Alok Kejriwal

Let us begin with your first entrepreneurial venture...

Well, it all began under a tree outside the Mahalaxmi Race Course in Mumbai. I was a 19-year-old college student, who used to go to run on the course, and was waiting for the gates to be opened for the public. I got into a conversation with this distinguished gentleman who was also waiting under the same tree. It turned out that he was a banker and he told me about what he does. When I mentioned that it sounded really exciting, he suggested that I should get into this business. One thing led to another, and I met him a lot of times after that meeting. He introduced me to this concept of getting Letters of Credit (LC) discounted, which was hot in the late eighties.

To summarize, the meeting with a banker under a tree gave me enough incentive to start the LC discounting business. It ran for about six months till the Reserve Bank of India changed the rules pertaining to LC discounting. I still remember that as a 19-year-old guy, I ended up making about a lakh rupees in those six months.

So, that was my first taste of entrepreneurship. In this attempt, there were a few lessons that I learned that have been permanently etched into my mind. That is, having an idea, the passion to chase it, meeting the right people, and speaking out. I have come to learn that 99% of people do not speak out themselves first; be it on an airplane, at a party, and such. Even in public conferences, one of the toughest things to do is to stand up and ask the panel a question. If you are an entrepreneur, you have to speak out!

Walk us through the different ventures you have formed so far.

My first venture was Contest2Win, which happened because as a consumer I was very frustrated that promotions were not happening without problems. I thought sending postcards to participate in contests was ridiculous.

I decided to create a digital platform where people could enter contests, and that was how Contest2Win came into being. I knew that asking people to pay to participate in contests would not take off. So, I got the brand owners to promote me in return of my services and kept it as a free service to the public. As my venture started appearing in the media and TV in a big way, I was approached by many venture capitalists. I chose ICICI and eVentures. Then, I got some of my really interesting clients on the board of my venture. For instance, I got Thota Ranganath from Pepsi to become CEO of Contest2Win. One of my passions is to find people who are more intelligent than me to run my business.

It is after this that I was invited by Softbank China Venture Capital to China to set up the same business as Contest2Win over there on the mobile platform. Thus, we started Mobile2Win of which Ranga was the co-founder. In 2003, I got excited by the Indian mobile opportunity. So, I started Mobile2Win India. Here we got the opportunity to put together the Indian Idol voting platform. Then I made Rajiv Hiranandani, one of the co-founders, to run it. In 2004, I felt the opportunity to start an interactive agency, Media2Win, which I created with Krishna Kumar (KK).

As an entrepreneur, the most important milestone came by in 2006. That is when Walt Disney Internet Group approached us and acquired Mobile2Win China and Norwest Venture Partners acquired Mobile2Win India. It is after this that I co-founded Games2Win with Mahesh Khambadkone. This is the business that I am running right now.

How do you go on about choosing co-founders and forming a team?

I’ll tell you what worked the best for me—having worked with the person as a partner, client, supplier, or such for a while. This happened in at least two of my businesses, Contest2Win and Mobile2Win.

I have used headhunters in the past to target people that I may not know; but when I meet them, it is all about the passion. I interview them asking whether they are ready to take the pain, not the money. The whole idea is to get people who want to build value to the business, and not just take back big salary cheques.

What would you say are the first steps in starting a business?

There is only one first step—finding the pain. You have to identify the pain, who is feeling the pain, why is the pain being felt, and find out if there is enough pain. This exercise to me is the opportunity. Then I find the solution. If I feel that a large pain problem can have a large solution, then I start constructing a business around it and think about getting people.

There is an old adage that goes, ‘You don’t create a problem for which you have already found the solution.’ This, unfortunately, is the bane of many entrepreneurs today. They try to find problems for their solutions.

What are the main challenges that you have faced in all the startups you’ve run?

The biggest challenge is stamina! Abhay Havaldar, who is a VC and someone who I respect a lot, explained to me that it is called the entrepreneurial marathon. When the excitement of announcing your startup, getting the congratulatory e-mails and calls, and the publicity in the press is over, the gloom sets in. That is the drudgery of running an operation day-in and day-out, calling up customers who don’t want to see your face, facing attrition, office space rents going high etc. Getting past this ‘suicide point’, as I call it, is the most challenging part. You have to overcome this.

