Known as the Father of the Pentium, Vinod Dham has seen it all. He has been an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist and is an entrepreneur all over again. This time in the online education space teaching software programming out of India to students in the US and India.

AcadGild is his latest venture in partnership with serial entrepreneur K Ganesh’s GrowthStory. In this recent interview at AcadGild’s office in Bengaluru, Dham talks about India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and the challenges ahead. Dham was one of the founders of venture capital firm Indo-US Venture Partners, which later became Kalaari Capital. He says his days as a venture capitalist are over, but he continues to be an angel investor, putting in money in ideas and ventures in the US. Edited excerpts:

What is the difference you see between entrepreneurs here and in the US?

At a fundamental level, there is no difference. An entrepreneur is someone who has an idea and passion and a burning desire to bring that idea to life. There are people here who have that. Like Kunal Bahl from Snapdeal. If you look at his company, it didn’t start as Snapdeal. He has taken so many steps because it doesn’t matter what the path is. He knows the destination. He will take all the dancing steps to get there. That is what an entrepreneur is. Doesn’t take failure.

Doesn’t get fazed by ‘oh my gosh, it didn’t work. My idea did not come about. What am I going to do now. Let us do something else.’

The only difference is the ecosystem – venture capital funding, companies going public, mergers and acquisitions, legal people who draft their agreements, deal flows and shareholder agreements – is a lot more mature in the Silicon Valley than here. Because we are only 10 years young here and they are about 40-50 years old there. You have to account for that difference. But, India is catching up quickly.

Is there a problem when ventures here have to raise funds?

The government has no role in that. The government is not restricting us to raise funds. There is zero interference. I can raise $1 or I can raise $1 billion. I will tell you where the government can help us.

All the money for venture capital comes (to India) from Mauritius because there is a treaty between the two countries. To raise money from America, why do I have to go to Mauritius, hire their accountants and then have them send the money here?

I am told that some companies are trying to go public in America rather than here. It is hard. Why shouldn’t we be able to do whatever we want to do?

The third thing is…we have 50 people here. God forbid if something goes wrong, the idea doesn’t take off, we don’t get more money, we can’t carry on, we need to shut down. It shouldn’t take me three years to shut down AcadGild. It should take me three days to shut it down. If I had 30,000 people, then I can see. We are a socialist country. The government needs to think about their livelihood. I can see some involvement. But a small start-up?

Most of them fail. If they have to take many years to shut down and follow the same, arcane labour laws that are applied to a steel company, that is not right.

You mentioned the money coming in through Mauritius. What exactly would you want the government to do?

Have a direct tax treaty with America. American money can come here. This money can go there. That is a win-win situation for both countries.

Ninety per cent of the money that is coming in venture capital is from America.

At least with that country, which is highly regulated, why not open up and as a start create some relationship that allows both countries to do business with each other in a more direct manner without going in a detour.

Is it a problem that most of the start-ups here are in the services business and not product companies?

Yes and no.

Every country has to start from where its base is. The base in India was services, both in terms of talent and in terms of need. The needs in India are not the same as the needs in America because the enterprises here have not gone that advanced. There is no Oracle, there is no Microsoft and Amazon and thousands of other companies that need cloud computing and software and data analytics and deep business intelligence and things like that.

Here, the infrastructure is so poor that it is easier for me to sit at home and order groceries or order retail things that Snapdeal or Flipkart sell. Most of the initial innovation has occurred in those platforms. How to make payments? How to collect cash payments? In America nobody carries cash. It is all credit cards. Here it is all cash. That system of America will never work here. But these kids have figured out new ways of collecting money and depositing money. It is innovation for India, for Indians, the Indian way.

Which is the best way to do it. We don’t need to copy America and what Americans do, although we should learn from them. We should do things for India, the Indian way.

There are seeds of product, intellectual property-based companies starting on data analytics, in cloud computing, in drones… there are half a dozen companies right here in Bengaluru, which are doing work that could be of global use. Those things could be sold anywhere. Always keep in mind that we are 10 years young and America is 50 years old, in this particular regard.

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