Foundations of

Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship and
Corporate entrepreneurship/Intrepreneurship/
Intrapreneurship
Story of Dhirubhai Ambani
Story of Elisabeth Holms
Intrapreneurship or Corporate Entrepreneurship ‘FutureWorks’
Charged with creating, incubating, and scaling transformational
new business models, new categories, or service experiences that
capitalize on disruptive market innovations.
FutureWorks is also connected to "open Innovation" through
which new ideas are invited for prototyping and refining from
agents outside the company. Innovation reaches to market taking
much shorter time.
P&G has established Corporate Innovation Fund (CIF) to fund such
disruptive innovations and has been highly successful in bringing
new products to the market (Crest Whitestrips).
VP and chief Innovation says his team members are characterized
by humility, passion abut the work, thriving in ambiguity, and
consistently challenging the status quo. The greater efficiency and
market loyalty of P&G products are due to the breakthrough
innovations by FutureWorks.
Innovate or Perish
Fortune 500 firms in 1955 vs. 2014; 88% are gone, and we’re all better
off because of that dynamic ‘creative destruction’.

Some 60 years later, almost 88% of the Fortune 500 companies (that
comprised the list in 1955) no longer feature in the list because they
have mostly become bankrupt or are no longer significant.
 http://benbarry.com/project/facebooks-little-red-book

Innovate or Perish

• Facebook’s little red book, a copy of which

lies on the desk of every employee, famously
says:

• “If we don’t create the thing that kills

Facebook, someone else will”

• “Embracing change’ isn’t enough. It has to

be so hardwired into who we are that even
talking about it seems redundant. The
internet is not a friendly place. Things that
don’t stay relevant don’t even get the luxury
of leaving ruins. They disappear”
Yahoo!
• 1994-95: Founded.
• 2000: Market cap reached
all time high of $ 125 billion.
• 2008: Microsoft offered
$44.6 billion to buy the company.
Jerry Yang and David Filo
• 2011:Market cap reduced to $ 22 billion.
• 2013: Traffic to yahoo superseded that of google. Share price went up to $ 36 from $ 8
after it acquired number of start-up Internet companies.
• 2016: Agreed to be sold to Verizon for $ 4.8 billion after investment of more than ten
billion dollar.
• What are takeaways?
Knowing when to exit is so critical yet so difficult
An idea is important but execution of the idea is even more important. Example: Success
of Google and failure of Yahoo.
 Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani

• Born in a poor family in a remote village in Gujarat.

• Used to sell potato fry at a village market during weekends.
• Due to father’s ailments dropped out of studies and get into business.
The rags-to-riches story

• High level of energy, strong will-power, and zest for life.

• Moved to Aden and joined a French Company A. Besse & Co – In those days,
Aden was one of the busiest trading and oil bunkering ports in the world. It is
here he gained business acumen and established contacts.
• He self-learnt export, import, commodity trading, marketing, distribution,
currency trading, and money management.
• He learnt accounting, banking, documentations, insurance.
• During lunch hour he used to engage in commodity trading and during
weekends learnt English.
• When Shell Oil Refinery was set up in Aden, Dhirubhai became in-charge of
the new filling station of A. Besse & Co.
 Dhirubhai Ambani
• Returned to Bombay in 1958 looking for start-up opportunity with limited fund.
• ‘Reliance Commercial’ started as a spice trader in early 60s.
• While doing a market survey he realized Indian exporters were mostly focused
on high margin and not on quality or strict delivery schedule. (short term
gain)
• He identified that as an opportunity and started offering quality goods and
delivered even before schedule.
• Realizing that spice has limited volume he diversified into yarn-trading,
dominated by multinationals such as Forbes, by pooling resources from friends
and associates. He made good money but distributed major part to investors
and gained their confidence and faith. His slogan was “Loss is mine, profit I
share”. Thereafter, He could mobilize huge capital.
• He introduced a shiny variety of yarn known as ‘Bamber’ in Indian market for
ceremonial dress and was an immediate success and gave him substantial
capital.
 Dhirubhai Ambani
• In the 60s, government allowed import only with the currency gained
from export. Many stopped import as they did not have the currency.
Dhirubhai exported rayon to contacts in Aden at a loss to gain foreign
exchange and imported synthetic fiber and sold that in India almost like a
monopolist.
• He realised that converting nylon yarn into fabric adds more value than
selling fiber alone. Put up a textile mill in Ahmedabad on a plot of 5000
sq yards that later was spread over 125 acres. He imported modern plant
from Europe rather than buying second hand machine, the then tradition.
• Most of his top employees were his associates during his Aden days.
• He bypassed the resistance by established mills by directly selling to
retailers.
• He introduced his own brand as Vimal (pure).
• Set up refineries that was regarded as the best in the world by a study by
the World Bank.
 Reliance, one of many units of the group,
(the flagship), pays 5% of indirect tax
collection of India Government
Turnover is more than Rupees 3.88 Lakh
Crore and Treasury Operation of another
2.80 Lakh Crore Rupees

