Meet IIT-Madras alumnus Prem Watsa, iconic BlackBerry’s new owner

Forty two years after he migrated to Canada, V. Prem Watsa, who was then just another IIT engineer in search of an MBA, now holds the future of an ailing, but still iconic BlackBerry in his hands. On Monday afternoon, a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings, Watsa’s flagship company, bid $9 a share to buy out Blackberry.

A 1971 batch IIT-Madras graduate in chemical engineering, Watsa arrived in Canada with little more than pocket change with which to pursue his dreams. He did his MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Since then, he has made a name for himself, mostly as an investor who identifies distressed and undervalued assets, bets on them, and reaps returns. Fairfax Financial Holdings, an insurance-cum-investment company that Watsa founded in 1985, went on to become Canada’s most profitable company in 2008.

“I know he is an ardent admirer of Warren Buffett and is sometimes referred to as the Warren Buffett of Canada,” says MG Venkatesh Mannar, the Ottawa-based President of The Micronutrient Initiative, and Watsa’s senior at IIT-Madras. “I remember him then as a shy and reserved person (maybe he still is).”

Funds for Alma Mater
Watsa, Mannar says, has made significant contributions to the IIT-Madras Alumni Fund. Despite a couple of recent lacklustre years, Fairfax Financial Holdings’ revenue crossed $8 billion in 2012, up over 7% from a year earlier, with net profit at $532.4 million and nearly $37 billion in assets, spread across pulp mills, specialty retailers, and restaurant chains. Its stock price has compounded at 19 percent annually.

Watsa, 63, and one of the wealthiest individuals in Canada, is reclusive by nature and limits public appearances mostly to Fairfax’s annual shareholder meetings. However, his company’s latest move – a $4.7 billion bid to buy smartphone maker BlackBerry, has put the spot light on the Hyderabad-born billionaire. BlackBerry is by far the most high profile company in Canada and Fairfax – short for fair, friendly acquisitions – is its largest shareholder with around a 10% stake. Fairfax raised its stake in Blackberry from 2 percent in January 2012 (when he joined the Blackberry board) to 10% by mid-2013, during a period when the company stock prices were on a decline.

Last month, when BlackBerry announced it was exploring options for a sale, Watsa resigned as a director on the Blackberry board, citing potential conflict of interest. This was read as a statement of intent to mount a bid for the company.

Watsa has been a strong believer in BlackBerry from the time he started buying its shares. “The brand name, a security system second to none, a distribution network across 650 telecom carriers worldwide, a 79 million subscriber base, enterprise customers accounting for 90% of the Fortune 500….are all formidable strengths..” he wrote in a letter to Fairfax Financial shareholders this March.

Truck Start
His professional career started in 1974 at the Confederation Life Insurance Co. (CLI) in Toronto, where he stayed till 1983, rising to become the company’s vice president. After a short stint at GW Asset Management, he founded his own asset management company – Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel Ltd. (now wholly owned by Fairfax) – along with his former boss at CLI and three others. In 1985, Watsa bought over Markel Financial, a Canadian company specialising in trucking insurance, and later renamed it Fairfax Financial Holdings.

Watsa’s mantra of risk-averseness and long term view has stood him well over the years, but it’s his eye for the big picture that enables him to see investment pitfalls and financial crises way before others, say observers. He was among the first to predict the crash of 1987, the Japanese collapse of 1990 and the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), September 25, 2013

Annamalai tech alumni to get ‘dream’ industrial park

Going off the beaten track, the alumni association of Tamil Nadu’s Annamalai University is embarking on a project that will help the institute’s expat techpreneurs realise their dreams of setting up own businesses in the country. The alumni association is planning to set up an exclusive industrial park to cater to the expatriate engineering entrepreneurs who plan to shift their overseas businesses to India.

