EmergeOut Conclave: It is a Crime…………

(This  is about the EmergeOut conclave we had in the last week of September 2008, in Delhi)

(The whole blogging on emerge out is pretty stale now I guess as stale as talking about India’s win in Mohali – too stale nevertheless let me give my point of view!!)

The EmergeOut conclave was a great opportunity for us, the emerging companies, to come out understand what we need to learn from those who have been there and done that and also was a great networking opportunity too. I almost missed it but thanks to Avinash from NASCOM who literally forced me to come there and ofcourse my marketing manager Subodh told me how in the world I can miss it and thanks to both I was there and valued every moment I spent there.

Before people start thinking why the hell the topic reads like it, let me get to the point. The whole session started out with the key note address by Subbroto Bagchi talking about “breaking all rules” and as usual he gave a very impressive session but unfortunately it was a very short one – probably less than an hour I guess (or atleast it appeared so :–) ).

I really think it is a Crime to call Subbroto Bagchi for a Key Note address and give him just a slot of an hour or less L As I mentioned earlier his topic was about breaking the rules and I was hoping that he will break this law of time limit but to everyone’s disappointment he did not break that law. His oratory skills are so impressive, and his knowledge his so vast and his speech’s are worth every second and he has the capability to hold the entire audience’s attention. In this speech, I really liked his comparison (of entrepreneurship) to nature and to Salomon breeding habits  and his words of “learn from the nature” and “don’t try to increase the probability (of survival), just be the survivor”. I was first subjected to his session/speech by *force* when I joined WIPRO in 1997 after I returned for good from the US and from then on I always make it  a point to attend any function/seminar in Bangalore where Bagchi is speaking.

Those who have never sat through his speech, I recommend strongly to try once and don’t blame me for getting addicted after that J Those who have not read his book on entrepreneurship (The High performance Entrepreneur) you are missing something and my advice is start NOW ASAP. Especially if you an Indian Entrepreneur specially in the services industry – don’t ever miss it (buy it today on the way home).

Coming back to EmergeOut, I won’t be summarizing the whole event as there was live blogging going on while the event happened and also many other blogs have come on the same (NASSCOM Emerge website) site and they should give a pretty much detailed summary of the whole event. Personally as good as I felt, did feel that few things were missing. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting again Mali (C Mahalingam, VP HR at Symphony Services), Sanjay (Sanjay Anandaram, CEO JumpStart), KK (K Krishnakumar, CEO MindTree) who were all my mentors when we (S7 Software) got mentored a year back.

Anyway in my opinion I felt that EmergeOut should have covered on “Sales and Marketing” especially for emerging companies, and also about “Innovation”,  again with the emerging companies and specially services companies in with probably live examples of other Indian companies who have crossed the bridge. I would love to hear Avinash’s opinions on these two items.

Overall it was a great experience and I felt good of being there and I hope it will be an annual affair. Looking forward for the next one!!!

Manjunath M Gowda, S7 Software