The Śūnyatā (Openness) Blog

Just read a fantastic article on 'What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial'. Excerpt: "Yet, in our classrooms we teach potential entrepreneurs an extremely causal process-the sequential progression from idea to market research, to financial projections, to team, to business plan,to financing, to prototype, to market, to exit, with the caveat, ofcourse that surprises happen along the way.Seasoned entrepreneurs, however, know that surprises are not deviations from the path.Instead they are the norm, the flora and the fauna of the landscape, from which one learns to forge a path through the jungle.The unexpected is the stuff of entreprenurial experience and transforming the unpredictable into the utterly mundane is the special domain of the expert entrepreneur." If you are an entreprenur, or thinking of becoming one, or simply interested in the topic of entrepreneurship, this article is a MUST READ.It is one of the best pieces I have read in recent times. Credits: The a...

For the past six months or so, I have been reading a lot about the abundance of venture capital availability in India. Key Learnings for me: 1.There are several Silicon Valley driven VC funds that have set up or setting up a base in India, especially in Bangalore. 2.However, the perception among entrepreneurs is that there is very little traction in terms of seed capital investment. Most VCs seem to be playing the role of private equity investors, than true venture capitalists. 3.The VC funds on the other hand are bemoaning the lack of really good ideas from Indian entrepreneurs, lack of strong and focused teams, lack of robust revenue models, and an overall weak eco system that encourages seed/angel investment. 4.Most, if not all, of the entrepreneurs seem to be US-returned techies or business people with the capacity to invest their own funds at the seed stage. Questions: 1.What do we need to do to create a truly vibrant ecosystem for entrepreneurship and VC activity in India? 2.The ...

I discovered Sramana Mitra's blog recently. She has accomplished a lot at a very young age. People with similar educational backgrounds in India end up working in MNCs or Public Sector at high salaries, where as, the enabling environment in the US has helped her become a serail entrepreneur and Strategy Consultant. After reading Sramana's Concept Arbitrage series of blog posts, and a few articles on her site, I started thinking about an idea for bridging the digital divide. Nothing really new. It is about convergence of mobile and television, where in one can use the mobile phone as the CPU, the TV set as a monitor, and use a key board and mouse as well if required. Most of our rural areas (in India) are witnessing the mobile revolution faster than the PC revolution.In fact, according to some industry reports, non-voice traffic (music and picture downloads) is many times higher than expected, in India's rural areas. And with technologies like System-in-Package (SiP) being...