The time now is challenging to most entrepreneurs, whether they are just starting out, raised funding and running operations or have a stably running business for some time. Customer delays, drying up credit and investor sentiment is affecting most of us entrepreneurs. Added to that, there are market forces and general issues which we wanted to hear about in the Entrepreneurship panel at HeadStart & Compute 2009.
HeadStart and Compute 2009 has four panel discussions in addition to the demo pit, the investor networking session and the customer talks. The Entrepreneurship panel is on the 9th of January between 12 noon and 1 pm and features the talks on the following topics
– ‘The shift from Enterprise to Consumer markets : Opportunities, Challenges and Experiences’
– ‘Building sustainable businesses : High growth vs High margin business models’
– ‘How to bootstrap your business and run it profitably without VC ?’
– ‘The Fund raising experience: where are VCs failing in India ?
– ‘Exits : When do you know it is the right time ?’
I expect a set of very inspiring and thought provoking talks by five experienced and very personable entrepreneurs following by an interactive session among the panelists and the audience.
Let me now introduce you to Jay Pullur, CEO of Pramati, who will speak on The shift from Enterprise to Consumer markets : Opportunities, Challenges and Experiences’. 
Jay has run one of India’s first software infrastructure companies. Pramati licenses an application server product that has been deployed globally and has recently made a transition of focus to consumer business opportunities. Having spent considerable time in enterprise product sales, I realise that long sales cycles, lumpy revenues, comparatively high capital requirements, and buyer preferences and purchasing processes make this a very challenging business for young entrepreneurs and companies. Jay will talk about his and Pramati’s experience with the enterprise business and the licensing business model and his focus on consumer and online business opportunities and the challenges he has faced in both segments.
Prior to starting his own venture, Jay was at Wipro managing customer relations and software projects. Jay holds a Masters degree from IIT, Kanpur in Computer Science and Engineering. Jay is very passionate about innovation, product design and entrepreneurship.