 Basically this presentation is how to help early stage companies to grow and what are the things that we all need to do to make them grow. Having said all this I must admit that please do not we are all in the learning phase and as we will talk about it later on the whole entrepreneurship trend in India and venture capital fund and angels these are all very early trends that are happening and we are you know maybe 30 years behind US or Europe in terms of the development of the early stage company space. So we have to we are all in the learning phase so it is not that we know everything and having four years experience is really you know not all that much compared to what you know incubators and venture funds and angels have in other parts of the world. So it is more of a discussion with you to you know to share what are the challenges that we face and what some of the learnings have been rather than trying to tell you what to do. So this is of course the biological definition of incubation and so when I first told my wife that I was joining an incubator this is what she thought I was going to do but it is not exactly that. But sometimes you know the point is that being incubator manager sometimes you want to act do act as the parent you know do act as the parent to the students and the people at the incubator or do act as per the terms of the contract that you have signed with them or do act as a professor and a teacher. So we will discuss all about the actual the relationship between the incubator managers and the incubator companies and what is the most preferred relationship that you build with the incubator companies and thereafter how you help them to grow forward. So today we are going to talk about you know mentoring and monitoring of the companies which again you know this is what an incubator supposed to do it monitors various physical parameters with the biological incubator and adds you know increase the heat or you know increase the humidity and so on to have the whatever is there to grow and then helps them along to reach the external world. So essentially see that they grow properly and then get them across to the external world. So that is really the process of incubation later on in the afternoon we will have one of the incubators here to share his experience through this process. He is completed about almost two years at the incubator he is recently closed his first round of funding and he will talk about his experience. To start with you know we all operate in an ecosystem and you know just to give you an idea of what the technology entrepreneurship in a state is it in India today. Now historically we all talk about India is a nation of entrepreneurs but if you really see entrepreneurship in India for maybe the last 200 years has been primarily trading and manufacturing very few entrepreneurs have really built technologies or products most of it has been either you know of course the trading is something which is going on for many years even the manufacturing which happened in India sort of took off after independence was essentially getting either a technology from overseas or which is which is which we called indigenous technology is copying western technology and applying it in India and this is because basically the tariff barriers were very high. So foreign technology found it difficult to come into India. So a lot of companies built you know their operating system there was a time when there were four or five Indian companies with computer operating system. So you had that you had in electronics you were copying in the pharmaceutical industry we've copied everybody's drugs and that is how that is what entrepreneurship was in India. The other was of course trying to get the other part of entrepreneurship in India was to deal with the government get a license and start you know if you're the cousin of a politician or of a government official you would get a license or of course you were Tata or Birla get a license and set up business because it was a supply driven market there was scarcity of you know steel, cement and all the basic things there was a so there was really no quote unquote technology entrepreneurship in India till very very recently. So entrepreneurship that we talk about is essentially trading and we're talking about manufacturing which is also not technology driven but driven either by copying western technologies or by getting a transfer of technology and yet India has as we all know the third largest technical workforce and if we start building technology products and so on we could really challenge and given the advantages that you have in India today one is the cost advantage the other is that today India itself is a huge source of demand for goods and services if you take say the mobile space India is one of the largest third largest mobile population in the world. So just that huge demand could generate potential technologies coming in which are as you see lot of new technologies are coming up in India in the mobile space because India is the demand is the market for such product and technology. So also to understand that all the entities such as incubators like us the venture funds the entrepreneurs we are all also learning this process because there are not so many technology entrepreneurs around. In the west there has been waves of technology entrepreneurs who then set up their venture funds or became angels and promoted the next set of technology entrepreneurs. In India there are very few role models and very few entrepreneurs who become venture funds or angels to set up new entrepreneurs that is one of the reason why there is a need for an incubator because that is what they really did these entrepreneurs in the west really help other businesses to created the ecosystem for early you know young entrepreneurs to set up their businesses by providing the money providing them you know the space introducing them to their business partners and you know people that they know that is what they did but it is not here in India because we do not have that generation of technology entrepreneurs in India. We do have entrepreneurs we do have people you know companies like Wipro and Infosys and so on who are quote-unquote technology entrepreneurs but because essentially