic), where he met Saxena, 45, as the duo worked on a business called Version 1.0, which helped startups to take their ideas and

[ TRAINED TO DELIVER ]

Wondering if your train is running on time? Would a one-stop source for all your train information help?

PRANBIHANGA BORPUZARI

ON THE RIGHT TRACK

WELL-WHEELED:

Manish Rathi

START UPS

108 Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012 Photo Amit Kumar

convert them into a launch. “In two years, we worked with 12-13 startups, so we started understanding this eco-system quite well. At the same time, we were also getting very excited about the mobility space as the entire world was becoming mobile,” says Rathi.

Travel pangsQuitting their jobs in 2010, they decided to start in the healthcare segment but could not see any immediate business opportunity. “We then looked at the travel space,” says Rathi.

Here, he realized people traveling by the railways had common problems. They found that information did not reach the passengers or was not avail-able in the medium they wanted. They also �gured information requested for was dependent on the stage of the jour-ney. For example, a passenger would be more interested in the platform num-ber at the start of his journey.

“We managed to get in touch with Centre For Railway Information Systems (CRIS). They were also toying with different ideas. One thing led to another and we decided to collaborate with Indian Railways,” says Rathi.

CRIS was set up 25 years ago as the Indian government conceived a proj-ect for analyzing Freight Operations Information Systems (FOIS) with the Indian Railways. Subsequently, in 1986, the Ministry of Railways established

CRIS to be an umbrella organization for all computer activities on Indian Railways. Today, its �agship service is the Passenger Reservation System, which provides reservation services to 15-22 lakh passengers a day on over 2,500 trains running through India.

A complex projectInvesting about ̀ 50 lakh from their per-sonal savings and some angel invest-ments, Rathi started working with the railways in August 2011, beginning with access to their data. “They gener-ate humongous amount of data and we had to extract the relevant material and give it in a presentable format,” says Rathi.

Sunil Bajpai, Group GM (FOIS) says building such a platform was always going to be complex because some-times a train journey is spread across three days and it takes a lot of thought to provide the correct information that a passenger would be looking for.

Compared to the extensive data available for every �yer on an airline, railway passengers are akin to aliens, says Rathi. No one really knows where they come from and what their prefer-ences are. About 80 percent of India travels by railways, with nearly 30 mil-lion passengers traveling everyday by trains but little is known about them.

“We got very excited about the potential of this information,” says Rathi. To make the platform work, he relies on information provided from the railways, looks at what is publicly available and takes into account geo-graphical data. “We have created a platform which assimilates all the data and delivers output that is compatible across web, mobile etc,” he days.

The other aspect that Rathi worked on was the prediction engine. “If I get an input on a train passing a certain station, I have to take that input and see what happens in future. For exam-ple, predicting an arrival time for a train if there is a delay. We had to build an algorithm to predict this,” he says. The railways also work on a different

timetable and the information, which comes to Rathi, is based on the operat-ing timetable. “We have to then convert it into a timetable which is understand-able to everyone,” he says.

Version 2.0With initial work on the platform sorted out, Rathi is now trying to build smart-ness around the information. “We now understand why trains get delayed and which stations cause problems. This information will help build the next generation of services,” he says.

According to Rathi, value-added services should be able to connect the needs of the traveler along with the businesses providing such services. This can be services like hotels, car rentals, porter services etc. He also wants to offer a service that will help people make choices by suggesting which trains are more punctual.

Another service he would like to build on is which train offers you a higher probability of getting a con�rmed ticket in case you are waitlisted.

“In the last two months, we have managed to gather data on 55 lakh train travelers but this is still the tip of the iceberg. The next six months will see us getting more information. We will also look at connecting different modes of transportation information with the railways,” says Rathi.

Only about eight to nine railway networks in the world provides such services; providing real time informa-tion is a real achievement for Rathi. “Our initial revenues will come from advertisements followed by transac-tions on the site. We are also looking at money from value-added services,” he says. The third year of operations is when he is looking at substantial rev-enues to chug in.

