Indian Entrepreneurs' maturity surprises VCs

By siliconindia staff writer | Friday, 06 August 2004, 19:30 IST

BANGALORE: On July 27 &28, 2004 venture capitalists, professionals, technologists and entrepreneurs converged at the Leela Palace here for the siliconindia Venture Capital Summit 2004. For the entrepreneurs, this event provided a tremendous opportunity to pitch their entrepreneurial ideas, and for the investors it was a golden chance to catch the start-up teams in early stages. "Only the venue is different. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you are at the Marriott in Santa Clara, this is exactly what happens in the Valley. There were quality entrepreneurs with good ideas," said Amish Jani of Pequot Ventures. Over 100 Indian entrepreneurs met up with global VCs to discuss their ideas. Some of the big names in the Venture Capital community like Pequot Capital, Bank of America Equity Partners, Soft Bank Asia, Nokia Ventures, International Finance Corporation (IFC), IBM Venture Group, Charles River Ventures, ICF Ventures, Oak Investments, Artiman Ventures took part in the event. Even Indian Venture Capital firms like ICICI Venture, WestBridge Capital, UTI Venture Fund participated in the event. During the two-day summit, VCs discussed about investment trends, strategies for investing in early stage ventures, strategies on how to find & access capital, what they look for in early stage companies, the kinds of companies they find most attractive, and the do's and don'ts in structuring deals. Apart from the panel discussions, the management of 30 select private companies, all of whom are actively seeking capital, presented their business plans to venture capitalists in a closed-door meeting. The fact that all the venture capitalists sat through the presentations of all the presenting companies speaks of the interesting business models that entrepreneurs had to present. In fact some of the VCs went a step ahead and made a visit to some of the Bangalore-based companies. The event was well organized. This is the first time I am seeing a venture capital summit of this calibre in India, said Shailendra Kumar, founder & CEO Nexecurity, a Silicon Valley based chip design company. The best part of the event was networking. Siliconindia had designed the agenda in such a way that entrepreneurs like me got ample opportunity to talk to VCs in an informal way, said Achyut Menon, an entrepreneur from Hyderabad. There was a special session on Structuring your company to become a global enterprise conducted by Pillsbury Winthrop, a reputed international law firm. We had a great trip and I was tremendously impressed by the energy and drive of the entrepreneurs we met, said Benjamin Quinones, Attorney at Law (Partner), Pillsbury Winthrop. All the participating venture capitalists expressed that the conference went a long way in contributing to an entrepreneurs ecosystem. When asked about the event's success, Harvi Sachar, the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of siliconindia said Helping the Indian entrepreneur meet the venture firms creates the ideal breeding ground for the next Google, Hotmail or Juniper from India.

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