May 2012
7 posts
12 tags
Primed up...for Hollywood?!
Ramki Sankaranarayanan glanced at his phone one evening, to see an SMS announcing the arrival of Namit’s baby boy. The year was 2007, and Namit was this absurdly young founder/CEO of Prime Focus, a company that dominates the post-production film business in Mumbai. Once a salesman always a salesman, they say, and Ramki true to his calling, immediately picked up the phone to wish Namit, his...
6 tags
The making of a "People's Bank"?
It was by happenstance that I came to learn about the Shriram Group and G S Sundararajan (Sundar), MD of Shriram Capital, the other day. Of course, I have known that Shriram was a huge player in the chit fund business and did a lot of truck financing. This only reinforced my image of the company as a traditional, Chennai based, family/promoter-run enterprise. Not the kind of company that I would...
12 tags
FreshDesk - A Whiff of Fresh Air!
I have met many entrepreneurs in my life, including my husband who I have seen through three start-ups. I’m always excited listening to their ideas, feeling their passion and their hunger to achieve success. But I often find it hard to figure out who will eventually succeed, or even go past their first or second round of funding. Most times, especially in India where the market is ripe for any...
9 tags
Brofounders of BankBazaar
I first heard of BankBazaar from Rajesh Subramaniam, who invested in them from Walden Ventures. He mentioned that they offered you the option of getting the best interest rates on loans, on-line without going place to place, something like what E-Loan does in the US. My interest piqued, I have been following up to see how they are shaping up since then. So when I got a chance to reconnect during...
In The Twitter-Tumblr World, Everybody Is A...
If you see yourself as a tech leader, be willing to put your money where your pen is MY FRIEND, who is a Vice-President with a technology start-up in Bengaluru, called me the other day with a problem. His company was growing fast and he needed to recruit aggressively. He was finding it hard to attract star programmers and architects he needed — his company was no Facebook or Google to...
7 tags
Our very own Startup Role Model
I am one of the lucky few who started my career with a start-up in India…a venture that grew rapidly, and could rival any bay area start-up of today in terms of excitement and energy! It is really hard to believe, today, that such a company existed in India and that too in 1983, but Wipro of those days was very much such a startup! (In fact, the global Indian IT companies we see today - a...
6 tags
Kumar at IndoUS
I started the week with a Monday morning meeting with a disarming Venture Capitalist, Kumar Shiralagi. Kumar is a Partner with IndoUS Venture Partners, a VC firm that is focused on early stage investments in India, and has backed some very interesting start-ups like Via, Myntra, Attero, SnapDeal, etc. Despite the fact that Kumar and I happen to be neighbors, and his wife Kalpana and I are good...
