 Tell you a bit, a bit of an introduction to Mises before I start, he give you some context. Now, so I still run Mises, it is a, we are a telecom software company, we have multiple telecom products that we sell to the GSM operator. So, you know all your mobile cellular telephony works on a basic standard called GSM. And when we started off which was the year 2000, the GSM world which was earlier just trying to copy the fixed line world with you know a phone that would make voice calls, suddenly decided that we can use this for data. And so that you know the GSM industry waking up and saying that you know this telephone which otherwise looks like a fixed line telephone now can be used for data, internet etc. brought with it a lot of opportunities and our products were primarily targeted at that opportunity. We today are an unsuccessful company, if I say so we are about, we do about a million dollars in profits a year. Most Indian companies also, I am a very successful company if I do a million, I find it that you know we are about 8 years old, we are doing about that much a year, it is highly unsuccessful. I remember my initial business plan based on which we actually started the company etc. It had a projection which said 400 million dollars in cash profit in the same year, which I think is success and I don't think it's a laughing matter because if I look at certain other companies today they are doing that kind of numbers etc. So I think today the problem is that we still have people who are trying to build two-story, three-story buildings and frankly two-story, three-story buildings, I mean you know America of the Empire State building was built in the 60s you know. So there is really no point in building a company that has got a million dollars etc. So what I want to do is during my presentation I want to tell you a bit about not just the IIT Bombay incubator because when we were in the incubator it was the very beginning of the incubator. So you know it was really an incubator pilot project. What was crucial in us becoming entrepreneurs was also the environment and the whole culture at IIT Bombay and also the culture of the world during that time. So I wanted to kind of take people back a bit to go to you know those years you know 99. So you start off in 2000 like as me and Kashyap started off is you don't start in 2000 you start thinking about it in 99 and you start you know getting the basic education etc. being an entrepreneur in 98, 97 etc. So I want to kind of give you an idea of flavor what was the world like at that time of course a lot of you must be remembering it but this was really the time where when we came into IIT I came in I was a foreigner coming to India to study. So I was a kid who had never spent any time in India grew up overseas and then 96 up in IIT. When I came into IIT in the first year when I got in I of course wanted email because you know my parents were overseas and I needed to communicate with them. So IIT had a very interesting rule where if you are a senior so if you are a final year student IIT you are entitled to 300 emails a year. I'm not sure how many other institutes had this rule. So no other institute in other institutes of India you had zero emails a year. In IIT you had 300 emails a year to be used very sparingly only by the senior students to apply to universities abroad. Now so this is the universe in 1996 and then you know you had you know like there was a thing called links and you had the text internet. So I went out because I had a necessity you know international calls were very expensive I had to go and get a shell account from VSNL and then finally one fine day you had a revolution by you had Yahoo and then one fine day you had Hotmail which said free email and I don't know how many people realized how powerful that was more than a kid who you know who otherwise had no email to access the outside world so 96 and I remember actually you know at that point of time you know you had Yahoo, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Google starting out as Google beta where you had a single page with you know the small form and you know you could put a search query and suddenly exploding so those were very magical years. I remember sending out an email to Jerry I am getting a reply to it. Sending out an email to Vinod Khosla you know who was a very well known venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins and getting a reply you know to some very pointed questions because the whole universe of people who were on the internet at that time was so small. So everyone by nature being part of that very small universe was very accessible and you could kind of you know interact with each other it was a revolutionary thing. So one you had some years which were magical so you had you know obviously companies which went from nothing so you had guys like Jerry Yang and David Fallow you had etc. who was just students at Stanford started a company became very popular and then you have people who are sitting in IIT you know and saying that we are really the brightest guys in India and really there is no difference between a guy who is an American high school student you know we didn't factor in that they were PhD students but you know but guys who were high school students studying in the US and okay starting a company and we also starting a company was Akin you know in some ways there was a parallel and so they were already the idea or conceptually you know you were okay with that you know secondly you had a large number of IIT Bombay alumni who were already in the valley and were part of such companies and were fairly successful either as the guys who started those companies or else as angel investors so you had Kanwal Reiki who was an angel investor into a lot of these dot-coms in the US. You had Rakesh Mathur who had sold a company to Amazon you had KB Chandrasekhar who was the founder of a company which was basically doing data centers where all these dot-coms were hosted. So you had all these guys who had made significant money US by starting and founding these companies in the 1996, 97, 98, 99 that kind of era and who were coming back to IIT Bombay so which was very very crucial so they were coming