RSS
Email
SMS
Venture Intelligence summit - Internet Review
(Rate this article)
Loading ...Email It!
Venture intelligence summit on Internet and Mobile was held last week. Many well known faces in the internet industry had graced the occassion.
The summit started with Internet and speaking on internet was a panel of elite internet entrepreneurs and Vc’s as well.
The panel included Murugavel J, CEO of BharatMatrimony, Ashish Gupta MD of HelionVC, Anurag Dod Founder and CEO of Guruji.com, Avnish Bajaj MD Matrix partners India and Ashwin Damera CEO Travelguru.com. The panel was moderated by Alok Kejriwal, Chairman of Contest2win.com.
The first session was on "Internet - Is the boom for real?"
Murugavel from Bharatmatrimony spoke about how in the 2000’s boom time the profitable companies got funded and how established business models like jobs, marimony were chased by VC’s. He felt this time around the boom is fior real but there is a need to for more offline services to become business online. e spoke of ticketing services for movies and concerts as an example.
Ashish Gupta from HelionVC expressed his concern that the valuation in Inda were pegged a US levels. Also he felt that exit valuations were not pegged which created an inflated valuation scenario for current startups. He reminded everyone that we need to tone down the volume of the boom but at the same time he reassured that the internet was here to stay. He said that if people are willing to spend time they would be willing to spend money online as well. He felt that indians just needed to figure out how to convert traffic into revenue.
Anurag Dod the CEO and Founder of Guruji.com spoke about teh significance on online ecommerce and the number of online trasactions as a important factor for the boom in the Indian Internet scene.
Avnish Bajaj of Matrix Partners stated that in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when the VC money came into india the window of opportunity for indian internet entrepreneurs was short lived. As in the US the VC money was around from 1995 to 2001 in India it was around from 1999 to 2001 hence many companies which could have been funded did not get funding. He felt that there are not many compelling businesses in India though the business models and exits have improved from a Venture capital point fo view.
Travelguru CEO, Ashwin Damera started off in a cautious tone asking the question as to "How many internet companies are making money?". He also questioned the scalability of internet businesses given the fact that the number of power internet users in India is still low. He also clarified that not all the so called internet businesses are completely online. He stated that Travelguru itself does 30% of its business through phone calls that come in.
Though most of the panelists were bullish there was a sense of caution in the way they spoke about the boom which could probably mean that this time around until and unless the fundamentals of a startup aren’t great VC’s wont pump in money which is good in more ways that one.
To summarize the session Alok Kejriwal from Contest2win said the following
- There is a need for differentiated products and services on the Internet
- Indian startups should look at Indian valuations rather than US valuations
- While spending on marketing one should be careful as marketing can be a killer.
- Longterm thinking helps you in building your venture into a sustainable and profitable one.
- In india the cost of setting up an internet business is much much lower hence the entry point is much more cost effective.
Loading ...
Leave a Comment and Follow the replies through Post Comment Feed