Start-up City Conference Feb 25th 2012 – PANEL 2

Concept to Success:Milestones for startups – Panel 2
Speaker
Kannan, Founder & CTO, Vortex

Jayabalan Subramanian,CTO and Co-founder, Netmagic Solutions

Kailash Katkar, Founder, MD and CEO , Quick Heal Technologies

Amit Patni, Co-Founder & Chairman, Nirvana Venture Advisors

Sam Mehta, CEO, Everonn Medical Education, Director – Atlas Venturez(Moderator)

First Kannan,  Vortex spoke

• He mentioned that while working with IIT on some investigation / research they noticed a need for Rural ATM
• Designed one and since they needed large capital to Manufacture these, they got funded early
• These ATMs are bringing banking to large segments which did not have access to banking

Jayabalan Subramanian, Netmagic Solutions spoke next

• Got angel investment and mentoring by BV Jagadeesh exodus founder in 2000
• Cloud infrastructure is capital intensive about $25K per SQ FT excluding  building
• It took 6-8 years to establish and then in suddenly they grew from one location to eight
• They had successful exit as NTT japan acquired them for good valuation

Kailash Katkar, Quick Heal Technologies

About Kailash Katkar, found this narrative that should summarize some of what I had written down and this one summarize Quick milestones, anyhow some of the things that stuck a cord in me

• Gave anti-virus solutions to clients as value add based on what his brother wrote
• came-out with a product but other Hardware sellers were refusing to sell, as they could not charge for Software service
• though anti-virus solutions did not make lot of money persisted and it took 2-3 years to establish in Pune
• Stopped doing computer repair and eventually grew by hiring good marketing folks and setting office in other cities in Maharastra
• Many competitors approached him to buy and kill his product he refused to sell
• Runs a transparent, clean organization

Amit Patni, Nirvana Venture Advisors

• Completed higher education and joined family business in 1982
• Worked on lots of greenfield projects in 1989
• in 1980s really money in hardware 40% gross margin
• in 1990 GE became anchor client (70%) and software services became king
• GE wanted sweat equity and they had to negotiate to get decent evaluation in 2000
• This was followed by PE investment by general Atlantic
• Sold in iGate as they wanted to get value for family business and pursue other interests!

Sam Mehta, the moderator was one of the best moderators in panel discussion I have watched so far

• Kannan and Jayabalan spoke for 5 minutes, so he let Kailash talk for 15 minutes as his talk was inspiring
• He did a wonderful summation and listed these as milestones based on panel input
• When to Start, Get a team, get mentor/adviser early, prototype and get first customer, customer pays or get funding, professionalize/branch out/build team, get funded, exit for good valuations or transcend and become a path breaker

It was 12:15 by the time this panel completed, I was starting to have hunger pangs and the fact Silicon India guys made us go eat lunch outside meant I skipped panel 3  and headed out for Lunch!