“We are close to buying land for the industrial estate either at the auto cluster of Oragadam or the micro-engineering cluster near Chengelpet. We could accommodate about 50 alumni techpreneurs in the park who could possibly set micro, small and medium engineering units with an initial capital of Rs. 3 crore (Rs. 30 million) to Rs. 5 crore (Rs. 5 million). The techpreneurs could well generate employment for about 1,500 workers,” Annamalai University Engineering & Technology Alumni Association (AUETAA) President PR Earnarst. “This is a joint development initiative of alumni expat techpreneurs and AUETAA with no upfront expenditure borne by the association towards the buying of land,” he added.

To identify the techpreneurs and promote the idea of shifting their businesses back to India, he said AUETAA has already opened front offices in Singapore, Muscat, Doha and the US to help out homeward-bound engineering entrepreneurs. “The initiative perhaps was kicked off in response to the overwhelming cry of our alumni who remain successful abroad and want to return to India and explore business opportunities for engineering industries here. People who have passed out of the university since 1949 and had gone abroad for opportunities now want to come back owing to family and other comforts of the homeland,” Earnarst said.

The scheme is also open to alumni techpreneurs within the country who want to expand their business with the support of AUETAA. “The spirit of alumni bonhomie is somewhat extraordinary as someone who had passed in 1960s rubs shoulders with someone who had passed out in 2000. They all now want to try out the possibility of functioning under the common roof assisted by AUETAA. Besides expats, domestic entrepreneurs based in other industrial estates want to set shop in the proposed industrial park and that is in a way is encouraging,” he added.

When asked about what type of opportunities await foreign expats in the MSME space, he said the scope is for light engineering and automobile engineering parts. “I myself am an expat techpreneur from Dubai who moved home to set up an engineering SME that supplies auto components to the companies in Oragadam. Other expats with their international exposure could also expedite the possibility of setting up SME export base for light engineering goods,” Earnarst said.

Source: The Financial Express, January 11, 2012

ISB offers entrepreneurial initiative to non-ISB students

After incubating more than 15 entrepreneurial ventures by its students in the last three years, Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB) is now opening up its Entrepreneurship Development Initiative (EDI) to non-ISB students also. For this, ISB is talking to industry chambers, NASSCOM and the Indian Angel Network to tap students with an entrepreneurial bent of mind.

As part of the EDI, ISB students who wish to take up entrepreneurship and set up their own ventures go through a four-month assessment programme to check the viability of the venture. Students of the selected venture get free stay at the ISB campus and a stipend of Rs. 25,000 for a period of one year, besides the incentive of deferred placements. In return, the successful ventures have to donate 3% of their equity to the campus.

ISB’s current incubation initiative is focused on its EDI which is under its Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED). Under this initiative, almost 17 ventures by ISB graduates have been incubated since May 2009 and five have graduated. “More than 40 companies have supported EDI in the last three years and now we are talking to the Confederation of Indian Industry and individual institutes which run business plan competitions to get non-ISB students participate in the EDI. Initially, we want only 5-6 students per year in the programme,” said Krishna Tanaku, Executive Director, WCED at ISB.

The institute plans to roll out the programme to non-ISB students in 2012. However, the non-ISB students will not get accommodation on campus but only access to infrastructural and intellectual property related facilities. ISB is also in talks with NASSCOM — the apex body of the IT industry — to identify a few ventures that have been filtered to some extent, besides winners of business plan competitions in the country.

Source: The Financial Express, January 9, 2012

IIT-B’s plan: Job support to entrepreneurial spirit

The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) has hit upon an idea that could boost the spirit of entrepreneurship among its students. Its placement cell is weighing the option of helping students whose start-ups have not fired to be placed in jobs after two years of experimenting with their ideas.

As part of the scheme, students keen on their own start-ups will be assigned mentors after graduating. These experts — either people who have successfully floated their own companies or those with enough exposure to new businesses — will evaluate their ideas to see if there’s any potential. Once the ideas are approved, students can float their own companies. After two years, if a start-up fails to take off, the student-entrepreneur can participate in the regular placement process and get a job.

