My Dad became an Entrepreneur before it was cool to be one
By: Roving With Abhinav
Tags: Startup, Entrepreneurship, Dads, Value Proposition

This takes me back to the first time I heard the term entrepreneur. I was in the 6th or 7th grade. It was Entrepreneurship Day at my school and my dad was called to be the keynote speaker during the morning assembly. I was told by someone that my father was supposed to speak in the assembly, I didn’t understand why. He ultimately couldn’t make it because of some official commitments. But when I got home and asked my father why he was invited, that’s when he explained to me that he was an entrepreneur.

Earlier to this, if someone asked me what my dad did, I’d just say businessman or I’d say he’s MD & Chairman of a software company. As time went by the word “entrepreneur” stuck. During my time in school, I’d proudly say I want to be an entrepreneur not understanding what it meant in my complete naivety.

Back in the day, the idea of seed money for a business came from either mortgaging your home or pleading with a bank for capital. The seed capital that my dad received was from my grandmother. It was ₹ 50,000 or 670$ in 1990. My dad was an entrepreneur when there weren’t any VCs or PE firms back then in India. Debt was the only option to raise capital or if you got the right traction, going public was the next big thing & so he did. How he got into enterprise software in 1997 in a city like Hyderabad is a story for another day.

He chose the more difficult path of software products space compared to software services, products needed deep pockets and a highly talented team. The only choice he had to raise capital was an IPO, in hindsight, he regrets having done it. He took his company public in 1999 right before the dot com crash. It was an IPO, unlike anything India had witnessed at that time. The stock opened at 42 & didn’t stop until 750. Everyone became multi-millionaires overnight. But my father never got into this to make money, so he didn’t make the spectacular exit like most promoters do today.

Those were different times I guess, it wasn’t about who made the biggest exit. I feel today’s priorities are skewed. He got into business to create value, put India on a global map in the enterprise software product space, provide employment to as many people as he could, and create an impact on society. He has seen the extreme highs & lows. But he never gave up on his employees, he stuck his neck out for them. He never delayed on salaries even if that meant that he had to stake everything & borrow money at an extremely high rate of interest. All this lead to a great sense of loyalty. He treated all his employees as a family. He’s been in the software business for over 20+ years and he has employees who have stuck around for over 20+ years with him. This is a lesson that my generation can learn.

The current start-up ecosystem is very superficial. It’s all about who’s going to be the next unicorn, which start-up raised how much capital, which founder made a large exit. The focus on value creation doesn’t exist. The few companies that are trying to do that aren’t cool enough to be taken seriously. In the process of being cool, we’ve forgotten the basics of economics. For any business, your cash flows are a key indicator. The burn rate of some of the start-ups is unfathomable. Sometimes I wonder why so much capital is being pumped into some of these businesses without a viable plan for future growth. I honestly sometimes wonder if this valuation game is a bubble waiting to burst.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree?

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