3 ms·

A few questions - 1) Do you take a stake in the new formed company ? 2) Why are you offer a stipend ? It's not that expensive living in India, and a dot-com

by ptm 19y ago

A few questions - 1) Do you take a stake in the new formed company ? 2) Why are you offer a stipend ? It's not that expensive living in India, and a dot-com startup doesn't require any funds really. 3) The real strengths of YC, as others have observed, are mentors and a hacker culture. How would you offer that ? 4) Is an IIM the right place to incubate ? 5) A YC like incubator does best in a place which already has a thriving hacker / entrepreneurial culture. Gujarat, BTW, is perhaps the most entrepreneurial state in India. 6) You say that "IIM Ahmedabad students shall work closely with the teams to develop a sound business plan". Is that not a little insulting to suggest that hackers can only hack :) ? After all they are the only ones who understand their product, and can possibly form a business plan.

kunalupadhyay 19y ago
Lets not stretch our imaginations too much. We are trying to provide help to hackers with no selfish motives ! With all due respect, our aim is not to belittle the hackers - we respect them and the whole spirit behind the program is to actually encourage them to start-up. Our interaction with a lot of tech start-ups (by tech i don't just mean IT) suggests that often the failure is rarely in development of product - it's often in the ability to understand the market and to penetrate it. We might be mistaken, but we feel that IIMA grads can do a good job on that. A good techie+MBA make a better team than an IIMA grad alone or a techie alone does. Equity: We are a not-for-profit entity and don't plan to take equity at this stage - if we decide to provide additional funding to these start-ups we might. Stipend: Yes, India is cheap. However our target audience is students and young IT professionals - the stipend is a sweetener. You get to work on your idea without having to think about how your expenses get paid. (Indian students typically don't take up RA/TAship in their universities and depend heavily on parental income for their education. So we are trying to provide them with a tension-free environment! Ahh, some would still believe it is a jail uh!!) YC Model: We can't be a YC - if we are trying to be we are probably mistaken. Our aim is to be a group which is trying to make a difference to say the least. There have been no Google or Skype coming out of India - but there have been the Naukri.com and the Makemytrip.coms which are some of the more successful names in the Indian dot-com scenario. If you think that the founders of these can add some value, yes mentors would be there. We'll have regular mentoring and weekly networking dinners where you should expect a few successful entrepreneurs/VCs/investors to be around. We are beginners in this and would love to learn on how we could do this better. IIM/Gujarat - the right place: Its at least a start to make the YCombinator culture more popular in India. Hopefully someone else - in the right city and right environment would do a better job. We'd love to see that happen. Not too sure if IIM is the best place - what else is? Are they ready to do it? We've got the resources to help the budding entrepreneurs - so we are trying. Gujarat, may be quite entrepreneurial, but there are very few hackers around. So we don't limit ourselves to Gujarat.
- msfthater 19y ago
  Good luck at your experiment. I think it is great that you are trying something. You ask an interesting question though - MBA + Techies > Techies. I am not sure. Most of us look at the sloanies as leeches although they did help me a little in defining the market for my project.
- ptm 19y ago
  By we, do you mean CIIE / IIM ? In any case, Best of luck ! P.S. I hope you keep updating the blog.

by ptm 19y ago

kunalupadhyay 19y ago

Lets not stretch our imaginations too much. We are trying to provide help to hackers with no selfish motives ! With all due respect, our aim is not to belittle the hackers - we respect them and the whole spirit behind the program is to actually encourage them to start-up. Our interaction with a lot of tech start-ups (by tech i don't just mean IT) suggests that often the failure is rarely in development of product - it's often in the ability to understand the market and to penetrate it. We might be mistaken, but we feel that IIMA grads can do a good job on that. A good techie+MBA make a better team than an IIMA grad alone or a techie alone does. Equity: We are a not-for-profit entity and don't plan to take equity at this stage - if we decide to provide additional funding to these start-ups we might. Stipend: Yes, India is cheap. However our target audience is students and young IT professionals - the stipend is a sweetener. You get to work on your idea without having to think about how your expenses get paid. (Indian students typically don't take up RA/TAship in their universities and depend heavily on parental income for their education. So we are trying to provide them with a tension-free environment! Ahh, some would still believe it is a jail uh!!) YC Model: We can't be a YC - if we are trying to be we are probably mistaken. Our aim is to be a group which is trying to make a difference to say the least. There have been no Google or Skype coming out of India - but there have been the Naukri.com and the Makemytrip.coms which are some of the more successful names in the Indian dot-com scenario. If you think that the founders of these can add some value, yes mentors would be there. We'll have regular mentoring and weekly networking dinners where you should expect a few successful entrepreneurs/VCs/investors to be around. We are beginners in this and would love to learn on how we could do this better. IIM/Gujarat - the right place: Its at least a start to make the YCombinator culture more popular in India. Hopefully someone else - in the right city and right environment would do a better job. We'd love to see that happen. Not too sure if IIM is the best place - what else is? Are they ready to do it? We've got the resources to help the budding entrepreneurs - so we are trying. Gujarat, may be quite entrepreneurial, but there are very few hackers around. So we don't limit ourselves to Gujarat.

msfthater 19y ago
Good luck at your experiment. I think it is great that you are trying something. You ask an interesting question though - MBA + Techies > Techies. I am not sure. Most of us look at the sloanies as leeches although they did help me a little in defining the market for my project.
ptm 19y ago
By we, do you mean CIIE / IIM ? In any case, Best of luck ! P.S. I hope you keep updating the blog.