Ravi Sinha, professor in charge of placements, said the idea, which is at a nascent stage, can give students the assurance to float their ideas without hesitation. “Very few start-up ideas on the campus turn out to be successful ventures. Often, many good ideas are not commercially-viable. So, students are apprehensive about floating their ideas,” added Sinha.

The office of Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), which promotes entrepreneurship on the campus by promoting business incubation, and the Entrepreneurship cell (E-cell) is working with the placement cell to check the feasibility of the project. “We have been working on the initiative for a couple of months. If it works out, student-entrepreneurs will be reasonably assured of getting a job through the institute’s placement office,” said Sinha.

Source: The Times of India, November 1, 2011

C.K. Prahalad Centre to focus on entrepreneurship

Prof. C.K. Prahalad Centre for Emerging India, a centre that will focus on research in areas of strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship ‘appropriate to the base of the pyramid’, was inaugurated at the Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA).

The centre in memory of Prof. Prahalad, an eminent management guru and an alumnus of Loyola College, was inaugurated by Mr. M.K. Narayanan, West Bengal Governor, and Mr K.V. Kamath, Chairman, Infosys Ltd. Fr Casimir Raj, Director of the Centre and Founder Director of LIBA, said the centre will primarily work on the philosophy that Prof. Prahalad emphasised on promoting entrepreneurship, and focus on women and the marginalised.

The centre will try to address the current gap between idea generation and scaling up into viable business opportunities. It will work on the primary premise of fostering BOP 2.0 (base of the economic pyramid), a more democratic model of the initial concept that will view BOP market as co-creators and co-owners, and as an enormous untapped resource of human capital.

The BOP in India represents 835 million people and $360 billion in disposable income making the biggest chunk of the global BOP market excluding China. The term Bottom of the Pyramid was coined by Prof. Prahalad to describe the poor and the underserved section of the market. Under the BOP, the local communities will get much more than simply new products and services. They will generate jobs, entrepreneurial skills, new income and social development, said Fr Raj.

Paying rich tribute to Prof. Prahalad, the West Bengal Governor said, “He was the management guru par excellence, someone who possessed not only a rare intellect but also a passion for common causes. He not only played a significant role as far as India is concerned in instigating policies that have yielded visible benefits but also succeeded his business theories in creating an aura of India in the West, especially in the US, that forced them to recognise the importance of India as a key destination.”

Some of Prof Prahalad’s significant ideas such as ‘core competence and Fortune at the Base of the Pyramid have since become buzz words in the corporate world. The paradigm Fortune at the Base of the Pyramid is perhaps one of the most important ideas of contemporary relevance. It has probably had a bigger impact than any other business idea to come from management theorists anywhere, he said.

Source: The Hindu Business Line, August 7, 2011

>Walmart to buy website founded by IIT-Madras alumni

>The world’s largest retailer Walmart has announced acquisition of social media site Kosmix, a Silicon Valley firm founded by two alumni of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), as the global retail giant aims to strengthen its position in social and mobile commerce offerings.

“We are expanding our capabilities in today’s rapidly growing social commerce environment. Social networking and mobile applications are increasingly becoming a part of our customers’ day-to-day lives globally, influencing how they think about shopping, both online and in retail stores,” Walmart’s Vice Chairman Eduardo Castro-Wright said in a statement.

Founded by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman in 2005, Kosmix has developed a social media technology platform that filters and organises content in social networks to connect people with real-time information that interests them.

Walmart has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kosmix. The retail major did not disclose the financial details of the transaction. The deal, subject to customary closing conditions, is likely to complete during the first half of this year, it said. The founders and the Kosmix team will operate as part of the newly formed ‘WalmartLabs’ and will continue to be based in Silicon Valley.

“We are thrilled to join one of the world’s largest companies and combine our work with Walmart’s vast online and offline retail businesses,” Rajaraman said. Walmart plans to expand the WalmartLabs team and expects this new group to create technologies and businesses around social and mobile commerce.

