The mBillionth South Asia Award 2011 concluded last Saturday, 23rd July, 2011 at Hotel Eros, Nehru Place, New Delhi, with more than 600 delegates attending the marathon 12-hours long International Summit on the theme “Linking masses with 3G”.

It has been a great privilege to be part of the execution team of the entire mBillionth Award process for the second consecutive year. Six months of intense effort went in reaching out to innovators and implementers in the eight South Asian countries and engaging various stakeholders to ensure successful compilation of nominations, rigorous screening, research about the projects, execution of a high-powered Grand Jury (in Sri Lanka) and finally managing the logistics of inviting 2000+ fraternity to the final event.

The process culminated in a mammoth full day event with 10 sessions, including parallel sessions of Mobile Application Developer’s Community (M@D), with about 100 speakers. A copy of the final agenda is here.

The winners include Babajob.com, which connects workers in the Bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) to potential employers; Intex V.Show – India’s first projector phone – literally a projector in your pocket; Pharmasecure – battling counterfeit medicine with an SMS; mPustak – creating an ecosystem of vernacular language applications and many more exciting winners.  See the complete list of winners and finalists at http://mbillionth.in/ and http://mobile.techsparks.com/.

It was an honor to meet and work with all the Jurors in Sri Lanka – see their profiles here. Some inspiring comments by Jurors’ are here.

It was exciting to work with all the Partners and Sponsors -complete list here. Vodafone supported in a big way and Vodafone India Foundation, its CSR arm, took a great leap of faith in the India Mobility ecosystem by constituting the Vodafone Mobiles For Good prize of Rupees ten lakhs each to two winners. NOKIA was generous in supporting five categories of the award, the entire Mobile Innovation Haat and the six parallel sessions of M@D – Mobile Application Developer’s community. OnMobile, One97, IAMAI, Mint and Govt. of India’s DIT continued to provide to their solid and consistent support.

See a compilation of tweets by Dr. Madanmohan Rao here: http://www.techsparks.com/mobile/?p=237.

Photograph links:

• Inaugural Session
• MAD Sessions Part 1
• M@D Sessions Part 2 & Mobile Innovation Haat
• Vodafone Mobiles For Good Session
• mBillionth Award Gala

Media coverage links:

• Video coverage by Mint is here.
• Hindustan Times
• Times of India

Some glimpses of the event:

List of Winners and Finalists:

Each participating city has a dedicated “City Coordinator”  to link Start-ups with a pre-selected groups of Mentors from a variety of domains and verticals.

So far, successful events have been conducted at Ahemdabad, Bangalore & Mumbai.  Upcoming events are listed below:

• 05 June, 2010 @ Mumbai: http://mentoredge.com/event/mentoring-clinic-mumbai-ii
• 12 June, 2010 @ Pune: http://mentoredge.com/event/mentoring-clinic-pune-i
• 19 June, 2010 @ Delhi: http://mentoredge.com/event/mentoring-clinic-delhi-i

Earlier this month on May 15th, Aditi Gupta (in photo below) & Vineesh Kumar launched the Delhi Chapter by organizing a meeting of Mentors at IIT Delhi.

Mentors present included:

• Amrish Sahgal [First Left in photo below]
• Dr. CK Taneja
• Kris Nair
• Rahul Agarwal
• Rahul Verghese
• Ravi Kikan
• Sanjay Gupta
• Suhail Kassim [Centre in photo below]
• Amarendra Srivastava

Mentor Edge Meeting at Delhi

We had a good discussion on the ‘screening’ process for entrepreneurs: basic policy is “no rejections” but due diligence is taken in terms of helping applicant entrepreneurs to be well-prepared.

There was a longer discussion on ‘criteria & process’  to ‘match’ entrepreneurs & mentors. Ravi Kikan with a ‘backing’ of about 50,000 members in his Linkedin Group ‘Startup Specialists’ was keen to make it more democratic for entrepreneurs. The debate was too long to reproduce here. Suffice it to say that this initiative is from Mentors to empower entrepreneurs and facilitate an access to world class mentoring, long-term partnerships and ‘timely’ funds.

Last Day for applying for Delhi Clinic is June 5 2010. Apply Here: http://mentoredge.com/mentee/for-mentees.

Franchise 2009 Food, Beverage and Hospitality

Thursday, November 26, 2009. Ashoka Hotel, New Delhi. Day 1 of Franchise India 2009. Continued from Franchise India – Entrepreneurship Summit 2009 – Specialty Retail.

Another interesting session was “Business Opportunities in Food & Beverage Sector”. The speakers were:

• Mahmood Khan, Hospitality Expert Virginia Tech, USA
• Pavan Gandhok, CEO, Litebite Foods
• Gary Moore, MD,The Pizza Co., Thailand
• Rakhee Nagpal, MD & Chairperson of DVS (Moderator)
• Luis Daniel, General Manager, KRR International
• Ankur Sharma, General Manager Business Development , Yo China

Mahmood Khan shared how more than 200 fast food franchise brands have been in developed in USA – a critical factor being ubiquitous Highways (necessitating “quick bites”). He claimed that F&B is a recession-proof business because people will NOT stop eating. His another observation was that today’s customer does not have patience. Technology plays a big role in dealing with customer’s “instant needs”. So, you need to know “real needs of the customer” and continually watch “where the technology is going”.

