Author: Avishek Gupta

I help drive sustainable development by financing the growth of professionally managed entrepreneurial ventures that solve key social and environmental problems. Having financed and observed over 250 ventures from close quarters, I understand the challenges that such ventures face in scaling up. I have the knowledge of process, financing and technology solutions that can help overcome those challenges. Separately, I have the experience of building businesses that finance early/growth stage companies. Most recently, I was involved with growing Caspian Debt to a full-fledged operating company from an initial 3 member fund investments team.

Characterisitics of good franchisees

  • Methodically screened agents (Implies that a fair amount of trial and error has to be done to decide upon the best fit profile of a potential franchisee operator.)
  • Strict quality monitoring and follow-up training (Standardised and exhaustive training modules )
  • Uniform branding and product mix (Centrally experimented and released based on the learnings obtained by the franchisor on the effect of tweaks on different aspects of the product mix. Implies a lot of trial and error again.)
  • Effective promotions
  • Low cost of goods achieved through scale (This is crucial. In order to ensure the quality of the finished product, it is essential to ensure that the raw material that goes in is standardised and of the same quality. The only way this can be ensured is by offering the raw materials at the least price.)
  • Stiff penalties for violating the rules (including expulsion)

Niche in life

Wrote this sometime back for my friends but thought I should put it on the blog.

When I was a kid, I was not very good at games….frankly speaking, I never had the opportunity to play many games. The only game that I ever played was football. In fact, childhood Bengal was a football academy. From Kolkata’s maidaan to the the small muddy villages, it was football allover. From the wooden spikes to the naked feet, it was football allover. From the anklets to the crepe bandages wrapped with safety pins, it was football allover. From the twisted ankles to the badly swollen shin bones, it was football all over.

Every year the city and the towns (not the villages generally because the people in the villages wouldn’t normally have enough to drape themselves) would be draped in Green and Maroon(colours of Mohunbagan club) or Red and Yellow (colours of East Bengal club), every four years the city and towns would be draped in Blue and white (colour of Argentina) or Yellow (colour of Brazil). Practically everybody was a footballer! Even if somebody did not play, HE had something to say about the game. (Frankly speaking Bengalis play a very few of the “games” on which they have a strong view).  The HE is capitalised here to point out that Bengali women were completely missing from this area of having a view on football. The women grew up attending music or dance classes, learning how to cook and getting ready to become a good marriageable “package” right from childhood. Once they are married, they concentrate on controlling the lout who happened to spend time mostly outside the house solving away all strategic worldly affairs. This lout is the husband.

By the way, all that is history now. People do not discuss football and girls are not limited to the home. Its cricket and its Mamata Banerjee.

Anyways, I was digressing a bit too much. My point was “Practically everybody was a footballer!” so finding a place in the class team, college team was always difficult. Given my physique which was several times worse (read thinner) than what you see now, football was a difficult game for me. Well, that is what people thought when they would look at me to decide whether I could join the team or not. Certain answer was a no. I figured out a strategy to ensure I was in the team because I knew that once I was in team I would give my team ample reasons to continue having me in the team. The strategy was, I said I play in the wings (a winger sticks to the right or left flank of the ground during the game).Nobody wanted to play in the wings. Everybody wanted to be in the middle. Everybody wanted to be a midfielder, a forward! But, I said I would play in the left wing. Playing in the left wing meant you’ve got to be able to kick with your left foot. I was lucky to be able to kick with both my feet. So there I was, giving my team a proposition to play in a position where nobody would play! Normally amateur football happens in the middle with everybody chasing the ball around the middle, the flanks remained empty. There lied my opportunity. I took the ball right down from the bottom and went past the midfield upto the corner of the opponents side. Nobody stopped me because every player of the opponent was stuck in the middle of the field! By the time I reached the other end, the opponent players would rush from the middle towards me in the side to prevent me from scoring. Now the middle would get empty. I simply lobbed the ball and centered it in front of my forward who would wait in front of the goal, unmanned and then a smooth header or a slow nudge saw the goal!

I scored a goal only on rare occasions but I had to adpot this weird strategy to ensure I was in the team. To ensure that I could strategically be at a place where no one else wants to be and yet have a ball!! I enjoyed my game.

The approach to the “marketplace” business model

Jason is back with another great post on market place business model. By marketplace, he refers to a platform which connects buyers and sellers who find it difficult to connect.

A few insights distilled from his post: (I must say that the full post is a MUST Read. This summary here, is not the best!)

  • The biggest problem for this kind of business is which side’s problem do you solve first? At the beginning, neither the seller or the buyer would come to you! Jason suggests, tackle the seller side first. Create the right proposition for the seller. It is easier to convince the seller to sell through you because it would anyways increase their sales. This would help you in creating an inventory, so that the buyer knows you have inventory and returns.
  • Do not automate right from the beginning. Wait for some time and find out the right things to automate. Or else, a lot of money might be wasted in automating something which may turn  out to be a wrong approach.
  • In order to get people to your site, SEO and google ads is passe, use a novel strategy like writing a useful guide or something that the chance visitor would bookmark/twitter/FB because it is genuinely useful. This would start getting eyeballs for your website!

