TIECon Southeast 2006-A Diverse Mix

for making Church’s a front runner in spite of tough competition from KFC and its former parent Popeye’s. Five percent of the employees of Church’s world wide come from South Asia and the largest franchise is owned by an uneducated Pakistani who began as a dishwasher and now does 100 million dollars worth of business. “Tell me anyone who does that without education?”

To make things happen at Church’s meant not staying a steady course.” You’ll be eaten alive,” said Agadi referring to the tough competition from KFC and Popeye’s. Church’s prime base is the inner city –its prime target the Hispanic and African American community. Agadi’s focus has always been to think clearly about the destination and operation point and to travel from one point to another. “Also we don’t think what can we do, but what we can’t do and go from there. It’s important to define value proposition-in Church’s case it is great chicken at a great price.” Agadi travels to stores extensively. When he hires people the focus is to see not how they will handle Church’s chicken but how well they handle life. “Recruiting the right people is the most critical element. Also keep things simple and speedy.”
 

Chand Akkineni, honoring Harsh Agadi CEO CHURCH'S CHICKEN

Dr. Jagdish Sheth followed next. His presentations are exciting because he always gives such a positive twist to the way he looks at life and business. Referring to Agadi’s Pakistani entrepreneur Dr. Sheth bought home the point that, “the most unique characteristic of entrepreneurship is that it’s universal.” He then focused on the fact that there are exciting entrepreneurship opportunities

in India as Indian gets globally integrated. India will advance through global acquisitions, as is visible by the activity going on in major industrial houses like Tatas, Birlas and Reliance industries. The most business opportunities in India will be in the domestic market, the defense sector, organized retailing, education, health care and wellness, wealth creation and preservation, value add R&D and Design, infrastructure and supply chain and travel and tourism.

Dr. Sheth reiterated that while the 20th century was driven by ideology and advanced nations, the 21st century will be driven by markets and emerging nations

Dr. Sheth’s presentation was followed by the first of the Trail Blazers panel moderated by his son entrepreneur Rajen Sheth where Mitesh Shah CEO Noble Investments and Richard House Founder and President Compucredit, shared their personal stories, and brought home the point that while both opportunities and challenges come with the territory of entrepreneurship, a good entrepreneur can always create success. Success lay in new ideas, and new knowledge; the prime examples are Google who has changed the way people thought and existed by providing virtual memory-and Wal-Mart a company that changed the whole supply chain management. Entrepreneurship was not a matter of chance but a matter of choice-where you understand your industry, build a platform and then take the risk. Several thoughts about how to run a successful business were shared. House said the best thing they did was to work with a small team where everyone knew their role but its tough when people don’t plan for success. Again to get emotionally attached to employees in the second phase of success often stopped progress. Even if it is tough, you have to bring in more qualified people above your loyal team members if you need better talent than them. The focus also should be to invest and innovate better than the competition.

The second panel dealt with the emerging markets in life sciences-a huge area of investment and opportunities. Vipin Garg, the CEO, Tranzyme Pharma, said that looking at his own journey he felt the most important thing he possessed was his ability to survive the tough times.” If you have to be in the drug discover line, you must be able to change course as data comes in.” He added that the main challenge today is the cost of developing drugs which has gone up significantly in the past 10 years and the failure rate is very high, so diversifying strategy was key.

He was followed by Tom Keesling, President IndUShealth, who talked about the new big investment being made in India- of uninsured people going to India to get major surgeries done at a fraction of a cost. “We have 46 million noninsured people in America who cannot afford medical treatment here, but they can afford it in India.” While medical tourism where people would travel to India has been happening for over a thousand years, Americans have just started discovering the economy of doing it now.

There were discussions on industry trends in engineering off shoring, the fact that India can benefit from the pharma industry if it focuses on long term rather than providing a service, making a quick buck and leaving, the state of the VC community in the south east, how to choose the right VC for your business idea, intellectual property laws, patents, how viable is outsourcing to India by different industries to name a few.

