The Golden Tap - The Inside Story of Hyper-Funded Indian Start-Ups

Kashyap Deorah

Sujets

• Entrepreneuriat
• E-Commerce
• E-commerce
• E-Commerce
• E-Commerce
• E-commerce
• Electronic commerce
• Commerce électronique
• Google
• Silicon Valley
• Amazon
• Tech
• Bust
• China
• Internet
• Valuation
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• Bubble
• Business
• Economics
• IIT
• Venture capital
• Über
• Dot-com
• Junglee
• OLA
• E-Commerce
• Marketing et communication
• Vente

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 16 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351941576
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

E ver wondered why global investors are willingto write million-dollar cheques to young andinexperienced entrepreneurs? Why companies areno longer judged on their ability to make profits?Why the valuation of a start-up can dwarf that ofits well-established counterpart? Is it a bubble? Orhave the rules of the game changed?
Can these hyper-funded, technology-drivencompanies become global superpowers? Or is itan unsustainable phenomenon? The Golden Tap gives you the answers.
In a remarkably honest, no-holds-barred account,Kashyap – himself a serial entrepreneur –demystifies the technology ecosystem that existsin India today. From the origins of Amazon andGoogle, to the remarkable growth of Flipkartand Ola, he meticulously plots and chronicles aconnected global sequence of events. Set in thisbackground, he recounts his personal roller coasterof a life. A story filled with ambition, greed, vanity,fear, and success that all young entrepreneurs canrelate to.
Is this the business model of the future? Or merelya game of poker played by master investors? Theanswers pour out of The Golden Tap .
Kashyap Deorah isan entrepreneur andinvestor. Over fifteenyears, he has splithis time betweenSilicon Valley andIndia building globaltechnology companies.Besides India and US,he has done business in China, Southeast Asia andNorthern Europe. Kashyap has started and soldthree companies, worked with public companiesin the US and India, invested in a score of startups,and mentored many more. He started his firstcompany RightHalf.com during his final year at IITBombay in 2000. After an acquisition by a SiliconValley company, Kashyap spent seven years in theUS. He returned to India in 2007 to start ChaupaatiBazaar, a phone commerce marketplace, thenmerged it with India’s leading retailer FutureGroup. In 2012, he co-founded mobile paymentscompany Chalo and sold it to San Francisco-basedOpenTable, a leader in the restaurant reservationsspace. He is passionate about travelling to newplaces and telling a good story. He lives in NewDelhi with his wife and three-year-old son. Hearhim tweet @righthalf.
‘An amazing inside-out view of everything you wanted to know about digital start-ups in India. Kashyap, a serial entrepreneur himself, has masterfully integrated the US, China and India landscapes to give an honest real world view. A well argued, skilfully written piece of work.’ – Sandeep Naik, General Atlantic India
‘A brutally honest narrative of India’s much hyped Internet start-ups through the eyes and ears of an entrepreneur and a born storyteller. In his shrewd yet lively writing style, Kashyap sews the 20 years of India’s digital landscape with global trends.’ – Shrutika Verma, start-ups team at Mint
‘A rollicking history of the Internet age told by a reflective fly on the wall, but also a human story of the greed, the fear, the ambition and the thrill of entrepreneurship. This is a book that is both intensely now, but will be of equal relevance a 100 years later.’ - Sudhir Sitapati, Vice President of Unilever, Advisor to Flipkart
‘Kashyap masterfully captures the behind-the-scenes look at the global and local events that have shaped the burgeoning Indian start-up eco-system. Not just for technology enthusiasts but anyone who is curious about how the next generation companies are born and raised.’ - Arvinder Gujral, Director APAC@Twitter
‘A candid view on the Indian start-up growth story from a straight-shooter who has been there and done that. The Golden Tap will keep every start-up founder up at night and ensure every investor sleeps with his chequebook tucked firmly under their bed!’ - Arjun & Rohan Malhotra, Investopad
‘This is a straight-from-the-heart, aimed-at-your-balls unputdownable page-turner about India’s Internet story.’ – Anshuman Bapna, serial entrepreneur, Chief Product Officer, MakeMyTrip.com*
‘Kashyap synthesizes and articulates concepts sharply and humorously from his vantage point of being a repeat entrepreneur in the US and in India.’ – Ashish Gupta, Managing Director, Helion Ventures and angel investor in Flipkart*
‘Kashyap’s phenomenal recall of events, unique insights and easy writing style make The Golden Tap a page-turner. Readers interested in learning about the evolution of e-commerce in India and the perils and pleasures of founding a start-up will find the book irresistible.’ – Meena Srinivasan, VP Treasurer, Fitbit*
‘Kashyap was there at the birth of internet entrepreneurship in India -arguably Techfest, IIT Bombay, 1999. He has written about his journey from days when Amazon and Google were in their youth to the days of Flipkart and Ola. He pulls no punches in a very compelling, well researched, honest, passionate and fun book written from the heart by someone who was there.’ – Rakesh Mathur, serial entrepreneur*
‘This is Michael Lewis meets Indian Startups. A candid and deeply personal insider view of the 15-year evolution of the start-up ecosystem in India. Kashyap’s analysis of the drivers of the ecosystem and the contrast with Silicon Valley and China is masterful and bold. No one involved in Indian start-ups should miss this.’ – Mohan Lakhamraju, CEO of Great Lakes Institute of Management*
*Endorsements by some of the professionals and entrepreneurs featured in the book

ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2015
First published in 2015 by The Lotus Collection An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright © Kashyap Deorah
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
eISBN: 978-93-5194-157-6
All rights reserved. This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published.
For my wife Shruti, who came into my life when I started my first company
For my niece Zoya, who came into my life when I started my second company
For my son Kanav, who came into my life when I started my third company
For my mother, who brought me to life and taught me how to love, and my father, who taught me how to start companies
Contents
Introduction
PART 1: THE INTERNET WAVE(1994-2002)
1. The Internet Changes Everything
Netscape, Yahoo! and Amazon
The Stanford Startup
Heady Days at Amazon
The IIT Bombay Startup
Pop Goes the Bubble
2. The Five Stages of Grief
The Day I Became an Entrepreneur
Go Back Home
There and Back Again
PART 2: THE GLOBALIZATION WAVE (2003-2009)
3. Sand Hill Marg
Don’t Forget to Blink
The First Startup Gold Rush in India
Swades
The Poster Boys
RIP Good Times
4. This-of-That Investing
Tiger Global Management and Lee Fixel
Digital Sky Technologies and Yuri Milner
Shanghai Wife
Rocket, Naspers and SoftBank
Good Times, Bad Times
5. Level Playing Field
The Cage
The Inspiration
The Inception
The Team
The Funding
The Launch
The Bootstrapping
The Bells
The Deal
PART 3: THE SMARTPHONE WAVE (2010-PRESENT)
6. E-commerce
The Amazon Renaissance
Flipkart.com: Early Days
Tiger Returns
The Future Becomes the Past
Unit Economics
The Poker Begins
7. Waiting’s over
Reconnecting with Silicon Valley
Will Work for Food
Birthday Gift
Fortune Cookie
The Changing Face of the Indian Entrepreneur
Pay with OpenTable
Name your own price
8. The Great Indian Boom
Father-in-Law Test
Indian Unicorns
Indian Rocketships
World War
The Pyramid Scheme
Race Course
PART 4: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
9. Busting the Myths
India is the Next China
A Limited Window of Opportunity
Hyper-Funded Startups are Too Big to Fail
Build a War Chest
Amazon Did Not Make Money for the Longest Time
The New Government Will Change Things
If You Own the Market, Profits Will Come
India Has Enough Exits; We Don’t Need IPOs
Indian Startup Employees Don’t Care for Stock Options
10. The Next India
Sequoia and the Banyan Tree
Building Indian Businesses
Building Global Businesses
Acknowledgements
Introduction
On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées (An invasion of armies can be resisted but not an idea whose time has come.) – VICTOR HUGO

4 December 2014, Downtown Palo Alto
I t was a bright winter’s day in Palo Alto. As a kid growing up in hot and sweltering Mumbai, I had romantic feelings about rainy days with the cool monsoon breeze. I had always wondered why the western world was romantically involved with sunshine, until I made Silicon Valley my second home. The refreshing sunlight of the crisp winter afternoons of California had re-programmed my brain. Today was one such day. It had become a reflex action to start the conversation with, ‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’
With pleasantries out of the way, I asked, ‘Is the urban legend true? About the golden tap?’
He gave me a quizzical look.
‘I have heard that the taps in his house are made of pure solid gold!’ My mentor who lives within a mile in Los Altos Hill had once told me about it.
He laughed a laugh that I had come to associate with him. He was not one to kiss and tell.
The previous night, he had had a sleepover at the most expensive house in the Bay Area. The house did not belong to the founders of Google, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, Intel or any other leading global tech company born in the capital of tech innovation. It was the mansion of Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, who reportedly overpaid for this mansion called P