THE FUTURE AHEAD - ONLINE SHOPPING

Guys get ready we are going shopping... Dress up.. Switch on your Laptops.. and get out your Credit cards..

Nearly 60% of the online users in India visited retail sites in November, 2011, with the number of online shoppers increasing by 18% compared to last year. India is also taking a liking for coupon sites, with 16.5% of online users visiting that category.

Brands are also making sure that their sales increase through online shopping. Indians, who were quite skeptical about online transactions, have welcomed these changes. In addition, e-commerce portals have attracted huge funds from VCs. Food and groceries can also be ordered online nowadays. Recently,Domino’s said that they plan to make India their premier e-commerce hub. This change has been spearheaded by sites like flipkart and makemytrip. Flipkart expects a massive increase in their sales in the coming year. Coupon sites have also taken off quite well in India. Snapdeal and MyDala have attracted a lot of customers to buy coupons and get exclusive discounts on many deals. This also means that online retailers need to adopt effective marketing and pricing strategy for their goods.

 The retail category saw 27.2 million visits in November, with the coupons subcategory growing by a staggering629%. Among the websites that Indian netizens visited, amazon sites took a lion’s share with 14.7%. The most visited online retail websites were Flipkart, Homeshop18, Naaptol, Bookmyshow, Myantra, etc. In the same month, 7.6 million Indians visited coupon sites.

The online retail industry is set to grow 70 billion rupees by 2015. Most of the e-retailers have also introduced cash on delivery to ease Indians transition from physical shopping to online shopping. Brands like Shopper’s Stop and Futurebazaar have also taken the leap to revamp their online presence. In this holiday season, sales are bound to increase. All these figures point to the fact that Indians are becoming click happy and are slowly but steadily warming to shopping online. This heralds in a plethora of changes for the retail industry who now have to look at various ways to attract Indian netizens.

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CREDIT RATING – WHAT IS IT & WHAT’S THE PROCESS

While having a discussion with few of my friends who have initially started their own ventures, one of them asked me “How do banks or financial institutions calculate Credit Rating?”

Just thought sharing it with all of you…

Credit Rating means an assessment made from credit-risk evaluation, translated into a current opinion as on a specific date on the quality of a specific debt security issued or on obligation undertaken by an enterprise in terms of the ability and willingness of the obligator to meet principal and interest payments on the rated debt instrument in a timely manner.

1) Request from issuer and analysis – A company approaches a rating agency for rating a specific security. A team of analysts interact with the company’s management and gathers necessary information. Areas covered are: historical performance, competitive position, business risk profile, business strategies, financial policies and short/long term outlook of performance. The team of analysts makes an assessment of the issuer’s prospects in the light of information available from management. Also factors such as industry in which the issuer operates, its competitors and markets are taken into consideration.

2) Rating Committee – On the basis of information obtained and assessment made the team of analysts present a report to the Rating Committee. The issuer is not allowed to participate in this process as it is an internal evaluation of the rating agency. The nature of credit evaluation depends on the type of information provided by the issuer.

3) Communication to management and appeal – The Rating decision is communicated to the issuer and then supporting the rating is shared with the issuer. If the issuer disagrees, an opportunity of being heard is given to him. Issuers appealing against a rating decision are asked to submit relevant material information. The Rating Committee reviews the decision although such a review may not alter the rating. The issuer may reject a rating and the rating score need not be disclosed to the public.

4) Pronouncement of the rating – If the rating decision is accepted by the issuer, the rating agency makes a public announcement of it.

5) Monitoring of the assigned rating – The rating agencies monitor the on-going performance of the issuer and the economic environment in which it operates. All ratings are placed under constant watch. In cases where no change in rating is required, the rating agencies carry out an annual review with the issuer for updating of the information provided.

6) Rating Watch – Based on the constant scrutiny carried out by the agency it may place a rated instrument on Rating Watch. The rating may change for the better or for the worse. Rating Watch is followed by a full scale review for confirming or changing the original rating. If a corporate which has issued a 5 year 8% debenture merges with another corporate or acquires another corporate, it may lead to the listing of the specified debenture rating under this policy.

7) Confidentiality of information – As the information provided by the issuers is very sensitive in nature; the rating agencies are required to keep them strictly confidential and cannot use such information for any other purpose.

8) Rating Credibility – The rating agencies follow a thorough and transparent evaluation so as to lend credibility to their findings. The policies followed are:

                    i.            Clear and Specific ideas for a rating score.

                  ii.            Rationale and Sensitiveness behind the ratings being made public.

                iii.            Publication of the limitations of rating, adequacy of information and validity of the rating score.

                iv.            Limiting dependence on information from third parties viz auditors, trustees, consultants, experts.

                  v.            Not carrying out a rating exercise on an unsolicited basis.

                vi.            Withdrawing the ratings after expiration of the tenure and following a strict policy of not disclosing the rejected ratings except when required.