they were real life you could touch them feel them talk to them and say okay yeah these guys have made 100 million 200 million 300 million so it was it was part of that culture netos you know so I just want to give you some context that is not just what the incubator per se did when the incubator started off in January 2000 it was also the preclude to all of this and you know the alumni coming in so IIT Bombay and won the online world was a very fascinating place at that time and IIT Bombay was also a very magical place where you know lots of things were happening as I said IIT Bombay was a you know hot bit of activity regular alumni visits significant number of external interaction you had an entrepreneurship sell that was started out by people these people were contacting people in the US getting them to come in etc etc I was a part of some of these lot of activity in Bombay city Bombay itself is a very vibrant city you know you had a organization called TI which was just starting off in the US and they decided let's have TI Bombay chapter I remember going very often you had TI in 99 was having meetings every once a month you know because those meetings were in Bombay guys from IIT could go I know quite a few people regular at all of these meetings lot of these other guys from my hostel etc were regular so you were getting educated about being an entrepreneur etc there was a significant amount of cultural activity or you know or entrepreneurial activity in the in the city at that time as it is a golden era where pretty much if you want to contact someone you could contact that person you know you could send out an email to a senior guy at Microsoft and they do you would be reasonably sure that they didn't have 10,000 emails there was no problem of spam they were it was a very funny period but you were not getting that kind of volume of emails or you know there was nothing there was competing for your attention to that extent where if you if you wanted to contact someone and you know you would not get a response so it's a fairly magical time and you know golden era I was also part you know one of these issues I was part of the initial the first tech fest team where I was running a particular part which was you know media and public relations etc so this was this was the you know like my life till 99 this is the context you know where where you have this is the kind of activity that was happening in the city and in IIT within the city it's important to know this because I don't think it can happen in isolation I mean unfortunately I want to take a slightly different track from the other speakers here because it's very easy for us to think that yes we can also start an incubator but the activity within campus and the activity etc it's difficult to get which is why there are so few successful incubators and where I personally if you ask my opinion I would say it would need to feed off a city like Bombay and an incubator like IIT Bombay's incubator or I am Amitabha's incubator for the students to get a full experience it would they would not be able to get a full experience just being in an incubator in a smaller city in my in my opinion okay so this so then IIT Bombay started what was called the Eureka business plan competition so being the way so I was by this time by 98 way way much into this entrepreneurship thing and I was I was very sure that I'm gonna be an entrepreneur I will start something of the other and I'll make it reasonably big idealism to the core yeah so so IIT Bombay had this first business plan competition which is Eureka the first year so of course this is an opportunity which according to me was was you know just made for me and I have to go and participate in this competition so I go into the competition you know it was it was it was really well well thought out you know there was a lot of education etc there were seminars and things like that good panel of judges with the intention of quite a few people was just to win the competition win some money and then then go home you know that was that was pretty much what a student competition is about of course for me it was not like that so so my intention was you know okay I'm gonna present to these guys and they're gonna be like you know a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs and then I'll get them to invest in my company I was already thinking along those lines of course what happened was something else so the first Eureka was 99 and the idea I thought about was why don't we create some sort of an online health portal where we are you know you have consumers in the US and you have doctors and you have healthcare etc and let's kind of connect them all online because online was new and you know earlier everything was happening in the physical world so okay so I wrote this business plan and you know the Eureka business plan competition went through a short list phase so where in the first phase you have professors from IIT who look through the through the plans and say that these are the plans which are of a certain quality and can go to the final judge in judge judgment stage so we didn't get through okay so so so okay I was very surprised because I thought you know this is a brilliant idea how can they not see this is you know the healthcare in the US which is like one of the biggest business opportunities how is it possible they're not even shortlisted so finally I went to you know some okay why why are we not shortlisted so the guys is no but you know this this seems like a very far-fetched idea for a student in India to do so none of the professors felt that you know that an online health exchange could could could be done by you know a student sitting in India so that's fine so so you know I said okay yeah man what do the professors know right you know I was one of those students who were always the the troublemaker was like you know I I mean professors don't know anything yeah I mean come on of course it's a brilliant business idea you know so so I decided forget the forget forget the competition I will go direct to the judges so you know so I said okay let me let me go into the you know the the final whatever judging area and one of the judges coincidentally is a it was