Day two was wonderful in the sense there were people from areas of my concern. There were four tracks. I went for internet technologies and technology.The other two were on IT services and Real Estate.
Ajit Balakrishnan of Rediff was First among Equals in the Internet Technologies panel. He was all about web and how had rediff withstood the dotcom burst by taking a look West policy of tapping NRIs. User generated content will drive the web. Rediff connexxions is a step in the right direction at the right time. Ajit also had advised on some entrepreneurs working on some sector specific portals. Cool n great dude.
And there was speech and discussion by Sandeep Murthy of Sherpalo, Sanjay Swamy of mChek, Raghav Kher of Seventymm.com, Samir Sood of Google, Probir Roy of Paymate and Ganesh Rengaswamy Greylock Partners. Raghav was very bullish about online DVD rental and his point on the fact that copycat models of companies in US is not that easy and India and its hinterland are really different market space is truly valid. Probir’s concerns were on issues regarding regulators, how their product waited for two and a half years to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I remember Sucheta Dalal wrote a wonderful piece on Financial Express how regulators and market are out of pace some time ago.
The afternoon track on Tech had Ashok Jhunjhunwala from IIT-M. How TeNet is transforming telecom and other technologies that empower people from grass root level was really gud. Ajit Deora of Light Speed Ventures was another point man. His question to the audience “Do you think VCs are interested in you/ your technology ?” was caught with silence. Deora said “No”. Indeed it was a frank speech and I liked that. While most went on beating the bush he gave a distilled point. VCs are here to make money. ROI is their concern. Buddy Prashant has a post here. The two sides of the coin. An indepth analysis is always needed before embarking on a trip to VCs. It’s all in – What stage you are ? What you want from them ? And how much you will give them Back ?