9) Rating Coverage – Ratings are not limited to specific instruments. They also include public utilities; financial institutions; transport; infrastructure and energy projects; Special Purpose Vehicles; domestic subsidiaries of foreign entities. Structured ratings are given to MNCs based on guarantees or Letters of Comfort and Standby Letters of Credit issued by the banks. The rating agencies have also launched Corporate Governance Ratings with emphasis on quality of disclosure standards and the extent to which regulatory obligations have been complied with.

10) Rating Scores – A score is given on the basis of the set parameters.

Social Media is a Boon to Startups Who Do It Right

Many writers have outlined the critical success factors for product companies, like sell every unit at a profit, patent the design, and continuous product improvement. But recently I was asked about success factors for services startups, and I quickly realized that there is very little published to help the thousands of startups that fall in this category.

The distinction between product companies and services companies is easy to see. Products are tangible and can be consumed now or later, while services are intangible and have no shelf life. A product business can usually be scaled with minimal people, which can lead to enormous profits and “making money while you sleep.” Scaling services means cloning yourself.

Obviously we can find many critical success factors, like finding and retaining high-value customers, which apply to companies that are product centric or services centric. Here are a few which I believe are at least most relevant and important to the services arena:

1.     Do what you know and what you love. If your business offers a service, like marketing or management consulting, you are the product. If you or any of your partners really don’t have the credentials, the commitment or the interest, you won’t succeed. Customers don’t like people who don’t show their passion and love for the job.

2.     Make sure your service is innovative. Being the low-cost commodity level service provider is not a recipe for success. It’s hard to make up for a low margin by increasing your volume of work. You need to demonstrate innovative approaches, more knowledge, more productivity and superior results to get the references you need.

3.     Networking and relationships. No expert or consultant can know everything they need to know. That’s why it is just as important that you can fill in the gaps by having the right relationship with people to back you up. Networking is the way to stay current yourself and nurture those relationships.

4.     Clearly communicate the vision, mission, and values. It’s hard to “touch and feel” services ahead of time, to see if you are buying what you expected. Thus it’s up to you to communicate effectively what you are about, to customers as well as your own team.

5.     Attract and retain the highly skilled and motivated people. Services people need to hit the ground running. Customers don’t like to see you learning on the job or outsourcing. Every partner and employee can kill your success potential in a heartbeat, so don’t take shortcuts on your hiring and training practices.

6.     Define and document the service process you sell. You can’t measure, scale, or patent a service process that is not clearly documented. Even if your service is artisan based, like commercial photography or interior design, the principles, vision, and style need to be clearly communicated to your team as well as your customers.

7.     Create and maintain the highest level of customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is very important for all companies, but it is everything for a services company. You don’t have tangible product items which can be compared for quality and cost in the value proposition.

In reality, every company has a services business component, if nothing more than customer service. Thus these are the critical success factors that apply to every company, rather than the ones you typically see for product companies. In addition, the statistics show that over half of new startups, perhaps as high as 75%, provide services only (no product).

Another reality is that angel investors and venture capital groups almost never invest in a services-only company. Their perspective is that these entrepreneurs need only to sell themselves, but shouldn’t need capital up front for product development or manufacturing.

That’s another reason that your services business is all about you, and what you bring to the table for skills, resources, and customers. In essence, you are the ultimate critical success factor for your business. Make it happen.

8 Key Elements Make Your Business Transformative

Every entrepreneur has an idea for transforming a market with innovative new technology, or transforming society with a new process. But unfortunately, most of these ideas fail at the execution level, or are not truly innovative. Entrepreneurs who have been really transformative, like Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, seemed to know how to deal with all the right elements.

Jeffrey A. Harris, in his new book “Transformative Entrepreneurs,” provides examples of key elements of transformative ideas and leadership abilities that separate the winners from the losers. I found his observations, like the following, to be inspirational for those of us chasing an entrepreneurial dream:

