[Even though India Silicon Valley , start-ups here can’t easily access capital, tap into a network of serial entrepreneurs or hone their ideas through incubators.]
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| Sanjit Das for The New York TimesThe Indian Angel Network discussing funding of new ideas in their office in New Delhi, India. |
“The Angel Network is really trying to help breed innovation,” said
Padmaja Ruparel, the president the organization. “Our efforts are really going
into driving the economic engine of India
Sanjit Das for The New York TimesThe Indian Angel Network
discussing funding of new ideas in their office in New Delhi , India
Even though India Silicon
Valley ,
start-ups here can’t easily access capital, tap into a network of serial
entrepreneurs or hone their ideas through incubators.
Wealthy individuals and organizations like Indian Angel Network are
increasingly filling the void, providing initial capital to young companies
with strong prospects.
It’s a small but growing class. In the last five years, angel investors
plowed less than $200 million into start-ups, based on data from Venture
Intelligence, a Mumbai-based research firm. In the United States
Angel investing is a high-risk, high-reward game. Since start-ups often
fail before they ever make any money, the investors, which typically invest
less than $1 million, are betting that a few will take off — earning returns as
much as 10 times their original outlay. In India
Entrepreneurs in India
Back then, upstart projects often got stalled by bureaucratic hurdles.
Saurabh Srivastava, the chairman of the India Angel Network, who founded the
software company IIS Infotech in 1989, said he had to wait 2.5 years to get
permission from the government to start his company.
“For first-generation entrepreneurs, it was a monopoly; anyone who had
an alliance got ahead,” said Mr. Srivastava, who is considered one of the
pioneers of India
Now, established entrepreneurs and business executives like Mr.
Srivastava are looking to ease the burden for the next generation. The Indian
Angel Network, for example, has started an incubator, where members mentor
young entrepreneurs. It also set up “boot camps,” inviting 10 individuals or
teams to give three-minute pitches in different cities across the country, to
practice for future fund-raising efforts.
Analysts say it’s unclear whether angel investing will become enmeshed
in India Silicon Valley , or whether it will crumble if early
investors suffer too many losses. While conditions have improved significantly
for India
Many of these new investors are “the first wave of people who kind of
made money in their first venture and sold off probably 10 years back,” said
Arun Natarajan, chief executive of Venture Intelligence. “Time will tell what
will happen when a real downturn arrives. Will some of these guys stick to
safer investments?”
The Indian Angel Network understands the potential pitfalls. Founded in
2006, the group counts the outsourcing giant Raman Roy; Harish Mehta, the
founder of an engineering design services firm; and Rajan Anandan, the managing
director of Google India, among its 175 members. Mr. Anandan spent the majority
of his career working for McKinsey & Company and Dell in the United States
“It’s very fulfilling to work with entrepreneurs,” said Mr. Anandan, who
also invests in start-ups on his own. “We sit on the boards of the companies.
We are deeply involved.”
To vet potential investments, the group meets most Saturdays in
boardrooms across the country. They listen to 20-minute pitches from young
entrepreneurs based in India
In the last five years, the group has made 25 investments, notching
gains in Druva, a successful real-time data backup software company. Another
company in its portfolio, Hungry Zone, a restaurant reservation site in Bangalore
They put candidates through the wringer. While the organization hears
more than 200 pitches a year, it only finances a handful.
At a recent meeting, the first presenters were graduates of IIT Roorkee,
a prestigious engineering school in the country. The two young men described
their idea to develop a virtual learning company for “freshers,” or recent
graduates, to make them more attractive to multinational companies with Indian
operations.
As they described in their pitch, it would fill an unmet need in the
country. But 20 minutes into their PowerPoint presentation detailing the
hardships face by new graduates, the judges grew restless.
“In the interests of time, can you move towards a solution?” asked
Vishal Lalani, who runs a dashboard instruments manufacturing company.
Later in the day, the group voted down the pitch, citing doubts that the
idea would really address the problem.
“We’re not looking at it as cutting checks,” said Pradeep Gupta, the
chairman of the specialty media house CyberMedia and a member of Indian Angel
Network. “We should be able to add value to the company. We should be able to
add value to India
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| Sonia FaleiroAnita Kumar and her daughters in Nakhighat village in |
Ms. Devi is 30, but appears 40. Her face is gaunt, her arms bony. Her
stillness as she talks of her son attracts scores of flies to her arms and
feet. “He was fine until he started crawling,” she says quietly.