Pavan Gandhok, CEO, Litebite Foods, opined that the challenge is to present local cuisines in an interesting manner – these items (like vada paav, paav bhaaji, samosa) account for 70-80% of the market and whosoever cracks this code is likely to make lot of money.

Gary Moore, MD, The Pizza Co., was excited about India and said that India is the biggest potential market we have seen in a long time. He emphasized on having “systems in place”. He said, “Brand is a promise of consistency” and successful entrepreneurs achieve that by engineering opportunities for the long-term. Apart from adequate capital, an entrepreneur needs to ask him/herself:

• What have I developed?
• What have I grown?
• What is my passion?

Luis Daniel, General Manager, KRR International, (who started his career as a McDonald crew 25 years ago) shared that after about 3-5 years when operational systems of a business have been set (facilitating smooth expansion), an entrepreneur can “work less and make more”.

Ankur Sharma, General Manager Business Development , Yo China shared that capital needs of a franchise business range from Rs. 3 lakhs to Rs. 1.5 crores. At the smallest level, Kiosk models can yield 100% ROI in one year. A full-fledged restaurant model  can yield 30-35% ROI in one year.

franchise restaurant services market size

Franchise India 2009

Thursday, November 26, 2009. Ashoka Hotel, New Delhi. Day 1 of Franchise India 2009 saw scores of enthusiastic entrepreneurs eagerly evaluating various franchise opportunities (300 brands) in India.

Billed as “Asia’s Biggest Franchise Show”, the event came alive in various sections - Brand License 2009, Entrepreneurship Summit ’09, Food & Beverage, Fashion franchising, Knowledge Series, Licensing and Retail.

What aroused our curiosity was the “Entrepreneurship Summit 2009″ conference series. Some of the speakers at “Business Opportunities : Specialty Retail” session were:

• Aloke Banerjee, CEO, Rosebys
• Vivek Bali, Group President, Spice Hotspot
• S.Ravikant, COO, Titan Eyewear
• N.P. Singh, Director, Samsonite
• Rajiv Agarwal, The Mobile Store
• Naveen Rakhecha, CEO, Cartridge World

S. Ravikant, COO, Titan Eyewear  was representing Titan, India’s “Largest Specialty Retailer” with turnover of Rs. 3000 Crores. He talked about his franchise offer, “Multi-Brand” Eye+ Retail Stores, as “World Class Optical Stores”. What makes this an attractive opportunity is the fact that most consumers in this space are clueless about quality parameters, concerned about accuracy of lenses and confused about lack of transparency in pricing.

N.P. Singh, shared how Samsonite’s innovations (from 1910) have made it a global leader with 34% of global luggage market share. He presented his Rs. 25+ lakhs franchise opportunity (3 year payback) with a unique offering – “obsolescence replacement”.

A recurring theme was “World Class” – world class products, world class operations, world class systems, world class training, world class technology and so on.

Rajiv Agarwal showcased “The Mobile Store” as a world class shopping experience for the existing fragmented mobile market with a chaotic shopping experience.

Naveen Rakhecha, CEO, Cartridge World shared his gyan, “Look beyond traditional franchise opportunities (Education, F&B, etc). Go for distinguished offering. Unique ideas are likely to give better returns”.

NEXT BUSINESS CAPSULE: Opportunities in Food & Beverage segment.

Shri. Dinsha J. Patel, Hon’ble Minister of MSMSE at www.nsicindia.com launch

The India Global Summit on MSMEs gets underway on Friday, November 20, 2009 at Hotel The Lalit, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi.

Expect the discussions to revolve around “Building the next generation of MSMEs”, the theme for the summit.

Shri Dinesh Rai, Secretary, Ministry of MSME, is one of the speakers (he was present at the launch of B2B web portal www.nsicindia.com for MSME’s as shown in picture). Other speakers include:

• Arun Maira: Member, Planning Commission
• Pravir Kumar: Joint Secretary, Ministry of MSME
• H P kumar: Chairman & MD, NSIC
• Rakesh Rewari: Deputy MD,  SIDBI
• Rana Hasan: Principal Economist, ADB
• Rakesh Singh:  Head SMEs, Standard Chartered Bank

One of  goals of the summit is to explore & deliberate on opportunities for integration of MSMEs in the value chain. Sub-themes include:

• Investing with Technology upgradation ICT adoption and R&D
• Dealing with Economic Cycles:  How to adapt the changed economic cycles ?
• Capital Requirement: What is the right mix of credit and risk capital?
• Developing people power: Challenges and solutions

On,  Saturday, November 20, 2009, a Buyer Seller Meet has been scheduled between OEMs/ Large Corporations / PSUs and the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises on one to one basis. Participating companies include:

• Bechtel India
• BHEL
• IDBI Bank
• International Tractor
• Maruti Suzuki
• New Holland Fiat (India)
• Philips
• Proctor & Gamble Innovation Centre
• Standard Chartered

For Registration, Speaking & Sponsorship Opportunities, contact:

Pooja Jha
Direct Tel : +91-11-24653006
Tel: +91-11 – 24629994 –7 Ext 407
Fax : +91-11 – 24615693
Email: pooja.jha@cii.in

For Buyer –Seller Meet & MSME Mart, contact:

Suvendu Mahapatra
Direct Tel : +91-11-24653006
Tel: +91-11 – 24629994 –7 Extn : 409
Fax : +91-11 – 24615693
Email: suvendu.mahapatra@cii.in

If you happen to visit the summit, we would be glad to hear about your experience. Do Write in!