First Session At Smarttechie Startup City – Ashish Gupta

Indiblogger – Blogging partner for the event

The indiblogger team entered the venue for the SmartTechie Startup City at 8:30 AM. The registration process was quickly done with. We walked in with our names written and pasted onto the front of our indiblogger T-shirts.

We found quite a few stalls on the way to the auditorium – all indoors.

The intro was given by the founder of SmartTechie. They are 10 years old and based out of the US. And this is the first ever StartupCity organized by SmartTechie. Nice!

Inaugral keynote – Concept to success Milestones for startups by Ashish Gupta, Managing Director – Investment Advisor, Helion Venture Partners (He was brilliant on stage. Loved the way he talked and his ideas. Obviously a high flyer who has gone through a lot to get here.)

He came down and wanted to do a small presentation and get onto some questions and answers as quickly possible. The ppt was titled Startup Evolution. Helion Ventures manage about USD 350 million across various ventures. They are work out of Bangalore and Gurgaon.

Some salient points from his conversation are given as bits and pieces below. (Any errors are mine and should be misinterpretation only)

“Not necessary to be an entrepreneur…but it’s a blast to be in one”

Risks involve hard work and deliverables, failure with high probability, won’t get fancy titles, won’t work in brand names but employability quotient grows, etc.

India is a startup – very little talent, little infrastructure, lots of optism, lots of growth, need to innovate to survive and high energy (POSITIVES)

Whatever can be made efficient will be done so and Creative folks will thrive – Significant change in dynamics – We have no choice

A startup is like a child just born. There are lots of interest and attention given.

Hardest evolutionary steps – those that requires behaviour change (e.g. – Change expense pattern, next level CEO (scaling up for a bigger organization), need to change process, need to introduce tehnology, need to change business or pricing model).

Always think of what you will need or want to be a year from today – Not what you or the company needs today. Measuring stuff helps to find if you are in the right path or if you have reached inflection.

Some rules of thumb – Focus on customer/issue, focus on continuous improvement, intellectual honesty, results matter – only for measuring (Same rules for person, family, company)

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