Knowledge@Wharton -- Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Can YES Bank, India's Youngest and Fastest-Growing Bank, Be a Model for Newer Entrants?

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:26:16 EST

Banking is fundamentally a simple business: You borrow money at a low rate of interest and lend it out at a higher rate. And yet so many financial institutions -- in India and across the globe -- have proved unsustainable. YES Bank, one of the beneficiaries of the Reserve Bank of India's new licenses in 2004, seems to have bucked the trend and has an ambitious plan for growth. But the institution's exposure to some troubled companies and sectors could be a roadblock, observers say, and YES will have to become more aggressive and react even faster to gain a foothold on some of its larger competitors.

Snapdeal's Kunal Bahl on Creating a 'Discovery Platform' for Indian Consumers

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:42:11 EST

In less than two years, Snapdeal, a group discounting site in India, has grown to become one of the leading e-commerce sites in the country. According to co-founder Kunal Bahl, deals are only an entry point into the customer’s life. The vision, he says, is to build a brand that participates in consumers' lives every day, across product and service categories.

Ignighter�s Adam Sachs: Making an Impact on India's Dating -- and Start-up -- Scene

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:30:37 EST

India wasn't even on Adam Sachs's radar when he and two friends founded Ignighter, a dating site that allows users to organize group dates. But the site quickly attracted the most traffic from India and other Asian countries, where one-on-one dates are still not the norm and young people going out in coed groups is more widely accepted. Ignighter has now turned its focus to India and recently set up an office there. In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton, Sachs discussed the company's growth plans and how it is negotiating the ins and outs of navigating India's cultural landscape.

Husk Power Systems: Generating Electricity from Waste for India�s Rural Poor

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:56:51 EST

Entrepreneurs Gyanesh Pandey and Ratnesh Yadav have designed a system that generates electricity out of rice husk, a waste material. Their company, Husk Power Systems, is providing power to more than 35,000 rural households in Bihar, a state where around 85% of the population does not have access to reliable electricity. Pandey and Yadav are hoping to light up one million households by 2014. Experts are bullish about the company, but warn that scaling up operations will not be easy.

Stylitics: Mining Data from Fashion

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:42:41 EST

Would you trust a computer to design your wardrobe? The co-founders of Stylitics, a start-up that combines fashion with the burgeoning field of analytics, hope the answer is yes. But the company's strategy is as much about attracting corporate clients as it is about building a community of fashionistas. Stylitics employs an analytics platform to track and gain insights from users' clothing choices and purchase behaviors. With the right mix of users, the firm is hoping to become an alternative to the fragmented and often out-of-date market research that retailers have traditionally used to identify trends.

In Kashmir, Entrepreneurs and Educators Preach Optimism and Self-Reliance

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:10:02 EST

Violence has long plagued India's troubled Kashmir Valley. But a new crop of local entrepreneurs and educators are working to reach a generation of young Kashmiris hoping to be a part of India's remarkable growth story. There remains a strong local belief that government jobs are the best in providing stability. Yet a recent report found many young Kashmiris are interested in entrepreneurship, and there is rising interest in pursuing an MBA. One entrepreneur, Abdul Hamid Bhat, is on a mission to promote private enterprise and reduce an over-reliance on the government sector.

India Equity�s Steven Wisch: Creating a Business Environment with the Best of Both Worlds

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:10:02 EST

During his first stint in India, Steven Wisch, founder and managing partner of private equity firm India Equity Partners, was struck by the quality of the entrepreneurs there, even though at the time it was “a very tough place to do business.” In a conversation with India Knowledge@Wharton, Wisch discussed the lingering challenges and frustrations of the Indian market and what Indian companies and managers have to offer the world.

Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Succession: India's Changing Business Landscape

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:05:18 EST

With so many Indian multinationals increasing operations outside the country, many in the business community are asking if India is preparing to remain competitive in the changing economic ecosystem. Does India have the resources, structures and innovation it needs to meet the challenges of the coming decade? What are the opportunities for first-time entrepreneurs in the country? At the 15^th Wharton India Economic Forum, leaders of global corporations and first-time entrepreneurs discussed these and other questions, offering advice to those hoping to make their mark.

NextWealth: Creating a Next Wave in India's IT and BPO Industry

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:19:22 EST

The biggest challenge facing the Indian IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is a continued supply of trained manpower. NextWealth Entrepreneurs believes that the solution lies in partnering with local entrepreneurs to create employment opportunities in the small cities and rural areas that have a large resource pool. Experts agree with this strategy, but caution that there will be operational challenges and note that convincing customers will not be easy.

KSK Power's Sethuraman Kishore: 'Local Power Developers Are in the Lead'

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:47:16 EST

London-listed KSK Power Ventur is a power plant developer with extensive business operations in India, headed by Sethuraman Kishore and K.A. Sastry. The company is in the business of developing, operating and maintaining power projects for major local and global industrial houses. Kishore, a speaker at the recent Wharton India Economic Forum, feels that Western entrepreneurs wait for everything to be cut and dried before signing up for Indian power projects. The result has been that while the country was expecting strategic investors from abroad, only financial investors have come in, says Kishore in this interview with India Knowledge@Wharton.