Write: What entrepreneurial qualities you learn from the story of Dhirubhai?
 A Stanford dropout.

Invented a blood-testing device named

"Edison" that uses a few drops of blood.
Founded Theranos.
As of 2014, Holmes held 18 U.S. patents
Elisabeth Holms

 and 66 non-U.S. patents. Co-inventor on

over 100 patent applications

Forbes magazine's - "America's Richest Self-Made

Women" in 2015, net worth of 4.7billion.  
TIME's "100 Most Influential People" 2015
2016: Controversy over technology and two-
year ban from blood-testing industry

In June 2016, Forbes revised its estimate of

Holmes's net worth from $4.7 billion to zero.
• On May 16. 2017, approximately 99% of Theranos shareholders reached
an agreement with the company to dismiss all current and potential
litigation in exchange for shares of preferred stock. Holmes released a
portion of her equity to offset any dilution of stock value to non-
participating shareholders.
• Theranos Secures $100 Million in New Funding from Fortress Capital
(24 December 2017)
• Theranos, the digraced medical-technology startup that infamously 
inflated the capabilities of its devices, has secured $100 million in new
funding in the form of a loan.
• Former president: Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani (her boyfriend) has since
quit the company).
Theranos was valued at $9 billion, making Holmes, who was touted as
“the next Steve Jobs,” the youngest self-made female billionaire in the
world. Just two years later, Theranos was cited as a “massive fraud” by
the SEC, and its value has come down to less than zero.

“This story is a classic example of truth is more dramatic than fiction.

