What is ECB? External commercial borrowings(ECB) imply borrowing (debt) from a foreign (non-resident) lender. ECB is an attractive financing route as it generally offers access to finance with low rate of interest available from overseas low interest markets. ECBs have been in use by many corporations, PSUS and especially by MNCs setting up operations in India. Who can raise an ECB, from where...
Starting up is hard, make no mistake about it, while media romanticizes startups and mostly talks about the glorious success stories, what goes behind is months and years of toil, frustration, fighting all kinds of odds. Cliched as it might sound but overnight success is the culmination of years of hard work. Bootstrapping a startup is even tougher, apart from challenges of building right...
ESOP another Stay-in-India checklist item gets MCA nod Ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has recently relaxed sweat equity issuance norms for startups. These new relaxations are for limited to Startups recognized by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). The announcement will immensely help startups. For startups not recognized under DIPP, there is not change. The new...
As of April 20th, 2016, Exotel is four years and 10 months old as an organisation. In the start-up investor jargon, Exotel is a VC-funded, high-growth start-up. Our home-grown on-demand cloud telephony services, powers over 1000 businesses of all sizes and shapes. Now, if that’s a lot to take in in one go, welcome to the startup world. This sense of overwhelm is the reason employees and...
(Our petition against India’s late payment culture can be found here) The Late Payment Problem We’re going to keep this short. Now that 97% of Indian SMBs were reportedly paid late in 2015, the late payment culture in our business environment has gotten out of hand. Today, India officially carries the longest average payment delays in the Asia Pacific for B2B SMB invoices, 51% of...
What’s The Scoop With Flipkart? “The digital industry is suffering because there have been several cases where advertisers default on payment… We do not have a strong industry body in terms of payment collection yet.” – Amar Deep Singh, CEO, Interactive Avenues (article originally posted here) Between April and May 2016, one of India’s e-commerce leaders – Flipkart–...
It takes passion to start up and convert your idea into a moneymaking business. However, passion alone is never sufficient to succeed in a business. It is people that make business happen; the ‘right’ kind of people. The core team plays a key role in shaping the future of a startup. It is the moot point that sets the course for the future. Hence, it is imperative that the founding team comprises...
A business exists only till the time it has paying customers. The day your customers cease to exist, or have no reason to pay you for your products or services, your business is in deep trouble. So, if we consider all the stake holders in a corporate, an i.e. employee, executive management, investors and customers, the customer is the most important. Now the chances are that you know all other...
Hindsight, they say, is 20/20. The advantage of hindsight is that all the data that affects a decision has been revealed and is known. Unfortunately, real life never works that way. As an entrepreneur, you have to operate on a combination of one part data, one part intelligent guesses, and, if we are really frank about it, one part luck. Managing a business, when broken down into its simplest...
Since the time Philip Kotler wrote his valuable tome on Marketing, technology has evolved so much that new pricing models like Freemium pricing are possible for both Consumer-oriented and Enterprise-oriented product startups. In addition, Free Trial pricing models and conversion to paid ones are common in both. In a price-conscious society like India, pricing can mean all the difference between a...