Source: The Indian Express, April 20, 2011

>IITian leaves Fortune 500 company for rural welfare

>From a government school at a nondescript village in Sikar district to Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT-K), this youngster has come a long way. Born to a humble farmer’s family, Rohit Garhwal now cherishes a dream of developing an international platform for the traditional agriculture art and craft forms and agriculture and minimise the exodus of rural talent to cities.

To achieve his dream, the 25-year-old has quit plush jobs at an MNC and an NGO to study at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). “IIM-A offers incubation centre for social ventures. Here, I will like to construct a model of branding products made by villagers and taking them in international markets,” said Rohit, who has secured a seat in the most prestigious management school, the result of which was announced on Friday afternoon.

Leaving behind the luxuries of an MNC job earned after receiving a degree in aerospace engineering from the most sought after IIT at Kharagpur, Rohit has taken the first big leap towards translating his dream into reality by securing the seat.

He had already started the groundwork travelling daily from one dusty village to another on the state roadways bus to the hinterland of Sikar, presiding over small public gatherings, explaining to the villagers the need for education and healthcare to alleviate their social and economic status.

Rohit now plans to take his work to a higher level after completing his IIM-A course. An alumnus of the IIT-K 2008 batch, Rohit was employed by a financial firm listed in Fortune 500 companies. He called it quits a year later worn out by the daily rigours of explaining and devising business models.

Back home, the IITian, being from a farming background and a strong advocator of inclusive growth, ventured in social entrepreneurship. He joined as consultant of an NGO Helplads. Using his technical skill, Rohit organised workshops on themes ranging from the basics of a computer to robotics for village children. “I plan fund-raising activities along with developing business models for small-time social entrepreneurs in this region,” Rohit said.

Inspired by other IIM students who have turned entrepreneurs, he said he was determined to find a way to help the rural people. “I am very worried of the migration of villagers to small towns and cities abandoning their agricultural and traditional art and craft practices. I would like to use my technical expertise and management tools to create a self-reliant environment for them,” Rohit added.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), April 19, 2011

>Business School students all set to enter Bollywood

>After management guru Arindam Chaudhari, who created a mark in film production with “The Last Lear” and “Do Dunni Chaar,” a group of business management students at one of the premier B-Schools in the country are ready to follow suit. Friday Night Productions, a venture of students at Indian School of Business, is all set to debut in the hindi film industry with “Buddha in Traffic Jam,” a mainstream political thriller, based on the life of a business school student Vikram Pandit.

“It is always believed that business students have nothing to do with film making. But right from marketing and raising money for the film to its promotion and publicity classifies as a job of a business management student. Also, we are no less in creativity,” Ravi Agnihotri, one of the student members of Friday Night Productions told PTI.

With a star cast that includes veterans like Anupam Kher and Pallavi Joshi, along with actors Arunoday Singh and Mahi Gill, “Buddha in traffic jam” went on the floors in February this year. “We have not just raised the money for the film but have also ideated upon the script. We were working over the project since June last year,” informs Agnihotri, who further says that his journey has been great so far.

“We look at film making as a business, which is profitable and sustainable as it has a great entertainment value,” adds Agnihotri. In the trend set by blockbusters like “Rang De Basanti” and “3 Idiots” to highlight a social issue in the set up of college, brimming with youth, “Buddha in Traffic Jam” brings to celluloid the problems of intellectual terrorism, contemporary naxalism and political nexus in the backdrop of a college set-up.

The story of Vikram Pandit, a student of the Indian Institute of Business, reflects different problems faced everyday by the deprived in India. Vikram offers a modern day solution to all of these nuances. Directed by “Chocolate” fame Vivek Agnihotri, “Buddha in Traffic Jam” film, says the students presents a radical business model that can effectively replace stagnant policies to deal with the social, economic and political problems in the country.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), April 7, 2011

>Irish company picks 3 ‘partners’ from IIM-Ahmedabad

>Call it incubation of a different kind. Ireland-headquartered engineering company Ingersoll Rand (IR) has hired three students from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) as ‘Entrepreneur Partners’ for a period of two years. Usually, students get either placed in companies or start own ventures. With this experiment, IR plans to mentor the students and help them turn independent entrepreneurs who partner with the company to expand business at the end of two years.