InMobi�s Naveen Tewari: Mobile Internet Will Be the Largest Medium Ever

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:11:14 EST

Just four years after Naveen Tewari founded InMobi, the Bangalore-based company has become the world’s second-largest network after Google, delivering ads to 315 million mobile phone users in more than 140 countries. In this interview with India Knowledge@Wharton, Tewari discusses how starting InMobi in emerging markets in the East enabled the company to capture large market shares and facilitated its progress to the more developed markets of the West.

Avalon Group's Aboobaker Moosa on Growth and Entrepreneurship in South Africa

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:29:28 EST

South Africa-based Avalon Group is the country's oldest independent cinema exhibition, distribution and entertainment business. With 33 screens and more on the way, and around 10% of national box office collections, the 72-year-old company has grown since the mid-1990s after being virtually decimated under the apartheid regime. Managing director Aboobaker Moosa, 38, has expanded Avalon into film and television production, in addition to acquiring content rights for international programs. An ethnic Indian, Moosa spoke to India Knowledge@Wharton about the problems Avalon has faced in the past and the business opportunities in present-day South Africa.

India's Hippocampus Writes a New Chapter for Children's Libraries

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:56:56 EST

During a consulting stint in the United States in the late 1990s, IT engineer Umesh Malhotra, his wife and young son were drawn to the local public library and its well-stocked children's section. When they could find nothing like it upon returning to Bangalore, Malhotra was inspired to set up an exclusive children's library in India. Over the years, his venture, Hippocampus, has partnered with other organizations to promote reading in India and in other developing countries. Malhotra is also looking to transform the children's sections of public libraries -- but he has to overcome establishment inertia and master a delicate pricing model.

Comat Technologies: Leveraging a Rural Network to Promote Financial Inclusion

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:22:21 EST

Bangalore-based social enterprise and e-governance firm Comat Technologies has built a strong rural network over the past few years. As a partner in the central government's Unique Identification program, it now has the opportunity to further increase its reach. Backed by a new investor, the Commonwealth Inclusive Growth Services, Comat wants to strengthen its portfolio by adding financial inclusion to its repertoire. Experts say that Comat is on the right track, but they warn that there could be challenges ahead.

Flingo's Ashwin Navin: Tapping into the Emerging Market of Web-enabled TVs

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:48:03 EST

The latest cutting-edge technologies for consumers' living rooms are television sets and Blu-ray players that connect to the Internet. Flingo, a San Francisco-based software firm, has found a market within that space by building interactive applications that allow content providers and advertisers to stream their offerings to web-connected devices. In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton, Ashwin Navin, Flingo's co-founder and CEO, predicts that phone and cable companies will soon join in as the market grows for web-enabled TV applications.

Breaking the Gender Barrier: Vinita Gupta on Creating More Women Technology Entrepreneurs

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:48:03 EST

Technology is one realm where women could break gender barriers and flourish as entrepreneurs, says Vinita Gupta, a prominent Indian-American businesswoman in California's Silicon Valley. She is best known as the first Indian-American woman to take a company public, and now sits on the boards of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and the Indian School of Business. In an interview, Gupta identifies social, cultural and psychological obstacles in both the United States and India that prevent women from becoming entrepreneurs, and shares her insights on what must change to unleash their potential.

iTeleport's Jahanzeb Sherwani on the Ins and Outs of Apps

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:24:29 EST

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jahanzeb Sherwani designed an application to control his computer from his iPhone while working as a doctoral student in Pakistan. The business potential in that personal endeavor seeded iTeleport, a company that creates programs for use on the iPhone, the iPad and the iPod Touch. Sherwani shares his assessment of the opportunities and challenges ahead for the mobile applications development sector with India Knowledge@Wharton.

Dataguise's Manmeet Singh: 'Masking' Data from Internal and External Threats

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:47:11 EST

One of the biggest challenges for organizations is to ensure that their data is secure. In a discussion with India Knowledge@Wharton, Manmeet Singh, who co-founded data security company Dataguise in 2007, points out that while most companies focus on external threats to their data, a bigger threat resides within the firms themselves. Employees, Singh says, can easily walk away with data if it is not adequately secured.

Lattice Engines' Shashi Upadhyay: Betting Big on Data

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:26:05 EST

Lattice Engines integrates internal and external data and then uses predictive analysis to present the most relevant information to its customers' sales teams. In a discussion with India Knowledge@Wharton, Shashi Upadhyay, who co-founded the company with Kent McCormick and Andrew Schwartz in 2006, says that with the growth of the Internet, people are now increasingly realizing that better data leads to better insights into what consumers want -- and this in turn enables companies to use their sales and marketing investments more effectively.

Energy Inside's Vinay Gidwaney: Promoting Well-being Through the Power of the Web

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:39:12 EST

U.S.-based entrepreneur Vinay Gidwaney and his brother Veer have been forming software companies since high school. Their latest venture, Energy Inside, focuses on health and well-being. The company's first product, "Pepfly," works through online mediums like Facebook and Twitter, and offers services that fall in the space between prescription antidepressants and traditional self-help books. Gidwaney spoke with India Knowledge@Wharton about the intersection of the Internet and personal well-being.