The characters are at once larger-than-life and real.”
— Director ALEX GIBNEY
Takeaways
• The ground-breaking idea from a 19-year old college dropout was a
breakthrough that stymied some of the largest and most prestigious
pharmaceutical firms. Those firms had thousands of PhD scientists,
Nobel prize winners and countless labs. The opponents were
formidable and there are a large number them.
• She underestimated competitors.
• Most things were evolutionary, not revolutionary
• Overconfidence
• Undue haste in growth strategies
• What looks too good to be true, is actually too good to be true
 Most Prominent Sectors in Indian Start-up
Ecosystem
HealthTech
“In the next 10 years, data science and software will do more for
medicine than all of the biological sciences together.” – Vinod Khosla,
founder of Khosla Ventures.
The overall Indian healthcare market is estimated at $100 Bn (in 2017).
It is expected to touch $280 Bn by 2020. As per Inc42 Data Labs,
healthtech startups in India cumulatively raised about $338 Mn across
107 deals till November 2017.
Logistics
• “The line between disorder and order lies in logistics.” – Sun Tzu,
author of The Art Of War.
• Since the middle ages, logistics has been a determining factor in
winning or losing any war. Today, efficient logistics is crucial to the
success of any business. Poised to touch $307 Bn by 2020, the Indian
logistics sector has always been crucial to the country’s infrastructure
and economic development.
• Equipped with advanced technologies like IoT, Big Data, artificial
intelligence and machine learning, the country’s logistics start-ups
have ushered in a sea change in the last few years.
Fintech
• “Digital technology provides a low-cost way for people in developing countries to send
money to each other, buy and sell goods, borrow and save as long as the financial-
regulation environment is supportive.” – Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of
Microsoft.
• In India, the need for technological disruption in the banking sector is all the more acute,
given that over 19% of the country’s population still remains unbanked.
• Digital wallets, Internet banking, the mobile-driven point of sale (POS) and others – as
well as the launch of IndiaStack including Aadhaar, eKYC, UPI and BHIM have also
managed to restructure the financial sector, disrupting the long-held monopoly of
traditional institutions like banks. Start-ups are engaged in loan and insurance, mobile-
based Point of Sale (POS) providers,  alternative lending, money transfer and many more...
• Fintech Revolution Will Turn Physical Banks Obsolete –
Amitabh Kant
Fintech
• India is currently home to more than 500 fintech startups, whose
collective aim is to attain financial inclusion.
• According to Inc42 DataLabs, the Indian fintech sector reported 102
funding deals in 2017 worth $2.59 Bn. As per data available, fintech
startups grew by 31% Year-on-Year (YoY) in 2017.
• With the entry of big players like Amazon, Google, PayPal and Uber,
India’s digital payments space has morphed into a $500 Bn behemoth
in the making.
Fintech
• Within fintech, blockchain, the underlying technology/platform of
Bitcoin and all cryptocurrency, is all set to disrupt the way we keep
records, data and share the same. The distributed ledger
technology/platform (DLT) has found huge applications in banking,
Insurance, government services, digital payments, logistics, etc.
• In 2017, Indian Fintech Startup Raised A Whopping $2.59 Bn In
Funding
Fintech
• In less than 24 hours after the embargo was announced by PM
Narendra Modi-led government, Paytm saw an overwhelming 435%
increase in overall traffic. Other digital wallets like PayU India
witnessed a staggering 80% jump in transactions, while FreeCharge
claimed that the average wallet balance on its platform increased 12
times. MobiKwik meanwhile reported an over 40% increase in app
downloads within less than 18 hours of the announcement.
• Policybazaar, and financial services companies like IFMR Holdings.
Fintech
• In segments such as alternative lending, including SME lending and
P2P lending, startups also took the centre stage this year with players
like ZestMoney, Capital Float, Lendingkart, CashCare, Indifi, Rubique,
Faircent cashing in on the opportunity.
• In the sector, sub-segments like digital payments and lending are
maturing, while wealth management and insur-tech emerging as
growth areas.
• Almost 33% of funding raised by fintech startups was in the areas of
artificial intelligence and analytics.
• Flipkart-owned PhonePe, which reportedly secured $500 Mn
from its parent entity.
TravelTech
• “To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” – Danny Kaye, American
musician and comedian.
• Currently ranking 7th globally in terms of its contribution to the
country’s GDP, the Indian tourism and travel sector underwent an
impressive 8.5% jump in 2016, with 2017 witnessing an additional
6.7% leap. Interestingly, domestic travel is what currently leads the
charge, accounting for a staggering 88% of the total revenue
generated by the tourism sector
Traveltec h
• According to a Google India-BCG report, the country’s travel market
(both offline and online) is expected to become a $48 Bn industry within
the next three years.
• The online travel space is likely to account for 40% to 50% of total
transactions by 2020.
• Despite this enormous potential, the Indian online hotel booking sector
has a penetration of only around 19%, according to a report by
Deutsche Bank AG. Most customers in Tier II and Tier III cities around
the country still prefer to book hotels and accommodations through
offline means in the travel space.
• The online travel sector saw a total funding of $790 Mn through 30
deals up to November 2017.
Edtech
• “Technology can become the ‘wings’ that will allow the educational
world to fly farther and faster than ever before—if we will allow it.” –
Jenny Arledge of Sulphur Springs ISD.
• Being the second most populous country in the world, India comes
with a lot of baggage that other nations are not subjected to. Lack of
quality education is one of the biggest shortcomings that the Indian
government is still struggling to overcome.
EnterpriseTech

