 My name is Kaushal Sardha, I am one of the co-founders of a company called CallCraft Technologies and we've essentially built a group interaction software that runs on the web. It's called Yuhuru. Yuhuru actually means freedom in Swahili which is an African language. It also actually is one of the highest peaks in Africa. So I think what I'm going to try to do is share the experiences of what we felt as a company incubated within the incubator here at Sine and things that I guess I have learnt in the process of what would be a great thing to get from an incubator or what should an incubator really expect. I think to summarize one of the biggest thing problems that we faced as an incubated company was what I would term as some sort of a cocoon effect. So essentially you've got this great place within IIT, awesome place to sit inside, great infrastructure given by Sine. You're here for a very long amount of period. They're nice enough to not charge you rent, that's too much. And essentially, so me and the other co-founder, both technology guys who love building technology. So given the setup, what ends up being defined is sort of a lab, then really a startup. So I'm actually working on nice things that I can build and you love building software. So you're really having fun and being a collaboration framework one day you think that, hey, I really think I read an article in Brand Equity that social networking is really hot within the enterprise. So let me take my framework and build something for that. And you find a client who's kind of excited when you talk to him about that and that's your market validation. So you start thinking, okay, let me go in this direction and that could be a billion dollar thing. Tomorrow you find out, okay, maybe I need to build something that improves how Yahoo or Google does its group interaction. So let me work on that. There's so many things and this is in our space. It could be in every space and there are 10 things that you could solve that still keep you aligned with your overall thing and you could go in that direction. So there's a high chance you lose your way in the process and you end up spending a lot more time on what you wanted to do. So that for me is really the cocoon effect that I'm not going out. I'm sitting in sort of my room, couple of guys who really know how to build software or technology really well are working on that and just going about doing that. So I think what ends up being very critical, I think from our learning perspective is at the end if you're going to be an established company in a certain space, you're going to be fighting with competition in that space, you'll have to have your niche. So you have to go out into the market very soon. And that for me is very crucial that within the point of time from when you come in to the point of time that you become ready to get exposed to the market has to be very small. And in that time period, things like getting your business model right, ensuring that your market market size is defined really well, ensuring that you're in a place that your prototype is ready. You can actually get the right kind of people to come into your team to really take it to the next step. Because all of these start coming up as questions when you either try to raise investment or when you're talking to an alliance that you want to do. And it's better that you do it three months from when you got incubated as opposed to trying to do it one and a half year down the line. Because technology or product is something that you could very easily fine tune and tweak once you've got everything else really right in place. So that for me is like one of the things that's really needed from an incubator and that value. So it's better to be sort of a more strict parent than being a lenient one because a kid is going to lose his way somewhere. So that's one issue. But the other thing on the other side is the incubator for the company is like a parent. So there are lots of things that can happen. As Shushant was mentioning there are maybe accounting goof ups. You can do legal things that you don't pay attention to when you're signing an alliance document. When you're talking to investors, are you raising the right kind of money? One of the things that as an entrepreneur you get tempted with is dumb money. There's a rich guy that you met and he's willing to essentially put in a lot of money in your company and says, Hey, I'm going to give you a $10 million valuation or you're thrilled. The thing that why should I go to a big VC firm who's going to give me one fifth of that valuation? But that money will actually could potentially bring you back and even kill your company as opposed to going to a VC. And there are a lot of apprehensions you have is why is a VC taking 50% of my company or 40%? I'm doing all the hard work. It's just that he's putting in some money in my company. But I think you fail to realize that people putting in money in your company and taking only equity is actually a huge risk from their part as well. So I think a lot of understanding of those things, having the right kind of protection of not taking the wrong money or taking it on the right terms, signing the right kind of documents, all of that ends up being a very critical part in the whole thing. One is really avoiding the cocoon effect and but still ensuring that you're not kind of a sitting duck who anyone can kind of pick up and take value out of. So that's a fairly thin line and I think the incubator could really help any company in that process. The final thing that's kind of been very crucial or could be something that can be done is sort of when you join in, have some sort of an