Entrepreneur's Corner

Gyan, the business advisor was participating in an informal discussion at the fringe of a two day conference where many entrepreneurs were present. The discussion was focused around the sudden interest in M&A deals in early stage ventures and valuation of these companies. Mukesh referred to two companies which were being acquired and then spoke about one other company where the deal was stalled because of differences in valuation. Gyan, "It is not about valuation alone, I understand that there were other issues, related to regulations and tax matters. Valuation is just one aspect of deals and growth in a…

Entrepreneurs have many questions about IP protection. This is particularly relevant in these times, when we talk of innovation and creativity ... driving the next wave of entrepreneurship. Here is a detailed guest post on this topic by Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, co-founder Brain League IP Services. Brain League is a company that was incubated at NSRCEL, IIMB and IP protection is their area of expertise and interest. Read on to get Kalyan's tips for IP protection...Intellectual Property protection provides business and competitive advantage to a company. While IP is important for all companies, its value for A Start Up Company,…

This is the story of how four women who met through an entrepreneurship programme teamed up for a prestigious city event, that allowed them to showcase their designs. They showcased their work at Bangalore Fashion Week which took place at Ottera, Electronic City from July 23rd to 26th.It all started when Bangalore Fashion Week organisers invited Babita Jaishankar in June 2009 to apply to participate. As a fashion designer, Babita was thrilled with the honour. But there was very little time to get organised! Desperate, she turned to Cynthia Sapna, a retail designer now full-time into photography. Babita and Cynthia…

Are you interested in writing a business plan? Is it to show to an investor? If you are planning to write a plan for your business or to help someone or are just curious about the noise made about business plans, here is a game for you to play. A game, where you get to be a virtual entrepreneur, without going into the pain of actually having a real company out there to run. If you are game for this game, think of yourself as an entrepreneur starting or running an existing business and...read on...First: The backgroundBefore thinking of preparing…

The newly introduced regulations on Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) have been briefly discussed in the post below. This is in response to the query in an earlier post: Company incorporation or partnership. This post has been contributed by S.C.Sharada and Jayashri Murali, Directors, Lex Valorem India Pvt. Ltd (Sharada.sc@lexvalorem.com and jayashri_m@airtelmail.in respectively). A LLP is basically a partnership firm established under the LLP Act, 2008, consisting of Partners who contribute to the capital of the LLP and is a legal entity which is regulated by the regulatory authority who is the Registrar of Companies. The main requirements to establish a…

Background: Negotiations are a part of life, whether it is in business or in the political arena, whether it is in selling a company or buying a stake in a business or raising venture capital for your company. In the last week of sessions of the MPWE 2009 at IIMB (Management Programme for Women Entrepreneurs) we had a negotiations role play for purchase/sale of a business. The participants were divided into 8 teams, 4 representing the buy side and 4 the sell side. We therefore had 4 sets of negotiations. The learnings of this were so good that I wanted…

There was a query in an earlier post in this blog: Company incorporation or partnership which was specifically related to how much starting a company would approximately cost the founders. As this is one question that is on the top of the mind of many wannabe entreprenerus, it is worth a full post and not just a response. There are actually different components to the cost, there is the initial, onetime statutory  fee, there is a recurring fee and there is also the fee you pay to an expert to help you with the registration process. The statutory fee is…

Ever year around this time, we see several women from across India converging to Bengaluru.  This is for the Summer Special @ IIMB; i.e. The Management Programme for Women Entrepreneurs (MPWE). This year there are over 130 confirmations, with participants also coming from outside the country. Registrations are still open for a few seats, for the programme which starts on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009. If interested, please look at the MPWE programme brochure at www.nsrcel.org/home/mpwe2009.pdf  for details. The Course Directors, Prof. Ganesh Prabhu and myself (Anjana Vivek) are very pleased to see this interest. I have been associated with this programme…

Many persons in Bengaluru want to set up their own venture. Are you one of them? Are you unsure about the kind of legal structure you need for your activities? Gyan, the business advisor, recently met Anil and Peter, who wanted to start a new venture. They were unclear about the benefits of setting up a company and wondered if the cost would be prohibitive.Gyan referred them to a couple of specialists who could walk them through the regulatory aspects of creating a venture and registering with the concerned regulatory authorities, based on the nature of their business and the…

Many persons talk of entrepreneurship. To some it is a fancy, to some it is a fad, to some it is a serious passion, what is it to you? Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur? I am not talking about the checklist one can fill and tick to see if one is entrepreneurial in nature. Many persons think they are entrepreneurial based on scores on paper and/or based on discussions with other entrepreneurs and attending workshops and seminars. It is one thing to see high score on inclination and aptitude for entrepreneurship; it is something else to actually…