• “If there could’ve ever been a magical time to build an enterprise

software company, now is absolutely that time.” – Aaron Levie, co-
founder and CEO of Box.
• Enterprise tech, as a sector, is moving forward in India with
businesses getting more specialised help from SaaS and ERP
management startups. With technological advancements in India,
numerous SMEs are now leveraging SaaS and related technologies to
optimise their overall performance.
• At the top of the SaaS game are two giants, Zoho and Freshworks, with
over 4,000 total employees and a combined revenue of over $350 Mn.
• Startups like Deskera, which develop cloud-based ERP software for
accounting and inventory have also taken a giant leap in 2017 and are
effectively catering to ecommerce sellers with warehousing facilities.
• Other players in the Indian start-up ecosystem like Happay are helping
employers to manage the expenses of their employees by using an
expense management software.
• Indian enterprise sector received a cumulative funding of $525 Mn in
129 deals till November 2017.
Consumer Services
• “E-commerce companies won’t be able to compete with the cost
structure of hyperlocal.” – Neeraj Jain, Zopper co-founder.
• Consumer services, as in hyperlocal food and grocery delivery, has been
the hottest ticket in the Indian startup ecosystem since 2015. However, it
saw a dramatic fall in 2016, as funding dropped almost overnight and
more than 100 startups shut their shops.
• However, 2017 was more generous to consumer services startups in the
country. Two of the most promising sub-sectors this year were food
delivery and grocery. On the one hand, foodtech unicorn Zomato
became profitable throughout the 24 countries where it operates, and
across all its businesses in September.
DeepTech
• “AI will be the best or worst thing ever for humanity.” – Elon Musk, Tesla
Inc CEO.
• Artificial intelligence and Big Data were quite possibly the most talked about
sectors in the Indian startup ecosystem this year. Be it in ecommerce, fintech,
banking, surveillance, customer service and support or analytics, or from
intelligent shopping assistants to helpful conversational bots, deeptech is
finding wider usage in our daily lives and will continue to do so.
• Big Data is the foundation of AI, since it enables AI to come up with
predictive and prescriptive analysis.
• Globally, revenues from the big data and analytics industry are expected to
soar from $130.1 Bn in 2016 to $203 Bn by 2020 growing at a CAGR of 11.7%
AI
• In 2017, the biggest amount of funding raised by an Indian AI startup was bagged
by Big Data startup Qubole that raised $25 Mn
• Customer data analytics software company Flytxt raised about $11 Mn

• https://inc42.com/features/indian-startup-ecosystem-sectors/
Blockchain
• A distributed ledger (also called a shared ledger, or referred to as distributed ledger technology)
is a consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data geographically spread across
multiple sites, countries, or institutions. There is no central administrator or centralised data
storage.

• A peer-to-peer network is required as well as consensus algorithms to ensure replication across

nodes is undertaken. One form of distributed ledger design is the blockchain system, which can
be either public or private. But not all distributed ledgers have to necessarily employ a chain of
blocks to successfully provide secure and valid achievement of distributed consensus: a
blockchain is only one type of data structure considered to be a distributed ledger.
• Incumbent banks are investing heavily in distributed ledgers as a cost-saving measure and a way
to reduce operational risks. The future use of distributed ledgers is expected to monetize the
Internet of things in a programmable economy.
• A distributed ledger is a database that is consensually shared and synchronized across network
spread across multiple sites, institutions or geographies. It allows transactions to have public
"witnesses," thereby making a cyberattack more difficult.
Slides above this one have only been covered in the class and not the ones below it.
Terms
• Hedging
• Define or distinguish Small business and entrepreneurship, passionate
business owners
• Live to work or work to live
• 5% of all businesses are entrepreneur
• 80% are small business
• Rest is passationate about particular business say yoga, cooking
(retaurant),
• Decide What type of business owner you are
• Everybody prepare a business plan. Its not realistic and is made at the
start only to keep in the shelf later. No idea what the goals are, what
the swot analysis, kept chopped into a filing cabin.
• Nuggets of information
• What type of business owner are you? Try to understand
• How to do you start each day?
• Lets create your 2018 gps plan?
• Define your competitive landscape? Many think they have no
competitors. Fact is everybody has competitors, at least a handful.
• Execute
• Most businesses (85%) are small business owners. Small business and
entrepreneurs r the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to describing
• They play important role in economy. You need to know what you r