It was felt that the Atlanta VC community has taken hits from the capital available locally. There is also less VC availability in GA because there are lesser role models in the South east.
 

Anil Khatod	Jay Chaudhry	Kris Klaus
(Photo credit Kavita Chhibber)

According to Anil Khatod, the marketing angle and execution on ground were key to attracting VC funding. “We often see some great ideas and technology but a total lack of understanding on the sales and marketing angle,” said Khatod and added, ‘Keep business plans short and get a trusted source to contact the VCs to look at the product.” Another key point was that entrepreneurs needed to cultivate other successful entrepreneurs. Usually VCs look at referred business ideas. The number of unreferred idea they look at is miniscule. The key was choosing the right VC, because both sides have to see how well they work together in terms of coachability, flexibility, and issues of control. If you want to own most of your company a VC may not be a good idea, and not every company needs a VC. The panelists reiterated that while looking for funding from VCs or angel investors look for those who are aligned with the specific kind of business you are doing- be it bio-tech, or a software product. Many VCs specialize in certain businesses, and if you took some one who does not understand your business, it may result in them being unsympathetic with what you do which will lead to decisions that may not be compatible with what you want.

It was also pointed out by the panelists that things must be put in place efficiently. Know what you are getting into-the financial aspect, what is the evaluation, how big is the pie at the end of the day, downside protection, and check what the deal will look like five years from now.

Many panelists felt it was easier to do business with entrepreneurs in USA as compared to India as many family owned Indian enterprises find it hard to relinquish control. Even giving out 10 percent of the company to investors is sacrilege for them.

Jay Chaudhry felt that it was always good to get into something where you had the first mover advantage and he personally went a lot by gut. He also added” no matter how smart you are, take advice but still remember that all business is a gamble. You win some you lose some. Also know when to cut loose instead of going at it forever, if things are not moving in the right direction”. He made an intriguing observation that people who make a lot of money lose the fire.

Kris Klaus said when he started out he didn’t sell in GA the first year. All his customers were on the internet as he went online and bounced ideas off the internet community.

In response to a question about the paranoia that many entrepreneurs feel about sharing their ideas for the fear of having it copied, Klaus said, “There is nothing out there that is original. Its just a matter of putting something together and coming up with the right execution. If you don’t share the idea and get funding, that idea will go nowhere. The bigger challenge is to find the right people to execute the idea and not that someone will copy your idea. More ideas die in obscurity than are acted upon.”


Bijan Khosravi added that team work is crucial and getting the right people to work with you is key-you will see the difference instantly. One bad apple in a leadership position will impact the entire team and in turn your productivity and decisions will be adversely affected. Its tough to fire a co-founder or a key leader because of the emotional aspect but the fact remains that most mediocre companies lacks Key A players.

At the end of the day, however said Jay, nothing matters without sales. Ninety percent companies failed because of lack of sales. Investing the right amount at the right time is also key.


Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

The evening session was a banquet featuring Vivek Wadhwa’s second talk of the day as the Tech wizard who had talked about outsourcing engineering during the morning session now talked about his journey from being a technocrat to a Bollywood film producer and the joys and travails of venturing in to the world of celluloid. It was followed by a thought provoking talk by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. The key message of his talk was the significance of being in control of yourself, because you cannot control others. When there are no issues within, the external issues are easier to handle.
The talk was followed by dinner, an Indian dance performance and a rib tickling performance by ventriloquist par excellence David Householder.

The relentless hard work put in by Chand Akkineni, Babs Sachdeva and the rest of the team was evident in the excellent turn out and the diversity of discussion, as well as the first time participation from TIE Carolinas and TIE-Florida. Dr Jag Sheth appreciated the fact that for once the event was not totally IT-centric and he hoped that there will be a continued focus on diversity in entrepreneurship and discussions among the invited speakers in the future as well.