Me

Here is the note by  Ashish for CEL, BITSAA 2007 initiatives

Fellow BITSians,

After a successful launch of CEL-BITSAA in 2006, we have even more exciting initiatives planned for this year. We have grown our team to 12 alumni and we are expanding our presence to BITSAA chapters in India. We are always looking for entrepreneurs to join us.

Entrepreneurship Education and Networking Events

We are continuing the monthly speaker series, with the first event on February 3rd. We have included a wider range of the topics this time. The event calendar is included at the end of this email.

Badhri, Himani & Pradheep are leading this initiative.

You can find audio, video and slides of all the past events, entrepreneurship resources and a Bay Area events calendar on the CEL-BITSAA website at http://svc.bitsaa.org/entrepreneurship/
 
Business Plan Workshop Series

CEL-BITSAA is happy to announce the start of a Business Plan Workshop initiative intended to help out aspiring BITSian entrepreneurs with the nitty-gritties of writing a business plan. A world class team of successful BITSian VCs and entrepreneurs will share their wealth of knowledge and experience about writing good business plans with aspiring entrepreneurs in the first event in February. But it doesn't stop there! Attendees are then urged to write their own business plans, and we will have a second event later in the year where we will get them critiqued by the panel. So not only do you learn about writing good business plans, you get to actually have your plan scrutinized by the experts, and all for free! Don't miss this valuable opportunity. Please register promptly (you will see another e-mail about this in a few days with the details) so that we have a good idea of the headcount.

Please contact Soggy (Saugata Chatterjee) for any questions.

PS on Campus

This year, we are launching the "PS on Campus" initiative in collaboration with CEL at BITS. The objective of this initiative is to connect startup companies with BITS students for on-campus internship projects. The framework and process is in place and in fact, we have already started working with a startup in the bay area !

The program provides an innovative opportunity for students with entrepreneurial aspirations to interact with start-ups and understand how entrepreneurs work. For the businesses, it is a one-stop-intern-shop satisfying diverse project needs from VLSI design to databases to algorithmic improvements ! If you (or your company) is interested in participating, please send an email to dp.ayyadevara@gmail.com.

NEN Collaboration

NEN - National Entrepreneurship Network is an entrepreneurship initiative in India started by Wadhwani Foundation. BITS is a founding member of NEN. NEN helps various educational institutes prepare entrepreneurship education programs. Among other things, it conducts faculty training workshops. NEN has a very close partnership with Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP).

We are collaborating with NEN to create a BITS/NEN co-branded event series to be marketed and distributed through the NEN channel. In addition, CEL-BITSAA will create an E-Cell (entrepreneurship community on NEN Online portal).

More details will be announced in next few weeks. Please feel free to contact me for questions.

CEL-BITSAA Website Makeover

The CEL BITSAA site will be modeled along the lines of existing sites such as BITS embryo and will provide up-to-date information regarding the latest events and the activities of the group. The aim is to build a flexible and customized website that will be used by Alumni, students, faculty and third party organizations to promote leadership and leverage BITSIAN entrepreneurship.  As of new, a team is being identified that will work on gathering requirements and supervising the development efforts.  The site will be based on a collaborative model intended to make administration, sharing and uploading of content easier. 

CEL-BITSAA Chapters in India

We are initiating CEL-BITSAA chapters in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Amit Thakral in Hyderabad and Raghavendra Prabhu in Bangalore are leading the initiatives. These chapters will host local speaker series as well as participate during some of the silicon valley events through live audio and/or video sessions.