• Priority is to work-life balance, they work to live rather than live to work. They
look at purchases that the y make in bus expenses. They recreational or personal
things while they are doing business.
• Opposite en is an entrepreneur who live to work. One parameter is GROWTH. If
they are five today, they want to be 20 next year.
• Entrepreneurs are 5%, 85% SB, in between a passionate business owners.
Somebody who passionate about cooking, yoga, they may open a second or third
store or center. Their custome or friend encourage them to open news center
• Fork in the road: recruiting a new employees, opening new location,
launching new product, make some outside investment because they
are all about growth. whereas SB don’t do these. They are not
focused on growth.
1st tactic (part2) Secure your foundation
• How do you wake up in the morning
• Reactive – stuck in the weeds of their business. They are firemen. They never get
to the root cause of the problem. Until you understand a problem with an
employee, its going to cause you time and money. A vendor running late in
supplying, or xx
• Proactive – spend time in the clouds (20000 view about your business. You can
address root cause and the obstacles that are coming up and from which direction.
Learn how to become proactive from reactive.
• Predictive – rare bird You see the future. You can execute in a precise manner.
When there are forks on the street, recruit a guy, etc. you are comfortable about
it, pedal for the mettle. One or may be two in hundred are predictive business
owner.
2nd Tactic: Create your gps plan
How to put together a plan? Majority of your issue are
• Whats you strategic goal? Start with profit or sale number? A means to that
end. Meaning this is how I am going hit my strategic goal. You have 0.5 million
turnover, want to achieve 0.75 million. Make a gps plan.
• 10% of your business is going to fall off!! So it is not 0.25 m but 0.3 million of
extra business. How are going to get that? Each month you r going to review
that.
• Whats your strategic goal?
• How detailed is your gps plan?
• Have you discussed the “What ifs”? Contingency or backup or plan B. Somethig
suddenly goes wrong! Say a hurricane or your computer gets hacked or a new
competitors emerges with higher competitive advantages, technology changes,
your building has a fire,.
How do you wake up in the morning?
• Reactive - weeds of your business, you will never get to the root cause
of your problem, be it one of your employees or supplier. Its going to
cause money time and
• Proactive – spend time in the clouds (you will be able see the obstacles
coming up, set up meetings, curve out time not alone but say a Friday
morning practice could be accountant, employees, lawyer etc.
• Predictive – you see the future, you can execute in a pricise manner, you
know things in advance, you know what obstacles or fire are coming up,
pedal to the metal, every 100, 1 or 2 are predictive business owner.
Create your GPS plan
• Whats your strategic goal?
• Measurable number, everything you do from April to March is a
means to an end.
• Say you achieved 500 and want to grow to 750, that is your GPS plan.
• How detailed is your gps plan?
• About 10% of your business is going to fall off. So from 500 you r
going to 450 so you have to aim for additional 300 new business.
• Key drivers
• How you discuss the ‘what ifs’? Back up plan! If some of things go
wrong? What if you loose your largest account? What if there is a
fire? What if one of your customer affected by natural disaster? Etc.
3rd: Define the competitive landscape
• Who is your competitors? You say no one, you are too unaware(?) Write
down five competitors, write five weaknesses, buy their products if
necessary.
• How well you know them?
• Unique selling proposition differentiate you from your competitors.
• Understand their (competitors) weakness.
• How do you plan to beat them?
• Ask your customer why they chose you as a supplier? When you lose
business, ask the prospect why they left you? Or chose someone else over
us.
4rth: Execute & Adapt
• Execute the GPS plan.
• Share you plan with your employees, get them excited, even share
with your customers, embrace their (employees and customers
vendors and suppliers) loyalty, even if you have two employees you
may have corporate culture.
• Customer loyalty with the best laid plan. Customer will never go
elsewhere unless you do something nasty.
• Execute the gps plan
• Things rately go according to plan. Have contingency plan.
• Know when and how to pivot.
Final thought
• Stay focused and execute your plan. Don’t waver
• Learn to be proactive if not predictive
• Urgent, important, everyday, non-essential
• Review your plan on regular basis
• Go to plan B if necessary
• You do this four things, you will hit your strategic goal. At least closer
to +300 if not all of it.
Can a small business owner become an
entrepreneur and vis-a-versa
• Absolutely, 100%. Easy for small business to entre. They should be
proactive and think of opportunity etc. Vis-a-versa is difficult since
you must have made investment etc.
• Yes. Don’t think strategic goal written on stone. Its iperative that you
revisit you goal every now and then. By all means, if something
happens to your business, you revisit.
• Where does networking sits in this scheme?
• Collaboration. Why do everything yourselves? If you can collaborate
and share the strengths and reduce weaknesses and growth together.
Say you talk to some home-based business,
• Segmenting my market? If you have too many segments
• Niche

• Identify or build your USP

• Core competency

• What are licenses necessary to start a venture that intends to

manufacture xxxx?
• If you focus on two sides, you will not be able retain either
You actually can
• Unless you start you will n ever know.
How to start a start-up?
Market segmentation or basics of marketing
management
Include design-driven innovation in the
second lecture
• Explain ‘Financial Inclusion’ , “Full Employment’, Corporate entrepreneurship,
creative destruction, cryptocurrency, blockchain, distributed ledger, IndiaStack,
accelerator, incubator, pricing power,
• Define corporate entrepreneurship (Intrapreneurship), Explain how corporate
entrepreneurship helps companies to remain ahead of competition? Corporate
entrepreneurship promote innovation culture? Promote creative destruction?
• What do we learn from the story of Dhirubhai Ambani?
• What do we learn from the story of Elizabeth Holmes?

• What are the activities of Fintech companies?

• De