The relationship is mutually beneficial. IR will get good talent. And, students who dream to become entrepreneurs but cannot afford huge capital investments get a solid launch pad. The graduates would be first exposed to the company’s products and geographies in the first year and treated as employees with a fixed salary. In the second year, the pay will be variable and students are supposed to choose a vertical and start developing a business of their own based on the product offerings.

“I always wanted to run my own firm but was not sure about the venture. But this programme has given me the platform to work across sectors before deciding on my area of expertise. I will also be allowed to use the company’s brand name and the mentoring will certainly help,” says K. Hanuman, a post-graduate programme student of IIM-A’s 2009-11 batch.

The company targets to create business lines worth Rs. 100 crore (Rs. 1 billion) over the next three years, independently looked after by people like these graduates. To drive the results, IR wants to infuse entrepreneurial energy through a pilot project called ‘Entrepreneurial Management Program’.

“The contract includes working in rotation at four main locations of IR in India in the first year. I will have to come up with a business plan in the last six months and if I come up with some solution related to IR products, my venture will be sponsored by IR. This is a unique opportunity for graduates who are looking at becoming entrepreneurs,” says Sandeep Kumar Gupta, another student.

Source: The Times of India, March 23, 2011

>IIM ‘campuspreneurs’ venturing into startups before graduation

>Only 23, Abhishek Humbad is the founder of clean-technology start-up NextGen — it earns revenues of Rs. 1.5 crore (Rs. 15 million) from marquee clients like the Reserve Bank of India, chip-maker Intel, and software services majors Infosys and MindTree. He is not just a young entrepreneur; he is still a student and will graduate from Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B) this month. He built his business while still studying.

Humbad is a flag-bearer of the new breed of ‘campuspreneurs’ — ET tracked down half-a-dozen like him who are graduating from B-schools this year, not just with a degree, but also with a start-up business in tow. The start-ups range from the conventional to the unusual. One start-up is already guiding 150 students in the North-East to carve out careers outside medicine and engineering; another, which is targeting revenues of Rs. 1 crore (Rs. 10 million) this year, helps consumers get information about any product by scanning it under a cellphone; a third is setting up a chain of coffee shops. And yet another is helping resorts to create butterfly habitats.

A year or two ago, very few bright young minds graduating from B-schools would dare to turn down a placement offer to start off a business of their own. But this graduation season, many students are walking a new path — spurning the comfort of a job, and yet avoiding the risk of chasing a nebulous new idea. Welcome to the era of ‘start-up while you learn’. It’s no longer a tough road to navigate — the entrepreneurial challenge comes with glamour, money and a built-in safety net.

“It is glamorous to be an entrepreneur,” says IIM-Kozhikode graduate Amit Kourav, who plans to launch a chain of coffee shops. Campuses have spawned an entrepreneurial ecosystem over the past two-to-three years, spurring many students to take the entrepreneurial path. Incubators at IIM-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), IIT-Bombay and IIT-Madras have given them access to early-stage funding through grants from the government departments of science and technology and biotechnology. Besides, venture capitalists are hunting for the next big ideas within college incubators.

Mentoring, safety net big draws
Funds such as VenturEast, Nexus Venture Partners, and SeedFund are increasingly backing companies from college incubators. In 2010, nearly US$ 440 million was invested in young companies across 83 deals compared with US$ 320 million in the previous year, according to research firm Venture Intelligence. Many aspiring entrepreneurs know this is the right time to raise fundings from angel investors and venture capitalists, says GC Jayaprakash, principal consultant at executive search firm Stanton Chase.

But more than the easy access to capital, mentoring and the safety net provided by IIMs are big turn-ons. The country’s premier management institutions are giving graduates the option of coming back for placements after two years, if their start-ups fail. No one has come back till date, says Pranay Gupta, joint-CEO, Centre for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM-A.