what they have done is they are providing services lower cost some of them of course have helped other entrepreneurs to grow for example our incubator is supported by the CEO of Infosys but those have been few and far between and it is only now that it is happening and that is what could actually change what India has done until now either copied the west or got technology from the west or just traded that is what we are good at but if we start building our own technologies which we can sell to the global marketplace India will be a very different country than what it is down so I think that is what this presentation is all about just to get into a little more detail about how each of the entities operating in this ecosystem so you know there are increasing number of not so many of them here but all of you want to set up incubator so there are increasing number many of them have got funded from the government to set up the infrastructure and operating as we heard in the morning from my colleague pointy that building a sustainable business model is key you know to running an incubator entrepreneurs we are all you know the technology entrepreneurs all first generation they don't have you know any business experience also the lack of role models you know in in in the US or in Israel you can always look up to a Bill Glitz or a Google or a Yahoo to say yes there are you know there are role models for you to follow but in India there are very few role models and therefore we tend to restrict our imagination and it's like a vicious circle because there are no role models you don't you don't think big and that's because you don't think big you really don't grow big and so there are no role models so it's some sort of a vicious circle which we should you know it's again the role of the incubator to help people to think big so that we get out of this vicious circle and again because of the lack of successful entrepreneurs from the technology space in the past there are not so many angels and because there are not so many angels companies don't get funded and here starts another vicious circle because because you don't have enough funds coming in there are not so many entrepreneurs wanting to set up a business because if if they have a product or a technology idea it requires to be funded but there are no VCs around so you know there are not so many entrepreneurs coming out of the system so again that's the role of the incubator to to promote entrepreneurship and here at IIT what we try and tell the students is that today with with the way India is growing at you know 8% or per annum there is enough job opportunities if you're a graduate from IIT or probably any other engineering college you will never find it difficult to get a job for yourself so we try to promote entrepreneurship as a career option because you could start out something it doesn't work out doesn't matter you will still get a job we're not in the 60s in the 70s where engineers were you know still you could be an engineer still but still not get a job that's because our economy is growing so fast so here is an opportunity for students and even researchers to say the job market is so good that's the reason why you could leave it for a while and do something else and then always come back and and and and rejoin it if if it so happens thankfully for us what has helped is that because the western world sees India as a big opportunity a lot of you know venture funds and institutions financial institutions have set up venture funds in it so while we lack our indigenous venture capitalists and angels we've had inflows from overseas both at the private equity level and as well as the venture capital level because they see India as a huge opportunity so that's is actually what is helping us despite all the vicious circles it's actually the inflow from the western markets and of course a few sprinkling of successful entrepreneurs who have now turned we see is in India that you have money flowing in so there is money coming into India maybe right now for the larger entities but slowly as the venture funds and private equity funds compete at the the big ticket level some of it will trickle down to the smaller entities which was absent in the past so it's competition up between the venture funds and the private equity funds that is leading to money being available to smaller smaller entities and early-stage companies I think both the business and the government have also realized that the sort of cheap labor economy that India has of you know sasta miss up which we said it abroad is not going to last very long because now with for example with you know the intellectual property rights being enforced many drugs that Indian companies are manufacturing you will not be able to manufacture anymore and in other areas as well you know so that's one to we also realize that the service economy whether it's you know software or BPO and so on is increasingly getting falling margins you know the big the level of competition and from other countries the margins of top software and BPO companies is falling if you see over 20 years in in early 80s the margins of Satyam Vipro Infosys was in late 30s and now it is you know 17 18 20% so it's fallen by 20% in the last 10 years so and that's probably that's the direction they're going to go so that's all the more reason why both businesses you know big business houses such as the Tatas or government is getting increasingly focused on entrepreneurship which is good for all of us because hopefully we'll get the money to set up our incubators fairly soon so there are a number of measures that the government is taking now there you know this various agencies who've been around for a long time have suddenly woken up to finance innovators and early-stage companies NRDCs come up with some schemes by department of biotechnology has certain schemes DST of course so let's look at us as many of us are from academic and research institutes we do realize that there's a whole lot of intellectual property and technology and skills within our institutions and unfortunately they've been lying around like this for a very long time it's not as though you know innovators and entrepreneurs have just been born in India today this has been going on