More than 1 lakh km in length India, the fourth-largest railway network in the world is also one of the most complex with numerous junctions and passenger and goods train running on the same track. For Stelling, the oppor-tunity is as long as it is complex.

Total track: 1.14 lakh kmRoute covered: 65,000 kmStations: 7,500Fourth largest: After the US, Russia and ChinaPassengers carried: 30 million per dayFreight carried: 2.8 million tons per day

INDIAN RAILWAYS

109Intelligent Entrepreneur August 2012To read more, grab the August 2012 issue of EntrepreneurTo Subscribe, visit www.entrepreneurindia.in

TWO SUITS WALK INTO A BARGolden rules for talking business over drinks

ROSS MCCAMMON

MEET FOR DRINKS? GREAT! BUT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE YOUR PITCH BECOME A PUNCH LINE, TAKE CARE NOT TO LET THE BOOZE AND CASUAL ATMOSPHERE WREAK HAVOC ON YOUR BUSINESS JUDGMENT.

PRETEND YOU ARE NOT IN A BARThe bar will impose its riches upon you: drinks, atmosphere, etc. If you’re going to get any work done, concentrate on business, and let the bar do the rest. The bar should be thought of merely as neutral territory. The bar is not a topic of conversation. Drinking is not a topic of a conversation. Because those things aren’t about business.

DO THINGS EARLIEREverything should happen sooner than your counterparts expect it to happen. You should get there before they do and introduce business earlier than seems appropriate. You should wrap things up faster than seems suitable. Because if you do things early, you have control. Early is a virtue.

NEVER MORE THAN TWOIf there are two of you, sit at the bar. If there are more than that, do not sit at the bar. Three people at a bar is the least-natural way for three people to jointly communicate. The person in the middle appears to be watching a tennis match, and those on the ends can’t get

a good look at each other because of the person in the middle. Awful.

ACT LIKE YOU HAVE A MINORITY STAKE IN THE PLACERespect the bartender. And the host. And the cocktail server. And the rest-room attendant. And the valet. Because for tonight, these are your people. They are your assistants. You want the bar to be slightly more yours than your counterpart’s.

HESITATION KILLS MOMENTUMNever hesitate while ordering a drink. Never read the big chalkboard above the bar. Just order something you know they have. You wouldn’t waste time in a conference room.

EYES!The worst thing I’ve ever seen someone do in a meeting at a bar is not look me in the eyes… the entire time. No busi-ness was done that day. Anyone who doesn’t look you in the eyes is either ashamed of something or intimidated by something.

POSTURE!Square up. All business meetings are confrontations of a sort. So, square up. Sitting up straight is evidence of a back-bone. It is also evidence that you’re not so inebriated you can’t conduct business.

CONSIDER TAKING NOTES ON A NAPKINBecause, just maybe, you’re inebriated. And because then you can always say: It all started by writing down on a napkin in a bar.

MODERATION!When it comes to doing business in bars, weak drinks help. The weaker your drink, the stronger your position.

MODERATION, PART 2!The second worst thing I’ve ever seen a counterpart do at a bar meeting is spill a full glass of beer all over himself because he missed his mouth when he went to take a drink. It was a breathtaking combination of misjudgment, humilia-tion and moisture.

ORDER YOUR OWN DRINK“I’ll have the same” is weak, unless that is what you’d have ordered.

BUT DO NOT ORDER YOUR OWN DRINK IF YOUR DRINK IS NOT A SERIOUS DRINK“I’ll have an Açai-tini.” No. No stupid martinis. Ever. If it ends in “-tini,” it needs to begin with “mar-.” All other -tinis are not actually martinis and do not suggest a serious drinker, a serious person or a serious business partner.

IMMEDIATELY FORGET EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE BUSINESSThings are said when drinking. Things are flirted with. Things are betted. Those things are to be forgotten. Anything aside from the business discussion is not to be spoken of again. What’s to be remembered is whatever is on the napkin. Because of the many virtues of doing business in bars, discretion is the most important.

©Entrepreneur Inc. All rights reserved.

ROSS MCCAMMON is an articles editor at Esquire magazine

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