1. It’s all about the people. Ideas have to be implemented well to change a market, or the world. Good implementation requires a plan, and a great plan and great operational decisions come from great people. That’s why investors look for entrepreneurs who have true grit, dogged persistence, and a disdain for the status quo.
2. Seek innovation that begets invention. It doesn’t always work the other way around. According to a recent MIT study, only about 10% of patents granted in the United States have any meaningful commercial importance and less than one percent are of seminal importance. True business titans deliver both invention and innovation.
3. Find enough venturesome capital. Nearly all new businesses aspiring to reach meaningful scale require some sort of outside funding to finance a competitive growth trajectory. The objective must be to get sufficient capital, with experienced and motivated counsel, to make the venture succeed.
4. Create a formidable and durable business model. Your business model is your value proposition. “Free” sounds like a great model, but it doesn’t imply value. Look for customer-focused value creation. Make your business model your competitive differentiation, like Fred Smith with Federal Express, or Ingvar Kamprad with IKEA.
5. Grab the next-mover advantage. First-movers have an initial advantage, but this position is fraught with risk, and often comes with a high price. Herb Kelleher, who started Southwest Airlines, wasn’t the first in the airline business, but he saw the need for low-cost short hauls, with exemplary customer service, and transformed the industry.
6. Failure is an option. Building a business from a raw start is hard, risky work. That means that the process of innovation is not always pretty and rarely successful. The best entrepreneurs always regroup after a failure, learn from prior mistakes, persevere, and launch a new venture with considerably improved odds of success.
7. Government matters. Government policies, initiatives, and leadership set the stage for economic growth, and provide resources for improving living standards, and enabling technological advantage. Transformative entrepreneurs pay attention and capitalize on these cues, rather than ignore or fight them.
8. Innovate or die. In a world connected through a broadband Internet and mushrooming social networks, information flows quickly and relatively seamlessly, expediting the pace at which new innovations gain traction and speed. Standing still is tantamount to giving up. It is not an option.

These elements and the people stories in the Harris book highlight just how difficult it is to build a truly transformative business, yet at the same time illustrate that it can be done, and has been done many times, with no correlation to geographic, ethnic, age, or sexual boundaries.

In fact, I’m convinced that it needs to happen more often, with all the challenges we have in our modern world. So it’s up to each of you to assess your activities, and your potential, to be transformative. Being there has to be a lot more satisfying than most of the professional feedback I hear about today.

Early-Stage Startups Need Friends, Family, and Fools

Early-Stage Startups Need Friends, Family, and Fools

Most entrepreneurs have learned that it’s almost always quicker and easier to get cash from someone you know, rather than angel investors or professional investors (VCs). In fact, most investors “require” that you already have some investment from friends and family before they will even step up to the plate.

You see, investors invest in people, before they invest in ideas or products. Since they don’t know you (yet), their first integrity check on you as a person is whether your friends and family believe in you strongly enough to give you seed money for your new idea. If they won’t do it, they why would I as stranger invest in you?

Friends and family will likely not expect the same level of sophistication on the business model and financials as a professional investor, but they do expect to see certain things. Here is a summary of some key items to think about as an entrepreneur before approaching friends, family, or even fools:

1. Don’t be afraid to ask, carefully. If you set around quietly waiting for someone you know to offer you money to fund a startup, you will probably have a long wait. On the other hand, if you open every conversation with “I need money,” you won’t have any friends or any money. Practice your “elevator pitch,” and end it by asking for the order.
2. Be upbeat and respectful. Nothing kills everyone’s optimism and desire to help quicker than a negative or arrogant attitude. If they are going to put cash into your company, chances are that they will expect to spend a fair amount of time together, either helping you or certainly discussing progress. Nobody likes a downer.
3. Be passionate about the idea. Friends and family will quickly detect your level of sincerity and thought behind the idea. You need to convince them that you have been working on this vision for a long time, and have done the “due diligence” on all the potential knockoffs. Daydreams and “the idea of the moment” won’t get much respect.
4. Demonstrate progress and your own “skin in the game.” Saying that you need money to start is not nearly as convincing as saying that you have built a prototype on your own dime, but need more to roll it out. We all know people who can talk a good game, but never get around to building anything.
5. Ask for the minimum rather than the maximum. We would all love to have a million dollars of funding to “do it right” and build the company of our dreams. But your chances are minimal of finding someone who will give you that much to start. Set some milestones for three or four months out, and show what you can do, then ask for more.
6. Communicate the risks, and write down the agreement. Be honest with naïve family members and friends about the inherent risks of a startup – at least 70% fail in the first five years. Don’t take money from family or friends who can’t afford to lose it. Think hard about the consequences of a possible startup failure and the loss of their funding.
7. Show some incremental value along the way. Look for ways to get some traction with a minimal product, while you are still developing the main event. In high technology, this is called “release early and iterate,” which allows you to make corrections as you go, as well as adjust for the market changes. It also shows progress to early backers.
8. Network to build investor relationships before you ask for money. Having a real project, rather than just an idea, is a strong positive when networking for angels or VCs. Now you really have something to discuss, and real credibility as an entrepreneur. Build the friendship first, ask for advice on a real project, then maybe money later.