for you know ever since these institutions came up but unfortunately they never got to see the commercial side of things they're all there sitting in their labs and no one ever thought that it could actually become a commercial venture and neither there were any government policies nor there was an environment to set up your own venture say 20 years ago or even 10 years so so there is increasing they said here again there's a lack of role models we had people coming over from various universities who have their incubators and they were telling us that all you know faculty members who set up their companies drive in you know marks and postures so we unfortunately don't don't see that many such cards in our educational institutions and that's why you know faculty members don't think of starting out on their own finally it's all about what you see in the world and if you see your colleagues riding around in in Mercedes then you'll also start thinking hey you know I could also do something and of course given the fact that there is no historical you know you know evidence of entrepreneurial activity people especially from academic institutions don't want to take risks they would rather I mean I would say that academics would rather put their money in fixed deposits than to put in mutual funds or equity that's the sort of risk take that's why they've joined the academic world rather than going into the corporate world because they've taken that is that corporate world you could potentially lose your job or you you know you could but in an academic environment those things are fairly certain and settled so those are the challenges that all of us face as an incubator manager if you're in an academic institution you'll have to fight all these things so here we come to what is the relationship that you have with the incubator so if you're you know if you've been a teacher and you see your student and you manage the incubator and you see your students coming into the incubator you still want to start treating them as a student right because that's what you've been used to doing you know you've taught that person for four years and suddenly the next day you happen to be manager of the incubator and he comes and you'll treat him like a student and of course you've also signed a contract with him or her to say that they will pay a certain amount of rent and they'll give you so much equity or they will give you a certain royalty or on their sales and then you start saying you know when a student miss babes in class you tell him you know a quiet and down you know do what I'm telling you to do but this is a contractual obligation but you tend to still keep yourself in the role of a teacher vis-a-vis a student and and therefore to some extent your we always thought that our teachers are very strict but you realize when you come into you know when they become incubator managers they're not so strict with the students and so sometimes you have to be strict and you have to follow what you have contracted because if you don't do that then there'll be many others who will also think that these rules and Indians are very good at bending rules and they will want to bend those rules and get away from it and especially in an academic institution where you know yes you are in a subsidized infrastructure you think of it as another project that you are doing for the institution and and try to squeeze the maximum you can even from the incubator and of course since I'm part of the incubator I'll be a little harsh on the incubator companies but that's what you might that's the normal way an ex-student would you know he'll say I'll say be nice and give a smile to my professor and get you know a reduction in rent or not pay the rent and so on and so forth but can we do that the other of course is that we are you know we are finally running whether it's for profit or not for profit I think but finally you are running this as a sustainable venture right so you cannot let commercial consideration get sort of diluted by your you know it's not altruism it's not charity that you're doing here because if you if you don't properly follow all the commercial considerations your incubator will fail so the very house on which you have these incubating companies will go bust so then you won't be able to provide any more services so the point of being commercial is not to to create wealth for your institution but just to ensure as we heard in the morning to make sure that your incubator is a sustainable business model that survives otherwise you cut the next morning you don't have salaries to pay the professionals at the incubator and you go bust and so do your incubating companies and of course the other thing is that you know the most of the companies are people who are in the in their early 20s apart from of the faculty and you know there for many of us they're almost as old or as young as our own children so you you tend to become a little paternal to them which again is wrong because the whole idea of an entrepreneur is full of energy and want wanting to do new things if you try to have a paternalistic attitude you would tend to you know sort of constrict his business and technology and so on so this is some of the things that we need to be careful about so while treading the path of you know helping and nurturing entrepreneurship you need to take care of the commercials as well because if you're not commercially oriented the whole unit that you're managing will not survive so one of the roles of the incubator is to mentor and some of the things really come out from what we talked about the ecosystem earlier is that we many of us don't think big and and it's not without reason we went through the reasons why people don't think big and so it's again our job to make them look at bigger opportunities and because they are there we always think of okay historically we what we've done is we've copied the you know the lower today in drug and made it in India and made lots of money so we always think how is the is there easy way out without taking the risk to build a business and we see successful businesses in there you know you see the you know Tatas and build us who have really not taken risks in developing technologies they've just followed what