JANUARY 2010 * volume 1 * issue 12 -MAGI!INE TO PROVE THAT LIMITATIONS LIVE ONLY IN OUR MINDS... SaaS SS) de | aaa ee aA a CTT Kaushik Mukherjee ane ate Founder : fintact.com Ray Hin RAMPRASAD RAJENDRAN Nandini Vaidyanathan Geraumetr 3M BaeU b> STR OES / ~Arununame—-2Z22ZPpD> W I bbe} | im Be a tleseee get E-magazine of the department of MHRM,IISWBM TM) Sur eum sslWe identify with the pain and the immense joy that is felt to let it take on the world on its own. Pain to let it go.. Joy.. to witness it take its first flight and every flight ever since. EDITORIAL ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost said this years ago, yet this thought is still young and driving, as We quote it here, here in this issue of E-mag!ne which has completed one whole year. They say life comes a full circle and how? Today takes us a year back when We first incepted this wild idea...which led to a number of raised eyebrows and even more number of smirks! All we could do was to smile and...well..smile again. Our silence was itself confused, whether we are sure of what lies ahead... whether this would be just another random idea that would fume away with the haze of umpteen cups of hot tea or is this something that would eventually get entwined with our lives so much so that a 365 days would pass with just 2 batting of an eye. We wanted to risk the unusual...we just didn't want to settle for the ordinary. ‘And as all great people have said, that hardship owns its reward, our initiative too reaped a lot of accolades, over the months comprising its journey, that silenced our retractors. E-magine not only broke across many barriers that had entwined our lives, but it also forged many a relationship with a world hitherto unknown to us. It not only did good for the cause we established it for, it also enriched us & all our stakeholders in ways which never ceased to surprise us! Slowly E-mag!ne became as integral to our lives as water is to a fish's existence. The hard stones stepped upon along the journey only made us bask rather unabashedly and merrily on the fruits we gathered later on. When we say that E-magine has reached far and wide, we do so with a fair amount of conviction because we have witnessed its reach touch lives beyond the domain of our mother land India even! We know what it feels to dream and when that dream takes a form of of its ‘own. We identify with the pain and the immense joy that is felt to let it take on the world on its own. Pain to let it go... Joy.. to witness it take its first flight and every flight ever since. Having gone through all of those juxtaposed emotions, having spent a full year of living this dream every single day, we realize and salute the spirit of “Doing your own thing”, the spirit of doing it differently, the spirit of Entrepreneurship. This month E-magine comes with an exclusive look. All sections that you shall see in this issue are anniversary special. Also introduced Is the “blog this!” feature. Now you can blog on the articles you read here. Just follow the link on the bottom-right corner of the page. Hope you have a good read and also that you continue supporting us! cheers! - Team E-mag!ne : Srimoyee Ray & Bikram SarkarContents 01/10 04 14 1 : , Survey Asurvey on the entrepreneurial attitude amongst the people of India. Entrepreneurs Nandini Vaidyanathan writes her experiences on entrepreneurship for us, x x KAUSHIK MUKHERJEE Chucking a career at Goldman Sachs, Kaushik Mukherjee took up the bold descision to be an entrepreneur. RAMPRASAD RAJENDRAN Gaming on social networking sites? this is the man you got to thank! 06 09 VISHAL SETHI The man who revolutionized event management in India speaks up in an E-magine exclusive. 11SURVEY Entrepreneurship survey An E-mag!ne initiative. ‘We had conducted a survey to judge the attitude of people towards the idea of entrepreneurship. A ‘questionnaire was administered with 10 questions which tried to find out what percentage of these respondents actually wanted to take up entrepreneurship seriously, This questionnaire is not a structured one in the sense that we kept it open for people to fil it up. We believe that only sheer interest in Entrepreneurship should be the motivation for these people to partake in this survey. At the end, we got a decent sample size of 30 with age groups across the following: Respondents -Age group - ff, — Ageinyeon, ‘The majority of the respondents belong to the age group of 18-25 with an inclination towards the age of 23 & 24 years. The gender distribution was fairly decent with male respondents being more in number than their counterpart female ones. Gender Constitution ‘Another very interesting conclusion that we got out of the results of the survey is that people who already have had an exposure to the entrepreneur bent of mind i.e, they have had members of the family, relations, friends who have had gone the entrepreneur 4 01/2010 >> E-mag!ne