Flower power: Karturi's eponymous founder has reason to smile

A floriculture company. A small import agency turned global trading house. And countless software hotshops. In India, circa 2003 enterprise rules!

Till as recently as the early 1990s, brothers Keshav and Vikram Anand worked out of a 200 square feet hole-in-the-wall office in C.R. Park, a south Delhi borough. Together, they would make daily trips to Delhi's commercial hubs, such as Chawri Bazar, in their rickety Fiat automobile, spending long hours with conservative traders in an effort to coax them into importing pesticides and other agrochemicals through their agency at rock bottom commission rates.

After a disastrous attempt at manufacturing plastic packaging material for Hindustan Lever, the brothers Anand knew they needed some fairy dust (lots of it, actually) to stay afloat.

That came in the form of the liberalisation process rung in by a certain Dr Manmohan Singh in the spring of 1991.

Leveraging easier export-import regulations and the death of licensing the Anands transformed Parijat Agrochemicals, from a small-time agency into a Rs 75-crore international buying house that trades in agrochemicals across 50 countries.

Judging by the number of Lonely Planet guides for countries from Mexico to Australia scattered in their new office in the more-respectable Greater Kailash neighbourhood, Chawri Bazar can't be but a dim memory of an eminently forgettable past for the brothers.

Cashing in on India's strong image equity in generic pharmaceuticals, Parijat has even started branding most of its pesticide exports. "Deregulation is the single biggest reason why we exist today," beams Keshav Anand, now 45 and Managing Director of Parijat Agrochemicals.

Some 2,000 kilometres away, in Bangalore, Ramakrishna Karuturi has a similar story to narrate. In 1977, Karuturi's father got into the business of manufacturing cables for what was then a very good reason: he had a licence.

Karuturi inherited the business in the early days of the reforms process and promptly exited cables. For his new business, he zeroed in on floriculture.

KESHAV (L) & VIKRAM ANAND Parijat Agrochemicals In 1990 the brothers Anand were small-time traders in pesticides. Today, their company Parijat, operates in 50 countries and boasts a turnover of Rs 75 crore

The famed Bangalore climate, ideal for growing exotic flowers and vegetables, made the plunge somewhat easier. "If there is one business where India boasts a sustainable competitive cost, it is agriculture," he explains.

The gamble has paid off handsomely for the man. Karuturi Floritech's roses are exported as far away as Amsterdam and Tokyo; in 2002-03, the company registered revenues of Rs 4.5-crore.

Karuturi now has his eyes on a turnover of Rs 10 crore by 2005. To achieve that target, he will likely have to invest in some nifty supply chain management; while it costs Rs 1.50 to produce a stem, average transportation costs are around Rs 3.50 a stem. Still, he's got this far.

A Land of Enterprise?

Thanks to reforms and the emergence of global business opportunities, there has been a discernable spurt in the entrepreneurial activity in the country.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (gem) report brought out each year by the London Business School acknowledges the fact that individual enterprise in India is on the upswing.

The 2002 report claims that nearly 18 per cent of the country's workforce (the population in the 18-64 age group) is engaged in some form of entrepreneurial activity compared to a mere two per cent in Japan, 10.2 per cent in the US and a worldwide average of seven per cent.

Only Thailand ranks ahead of India in the study conducted across 37 developed and emerging economies that represent three-fifths of the world's population and 92 per cent of its GDP.

Such intensity of entrepreneurial activity is all the more impressive as it has happened, "despite poor physical infrastructure, with the exception of it and telecom, and the gradual recession of governmental support towards new enterprises," according to Mathew J. Manimala, Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship at IIM Bangalore's N.S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, the author of the gem India Report.

New Money, New Medium

The dotcom era (1998-2001) was in many ways a turning point for entrepreneurship in the country. For anyone on the sidelines, the entire dotcom thing was a Roman circus. There were gladiatorial fights between portals. There were posterboys who shone briefly before fading away or becoming fall guys, or plain jack asses. There were money-burning orgies that would have done Nero proud. And there was madness that was vintage Caligula.