intensive 10 week kind of a thing where you either work with a mentor in the incubator and you kind of refine out a lot of these things which could potentially take time. And at the end of 10 weeks, you're done with a lot of stuff, whether it's to certain extent understanding your business model, knowing what kind of people you want to hire, which is the right kind of investor group to talk to, having a prototype ready. And a lot of these things if you can achieve in the first 2-3 months, then you won't really lose direction. So I think in a sense that's what I wanted to say from an incubated company point of view. Any questions? I'm saying it's actually termed as dumb money because that individual does not understand my space. So it's not just I'm taking money from an angel. I'm taking from a guy who can add no more value than just giving the money. So yeah, maybe I've termed it wrong. It's called dumb money because it's just money that I'm getting. So he may not be in a position to create a network for you for a product product? Not just network. Maybe even things like he can't tell me the right steps to take or not to take. So he's not someone from the industry from that segment and typically what happens is if I ask for someone who's, let's say, got a great background in some real estate business, he understands his domain well, but what can he tell about software? He could maybe give you a lot of money and that money gives a false feeling of success, which could be fairly detrimental. A sleeping partner kind of thing. Can you elaborate a little bit more on this 10-week intensive idea that you just mentioned? So I think the way I would elaborate it and purely this is from the perspective of a company like mine, maybe I'm mistaken in terms of the time frame from maybe a traditional business and may require more or less. But I think what is fairly critical and the reason why I'm saying 10 weeks is that once we started talking with investors, a lot of these questions came up and in the last 10 or 12 weeks, we've actually done so much of refinement on our whole thought process. If we had done this at the cyber incubation program, it would have helped quite a lot. What I'm really talking about is all of things. A, most of the time, you don't end up defining your market well enough and defining it, the size of it, the problem that you're solving for them and maybe some sort of validation of that problem being valuable enough. And sometimes it's not even done in the right way, it's done but it's not done in the right way. One is that. Second is what's the best way to reach out to them in terms of your business partner, how do you offer them, whatever you have? Is it that you should do it on your own or is it better to do it through some alliances who exist? So what kind of ecosystem do you need? That gives you a huge idea as to what kind of people the incubator may need to network you with from the alumni, from the people you need to hire. The third thing is, I think, the value proposition in terms of the pricing and getting those things done. And a prototype which kind of shows that your concept is something that can reach reality. I think with these things in place, you have a lot of clarity of what kind of people you want to hire, which industries, what kind of money are you going to spend. And it becomes a lot more easier for whether you're going to a venture capitalist, an early stage investor, an ranger to really help you move forward. And I think a person who's been in from this industry, if he spends a dedicated time with you even for this 10-week period would be a substantial value add. So he knows that there's a limited time that he needs to spend and that he's dedicated and a limited goal that the company needs to reach. It could be very uncomforting if you do it at the start, but I think it's better done at the start than kind of relaxing and then doing it. So it's kind of an intensive crash course kind of problem. What's your sense? You were two technical founders. Do you feel like in the incubation period that you should be upfront about needing to bring in sort of a yo or something like that? Like were you clear from the very beginning that you needed a biz guy? Or you still don't believe you need a biz guy? So I think from day one we knew that A, I think getting a CEO too early into the company could also kill you. Because they come with a huge baggage. What you need is someone who can give you the right kind of perspective of the market. Because still I actually don't have my offering in place. What is this guy really going to do? So I would ideally have a mentor in the initial business as a business mentor who comes in. But I think from start we are fairly clear that you need a CEO. But I think getting a CEO you need to reach a certain stage for those guys to get excited. Because if a CEO, maybe he will cost you about 50 lakh rupees a year in terms of salary, do you have that kind of money? Can you excite him to get here? Do you have all the bigger market picture for him to come inside? Because unless you have all of that you are going to end up wasting time getting him in as opposed to getting these things done. How about if not like a big CEO, just somebody who is willing to pay attention to the business issues as his job. Whether he is a student or an MBA graduate. I think it's great if you can get someone like that in your team. Because obviously it kind of gives a more balanced team for you to kind of start off with. But if you don't get someone I think even if a mentor is there that could be at least good enough for the first 10 weeks or so. Till you refine what you want to do. Thanks a lot for your time.