Rakesh Mathur and you know and I'm surprised to see that all the people sitting in the panel have some connection to him so so you had Rakesh Mathur and you know the judging is going on and so I go to him and say that Rakesh I know you're judging this competition and the ideas may be very good but I've got a really great idea and I want you to come and listen to me you know and and I gotta give credit to Rakesh you know because obviously he's an alumnus who's already made like 200 million dollars he's just doing this you know because just you know build a connection and now he's already spent a whole day judging business plan competitions the last thing he wants to do is to sit to and sit with another young you know young kid and you know listen to his idea so he tells me that's he look dude I have you know I've already spent this whole day and all that but I'm going back to my hotel room after this you can come there and present me so finally even thing that he thought that I would come you know so finally I end up going at about I think 10 a.m. and it's Rakesh's pajamas his dad and they're having room service and finally I present to him so so Rakesh just tells me one thing he tells me so he's very very good and he tells me that see I think that you know it's a very good idea but I'm afraid that it's already been done by another guy who is running a company called healthy on you know which was which was which had already by that time Rakesh gave me a very good statement he said that see look healthy on has already been sued twice by the what is the anti monopoly what is it called and by the anti-trust department of the government so you know it's obviously it's a very huge idea and it's obviously that they are already very successful so I would refrain if I was you and from trying to compete with them right now so he let's you look but he was very positive so he told me that see look you know you've got the internet you know you should really do your market research well because you can pretty much anything on to Google or Yahoo as it was at that time and you can see what other people are doing you can understand what people are doing etc and and my his words of advice to me was that you try and do something that can have help people save time etc so that was it that was my first Eureka experience and I said but you know I said yeah this is valid advice and you know I should have done my homework better and things like that and then life went on so the next as soon as this was over I decided okay this Eureka is gone I have one more year to graduate so I graduate next year 2000 so so now by then by now I decided okay I want to be an entrepreneur you know and this was this was very clear to me so I decided that I don't want to spend my time doing anything else at IIT you know I would rather spend my time and looking at what are the steps in in actually a business person so I decided to engage disengage from most of my activities I spent one year in just reading I I could have spent one year in reading but but you know I will actually tell you that I spent actually one year reading practically every website of an entrepreneur or every website of a venture capital fund every interacting with a lot of VCs etc in India overseas etc so I spent about a year just in in just standing entrepreneurship and this is this is very important because no matter if the institute is doing seminars etc at that point of time you know everything was very early in in the in the in the world so the quality of the content that you have today is not the same quality of the content that you had earlier and what was really good was that time when people used to write things themselves so if they were to write to you and say that this is this I give you this particular feedback you're getting a direct version as opposed to Xerox version something similar to what you would get on a blog today so if today I were to to read something I would definitely read a blog and would not read a content that's created by a professional content creator etc so I spent one year just reading and I will I spent also a lot of time interacting with VCs who were in the US VCs were setting up in India and sort of got lost you know to be to be very honest with you towards the end of that year a lot of the VCs were setting up in India said that Roshan we need a bright kid like you why don't you join us so I was getting a lot of towards the years that you know towards about October November I was I was getting a lot of offers to join venture funds you know because obviously they also wanted a you know younger guy as part of the team as a lower member of the order etc and the other option was always yeah now I should do some startups I was I was a bit lost in between and then came the moment of truth I saw the announcement for the next year Eureka and it came in upon it became the realization that shit okay one year's gone by what has changed you know so so then I said okay no you know I will I will go you know do the first thing fine fine because it was only me at that point I said let me find another person who would compliment me you know from having having read through you know whatever was available on the internet etc it was very clear that you know it is required to have a person who would compliment you so I went out I I looked out for you know who would be a really good tech guy because obviously I was not I was not a programmer I was more the as you can tell I was more the talker in the in the team you know so I said let me find a really good tech guy in IIT etc ended up spoke to a lot of people etc finally went to a guy called Sandy who till date I feel is the best programmer I know okay so you must understand so very very magical moment when you don't know the guy you've never met him before he doesn't know you he's never met you before you go out knock his dorm room door or hostel room there door he says hi what's up and you introduce yourself when you say that okay now I want to start a company with you and and and and this is a moment I'm sure for him would have been a moment of shock when when you know when this is it is another student and he suddenly has another student landing up his door saying