the West does so what we do so typically what we do is there is a package there's a software package there's an ERP package like SAP or or or whatever and say can we make a cheaper ERP package in India which we can sell so I'm not taking the risk I'm not trying to build a product which is different or which serves a different purpose I'm just trying to build a CRM package or an ERP package or any package which is already available in the market but I can do it much cheaper so everything in India works when it's cheaper so here is an accounting package here is an ERP package a lot of early-stage companies have done that in the past so that's about thinking big the other is especially people coming from all entrepreneurs and especially ones who come from a technology background have this problem of being too focused on their own product or technology so they don't really focus on the market they said okay my product is like we do to our own children you know our children are the best so as my product is the best and and you know if it's good if it's a good enough product the people will come and buy it so we are more focused on the product than on the market and naturally we are more focused on the features so I compare my ERP package which is one tenth the cost or one hundredth the cost of SAP and say I have almost the same features that there are in SAP so hey my product is going to sell as much as SAP or Oracle but you know the hard truth is that it doesn't so that's again not really the fault of the entrepreneur it's it's the environment which makes us think that way and even if you and I were to set up companies we would also think the same way because we we come from the same environment but the idea is to try and influence thinking away from that and focus on the product and the market rather than the product and the benefit what does it do to the customer of the client how does it change the way things are done rather than on what features it has just a little more bit on this business model is again a problem the Indian service model is very well established that you can provide services and technology institutes and research institutes have people who can provide consulting service a lot of companies who want to build a technology or a product find that they're not getting money from a VC or an angel and say that to keep keep the business rolling let me do some services to earn money right so they provide consulting services as long as it is around the product it's okay but tomorrow somebody says you know you send five engineers and make them sit in our office and we will pay you twenty thousand rupees a month like a simple body shopping sort of exercise there are companies who who think that that way and that is the final death knell to the product business because the best people you will send to your clients and the business go I used to work for soft one of the first software product companies in India called soft tech set up by IIT graduates way back in 1985 so they built you know cobalt compilers Fortran compilers they had a Hindi software as well of course they also took the easier way out they built clones of word excel and you know debase that was was called those days so they had this and the business was tough but the business is going so somebody told them that you know can you send us a few engineers to the US and you know we and we realized that we would get more money out of those engineers sitting in the US then for a month then we earn revenues for a whole year so those become you know it becomes too you know tempting and then you say okay fine and then what you do is you pick up the best guys and you send them to the US and they of course will leave in a few months from then and so you said the next best five guys and send them that and soon your product team is empty and you only have a service business left and that's exactly what happened to the company so it's now there's no product that only does services so that's what happens if you try to mix two business models one of service and one of product in the same company getting VC ready finally if you build a product or a technology company unlike a services business will unless it like runs on word of mouth and you know it's like hotmail which gets acquired you will need money before your revenues come in and you will need and forget about revenue to you to break even still you will need more money so at least for that first two to three years your company will be burning money and again because the lack of you know the entrepreneurial infrastructure the money can only come from VCs who are willing to invest in you we'll talk about VCs later on what they are looking at and how they make their investments but essentially at this point I'll say that they are looking for businesses which which could become one billion dollar opportunities and and therefore they are looking at not only the product and the technology which we as we all know is one only one part of the entire business but at the team which is you know the other part of business is the team so these two things need to be built at an early stage so that you have VC interested in you the last element in here is the world is networked you know in the sense that you're talking about if you look at any big company whether it's Microsoft or IBM or or in in any other telecoms they all have formed alliances you know the Microsoft and Intel alliance is well known so really without alliances you can't break make a big breakthrough in in any global market which could also be that you have lack certain skills typically companies coming out from research and academic institutions will not have exposure to markets or commercial things it's not a bad idea for companies to partner with an outside entity maybe in terms of equity who will help them to market their product because that's the biggest challenge you might have a great technology but unless somebody wants to buy a product and if you don't know the way from the product you know how to distribute the product or how to sell the product your product will remain if not in the lab in the incubator so the point is and we have one of our companies here the faculty member who started a company and has now tied given 49% stake to