Think big, follow your passion and set inspirational goals. This is the message that a panel of speakers that consisted of a professor at IIT Madras, an entrepreneur-turned-angel investor, an entrepreneur who sold his venture, and another one who has successfully enlarged the scope of his venture, had to convey to anyone wanting to start off on their own.

Participating in a panel discussion on ‘Crafting Success, Creating Impact’, moderated by actor Anu Hasan at TiECon Chennai 2018, R Krishnakumar, Perry L Blackshear Institute Chair Professor, IIT Madras, wanted entrepreneurs to start with a large canvas on which they should start painting slowly and go to the next level. “It is important that you are not restricted by your thoughts,” he said.

The big picture

Agreeing with this view but with a caveat, Phanindra Sama, co-founder, redBus, and Chief Innovation Officer, Telangana Government, said very often start-up founders cannot see the big picture. If they were to think about what would happen 10-20 years later, they would get bogged down. But the founders should keep their eyes open and grab any opportunity that came their way, he said. “If you want to think big, be ready to pivot,” he said, citing the examples of companies such as Paytm and Ola.

Kalpathi S Suresh, an entrepreneur-turned-angel investor, said entrepreneurs should have a goal that was inspirational and large. Many things were bound to go wrong when you start up, and there would be more of “down-days than up-days”. It was important to remember the inspirational goals on the down-days, he said.

Focus on fundamentals

S Ramakrishnan, founder and CEO, Sports Mechanics, said entrepreneurs should start off with a lot of passion and look for niche areas to scale up. Krishnakumar, who is a mentor to electric scooter manufacturing start-up Ather Energy, recalled the advice he had given Ather’s founders when they came to him with the idea. He had told them that they were not going to copy any existing scooter model, and that they would start from scratch. For any start-up to succeed, especially in the manufacturing field, the founders must focus on the fundamentals; no amount of jugaad (improvisation) would succeed, and that they must have enormous passion for engineering.

His regret was that no one looked at the manufacturing sector for start-ups, especially in a State like Tamil Nadu, which had a long history of manufacturing with clusters in different parts of the State. As an investor, Suresh said he would look at any business that could create economic value. He had come across a company that was doing something as simple and routine as painting a wall, except that it was using robots.

There were businesses that provided inordinate returns, and others, such as those in manufacturing, that gave sedate but healthy returns to investors.

However, the risks were higher in those ventures that promised great returns than in those that gave only sedate returns, he said.

Ramakrishnan pointed out that he was passionate about cricket, having played the game at club level, and when he decided to start a venture that would help in cricket coaching, he realised that there was hardly any video-based coaching.

He started off providing videographed analysis and had now pivoted to providing data-driven coaching. His venture was also engaged in improving the engagement for sports fan using the huge amount of data that was thrown up.

Sama, whose venture redBus was bought out by Naspers of South Africa a few years back, said the challenge for him in his present role was to make innovation a part of the daily conversation of everyone.

“How do we make innovation a dining table conversation so that children grow up with that in mind,” is what he is trying to figure out, he said.

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