As dictated by tradition, a family member delivered the baby at home. In
his short lifetime he was taken to the doctor once. Ms. Devi says the doctor
told her Krishna needed more food and left it at that.
Clearly malnourished herself, she says she fed him as much milk as she had,
and, when possible, black tea.
Devi lives deep within the slum colony of Nakhighat in Varanasi,
Uttar Pradesh. This 20,000-strong community of former handloom weavers was once
known for its Banarasi saris,
which are traditionally finely woven and heavily brocaded, and therefore
expensive. Since market changes in the 1990s, its members have struggled to
find gainful employment. As a result, families have less to eat.
Women and children are the most deprived. Ms. Devi admits to eating just
one meal a day. And Krishna
isn’t the only child she lost. Six of his siblings died before him, also of
malnutrition. Two girls survived. From July 2010 to July 2011, the
non-profit Child Rights and You (CRY) tested
171 randomly selected children for malnourishment. As many as 150 were
suffering from some form of acute malnourishment. Of these, five have died.
In the maze of single-room homes women contribute to the family income
with pickle making. They earn 20 rupees (42 American cents) for 10 kilograms,
or about 22 pounds. Husbands find irregular work as daily wage laborers. The
average monthly income for a family is 1,500 rupees, or about $31.
Project Vision, a non-profit that has been working with CRY in Nakhighat
since 2006, says the colony’s deprivations have been in the making since a
spurt in the usage of power looms, which take a night to produce what might
take a handloom a week, in addition to an influx of affordable Chinese silk
cloth. Thousands of weavers have been forced to abandon their livelihood.
Since Nakhighat has pursued a traditional livelihood, education isn’t
valued. Education is seen as a means to employment, and as families were
already employed, most of the area’s population remained illiterate.
The circumstances have left them vulnerable. ‘‘When we spoke to the Jaat
(Caste) Panchayat about the rising cases of malnutrition, they responded by
forcing all the men, who earn a daily wage, to take the day off to pray,” said
Jagriti Raha, an activist with Project Vision.
The government does have measures in place to help malnourished
children. But the system fails the children.
When the local primary health center identifies a malnourished child; it
is expected to make a referral to a government hospital where the child will be
treated for free. But chronic absenteeism by hospital workers, as well as
overcrowding, force repeat visits that parents are reluctant to make because of
the distances involved. While the cost of public transportation may seem small
to some, for those in Nakhighat it soon becomes an untenable expense.
A 2004 government order requires a local government to immediately
release 1,000 rupees to families of children identified as malnourished.
But Project Vision says this mandate, which may have helped save Krishna and other children, isn’t routinely
carried out.
A short walk from Devi’s home, the Ganga and Varuna rivers meet in quiet
confluence. On the grassy banks of the river, boys practice riding their
fathers’ large bicycles. They listen to Bollywood music on a mobile phone.
There are few girls to be seen.
In Nakhighat, as in other conservative areas in Varanasi
In the close confines of a slum in which mosquitoes hover greedily over
open sewers and illness spreads quickly, the child is condemned to the many
diseases that plague the community, such as malaria and tuberculosis.
Death due to infectious diseases is the most prominent manifestation of
malnutrition in Nakhighat. At the last government-sponsored testing, according
to CRY, 12 out of 15 Nakhighat children tested positive for TB.
The short- and long-term impact of infant malnourishment is evident in
the faces of the children of Ms. Devi’s neighbor. Anita and Dilip’s
10-month-old twin girls, Archana and Kalpana, are underweight. Their 5-year-old
sister Riva also displays symptoms of malnourishment, including a distended
stomach and brownish-blonde hair. The twins drink their mother’s milk. Riva,
says Anita, is happy eating nothing more than a single bowl of khichdi, watery
rice and lentils, every day.
The children would benefit from visiting the local “anganwadi”, a government-sponsored care
center for children and mothers, and part of a scheme created to provide
nourishment to children under 6 years of age. But the anganwadi workers’
time is routinely diverted by the government toward alternate work, forcing the
center to remain closed for months at a stretch. Among the tasks they are
asked to perform instead: tallying numbers for the livestock census.
Lacking support, and with no education to guide them, the villagers of
Nakhighat have adopted a fatalistic approach to the tragic losses they have
suffered.
“My child ate well,” says Ms. Devi. “It was witchcraft that killed him.”