Besides this, funding is another challenge. I would say, take it when it is available. The thing with entrepreneurs, including me, is the thought, ‘How can I give away so much of equity for money?’. I would say, give it away. It is not the percentage that counts; it is the value that you create.

Another big challenge is managing the board and investors. Whether you like it or not, many of your investors keep changing their perception of the business, about what they want the business to be, about the exit of the business etc. That is when things begin to unwind.

What was the first taste of success for you as an entrepreneur?

There are multiple instances that I would like to attribute as the first tastes of success.

One was the time when ICICI Ventures got intrigued by Contest2Win and called me up asking if I am interested in VC funding. The fact that I was approached by a VC and not the other way around is the first success that I had.

The other moment is when Hindustan Lever gave me my first break in Contest2Win. I would say it was another first taste of success—the fact that HLL supported my idea, especially at a time when it had no background, no marketing or advertising.

The third moment that I say was my first taste of success was when the first response came in, indicating that the customer has accepted the business model. Also, when the first time that a person who I was interviewing said that he wants to join me because he believed in what I was doing.

You have done business in India, China and the United States. Please share with us any difference in the experience of doing business in each of these countries?

While the world has become a single global village, there is a golden triangle formula that has worked out well for us. In terms of doing business, US and China are very fast in adapting technologies. In India, the concept of experimentation is very high. Hence the formula, ‘build in India, scale in China, and sell in the US’.

Any thoughts on how to branch a business outside India?

The world today is very connected. You have business networking websites, forums, so on and so forth, where people are easily contactable. I think one should take networking through these mediums seriously. You have to be almost transparent about what you want to achieve. One of the biggest obsessions and problems of Indian entrepreneurs is ‘idea protection’. You have to realize that the most important thing is not really the idea; it is the execution of the idea. Meet venture capitalists and instead of asking them for money, ask them for contacts.

How easy or hard a decision is it to let a company you formed be acquired; what is the thought process that goes behind making that decision?

My approach to this has been that a business is like a relay race. When the time comes, stretch your hand out and give the baton away. You have to realize that someone who is paying you a whole lot of money for your company will obviously love it equally or much more than you. Frankly speaking, it has been an emotionless decision for me. For instance, what Disney has done with Mobile2Win in China was unimaginable for us. For me, it is the flowering of your brainchild, making it into a bigger and better person.

Tell us a little about the in-game ad network. How is it working out for you?

It began with a situation where we realized that our games were stolen and started seeing them on a huge number of other sites. Then came something that I call the art of thinking like a Judo star. In a Judo match, you do not block the opponent with your might; instead, you use the opponent’s momentum and speed to throw him off. We said, let us put invisible ads in our games, so that when the games get stolen, the thieves don’t see the ads; and when it gets played on another website, the ads automatically start to work.

Instead of fighting off piracy, we rode on it. Today, we have 200 million ad impressions a month. And because we use InvisiAds to bring traffic back to Games2Win, according to ComScore data, we have become the top 50 global sites in terms of traffic.

How big is the applications development market and where is the big money in it?

With Orkut, Facebook and the rest of the social networking websites involved, there are about 500 million people on these sites. These people don’t come online just to hang out; they want to do things with their friends. So the applications market is for this population of half a billion people. According to me, that is the biggest opportunity out there, in terms of the Internet space.

The big money is to charge consumers for nibbling away. The concept is that of charging a dollar to buy certain add-ons that will give you a one-up over the others. These are vanity purchases. Then there are feel-good spends, donation and charity spends, skill spends etc. Consumers are spending on themselves, and that is where the money in social networking is. Right now, the market is ripe in the US and Europe, because that is where they have iTunes accounts, micro-payment cards in their wallets etc.

What is the impact of the ongoing slowdown on the Internet space?

Anything that is costly to make in a bad economy does not survive. While traditional media has suffered very badly, the Internet being cost-effective has been the true beneficiary. Gaming has been the free leisure activity of all the youth in the world.

So, where is the opportunity space for aspiring entrepreneurs?

When broadband becomes very accessible—video applications, arm-chair or mouse-potato travel applications, e-learning, e-training and, of course, gaming with a whole lot of edutainment ideas. These are the four or five core ideas that I think are going to be big in the near future.

Article earlier appeared in the Dare - a business magazine