Overall, don’t think of friends and family funding only as a last resort. There are massive advantages, like sharing profits with friends and family, as well as the strategic credibility than can be gained from funding from someone you know, rather than from a professional investor.

I hope all of these points seem like common sense to you, and you wouldn’t think of handling it any other way. Yet, I’m continually amazed at how often I am approached as a professional investor by strangers asking for a million dollars to fund an idea, without hitting even one of the above points.

We can all recount horror stories of families and friendships torn apart by money lost on someone else’s speculative dream. In these cases both the entrepreneur and the funding partner are the fools. Don’t be one.

Modern investors love to first read a two-page summary of your business plan, formatted like a glossy marketing collateral sheet, with text well laid out in columns and sidebars, and a couple of relevant graphics. This one had better grab their attention, or they won’t look further.

You may have already found several articles, web pages, or books about writing the perfect executive summary. They all offer a list of requirements that might take 50 pages to address, but of course they ask you to write concisely. Take a look at my website for the sample executive summary , which shows what can be done in one page (both sides).

Before you start, remember that the goal of the executive summary is to provide a printed version of your best elevator pitch, to provide a positive first impression to the reader. Think of it as a selling effort, not an attempt to fully describe your startup. Here are the key components:

1. The problem and your solution. These are your hooks, and they better be covered in the first paragraph. State your value proposition, and what specifically you are offering to whom. Skip the acronyms, history of thecompany, and the disruptive technology behind your solution.

2. Market size and growth opportunity. Investors are looking for a large and growing market. Spend a few sentences providing the basic market segmentation, size, growth and dynamics – how many people or companies, how many dollars, how fast the growth, and what is driving the segment. Skip the comment that you are conservatively estimating your penetration at 1%.

3. Your competitive advantage. Identify your sustainable competitive advantage, like unique benefits, cost savings, or industry ties. Don’t kill your credibility by saying you have no competition. At minimum, you compete with the way things get done currently. Most likely, the investor has already seen multiple plans with similar solutions.

4. Business model. Who is your customer, what is the price, and how much does it cost you to build one? Do you now have real customers, are just starting development. Outline your sales and marketing strategy (direct marketing, sales channel, viral marketing, and lead generation). Identify key quantities, such as customers, licenses, units, and margin.

5. Executive team. Remember that investors fund people, more than ideas. Why is your team uniquely qualified to win, and what have they done before? Explain why the background of each team member fits, by naming roles and names of relevant companies. Include outside advisors if they have relevant experience.

6. Financial projections and funding. You need to show your summary revenue and expense projections for three to five years. Investors need to know the amount of funding you are asking for now, and what they get. The request should generally be the minimum amount of cash you need to reach the next major milestone in your plan.

The above outline need not be applied rigidly or religiously. There is no magic that fits all startups, but make sure you touch in each key issue. You need to think through what points are most important in your particular case, and capitalize on your strengths. Key points skipped are red flags, and investor first impressions will go negative.

A final important element is not even in the executive summary, it is the paragraph you use in the email that introduces your company and has the executive summary attached. Less is more here, so include the grabber, show your passion and commitment, and be sure and ask for something (like a follow-on meeting or specific feedback). That’s your metric to see if you have their attention.

Points to consider while raising Entrepreneurial finance

Funding proposal

It doesn’t matter whether you are looking to raise Entrepreneurial finance from your bank, financial institution, private investor or a Venture Capitalist. At the end of the day you will need a good funding proposal.

The funding proposal outlines the details of your business plan, the vital numbers and forecasts of performance and financial viability. Your financiers are looking to invest in a solid business plan, so don’t leave any stone unturned when you draft your funding proposal.

Selection of creditors

One of the costs in any Entrepreneurial financing is the cost of inputs which can be in the form of services, supplies, raw materials or even finished products. These costs can represent a large portion of the initial funding

Traders are generally given start-ups credit in view of repeat business. So, select your creditors after due research and ask for longer credit periods to cut down your working capital requirement.

Investors

Investors, are a rich source of raising entrepreneurial finance. However, what you, as an entrepreneur need to be careful about are the terms of credit because this line of credit comes in the form of debt or equity. Though Debt is costly in the short term, Equity will reduce your share of revenue in the future. Depending on your forecasts and needs, make sure that you manage these terms.

Clean credit history

Your credit history is going to play a big role when you are looking to raise entrepreneurial finance, especially from the banks. So if you’ve been defaulting on your credit card or loan repayments, chances of you being able to raise entrepreneurial finance from your bank are slim. There are many ways to better your credit history and your past dealings with the bank and we suggest you start putting them into practice if you are looking to raise entrepreneurial finance in the near future