a company in in a similar area to help them market their product so he's saying I know my technology best I don't I don't know how to do no problem so either you induct a person in the team who can provide that or have a strategic partner who can do that similarly a similar but a weaker form of that is getting mentors here this mentoring is different from the mentoring which in incubator does now if there are 20 companies in your incubator you cannot spend you know a defined amount of time with every company what early stage companies do is to get on their boards people advisors who have been in that marketplace or been in that technology area for some consideration it could be an equity consideration it could be a monthly retainer but it's very important so that you don't make the same mistakes have other companies have done in that space also the amount of networking and contacts that he or she may have in that space would be useful for the early stage company so these are the sort of things which early stage companies need to do very early to survive because this is what this is the foundation of their business model the foundation of their relationships with the external world and of course having said this this is not a one-time exercise you to keep on doing it because a lot of times early stage companies will go for a particular business model to find later on that it's not working so you know especially in the in the dot-com space all of us know that a lot of companies went for you know what is called in those days the eyeball model you know get registered as many as registered users is concerned Yahoo on Nasdaq is you know the valuation of Yahoo is at 70 dollars per registered user and therefore if I have you know a million registered users I'll be worth 70 million dollars but of course we all know that it didn't work and so companies then came up with business models such as subscription or advertising or whatever so different models in one model of business model is not necessarily the one which will survive we've seen that in our own incubator where companies have changed their business model itself the target clients itself twice or three times over there stay at the incubator the early stage companies you might have a great product who which person is going to buy it how will he buy it why will he buy it all those things you only learn when you go through that process so at the tactical level and these are you know a lot of problems which come up periodically for early stage companies is that you know you get one client and it takes you know much longer to get the next one or you know the getting the first revenues in takes much longer than you expect everything happens much longer than you expect except the way you spend money so you always spend money more faster than you expect and the revenues always come much slower than you expect so you have lot of startups go through very severe cash flow problems and and you know and you have to really keep the entrepreneurs going because as we all know that they have job opportunities just an inch away from their incubator you know there are companies like Infosys and Wipro waiting to pick them on and here they are going through not being able to pay for their own personal expenses it could come down to even getting their next meal we have had that experience at the incubator and yet their colleagues may be earning 10 or 12 lakhs you know per annum and here they find themselves not getting to afford the next meal or to have a place to stay in you know not being able to pay the monthly rent for your place so you have to find some way in there no there are no quick fix solutions but this is a problem which all early stage companies face and and from that comes the issue of a lot of supposing there are team of three four people not everybody's motivations are the same and you might find in a situation of crisis it could be cash flow it could be some other problem that the team dynamics changes you know and and that again you have to catch it at a very very at the right point because if people break apart it's very difficult when people come up together very easily but once they break apart getting them together is very very difficult of course negotiating with VCs and and you know their commercial partners and so on is also important here there is this is you know it's a million dollar question whether you do you engage in their negotiations or you take a backseat you know in your enthusiasm you might say okay now I'll come along with you to the VC and sit and and and and and help you to close this deal or I'll come and sit with you with the potential business partner and we'll close the deal but by going with the with the entrepreneur what you are actually telling the person across the board that this guy is still a kid he doesn't know how to talk to you that's why I've come along and therefore whatever chance is that guy had who getting the funding or getting gets diluted to that so the way that we've looked at it is to remain in the background but of course be on the phone available with the person all the time but not being physically present in in those meetings but helping them from the backside and also that sometimes you know let's not you know we are not the only smart people in this world the entrepreneurs are a lot smarter than us sometimes they forget that they're a lot smarter than us otherwise we would be sitting in in their companies right if we was as smart as they were at the operational level also at least age companies need your assessment you know just there are so many rules and regulations in our country set you know company formation accounts TDS sales tax service tax we have more rules and rules for and and unfortunately even small companies have to do anything which big companies do so it's it's a huge task and again people coming from a technology or a product background have have no understanding interest to do all this and what happens is many of the time that they don't do all this and later on in life they realize that because they did not file certain things or didn't do certain you get into a huge problem we have we have a case right now you know where the company is having a problem with another business partner and