|
|
| Home > Past Events |
| Outlook on India –A VC’s Perspective |
|
Tim Draper, of the VC Firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) interacted with the ISB community and TiE – Hyderabad members on 5th October 2005.
A jam-packed classroom of members from the ISB community and TiE had the good fortune of listening to one of the most successful VCs in the world. Tim Draper described himself as one who has dedicated his life to identifying and helping extraordinary entrepreneurs who want to change the world. He called these entrepreneurs heroes for taking great financial, social, and career risks in order to create solutions to momentous problems of the world that need to be addressed.
He said that there are many areas such as energy, security, healthcare, traffic and pollution, poverty alleviation, education, roads and airports where change has to be brought about. DFJ has invested in companies seeking to change the status quo in each of these areas.
He also said that a number of waves such as the ones in mobile phone software, convenient security checks, and the nanotechnology – biotechnology convergence are discernable. These waves are throwing up interesting opportunities for investment. DFJ is actively seeking investments in areas such as wireless, open source, P2P, energy and clean technologies, video, GPS, etc.
The transformation he has witnessed in India, from a culture of need to a culture of opportunity, has enthused DFJ to plan a dedicated India Fund. This fund will invest in early-stage technology companies creating unique products with the potential to change the world. The opportunities being exploited by these companies must have very high upside potential and the industries they operate in must be large and changing. Companies seeking to overthrow entrenched but bureaucratic incumbents in such industries would find support from DFJ.
This thought provoking and interesting interaction ended with Tim Draper playing an ode to entrepreneurs called “The Risk Master”, whose lyrics were penned by Tim himself and has vocals by a “mystery” rock star.
Tim Draper is the Founder and Managing Director of DFJ, the premier early-stage VC firm. DFJ operates a global network of affiliated Venture Funds with over $ 3 billion in capital commitments and offices in the major technology centres of the world. It has supported many outstanding entrepreneurial ventures over the years such as Hotmail, and Skype – a company that E-Bay recently purchased for $ 2.6 billion. His original suggestion of using “viral marketing” in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an internet product to its market was instrumental in the success of Hotmail and has been adopted as standard marketing technique by many businesses.
A third-generation VC, whose father set up one of the first venture funds in India, Tim Draper is a graduate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. |
| Back |
|
|
