MediaNama has an interview with B2B Internet firm IndiaMart's CEO Dinesh Agarwal.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in
I think the latter part of the upturn affected us more than the downturn. We were highly cashflow positive business, and towards the end of 2006-2007, there was market frenzy. Our costs were going up unnecessarily and the whole business model started to look non-feasible in the medium or the longer term. If costs were to grow at 30-40-50% growth, I didn’t see the businesses flourishing in the long run. That is when I decided to raise the money. We would never thought of raising money otherwise.
...Intel is probably going to complement it (BCCL's ads-for-equity deal) with money. BCCL has media properties, but for a larger market pull, you need to invest across various media…and you cannot do private treaty deals with 7 different media houses.
...I met different venture capital companies over the last two years. Intel matched better with us, they had a longer horizon, and are less impatient than some of the pure VC firms. Some of them think that you have to burn faster to run faster. Somehow my companys DNA does not match with that, we have been a slow, steadily growing company. We are not at that stage where we are a small company, and we not do need a day to day guidance. I mean, we have been able to grow sustainably to a thousand people team.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in