Wednesday
Morning – Mumbai Marriott Hotel
I just finished a fine breakfast at this hotel on
the beach and watched BlueRun Ventures partners discuss a business plan with a
local startup’s founder CEO. The photo shows their informal style, with the
discussions taking place in the restaurant of choice for local business people.
We had done our run on the beach earlier this
morning, watching the cricket players slash away on the sand and morning young
couples snatch the lasts moments of semi-private togetherness as the sun came
up.
Invigorated, we meet for breakfast and discussed the TIE event last night. The audience received my “Go Global From Day 1” message with a bit of expected timidity, yet acknowledged the wisdom of expanding to compete beyond the local market. Like China, the potential number of consumers is large but mostly impoverished. So the hot deals are focused on serving the middle and upper income groups. The breakfast entrepreneur who presented has a leapfrog solution for bringing a package of the latest IT services into homes via cable television at sharply lower costs. His business model has product design teams located in both Silicon Valley and India. His plan includes aggressive expansion world-wide. That is the sort of deal BRV is looking for. Another example of a deal that is done is Nevis Networks http://www.nevisnetworks.com/
So I tha
nked TIE Mumbai http://www.tiemumbai.org/ for support of
the event, signed a lot of books, accepted my flowers from another of the
lovely Indian women and looked forward to my present ion at the local IIT
school.
Final confirmation of the day was that the top university is now teaching courses in entrepreneurship within an incubator-teaching center. Others in India are just as active. So expect a lot more from young people who don’t know that Indian startups cannot go global. This is exciting!
BOTTOM LINE: The elephant is running and racing well with the tiger. India's entrepreneurs are popping up as fast as in China. IPOs are raining in like a monsoon on the local stock exchange. The GDP is booming. Yesterday the central bank raised interest rates a bit to keep the boom in check. i bought stock in some local public companies. This elephant can run!
Comments