Given the fact that my colleagues are fighting with a similar business model in different sectors. I am forced to wonder:

  • How would a platform that connects rural homestays to tourists start? What could be their “novel strategy” as mentioned by Jason? What could get more eyeballs to their website?
  • What would be novel strategy for the marketplace which connects buyers and rural artisans?
  • What would be the novel strategy for the marketplace solution which connects rural distributors of energy saving stoves with manufacturers of energy saving stoves?

Economics of Happiness

US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke talked about the Economics of Happiness in a commencement speech at the University of South Carolina on 8th May, 2010.

A few takeaways:

He moves away from the materialistic reasons of happiness as proposed by many economists and suggests the following as things that lead to happiness (off course in addition to materialistic gains):

1.) spending time with friends and family,

2.)getting engrossed in the “activity” you are involved with,

3.)recognising the fact that everything in life can not be under our control.

4.) Remember all the good that happened with you!

He also tries to answer the age old question that we often ask ” Are the people in the poorer countries less happy?” or ” Are the people in the villages less happy than the city people?”

He says that what matters is the relative possession of wealth. So he says,”If I live in a country in which most people have only one cow, and I have three cows, then I will have lots of social status and self-esteem and will thus feel happy. But if everyone around me has a luxury car, and I am hung up on status, I won’t feel very special unless I have both a luxury car and an SUV.”

He ends it off by saying something very interesting “happiness is nature’s way of telling us we are doing the right thing. True. But, by the same token, ephemeral feelings of happiness are not always reliable indicators we are on the right path. Ultimately, life satisfaction requires more than just happiness. Sometimes, difficult choices can open the doors to future opportunities, and the short-run pain can be worth the long-run gain.”

Perhaps, an effort to draw our attention to the fact that the desire to gain immediate proseperity through financial jugglery has led to a fatal crisis for all of us today. He seems to be telling us that it is prudent to postopne immediate happiness for “life satisfaction”!

Read the whole speech here.

No plan survives first touch with customers

  • The last word on startup success.
  • Why writing business plans is NOT done first. It is something different that needs to be developed first and that is – a business model.  A summary of the lessons learned is given below (copied from the original blog of Steve Blank HERE):
  • A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
  • There are no facts inside your building, so get outside and get some.
  • Draw and test the Business Model first, the Business Plan then follows.
  • Few if any investors read your business plan to see if they’re interested in your business
  • They’re a lot more interested in what you learned

Here is another article on the Financial Times (Read FT Article **). The article discusses the act of pivoting in a startup which refers to making minor changes in the original idea of a business rather than going for a completely new business altogether. It points out that though entrepreneurs start with an idea that looks perfect, it is the feedback from the customer that first triggers a pivot. The more successful you are in pivoting, better are the chances of your startup doing well. The article also discusses how along with many others Facebook and Twitter pivoted and then created history. I guess my previous article on Starbucks (Starbucked)also referred to the same without using the term pivot. I mentioned there that Starbucks didn’t start as a food service concept. Their idea was to sell coffee so that people could make it at home!

One interesting quote from Mark Suster in the FT article:

“Every entrepreneur starts with an idea that they believe makes sense. But then your customers start using your products, your competitors come out with new offerings and your partners decide to launch a similar product rather than working with you. You’re forced to pivot on a regular basis.”

For more from Mark, I suggest you follow his blog which is a must read for any entrepreneur. It talks more than just about pivoting!

** You will need to register for the FT article. Don’t worry, there is a free registration that allows you to see upto 10 articles a month. Trust me, it is a good idea to register free for that! Better still if you can go for a premium membership.

10 questions you should always ask once a month

Though the original blog article is meant for entrepreneurs (read here), I believe that a few of the questions would apply to you if you are a manager as well. (Of course, only IF your organisation gives you the liberty to take decisions and implement initiatives. 🙂 ) I have split it up into two parts. The first set applies better to the “managers” but the entrepreneurs would have the tougher job of answering both the sets! 😛

Set One:

  • In one sentence, what does your product do and who buys it?
  • In one sentence, why does someone buy your product?
  • What one thing is most responsible for preventing sales?
  • What’s one thing you could do to get more feedback from customers, potential customers, or sales you’ve lost?
  • If you were forced to hire someone today, how would you define her job such that she would contribute enough revenue to cover her expense?
  • What initiatives could be done half-assed without significant impact?
  • If you could get one solid hour of advice from a guru you respect, what would you discuss and what would be the goal of the meeting?

Set Two:

  • If you had zero revenue from now on, on what date would you run out of money?
  • If someone handed you $100,000 today, how would you spend it to maximize future profits?
  • Which of your business operations do you hate?

These are a brilliant set of questions which brings clarity of thought and clarity of thought is something which is at a great risk always when you are dealing with a highly fluid situation like building a new organisation or spearheading a new product launch.