because they did not file certain returns on time and so they did not get recorded it's creating a huge legal mess for them and so rather than focusing on business they are now working on on this part which is again very really lethal for fatal for early-stage company again commercial exposure is not there for for most of these people whether they are from an academic you know from academics or students who have not really gone out and worked and come back so you need to support those activities you know all of all of us learn accounting in one one time or the other or you always think if the company is profitable everything is fine but it's actually cash flows which matters you might have profits on the books but if you don't have cash to pay your employees or pay for your next meal then you know it becomes a problem biggest problem of course is because the Indian economy is booming and you know everybody is get keeping employees is is tough for everybody and it's even tougher for early-stage companies because they're not able to pay the same salaries and perks a to this thing they also don't have the same brand and and you know facilities and opportunities really for for early-stage and there was a time in that you know during the dot-com days that a lot of people from you know premier institutes joined startups but after the dot-com bust fewer and fewer people from you know engineering colleges and and management institutes want to join early-stage companies we are again hoping to change that trend but it's it's a huge challenge first of all attracting the employee and then keeping him him or her with you because there are so many opportunities outside so sometimes the the economic boom also has its own you know problems of keeping people see when you essentially what is profit profit is the excess of you know if you sell your good for 100 rupees and your cost is 80 rupees you made 20 rupees profit but the typically in a product company or in any company for that matter the your costs are incurred upfront that means salaries you have to pay at the end of the month electricity bill rentals you have to pay at the end of the month but we all know in India that getting our money from a company or sometimes for many of us from the government takes many many more months than you originally thought it to so so that is really so you may be profitable so if I write my accounts the government has bought 100 rupees worth of software from me or my product for 100 rupees I'll get my payment in in two months time or 90 days time but during these three months I would have incurred 80 rupees of cost how much yeah you may you may on so that so the important thing is to realize that you should manage your account in such a way that you're not short of cash at any point of time yeah you have to have enough liquid cash so sometimes you will not maybe sell to certain client because you know that the payment will come after three months is better to pay to a client from a self to a client where you get the money faster or that you budget that I'm selling it now but since it's the Indian Navy it'll take me you know 90 days and another 2% additional cost to get my money out so I'll have to plan according so on paper your profits and everything will look nice but when you actually go and do it there'll be problems and of course how to get working capital loans from banks and so on is what would you would try to do for the company at that point of time because then for example an invoice from the government of India even though you you might receive the money after three months a bank will fund that you know actually up to 75 percent you know so as I said monitoring is like the twin brother of mentoring because if you mentor but not monitor you will really not know what what is the benefit or the the damage that you have done by mentoring the person so and of course we all know that you know the business plans with which people will you know come you know you'll always as I said underestimate costs and overestimate revenues so that it happens most of the time and also that you need to change we had a company at the incubator which was focused on Ethernet right and and which is basically wired networking you know whereas the market really moved towards wireless as we all know the whole market is moving towards wireless and and they did not change even though the technology was break through they did not change their model early enough and they therefore one of the few companies which which you know didn't really go ahead so especially if you're in technology area things are changing extremely rapidly you might think you are at the cutting edge but you know tomorrow markets can change and and throughout your entire business model out of place so and it also you know finally tells us whether we are really doing you know we're doing doing a benefit or or damage to the to the company and accordingly change and focus on a particular company and not really bother about the others you know that you say okay every six months we review all the company and say okay for the next six months these are two three companies that we want to focus on who are facing some particular problems or you know that what are the problems each company is facing so it's also useful for us as much as it is useful for the company to realize that there is some external person who is seeing how you progressed and and opening a discussion for changing the way that they're doing their business sometimes when we are running our businesses with our eyes very closely on the ground we can't see what is really happening at you know 30,000 feet so you need somebody else from out the outside world to come and tell you hey you were doing this maybe that's not the right way to do it you may not we may not know exactly how that business runs but just being an outsider we can add value as incubator managers the other is as companies grow up from you know being you know a one-man show to a team of people they have to also get ready to go out in in the corporate world where you have to make provide information to all the stakeholders whether it's the government it's your other shareholders your investors there are you know there are reportings that you need to do to all so