there okay let's start a company and he has no background for me at least I was eased into it where I had some background into the whole thing etc but he had no background at all into into this whole entrepreneurship business and you know and and I think that that's the power of idealism as a student and and the power of of in some ways I would like to give myself some credit and say it's a power of leadership but you can inspire people to go out of their out of their comfort zone you know and we made a decision that changed both of our lives and we said that okay let's let's start a company and it was in no straight away we didn't we never started off saying that we'll do something to win a competition we started off straight away saying that we're gonna start a business you know and we spend the next few days going over what are the ingredients for right business what business ideas shortlisting ideas going through all of them the the whole work so we actually did a very good and guided by a few broad principles some of the principles of course from you know of course our interaction with Rakesh market research XYZ and of course interaction with a lot of entrepreneurs and VCs etc as we went through the through the thing end of the story you know February 2000 we ended up winning Eureka the next year okay the idea was very very simple at that point of time of course as I told you you can put this in context to what Mises does today okay and I'll tell you how this ended up there you know so what what what we ended up doing is saying that let's create some sort of an auto browser that you know whenever at during those days being on the internet was a very repetitive process you would usually know that I visit these four or five websites I would go to Hotmail I would go to you know let's say Rediff I would go to Times of India and I would generally do you know these these things I would go to Hotmail login check my email go to Rediff go click on a new story and see the actual new story etc so what we said is why don't we create some sort of an auto browser which we're using which you could create a page that would basically you could record your actions and then later you don't need to do these things you know the software will itself go it will go log into Hotmail check your emails and alert you if you had emails go to Rediff click on a new story remove all the ads etc and just show you the new story etc so sort of like letting you letting you create a personalized page today if you see you have the world has evolved where you have now RSS you have feeds and etc which which which make this job much easier but it was a very different era then this was an era where I'll tell you I'll give you an example of how different the era was our our auto browser was working perfectly fine till February 2000 when finally we realized it was not working for many websites and the reason for this was JavaScript can you imagine this it sounds hilarious that you know your but but actually you were in an internet then which which JavaScript was not common and and today of course as you know every website has some JavaScript or Ajax or whatever but you know that was the kind of thing where you know where we decided to create an auto browser we won Eureka and and and I think the reason that we won Eureka was really the passion in the detail because the amount of effort analysis the detail in the business plan etc was was as amazing I don't think any other any other group who went out trying to win a business plan competition would have put in that amount of effort typically I'm sure that the guys who wanted to just win a competition would have gone spent you know 10 days of last-minute late-night creative writing and then ended up this it was it was totally different and so I truly believe we deserve to win we'd really put in about six months of hard effort etc now as soon as we won it was very funny because we won and there was you know this the winners are announced at the at the end something similar to this so you know of course much larger audience where a lot of students from IIT etc sitting in the audience and we are there and you know they just called out our names and we're there on the on the stage so in those days people should be very secretive about their plans I don't know I guess sometimes startups still are very very secretive about their plans so it's very funny because the we won you know there was actually there was no disclosure of what these guys won the competition based on and then you know the the judges asked us do you would you like to tell people something about your business plan so we had no qualms I think we had the maturity to say yeah we'll tell people so we just that you know that that's what we are plan was we're gonna do this and we're gonna come out with this soon so a professor Fatak you know matters so so professor Fatak called us and he said that you know okay I've heard about this and you know your etc and and and that is another moment that changed our lives because I think professor Fatak in the 15 minutes that he matters was able to immediately see that these guys are serious and and and leave aside what the idea was I think he he at least had the belief that okay these two kids sitting here can build something useful people on the internet will come use it and and and then you know the service will grow something similar to a hotmail yahoo or or etc so so he of course already had a company which was which was right off which was already had been admitted maybe a day or two days earlier or something already into the incubator so there was a precedent was very easy for him to say that you know if you guys are also keen to do this instead of just saying join the incubator and so we joined you know I think you know here is here is where one thing is very important where you know where you know there was a certain degree of idealism even in professor Fatak and I think that if the incubator was run by systems and processes at that time there's no way that it would have started off if you if you are at an institute which is about to start an incubator or an incubation entrepreneurship activity you need to find the most craziest and most idealistic