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Press Release Hyderabad, September 15, 2004: Promod Haque, Managing Partner, Norwest Venture Partners (NPV) addressed students at the Indian School of Business, emphasizing Information Technology as the source for 'Building Companies in the New Economy'. Haque stressed that Bangalore and Hyderabad today are similar to Silicon Valley 20 years ago. And, what Stanford did to Silicon Valley in California, will be similar to what ISB will do to Hyderabad. He advised ISB students to work for small companies as they provide more exposure to senior management, and a higher level of responsibility. He time and again emphasized the importance of "the right team", as a criteria for looking into any entrepreneurial project. He added that the new companies should provide global market opportunity, unique value proposition to the customer, and capital efficiency. Haque is a strong believer of innovative products in Information Technology and said that he primarily looks for disruptive product technology that can solve significant problem distinctively. He believes that the next wave in Information Technology will be in Wireless/Mobility products in which enterprises work. Commenting on the Indian software companies, he said that the business models of exploiting the labor cost arbitrage by companies like Wipro and Infosys will have to change, in order to survive. Rather than providing tactical solution they have to be global solution providers. A lot of product development is creating huge opportunity. He also mentioned that the Indian telecommunications market is the 5th largest market in the world. The IT sector is also growing robustly and the outsourcing industry presents a huge market opportunity. However, he added that the next "big wave" lies in Engineering services and not IT services. "Companies that bring profound change in technology are what I like," says Haque, No.1 Venture Capitalist in the world on Forbes Midas list 2004. He mentioned that NVP primarily and proactively focuses its investments in Communication Technology and Enterprise Softwares. Companies that are into semiconductors, networking equipment, enterprise infrastructure and applications are his forte. NVP invests mainly in early-stage projects with world class technologies and entrepreneurs. Occasionally, NVP does invest in later-stages, provided they have strong sales, large pool of customers, and top tier management teams. He stated that a VCs prime task is to help entrepreneurs build management teams for sustainable development of the idea by bringing other companies together, help them network with other potential venture capitalists and share the risk. Some of his investments include, Peoplesoft, Siara Systems, Tivoli, Forte, Winphoria, Cerrant, and many more. Rarely, but surely he has also invested in non-IT companies like Gymboree, Lifetime fitness etc. Having over 18 years of experience before becoming a VC, Promod has experienced multiple recessionary cycles. He judges the companies on long term basis. The talk was organized by the students of the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club of Indian School of Business along with the Wadhwani Center for Entrepreneurial Development Centre at ISB. Contributed by - |
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