IIM-B, which has an elective in entrepreneurship, is planning to make entrepreneurial thinking a compulsory module in its flagship MBA programme. The institute recently announced a new initiative, Next Big Idea, aimed at fostering greater entrepreneurial growth across the country. IIM-B will partner global chip-maker Intel and the Department of Science and Technology to nurture innovative ideas culled from business plan competitions. “No idea is a bad idea,” says K Kumar, Chairperson, NS Raghavan Center for Entrepreneurial Learning, IIM-B. Indian School of Business (ISB) has shortlisted 110 entrepreneurs from all over the country this year who will receive funding and mentoring to launch ventures in the social and agriculture sectors.

In a first for Indian campuses, ISB is home to a very early-stage start-up fund — SONG — a collaboration between the Soros Economic Development Fund, Omidyar Network, and Google. “We have a vision to create an ecosystem like in the Silicon Valley in the US,” says Krishna Tanuku, Executive Director at Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development, ISB.

For the campuspreneur, the fat pay packages that come with placements are chicken feed. Humbad’s NextGen, for instance, which helps large companies manage emissions and convert waste into energy, is being valued at Rs. 20 crore (Rs. 200 million) by investors. Compare this with a salary offer of Rs. 40 lakh (Rs. 4 million) per annum for an overseas posting.

Days of entrepreneurs giving up little pleasures in pursuit of a dream are history. “We can fly and stay in a five-star hotel too,” says Humbad, who is receiving queries from his seniors in consulting firms such as McKinsey and Bain & Co for a job in his company. There is the added incentive of pursuing a passion. “As an entrepreneur, I work seven days for myself, compared with others who work five days for someone else,” says Nithin Chandra, 26, an IIM-B student who is launching a software product start-up that will enable students and transportation professionals to access rich local content.

Rahul Sanghvi, who graduated in 2007 from IIM-A and now runs technology start-up Dexter Consultancy with revenues of Rs. 1 crore (Rs. 10 million) and 41 people on its rolls, said, “Opting out of placements was the best decision I ever made.” Dexter has completed 100 projects for customers such as Audi, Arvind Mills, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Paras Pharmaceuticals.

Sanghvi’s batchmate Akshat Khare, 28, who started a clean technology firm, has grown his business to over Rs. 1.2 crore (Rs. 12 million). His company, Nessa Illumination Technologies, which makes low-energy consumption lighting systems, has bagged major contracts from the Gujarat government and various institutions.

Within this comfort zone, campuspreneurs are finding it easier to think out of the box. From technology solutions to coffee shop chains, they’re traversing the whole mile. IIM-Lucknow’s (IIM-L) S. Das, for instance, is on a mission to resolve the employability gap in the North-East. Das, who is from Assam, has started Learn for Life Academia in Guwahati, which is helping 150 students — from school children to graduates — to identify suitable careers.

Das expects to cover over 1,000 students by the end of this year. There is a lot of talent in the North-East, but little exposure to career opportunities apart from medicine and engineering, says Das, who used to work for General Motors before his stint at IIM-L. Tanuj Mendiratta of IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C) has turned down an offer from Unilever to concentrate on his venture, Study Craft, which provides IT products and solutions for the education sector. Vivekanandan M from IIM-C is starting ButterflySpotter, a consultancy firm that assists resorts in creating butterfly habitats. Naga Niranjan G, an IIM-Indore student who hails from a farming community, is planning to start a consultancy firm that will guide students and farmers.

Family and friends are also willing to bankroll young students keen to strike out on their own, creating a virtuous cycle of support. In Kozhikode, Amit Kourav, who put in an internship at start-up firm Apalya Technologies, is using that experience to launch his coffee shop chain by raising around Rs 40 lakh from banks, family and friends. Manav Jain from IIM-Shillong, too, is raising Rs. 5-7.5 million from his family to launch a retail chain. One way or the other, this is a generation that is raring to go.

Sourc: The Economic Times, March 11, 2011