professor put him in charge of incubator a guy who has absolutely no business sense and a guy who will go only based on the fact that oh these guys have the drive and these guys have the sincerity only then will it get off the ground otherwise I'm guaranteeing you if you look at the quality of ideas you will never have a incubator starting off or ever being successful it's impossible because the ideas will be very very raw at coming from students and coming without their from their cocooned existence XYZ so I don't feel that you have to be harsh at all you know I feel no have the craziest professor and the most sincere idealistic professor and put him in charge of that and let him find the other guys who he just feels are sincere because the people everyone has the intellectual capability anyhow given that they're you know at one of the top institutes everyone had the differences only in the sincerity of that group there's no that the business idea is definitely not going to be there after three months which was exactly the story with us also because in three months we decided I'll go through that is we decided to just move quickly so so so so as soon as we got into got accepted incubator we said okay let's let's let's hire the team so so so this was also a very interesting experience and I'm trying to you I'm trying to go through this experience to show you the kind of idealism that's there and teams at that level and but the fact that even an idealistic team who really is sincere about wanting to do something will make the right decisions so we went out and we said that okay we'll have five six computer science you know guys who will work with us and we went out and and and got these guys from the computer science patch etc so funnily you know this our startup kind of went along with the IIT calendar where you know in May June July etc you have a three month break where people are supposed to do their practical training this is typically done after that third year so usually so all these guys were eligible for their practical training and we felt that you know we'll give them the opportunity they would be our our initial team and they would do their practical training with us so we'll we'll get them as part of this initial team etc so in the time the training came I I won't kid you but out of the initial five or six guys three guys just said that no actually I if I do a practical training with you guys then I don't think I'll be able to write a strong enough statement of purpose when I want to apply next year to my masters of PhD in the US another guy said that no I think you know if I work with IBM research I think I'll have something more credible on my CV as opposed to telling them that you know I was working at a startup that was run by one of my batch mates so and at that moment of truth and it was a moment of of great difficulty for us because these were this was our initial team you know so we had these six or seven guys who were who were part of the really initial part of the team and three out of them were basically interested in in the first three months which was crucial to the company just going up and doing their practical training elsewhere so we made some way this is where I think the the idealist says that no let them go you don't need those people there you will do it anyhow so so so we made some tough decisions which I which I think that you know no one else would have done if if if they wanted to be friendly if they wanted to be diplomatic if they wanted to be you know you want if they want to do the regular thing you know it ended up saying that okay no let's go and get a whole team of people who are professionals and we went out to people who are who are seniors of ours who are already working in industries went to each one of them who we knew were good spent some time on a personal basis convincing them making sure that they would get paid a salary etc whatever was professional etc so then simultaneously incubators also moved to a larger office etc at this time you must understand that the the incubators also pilot project everyone within IIT was not in agreement with the concept of having incubator and this is something that I'm sure all of you all will face at your institutes you know I'll give you an understanding Sandy was still a student so he was under tremendous pressure from a section of the computer science professors who are saying that no IIT students should not have any commercial interests so that's all so there was significant amount of opposition there was also opposition to certain practical things like for instance if you have a website and you need to FTP something your server within IIT during those days FTP was access was banned as a student you could not have FTP access and I do not know what is happening presently IIT I've heard some things on the newspapers etc about net being banned after 8 o'clock and all those kind of things but there's those were significant things that you know that at that time without the incubator being given some sort of official status still some difficulty so I think that you know when you go to your institutes you'll face those hassles and so you need to have someone who is a reason big idealist to say no and you know that no no it has to be done this way and we will have to do this and we'll have to give this XYZ because otherwise it'll just not work it will not work as a half-hearted kind of you know that yeah we'll give them some space and you know maybe they'll do it maybe they'll not do it because there's no point doing it in that half-hearted manner you know so May 2000 let me let me let me go through some of here so then okay the other differences is raising is come August 2000 we be actually raised capital so so the incubator helped we had got a lot of publicity we were also very clear at that moment that we didn't want to of course we were in touch with a lot of alumni but we were very clear that we didn't want to raise money from alumni especially not IIT Bombay alumni because the IIT Bombay alumni that we ended up meeting for some reason always felt that this is this is something that I should do just to patronize IIT Bombay and and we wanted to be very clear that no we want