Inflexion – Technology Summit: An evening of insights and observations

I was invited to “Inflexion” an event organized by Signal Hill and iSPIRT. The duo have in the past co-created the report on Technology M&A in India (link) which was very educational, so my interest was piqued and decided to go.

The evening was started by Scott Wieler, Chairman & CEO Signal Hill. He mentioned that $6.9Bn of VC/PE money has been invested in India in last four years (2011-14). However, the M&A value generated is just $1.7Bn. So with a value creation ratio of 0.2x, India is far behind US (3.0x) and Israel (5.3x). This led to the insight that M&A values will need to increase by more than 15x over next 3-6 years for this ratio to catch up to US and Israel levels. My hope is recent acquisitions by Flipkart (Myntra), Snapdeal (Unicommerce), Facebook (Little Eye Labs) and Twitter (ZipDial) – are good trend in this direction, and we will see a lot of action happening in next couple of years. This augurs well for Indian entrepreneurs.

Next came the retrospective by N.R.K. Raman – co-founder of i-FLEX Solutions. Very interestingly his company was probably the first VC/PE backed unicorn in India! They were bought by Oracle for nearly a billion dollars. A lot of i-FLEX’s story was about perseverance and street smarts. We keep on talking about product-market fit – this was a phenomenon written all over i-FLEX’s success. The founders were working in the banking software industry inside a bank (Citigroup) – and understood the inefficiencies of the system. They jumped the boat, separated from the mothership (albeit Citi wrote them their first $400k) – and launched a product that found ready takers in the market. It was not the dramatic high burn, breakneck growth story but rather a well thought out, methodical plan executed with hard work and business fundamentals kind of story.

As the night became young, Flipkart’s co-founder Binny Bansal and YourStory’s Shradha Sharma, stepped onto the stage. Binny said that the one thing keeping him awake at night is “finding high quality talent and retaining them” – interesting to note that the big guys have still the same challenges as newbie startups. As an investor, I feel it is becoming very competitive to hire good talent. That one perfect designer or product manager you have found – chances are will have multiple offers in hand, if not thinking about doing his own startup already. The other big focus area that Binny mentioned was mobile – if you look at the data, I think the writing is on the wall – by 2016 – 80%+ of India’s internet population will access Internet more by mobiles than by desktop and my guess is 60%+ of India’s internet population will have never accessed internet using desktop. So Flipkart’s worries are talent and mobile.

Then Sharad Sharma, iSPIRT co-founder and Governing Council member, delivered a short punchy talk. He explained how small sub $50m dollar exits are the lifeblood of any tech ecosystem. Unless they happen in enough numbers we won’t get Billion dollar exits in the long haul. I learnt that iSPIRT’s M&A Connect program has been instrumental in getting Facebook, Corporate Executive Board, Yahoo, Intuit and Twitter become first acquirers in India! The M&A Connect program is now on a one-acquisition-a-month run-rate and aspires to get to a one-acquisition-a-week rate in the coming years. What an inspiring story of volunteer magic changing our ecosystem for the better!

Sharad then talked about global SaaS startups. They are gaining momentum. He also outlined why software product startups targeting Indian SMEs will be big in the coming three years.

We then broke for drinks and dinner. The book “Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere”, authored by Ravi Venkatesan, iSPIRT Adviser and former Chairman of Microsoft India, was gifted to attendees of the event. It promises to be an interesting read.

TechSparks 2012 Unveils the Top 30 Tech Product Startups from India

TechSparks, the flagship event of Yourstory.in, the biggest tech product startup showcase in India, is now in its 3rd edition. The Grand Finale of TechSparks 2012 was held in Bangalore on September 8th, after the 5 roundtables which were conducted in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Hyderabad over a period of 4 months. Techsparks 2012 was presented by Intel in association with Amazon Web Services, Qualcomm, Sequoia Capital, CNBC TV 18 Young Turks and VentureBeat.

Registering more than 800 applications to become a TechSpark, the response was overwhelming and the jury comprising of investors, successful entrepreneurs, industry experts and the Yourstory team had a tough time shortlisting the top 30. Applications were received from all over the country and the diversity was immense. From education to healthcare to cleantech, there were companies in every sector with a common motive – leveraging technology to build great businesses.

The Techsparks 2012 Grand Finale had the theme “The Smartest Way to Scale Up” and the entire day was organized around that. Starting with an introduction from Shradha Sharma, founder of Yourstory.in, the high-on-adrenaline event was given a huge pump by RJ Sriram and DJ Dhruva maintaining the tempo. Shradha’s introduction was followed by an in-depth keynote by Shailendra Singh, MD of Sequoia Capital, who outlined some of the most important factors for ‘Building a Business’. The ensuing Panel Discussion was a highly engaging one with audience actively participating in the discussion. The Panel consisted of Narendra Bhandari (Director, Intel Software and Services Group – Developer Relations (Asia-Pacific)); Shailendra Singh (MD, Sequoia Capital); Gautam Gandhi (Head – New Business Development Emerging Markets, Google); Joe Ziegler (AWS Evangelist for Australia and New Zealand); M. Maheshwar Rao, IAS (Commissioner for Industrial Development and Director of Industries and Commerce, Govt. of Karnataka); Dr. Wido Menhardt (Vice President, Head, Philips Innovation Campus) and was moderated by Ravi Gururaj (Vice President, Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix).

Read the complete story at YourStory.in