Events Calendar for 2007

	Topic	Speaker	Date
1.	Intrapreneurship - How corporate entrepreneurs make it big	Dinesh Ramanathan, VP Cypress Semiconductor	Feb 3
2.	Business Plan Workshop – I	Ajay Chopra, Madan Bellam, Vijay Parikh	Feb 25
3.	Early Stage Offshore R&D: benefits and pitfalls	Raju Reddy, Founder and CEO – Sierra Atlantic Amar Kapadia, Sr. Director Mkgt, Emulex; Founder Aarohi Communications	Mar 24
4.	Hot Areas series: Web 2.0 - social networking, video and file sharing, vertical search	Sandeep Khanna , VP Yahoo Inc.	Apr
5.	Business Plan Workshop – II	Ajay Chopra, Madan Bellam, Vijay Parikh	May
6.	MBA Admissions: All you ever wanted to know	Aanand Krishnan, Haas Ishmeet Singh, Kellogg Tarun,  Stanford	May/Jun
7.	Social Entrepreneurship: The Craigslist Story	Jim Buckmaster, CEO and President, Craigslist	Jun
8.	Secrets of Financial Management in a growing startup	Diaz Nesamoney, Founder, President and CEO of Celequest	Jul
9.	Webify and Exterprise	Manoj Saxena, VP IBM, Founder of Webify Solutions	Aug 4
10.	Intellectual Property and other legal issues	Jayan Ramankutty, Founder and CEO, Yume Networks	Aug/Sep
11.	Opportunities in Health Care	Anupendra Sharma, Investment Partner, Medical Solutions Fund at Siemens Venture Capital in Boston	Oct
12.	i-flex®	Rajesh Hukku, Chairman and Managing Director of i-flex® solutions	TBD
13.	Entrepreneurial opportunities and challenges in India	TBD Suggested speaker: Rahul Chandra, Director – Investment Advisor, Helion Venture Partners	TBD

 
Registration for the event

http://svc.bitsaa.org/app/planE_educational_2007.htm

Technorati Profile

Blog Marketing

A useful book on Blogs-
Blog Marketing -  Published by Jeremy Wright under McGraw_Hill publications.

The book provides pointers on how blogs can be exploited to create the right branding for your company.

Key terms and definitions for business processes, creating business solutions

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and it is the smart solution to all your business management needs.  ERP applications typically consist of modules such as Marketing and Sales, Field Service, Production, Inventory Control, Procurement, Distribution, Human Resources, Finance and Accounting.

 CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRM software supports your business process to find, get, and retain customers. CRM applications typically consist of modules such as Sales Force Automation, Call Management, and Self Service.

 ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming) is a programming language created by the German software company SAP. It is currently positioned as the language for programming SAP's Web Application Server, part of its NetWeaver platform for building business applications. Its syntax is somewhat similar to COBOL.

 Supply Chain Management is the management of the entire value-added chain, from the supplier to manufacturer right through to the retailer and the final customer. SCM has three primary goals: Reduce inventory, increase the transaction speed by exchanging data in real-time, and increase sales by implementing customer requirements more efficiently.

 Enterprise Java Beans is a component architecture for the development and deployment of object-oriented, distributed, enterprise-level applications. Applications written using the Enterprise JavaBeans architecture are scalable, transactional, multi-user and secure.

I have just put up this link so that people especially from India can understand the product game. It is a must read for people who have been doing services till now.

Please find the article on Product Lifecycle Management

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_life_cycle_management

Notes on forming a company

Go and get a particular name to the registrar of companies
They will check and see whether it is available and give it to u. This should be done with the Registrar of Companies.After doing this, file the articles of memorandum and associationship with the government and wait for the sanction.

Once you get the sanction,there will be a form which the government will give you. You can use this to get ur bank accounts opened

Ensure that your bank accounts are opened with the first day of operations

What is the ideal way to Start  a company?

I have realized that it is about choosing a good idea which will let you be flexible.

As an example of this, I would quote my own experiences. I realized from my internship at ST MicroElectronics that opening up a tech venture in the hardware industry would be capital intensive. I realized the same thing in my first job at Symbol Technologies. These were hardware intensive areas which needed solid investment and resources that would be difficult to hire.

To kick start and boot up your idea, you have to work on something flexible which can metamorphosize into a big money spinner. By picking up a low cost idea, you give yourself a realistic chance of starting up a company and running it. Down the lane, you can always extend your idea to include your original thoughts and implement them. Right now the Web is a happening place and there are opportunities.

Innovating to stay afloat....