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TIECON 2000 - Revisiting History ...
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  Information Technology (IT) - Kit for India's IT Community - News and Views 
Revisiting History ! Key Observations from TIE CON 2000 Conference - October 30th and 31st 2000 - Hotel Regent, Mumbai Organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) Mumbai featuring talks by Successful Angel Investors, Venture Capitalists, Entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley and India. |
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KTECH-KIT Kaytek's Information Technology (IT) - Kit Indian IT Community - News and Views Key Observations from TIE CON 2000 Conference - October 30th and 31st 2000 - Hotel Regent, Mumbai Organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) Mumbai featuring talks by Successful Angel Investors,Venture Capitalists, Entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley/India. |
All speakers were unanimous that pure Dot Com companies without sound business models are dead. Many of the Dot Com companies were trying to reposition themselves as ASP (Application Service Provider) enterprises. There would be many Mergers,Closing Down,Deaths and Disappearance of the Dot Coms as they existed today. This was a necessary market correction mechanism. Very few would get future venture capital funding. Speaker-wise Points Mr. Pavan Nigam
 Mr. Jnan Dash
Mr. Dewang Mehta
Mr. Ramesh Venkatraman
Mr. Sudhir Sethi
Mr. Abhay Havaldar
Mr. Neeraj Roy
Mr. Vishnu Varshney
Mr. Ashank Desai
Mr. Roy Prasad
Mr. Prakash Bhalerao
Mr. Prashant Parekh
Mr. Rajesh Jain
Mr. Ashish Dhawan Most of the Silicon valley speakers felt that the Internet wealth
creation era was just starting. The current period is the 'End of the
Beginning' as per Mr. Pavan Nigam, co-Founder of Healtheon,
a US Multi-Billion $ Health Care B2B Organisation.
He spoke of the current scenario as ' The Revenge of the NOT Coms' or the
'Death of the Powerpoint IPO'. Mr. Jnan Dash from Oracle, mentioned that the
biggest challenges that US organisations are facing is with respect to
integrating company web sites with back-end legacy systems effectively. He
mentioned about The "LipStick on a Pig" Scenario. The Lipstick referring to
an Organisation's web site and Pig referring to Ugly and messy Back-End
Systems running in enterprises. He gave the example of an organisation he knew of which had a Web-based ordering system at the front end but at the back end, there were 50 people who would take a printout of the web orders entered and fax the same to different suppliers, manufacturers and factories. It is not known as to whether the above example was correct, but it is illustrative of the situation in many organisations today. Mr. Dash spoke about the various challenges and opportunities that existed in integrating the different back-end legacy applications of US organisations today with their Web sites. (The Late) Mr. Dewang Mehta of NASSCOM, spoke very strongly
against the ban on Internet Telephony - Voice over IP (Internet Protocol) and
mentioned that India was the only country in the world with this restriction which
was holding back wide spread Internet usage. He was also apprehensive of the
widespread powers given to Police Authorities under Information Technology (IT)
Act which has become law in India from 18th October 2000. Mr. Ramesh Venkatraman, Partner, Mckinsey & Company,
spoke about the Four Tangible Key Sources of Wealth
in the New Economy. These were Intellectual Property (IP),Brands, Teams and
Networks (Customers and Suppliers). Mr. Sudhir Sethi, Venture Capitalist, Walden Nikko International,
spoke about E-Commerce in India picking up momentum in
2003 only when widespread Internet usage would be possible due to a combination
of a critical mass caused due to 100 Million TV Owning Households, 40 Million Cable
Connections, 45 Million Phone Lines, 25 Million Internet users and 10 Million Cellphone
users. According to him, only those B2B web sites would be successful where India had a national competitive edge - eg. Tea, Agricultural products, commodities.He spoke of other promising areas being Broadband, Wireless, Cable Internet, Content, Indian Languages, Knowledge Infrastructure, ASP,etc. Mr. Abhay Havaldar, Venture Capitalist, Connect Capital Holdings spoke
about attributes and challenges faced by successful enterpreneurs. He
mentioned the following as important - Credible Forecasting,Cash Management,
Customer Benefits, Quality Recruiting, Balanced Teams, Stress
Management,Flexibility as the key areas to be worked on by enterpreneurs. Mr. Neeraj Roy, Founder, Hungama.com gave useful
pointers on low cost effective strategies on how to build a brand on the
Net. He said that the first challenge was to make users open a Browser since
for most people today, Internet meant only Email. He advised companies to
keep a sharp eye on Web site content and monitor Promise Vs Delivery. Mr. Vishnu Varshney, Managing Director of Gujarat Venture Finance Limited,
spoke about the problems faced by them in assessing promoters integrity and
due diligence exercises. He also mentioned that the list of Venture
Capitalists in India was available on the web site of his company
. Mr. Ashank Desai, Chairman, MD of MASTEK,
candidly spoke about the challenges faced by them in their early days. He
mentioned that one of the main reasons of their success was that the entire Top
management Team had been together from last 18 years. He spoke about how his entire top team jointly evolved their organisation's mission,vision and values. He emphasised on Reward Sharing, Fairness, alignment of organisational and personal growth,training and career planning, removal of insecurity of employees as key Top Management issues to tackle. Mr. Roy Prasad, Venture Capitalist and co-Founder Decide.com
said that Business is not just a vending machine.
People are needed to help get orders and close business. Brick and Mortar
Retailers can be partners to Dot Com companies. He focussed on the 2 - 3 Trillion $ Opportunity in the US market for using the Net to improve Organisation's productivity, enable faster turnaround and offer better service to customers and suppliers. Mr. Prakash Bhalerao, Successful Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist and
Founder of more than 40 companies spoke of his expectations from
Enterpreneurs. He spoke of an Enterpreneur being able to rapidly,
successfully Create Direction out of Confusion in the marketplace. Mr. Prashant Parekh, CEO Zeneb Inc highilghted
Wireless Internet as being a key technology for winning Enterprise Battles
in the future. He spoke of a Billion Cell Phone users, 83 Billion $ Revenue
from Global Wireless E-Commerce Services in 2003. Mr. Rajesh Jain, Founder Indiaworld, (Part of
Satyam Infoway) spoke of creating indigenous Internet based applications to
solve basic needs of Indian people. He visualised the creation of a Base
of 100 Million Internet Users within the next 3 years. He spoke of the
means to tackle 4 main issues Net Access,Network, Payment and Applications. Mr. Ashish Dhawan, Venture Capitalist, Chrysalis Ventures
emphasised Building a Strong Business and
managing Cash prudently for the next 3 years. |
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