It was in early 2005 that Dr Shaleen Raizada started getting the lost feeling. It had been six month since Raizada, a PhD from CSIR’s National Physical Lab in Delhi, had abandoned her rather safe decade-long career in government and private sectors to start her own intellectual property consulting. “I decided to start it because I saw there was a clear gap between what the lawyers knew and what the companies knew.
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| I decided to start it (intellectual property consulting) because I saw there was a clear gap between what the lawyers knew and what the companies knew. We had a good team, a team that could deliver. — Dr. Shaleen Raizada MD and CEO, Sanshadow Consultants |
We had a good team, a team that could deliver. We were making good documents. Yet we were not going anywhere, our business was not going anywhere,” says the MD and CEO of Delhi-based Sanshadow Consultants Pvt Ltd, on track to post revenues of around Rs 5 crore this year. “All four of us were all from professional backgrounds. We were good technical people, but none of us were from a business background, neither as individuals nor as families,” she remembers.
Shaleen’s problem is by no means unique among first generation entrepreneurs who do not have a VC or angel investor to guide them.
The movement from an employee to an entrepreneur brings with it unexpected challenges. As Sanjay Anandaram, one of the founders of Jumpstartup and a mentor to many young businesses says, “The first step is to know what is it that you don’t know.”
However, many entrepreneurs have to learn as they go along, sometimes getting caught in a fix with no one to turn to. While Shaleen was lucky to have a friend who soon introduced her to Mohit Goyal, founder of IIS Infotech Ltd (later taken over by Xansa Plc), there are many ways to still find a guide and mentor for your business, even if you do not have an investor in the company. Online resources, institutions, consultants and industry veterans are available to offer advice and vet your ideas, and sometimes even set apart one-on-one time for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Seek, and ye shall find
There are many ways for an independent entrepreneur, without VC or angel investor support, to gain from others’ experience and access. Step one is self-help, with the aim being to get a realistic picture of what entrepreneurship involves.
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| Seek out information on basic issues such as what is a business plan, what are the elements that go into it, what are the different ways to raise money. — Sanjay Anandaram co-founder, Jumpstartup |
“The first key requirement is that the person look around what exists in the world of entrepreneurship and see what is available. Ignorance is not an excuse,” says Sanjay, who besides being associated with the fund, is involved with hands-on fine-tuning of many start-up strategies. “Seek out information on basic issues such as what is a business plan, what are the elements that go into it, what are the different ways to raise money. Start talking to other entrepreneurs and to other professionals you might need, such as lawyers and accountants,”
he points out. Besides reading and listening, this step also involves attending networking events such as BarCamps and OpenCoffeeClubs, to share experiences and learn from other start-ups.Getting hands on
After basic education and networking with peers, one should try to benefit from the veterans in the industry, people who have built up today’s top companies. While this kind of mentorship is by no means a pre-requisite to building a successful company, it can cut down the time taken to do so, as Shaleen’s experience shows. When it comes to hands-on mentoring, there are three options—TiE, educational institutions, and NEN and individual consultants.
TiE
The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and senior professionals with roots in the Subcontinent. A not-for-profit organization, it helps young entrepreneurs—typically those who have thrashed out a team and a business plan—sound out their ideas and fine-tune their strategies by getting them in touch with veteran industry professionals or entrepreneurs in the field (charter members of TiE). It has around 150 industry veterans as its charter members in its Delhi chapter and over 100 with its Bangalore chapter, two of the biggest chapters for the organization. Annual membership, which enables you to receive mentorship and participate in events, cost around Rs 3,500 in Delhi and 2,500 in Bangalore.
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