someone who you know for whom it's a business decision and things like that and so you know we went out raised professional capital from a proper firm which had absolutely no connection to us and you know I moved swiftly had multiple investors across the table negotiated with them close the deal with the guy who we getting the best valuation with as normal and started to conduct us as professionally I think we started the first professional the the the two metrics I say when you are running a company professionally is when you hire your first sales guy and when we hired our first chartered accountant so that's when it when you when you realize okay is now the company is is running slightly professionally so we so that was about August 2000 we then of course went through some we went through then one of our major strategic shifts so let me tell you what happened so we went we were doing trips to the US because obviously in those days the typical model was you raise some angel money start something to a certain extent then go out and raise venture capital you know from a larger fund etc. and typically these large funds when the US so when we were going so we were doing that so we were going we had the product ready we have the initial offering etc. and then we were doing trips to the US to actually pitch to the marquee funds in the US etc. and raise money from them at that point time it kind of hit us that see there are a lot of very well funded guys doing something similar etc. and at that moment we also realize that see look what are we doing where we're giving people the ability to to save a lot of hassle of browsing etc. etc. so let's say for instance instead of going to hotmail putting in your username password clicking here clicking there etc. and then seeing your email you can just click on one link and it'll show you hotmail without you having to put in your username password etc. so what we said is it's much more powerful if this is done on a mobile device or using voice because on a mobile device I have no way to put in my username and password or when I'm using voice I have no no no means of actually putting in my username password and then going and checking my email so we said it'll be much more powerful to actually go and say that let's let's let's take the internet on mobile and you know use it so that you can store everything you want you can go and configure your mobile internet when you are on your PC and then every time you want to check your email you just call in a number it recognizes your phone number and it will it will tell you that you know you've got four new emails reply to it it will if you reply to it it will send and send the reply to the email to the to the sender using an attachment and things like that so so we did our first major strategy shift and we said that we'll move away from the internet and we go straight into the mobile devices because that was the market that was just opening up at that moment so I think this is a first important point where you say that you know if a team is is smart and if they are if they are they have the best interests of the company at heart and they want to succeed then they will find you know the opportunity which is big or they'll they'll shift quickly enough as opposed to a team who wants to say that you know I will protect or I will defend myself and I will not admit that I went actually went wrong somewhere and I will continue on that same path etc so so we went we went straight into the mobile space we then decided let's go to you know who are the IIT Bombay alumni who are working in the mobile space and we found a gentleman called Mr. Anil Gajwani who was a CTO of what's called Max Touch which was the mobile operator in Bombay you know it was at that point of time called Orange and it was a joint venture between Max, Hutchison Max and and Orange from Hong Kong so Anil Gajwani was a very senior alumnus who was you know was working in the US and was then recruited as of Max Touch when they were setting up the cellular network in Bombay and so we knew him through the you know the alumni network we went pitch to him and you know once when we met him he then he immediately understood that you okay this is this can be something big because we would like to let our users you know when they're when they're buying when they're spending 10 rupees or 20 rupees a minute on mobile telephony we would like to give them email on the move or give them new sellers on the move and things like that and then he said that you know is it possible for you guys to create some sort of operator portal so can I create some sort of portal like you know where all my orange customers can come and you can use your phone to check your email and use your phone to check your news and things like that and so we realized okay this is something interesting so and we said that why just go to orange so so then it didn't think that let's go to all the operators so we went from Orange to BPL to Airtel to every known operator in India etc and finally went into trials with orange and BPL and then finally you know we had our first customers BPL and then we then of course we evolved the product made it a real product sold it overseas and that the rest is kind of history but that's really how you know it it kind of went off from there as I said first real customer demo something like Feb 2001 orange BPL the orange experience so the orange experience was more of just making sure that a professional company which is orange was really like order phone today it's the same company which has been reached on by by anyhow but orange is really the most professional mobile operator in India at that point of time so the orange experience was more tell us that really a very professional operator which had senior executives were worked in Hong Kong and worked in London and worked in all parts of the world as part of the orange network felt there was something valuable and what we were demonstrating and BPL was the guy who paid as a check first who said that yes we're gonna take this service live you know and and and you know so so that was really our first customer experience there is a telco and then we realized that there are a lot of telcos every