Pradeep Kar, the founder of Microland, Indya.com and Planetasia and Rajesh Jain the founder of Indiaworld.com (he made Rs 440 crore from its sale) were the role models to follow. Once the dust had settled, the two individuals went down in Indian dotcom history as biggest beneficiaries of the Greater Fool Theory.

It was during the dotcom era that most Indian entrepreneurs had their first serious brush with a hitherto unknown animal called the Venture Capitalist (VC). In 2000 net VC investments in India stood at $500 million (Rs 2,300 crore); they more than doubled to $1.2 billion (Rs 5,520 crore) the next year.

Then, the bubble burst. Today, "given the cautious approach (of VCs) their investments are likely to remain in the $1 billion band over the next two to three years," says Saurabh Srivastava, Chairman, Indian Venture Capitalists Association.

Not all dotcoms have gone belly up. Although the best venture capitalist investments have been in telecom (Bharti), software services (Patni), or business process outsourcing firms (Spectramind), there are a handful of dotcom survivors like the Mumbai-based Apnaloan.com that continue to hold some attraction for investors.

Harsh Roongta, the former head of sales and marketing at ICICI's personal finance division started his online financial services distribution portal Apnaloan.com in 2000. Apnaloan provides consumers tailor-made financial products like insurance and home loans and has an offline delivery model. "Some businesses are naturally suited to being carried out on the internet and distribution of financial products is definitely one of them," says Roongta. He hopes to emulate the success of Lifetree.com, a US portal with a similar business model. Apnaloan reported a turnover of Rs 6.5 crore in 2002-03 and recently closed a funding deal worth $3.3 million (Rs 15.18 crore) from a clutch of investors including ING Vysya Bank, Sidbi and Jumpstart.

SHASHIKIRAN MULLUR Hical Magnetics When Hical applied for a licence in 1988, it was given permission to manufacture 20,000 transformers a year; today, it does 50 lakh pieces a month. That's freedom

The Knowledge Economy Rush

One of the reasons cited by the gem report for India's high ranking is the emergence of newer market opportunities that have encouraged individuals from even non-traditional backgrounds and rural areas to take the entrepreneurial plunge. Another is India's education system that has helped create entrepreneurs with higher-than-global-average skill levels.

Shashikiran Mullur could easily pass for a factory manager. The 44-year-old is actually the managing director of the Rs 76-crore Hical Magnetics, a company that designs and manufactures transformers used in telecom, power, and automotive applications and which counts multinationals like Siemens, Thomson, Nokia, Ericsson among its clients.

In 1988, Mullur, an electronics engineer, decided to venture out on his own. He had to seek approval from Development Commissioner for small scale industries in Delhi to open a magnetics unit in Bangalore. "We had to file an application form with 17 duplicate copies," he recollects.

Hical applied for a capacity of one lakh units a year but the government would allow him to make just 20,000. "No reason was given why we were allotted that capacity. Today, we make 50 lakh units a month. This is the difference between the pre and post liberalisation era," says a triumphant Mullur.

Most Indian entrepreneurs who ventured into knowledge businesses either had the opportunity to observe the knowledge economy in the West (where they studied or worked) or were simply following in the steps of pioneers such as tcs' F.C. Kohli. According to the gem report nearly 40 per cent of the high value enterprises started in the last two years in the country has been in the area of it.

Back in 1984, when computers were exotic devices, Anant Koppar, would wait in a long queue outside his classroom in Karnatak University in Gulbarga just to feel and touch the machine. Koppar, 44, comes from the dry lands of Dharwad in north Karnataka and was the seventh child in a middle class family. Today, Koppar, a product of the now famous Wipro "school of entreprenuership" is the founder of the Rs 60-crore Kshema Technologies, a software solutions hotshop. "Today if I am a successful first generation entrepreneur it is thanks to the changes in the Indian economy in the past decade," says Koppar. "If the knowledge economy had to face the same constraints as other sectors did before 1991, companies like us wouldn't have existed."

India's roads may be bumpy, the power supply erratic, and capital, not that easy to access, but its never-say-die entrepreneurs, from Chawri Bazar in Delhi to Silicon Alley in the South are testimony that, eventually, it's the spirit of enterprise that matters.