Indian start-ups are badly hit on several fronts. Most of their funding is routed from developed economies, where economic turmoil has taken its toll. And even where funds are available, the appetite for risk has vastly diminished. The scenario has changed dramatically in the last year for entrepreneurs. In Bangalore this time last year, money was chasing ideas, say people in the business. A year later, it is a full cycle and ideas are chasing too little money. As dozens of budding entrepreneurs squelched into bean bags in a crowded corner of the TiE summit, mentor Gururaj Desh Deshpande delivered some harsh advice: “The Americans think entrepreneurship is super easy in India and China, but I can tell you that being an entrepreneur is hard work anywhere in the world.”

Deshpande, an influential technology guru and founder of successful American companies such as Cascade Communications and Sycamore Networks, said that start-ups with no track record, who are raising money for the very first time, are going to have a rough time. “Set yourself a deadline and if the money does not come in, give up and move on.” Self-funded Vasuprasad H, managing director of Bangalore-based CelNet, a start-up developing mobile-based applications, was at the TiE summit looking to “network, scout for partners and funding”. Though a market surely existed for the services he provides, Vasuprasad said, small players like him suffered from the lack of marketing and branding.

Evidently, different entrepreneurs were at different stages of their journey. Loveleen Arun and Sanjar Imam, founders of luxury travel company ‘Panache’, sought one-to-one mentoring sessions as they charted the growth plants of their 10-people company ‘to its next level’. India’s luxury travel market is just coming into its own, Arun said. The company would need funding to get itself known to a larger target audience and to expand outside Bangalore as well as overseas. As entrepreneurs thronged to an overcrowded mentoring session by Silicon Valley angel investor and TiE founder Kanwal Rekhi, the millionaire deflated the dreams of many aspiring entrepreneurs walking around with their business plans in the ready. He does not do angel investing anymore, said Rekhi who now heads a fund called Inventus Capital Partners. He never invests in an idea anyway, Rekhi revealed, only in the person behind the idea.

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