country has a telco and so let's let's go and try and sell to all of them of course there was the inevitable crash something like around this time the market went really bad there was a whole dot-com crash the you know the telecom bust etc we ourselves went in did some layoffs etc because you know we had we had too many people I still remember 9 11 where I had BPL in our office and you know we were watching it suddenly the news broke and we look at on TV and it was like you know it was it was actually we felt it was a hoax when when we when we when we saw it on TV and you know you know the in the whole environment went really bad so the reason I'm saying this is that is that be sure that this experience is going to repeat itself if you're gonna start an incubator today I'm 100% sure that within a year you will face the exact same thing where you will have an environment where there's absolutely no investor willing to put in money into those companies there's absolutely no customer willing to buy anything and every founder is shaking and is trembling it's bound to happen and it's my personal guarantee that will happen you know you know the are the only other campus startup which was there which is right half at that point of time got acquired by purple yogi and and then you know you know it was it was a slowdown so it was it was it was like there there was absolutely no nothing that was happening in the world it was like you know the whole world had gone shut everyone had gone shut the companies gone to work at Microsoft and other companies and so we we finally said that no let's let's go to let's go back to the thing let's go and let's go and sell overseas because the Indian companies were just not willing to pay because if you went at that time and to and looked at their data numbers the total number of people in India as mobile subscribers in 2001 was something like two lakh users it was that smaller market the number of guys who had data enabled was maybe thousand people in the whole country this is not wrong I mean the real studies have given some thousand people who had data enabled and and so a customer even if he tells me that boss you know if I tell him that you need to pay me a crore which is what a typical product costs you know etc you see that how do I justify paying so we very quickly realized that no we need to sell overseas because there are GSM operators across the globe GSM is a standard let's let's start it and so we went to the GSM association took the whole web and old calling this is a this is a crazy thing to do I am I today I don't know people who have got some background into telcos will know how crazy this is it is really impossible for someone to say that a telco in Malta is a billion dollar company in Malta it's typically a telecom operator is one of the largest companies in the country he operates in he's a monolith typically during those days 2001 2002 they typically government owned monoliths who've just there's themselves grappling with how to get into this whole you know what do you say the the the the mobile side of things because they're typically fixed line operators so we decided okay of course because we were students and we didn't know better we decided let's take the whole GSM association website let's look for their websites and let's just start calling them and that's what we did we basically ran an operation where myself and a few few guys sat in India called each and every GSM operator across the globe set up appointments I went with a u-rail pass and you know and a ticket that would go you know right round across the world as a pretty much a door-to-door telecom salesman you know going to each one of these operators with a demonstration of the product on my laptop and you know very well written etc with of course a lot of exaggeration about a really great team in India etc YZ and finally of course when you when you put in that one year of really that kind of sincere sales effort it you you are bound to see results so we finally had a customer which finally said yes this is great and here's a check it took us about 15 16 months of that slow down sale cycle to finally get that check which was a substantial order which is the order of what 300 thousand dollars which pretty much you know once that order came through as as a company running in India we knew that the next one year we don't have nothing to worry about you know but of course that when you when you end up doing that at the end of one year you lose your idealism so you end up really questioning you know what is whether this whole story of whether you can make 400 million dollars a year in profit is true and it's not just you it's your employees and it's your co-founder etc etc so we pull through this whole whole slow down and you know we managed to sell and make money but somewhere we lost the idealism you know so so we lost our idealism my co-founder went to Microsoft you know which is I'm giving you an idea of how how badly you can lose your idealism went to yeah so he went to Microsoft I took a sabbatical decided that call center the next big thing went on to do that you know and of course do a lot of other things our incubation experience was on the whole great we would not be incubator be entrepreneurs without it we caught the incubator early I would say and I T was also struggling at our time so the amount of value that I T could add beyond a certain extent was was limited but of course now today there there's this it's a formal thing now what do I when I look at you know entrepreneurs etc I always remember these two photographs one is of course everyone knows this photograph is the Microsoft founding team you know and if you're gonna if a team comes to you looking like that then you should know that they'll be building a billion dollar company and this is our team you know so I always remember these two you know photographs and I remember some you know some sayings you know but because this is a saying in idealism and it's it's a saying that you know is outside of school in California unfortunately India the first thing that we teach our kids is not to be idealists is to be realists and you know do whatever it takes and become number one then you know