it sort of helps to inculcate certain corporate governance norms very early in in the life of a company so that when they go out in the in the big world they'll be used to it because we've seen you know not in the incubator but companies who get funded by VCs in the outside world find it very strange that they have to send every 15 days or three months they have to send a report to the VC but we don't have that problem with any for companies because they are used to sending us reports on a quarterly or a half yearly basis and it also you know finally tells you you know six months ago you promised you would do two crores of business and you come after six months you only done 38 crores of 58 crores lags and then you start thinking you also the end the entrepreneur also starts thinking when he puts it on paper sometimes that where I had planned to go and where I have it it also acts as a way of of making him or her feel that there is something wrong that I am doing so that's all and then we can break for tea to make you sleep I think there are two parts to it and then we can talk I think firstly you realize that the incubate as far as the profit and not profit there are certain objectives which you know we sign has to achieve and so those are they need not be monitoring in terms of profit right so that is one the second part is that you know especially when you get into an incubator firstly you forget about designations because you have to work as a team because there are so many especially if there are 20 companies everybody has to work just as much just as hard so it's actually and it's best when you work as a team or rather as partners I think that's the real model is that the team becomes another set of partners who work together rather than there being any particular extra hard work for the CEO or you know less hard work for the CEO everybody works at the same level really that's that's how I look at it I don't know how other incubators work this is how I work not for profit essentially is that whatever profit you generate you don't distribute to the state contributors or members but it plows back to the system that is the so the conception not for profit is not that society cannot make profit we would love to make profit and that is one thing yeah you have to show you have to show profit in your book you can't like in a company you distribute dividend right here you don't even section 25 companies that don't distribute dividend which is surplus only goes back to plows and gets plowed back to the system so even at sign level we always think in terms of money every deal we look at it you know be negotiation with the VC on behalf of a company or whatever so like you know we also look how much money we will make out of it yeah so we are very clear about it that's one thing second thing is that CEO CAO and all those things are designation but I think it is essential functional requirement one person takes care of business aspect because you require a business incubator also requires business right which means you have to get your companies so one we have scaled up to a level that where single person cannot manage everything so one person takes care of business aspect one person can take so that's a primary responsibility we always compliment each other as a team we are six people in the incubator so it's not designation specific but more functional specific and smaller organization you can't go by designation you know in a company like as she's rightly said in a company like telco or disco you actually need there is a need for a hierarchy because it but for you know for about five six people the hierarchy is is largely on paper it's more of working together as a team yes perhaps but I'm saying in terms of working you know at least in our case a designations really don't matter you know but maybe because we are still a very small team if it the team is of you know if you have a 50 a mem you know incubators in a company you might need to have a very structured hierarchy but not at at the smaller and if you go across other parts you know venture funds and others they all have small teams and they all work essentially as partnerships in fact in the US VCs are structured as partnerships because that's for how you operate so each partner looks after a particular area but you function as a partnership your presentation what I could understand is that there is appropriate staffing pattern required for a incubation but that's what I could understand saying that there are roles are very clearly being done and for each of the team members incubating company when incubation centered staff has to be appropriately designed and there'll be and trust the responsibilities and also I mean you'll give shown the way and different stages test to go with staffing is one issue which is looking like from an incubation for the incubator managers or the staff of the incubator that's what I might take away from your definitely I think you know for example we are we always say we are very lucky to have you know a person from banking a person from legal background and in this morning we learned how important those the structural issues are you know because that's the foundation on which you build build whatever the business and the operations and we are professor who has interacted with you know who's been interacting with students and so on so we we actually have best of both the world so as to speak because because we have a good interaction with the rest of the host institution as well as have people with business experience not that it is rocket science business is different you know knowing how what you know how we see function or how banks give working capital loans is not rocket science but for early stage companies it's very important to know the rest of the world anyway knows about it so we are not none of us are rocket scientists here but no enough to help the early stage companies to be able to deliver that to them and that's what is important that's a very high but unlike a most of the professor's way they tolerance for non-technical yeah and similarly our tolerance for technology technical things is also fairly high so that's how that's a great mix yeah that's the right mix now if we're just fortunate and lucky to have