way, are more inclined and interested towards taking it up seriously in the near future. Entreprenual Background in Family Here we see that the maximum number of respondents have a prior stint with entrepreneurship. Close to a 60.90 % said that they belong to background of entrepreneurship and about a 39.10 % said that they has no exposure to the E-way, in the past. Consequently, we have seen that these 60.90% respondents have designed or rather tried to design a B-pian of their own. We can account this again to their relevant background which might have acted as an eye opener for them. When we asked the respondents to give their preference of startup industry, as in the industry that they want to venture in, we noticed a very interesting trend, Most of the respondents showed an interest ‘towards starting some thing of their own in the Education sector, followed by food and service which ranked equal. But the majority of the responses included varied sectors like, Rural healthcare, transportation, etc. Preferance of startup industry 2 cence F eoxto ResponsesSURVEY ‘On asking their preference of the city in India that they ‘would want to start their venture in .i.e, the city that ‘would be the base camp and on it the venture would eventually spread its roots to other parts of the country, ‘this was the trend that followed : Preference of startup city ‘Mura | Rolate | Dan one innsconse snows | aaaoy | 770% Kolkata was preferred most in terms of the city ranking, The reasons that we could ration out was Kolkata being a fairly cost effective locale, people thought that it ‘would be a comfortable zone to kick off their venture, ‘even with a not so handsome capital investment. Only next preferred location was Mumbai, obviously because itis the financial capital of the country and consequently the opportunities and possibilities are immense in the city of dreams. Delhi followed closely with a host of ‘other preferred city like Bangalore, Gurgaon and Chennai. We also tried to gauge a little of the ‘emotional/psychological aspect that is entwined with ‘entrepreneurship in an indispensable way. We asked our, respondents, who is that person or icon that they idolize ‘when it comes to taking this bold step in the world of different thinkers? This is what we got : We noticed that a host of respondents between the age group of 23 to 25 years idolized stalwarts like Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani and Mr. Narayan Murthy. Amongst the other responses were, Mr. Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and even our very own, the greatest “Bapu ji There were responses that claimed that a lot of their inspiration was due to their family members who had already taken a plunge into this interesting world and ‘emerged victorious and successful. Based on certain myths that we keep on hearing every now and then, that out country India, produces potential minds but however does not support entrepreneurship when it comes to the opportunities that are available. So we tried to find out what percentage of the respondents feel likewise or rather unlikewise the above. We found that 5 01/2010 >> E-mag!ne Perception of Opportunities in Inia ee en ee 39.13 % respondents felt that the opportunities that are available in india are very good and that India is very much able and capable to support the minds that harbor the interest to take “the road not taken” with a host of opportunities and amenities. Inspite of all the planning and the background work, at times some ventures fall flat on the face or get handicapped mid way. This in turn creates a sort of prejudice amongst the people against this particular field. We tried to find what according to the respondents might be the reason that lead to a sudden demise of a plan which was alive and beating at one point in time. Poor Planning/research/analysis/study Poor funding Lack of vision Lack of endurance Power politics Environmental change Lack of risk taking ability ‘The above are some of the reasons that was cited by our respondents as being the primary concerns for a startup to meet its unnatural death. Respondents between the age group of 23 to 25 years felt that lack of enough funds and poor planning whilst our respondents of 30years and above adjudged, lack of operational skills and inability to think long term as the major reasons for failure. The proper flow of ‘things that should help a startup in the long run would be : Right Information, Right Funding and Right people. So what are the necessary traits that one should possess in order to be an Entrepreneur? Heres what our respondents feel: Focus, Hardwork, Perseverance, Non -Conformity, Leadership, Patience, Innovation, Sacrifice are the key pillars on which an able head rests with a firm foot on grounds. Yes, we agree too, but E-magine would prescribe just one tonic— Imagine I! and that should take care of everything that follows Ente