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Finance for Entrepreneurs
Today, TiE Chennai, had started a 12-week workshop on “Finance for Entrepreneurs” to expose, familiarise, and, educate entrepreneurs on the basics of financials. While a promoter needs to be aware of most of the areas in her business, knowing the basics of finance and accounting is a must. The workshop is being conducted by seasoned professionals in the field including Mr M.S.Jagan, Mr Kannan Ramanathan and Ms Aparna Rammohan. The organizers from TiE had invited me to be the intro speaker to share my experiences. I listed the following four costly mistakes I did in my business due to my lack of finance / accounting / taxes in my early days…
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Drumming for Entrepreneurs
I had a different experience today evening. I actually played drums! Yes I played a musical instrument. TiE Chennai had organised their Charter member meet today as a precursor to annual TiECon event, before the dinner we had a musical treat by Mr.S.Murali Krishnan, who runs Jus Drums a School for Percussion in Chennai. The sheer number of instruments he had around him and the ease with which he moved between them was a delight to watch. Within the first 10 minutes he managed to get the room full of suits energised and raring to go. As a highlight Murali made every one in the audience join him in playing a rhythm,…
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Panel on Entrepreneurship and Career
Today the alumni association of my alma mater “SVCE” (Sri Venkateshwara College of Engineering, Pennalur) had organized a panel discussion of 3 of our alumnus from across fields to share their experiences around Entrepreneurship and Career. One of the panelist I knew as he was my batchmate, Anand Daniel a former Intel engineer and a partner in Accel being well known in VC circles in India. The other two panelist were Ajay Prabhakar (Owner Score magazine) and Praveen Sekar (Lead Global Software). Praveen talked about the benefit of experiences he gained by working in different roles at an NGO, a HR firm and finally in his dad’s company. Ajay talked on how he stumbled on the idea…
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Entrepreneurship amongst Gen Z in Chennai
My spout on the traffic in Old Mahabalipuram Road,Chennai Today evening I found myself in IIT Madras Research Park which is near Tidel Park in Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) in Chennai. OMR tops the list of places in Chennai I hate going especially during evenings, other places in cities like Chennai have traffic problems, but OMR in my view is a just long stretch of parking lot with intersections every few metres. For lakhs of people living in areas either side of OMR there are only two roads connecting them to rest of the city (Tiruvanmiyur Junction & Madhya Kailash Junction), obviously these two are huge bottlenecks. In sensible satellite…
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Motivation for Budding Entrepreneurs
The other day I got an email from a person representing Startup Saturday inviting me to do a talk @ IIT Madras Department of Management Studies. On a follow-up phone call, Mr.Mani Parthasarathy (one of the organizers) explained to me that Startup Saturday is a forum (yet another) for entrepreneurial community and they do monthly events in many cities across India. I didn’t want to give yet another talk on Entrepreneurship which no one wants to hear & many are already aware :: covering the familiar – on how to raise funds, write a business plan, how to hire, management techniques, branding & so on. Instead I asked for an…
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Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev on Entrepreneurship in India
In today’s Mint newspaper there was an interview by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev of ISHA Foundation titled “Indian businesses don’t understand branding”. He precisely lists what’s holding back Indian businesses – Branding, friendly finance & Marketing capabilities. Being an entrepreneur myself I couldn’t agree more with what Sadhguru has said. He continues that for some of them, language is the issue – the language of business; Unless a transaction benefits both the parties, it will not be sustainable, whether it’s marriage or marketplace; how to train businesses to be sure of themselves to take the next big jump for growth (its like in a trapeze bar, unless you are sure you…
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Entrepreneurship for Engineers
I was invited to do a presentation to students at my alma mater (SVCE, Pennalur). The occasion was a day-long event today organized by the ECE department’s Alumni Association & IEEE Chapter. I decided against a technical topic for fear of boring the students, instead, I made a talk on “Entrepreneurship for Engineers”. Following what “George Bernard Shaw” said “I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation“, I started by quoting myself “There has never been a better time in Indian History for becoming an Entrepreneur”. I tried my best to make the session very lively and at the end when I counted only a few heads were sleeping…
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My experiences as being an Entrepreneur
Today I was invited to present on “A Case Study – on my experiences as being an Entrepreneur”. The event was Computer Society of India’s National Symposium on PREPARING IT PROFESSIONALS FOR 2010- A ROAD MAP. The event was featured in “The Hindu” Education Plus supplement dated 26, March 2007 (Low-Res PDF, Hi-Res PDF). I enjoyed presenting in this, especially to see the enthuism and the energy with students. You can read the references notes I used for the talk here – PPTX Format, PDF Format. It is not very detailed as I didn’t project it as a slideshow. In this connection, I remembered an Interview of me done around 2003 by Pallavi Aravind…
