Gaming is fast gaining track in India and Mumbai is the epicenter for the industry. I finally caught up with Quentin Staes-Polet, CEO of Kreeda in Bangalore to find out about Kreeda, doing business in India and the challenges of doing business in India. Kreeda bills itself as India’s ...

Yogen Dalal is the managing director at Mayfield Fund, in Silicon Valley. I caught up with Yogen at the Pan IIT Global meet, where we talked about IIT, Mayfield’s India strategy and entrepreneurship.

In the interview, Yogen answers some tough questions, like what to do if your venture fails, ...

Ravi Swaminathan is president of Hewlett Packard’s Personal Systems Group for India. He has countrywide responsibility for the entire range of consumer and commercial PCs, laptops, workstations and the emerging range of personal access devices including handhelds.

Ravi joined Compaq in 1995 and started the consumer PC business in India. ...

Ravi Venkatesan is the chairman of Microsoft. Ravi is directly responsible for marketing, sales, operational and business development of Microsoft’s efforts in India.

I caught up with Ravi at TiECon 2007 in Santa Clara, to get a comprehensive picture of Microsoft’s India operations. What is Microsoft’s broad India ...

Aashish Kalra of Trikona Capital is a key player in the development and investment of infrastructure and real estate in India. Trikona Capital is one of the few key players in building new roads, townships, hospitals and other infrastructure-related projects in India. For instance they are one of ...

There are two sides to every coin. So, there is the India Story that celebrates the new and emerging India with an annual GDP of almost 10 percent that has strong IT and technology sector, and has millions of dollars coming through FDI and VC and PE investments etc. Then ...

Asawari Desai is a director with TiE Global, overseeing the performance of all the 42 offices. At TiE she is responsible for defining organizational strategy and vision, branding, identifying and addressing issues concerning the organization and individual offices and evaluating opportunities to open new offices.

Prior to TiE she worked ...

Ajay Adiseshann is the founder and managing director of PayMate. He helped set up the company in May 2006. As managing director of PayMate, he is responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing, business development and overall strategy.

PayMate is the first-of-its-kind mobile payment service in India, which helps customers buy things ...

Burrp! is a lifestyle social site that allows users to submit and review lifestyle-related listings like restaurants, bars and nightlife.

Deap Ubhi co-founded this site along with his friend Anand Jain. Deap is a mergers & acquisitons man with private equity experience. He most recently was a senior associate at ...

Dominating this week’s round-up are investment and merger and acquisition news.

Topping the investment this week is SKS Microfinance that received $11.5 million in investments. The investment round was led by Sequoia Capital. Other investors include Unitus Equity Fund, Vinod Khosla, Ravi Reddy, Odyssey Capital, SIDBI.

Mumbai-based Games2win received $5 million ...

The amount of funding received by tech start-ups in India appears to be shrinking if we go by some recent investments. Moveo Systems recently received a new round of angel funding from undisclosed investors. Ziva software, a mobile search company, received about $1.5 million from Nadathur ...

Kumar Subramanian, with over 18 years of experience in the banking and financial sector, heads Adventity, a successful financial BPO/KPO company that has operations in India and USA.

Kumar spends weekdays in Mumbai, and flies home to the southern city of Chennai to be with his family, and come Sunday ...

The IPO season is underway in India. Media company Global Broadcast News, which operates CNN and other news channels, went IPO earlier this week. It listed on both the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange.

Bangalore-based MindTree Consulting is going IPO on the Indian stock exchange. ...

Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the managing director of One97, a mobile value-added services company. One97 has many firsts to its credit, including India’s first short code sms service, 3030.

Vijay talks about how they started, the various offerings of One97, impact of 3G and the overall VAS market in ...

Pravin Gandhi is currently the managing partner of SEED Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund based in Mumbai. Google and Sierra Ventures recently invested an undisclosed amount in Seedfund.

In 1972, Pravin co-founded the Hinditron group of companies (India’s first IT Company) which subsequently merged with Digital Equipment ...

On December 23, 2006, Dr. A.P.J. Kalam, the president of India, inaugurated the first Global Pan-IIT conference in Mumbai. The theme of the conference was: “Inspire to Involve and Transform India.” One of the early pioneers to help India involve and transform is Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, who ...

Media- and entertainment-related funding appears to be the trend with angel investors. Recently, MadHouse Media, a movie rental start-up, received their first round of investment from angel investors. The investors included the Band of Angels, Mumbai Angels and some private investors.

Dr. Kumar Shiralagi joined NEA IndoUS Fund which ...

Rajeev Samant of Sula Wines was a featured speaker at the recently-concluded TiE India entrepreneurial conference in Mumbai. He was part of a panel discussion on “Taking the Leap: Starting An Enterprise,” where he talked about how he started his wine company about 10 years ago.

Rajeev, a ...

Dr. Girish Saraph is the founder of Vegayan Systems, a networking start-up company located in IIT, Mumbai.

Vegayan Systems was one of the three winners of the TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurship challenge that was announced at the TiE entrepreneurial conference ( Dec.17-19 , 2006), in Mumbai.

As one of ...

Info Edge (India) was the first Indian Internet company to go public on the Indian stock exchange in November 2006. It owns internet properties Naukri, 99 acres and Jeevansathi.

CEO and co-founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani was a featured speaker at the recently concluded first TiE India entrepreneurial conference ...

The Indus Entrepreneurs, better known by its acronym TiE, has become a central force in nurturing and helping entrepreneurs around the world. Founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley, the organization now has over 40 chapters in various parts of the world.

For the first time a three day Pan ...

Who will bid and acquire Hutch Essar? That’s the big question in the telecom and mobile service sector in India. Hutch Essar is a joint venture partnership between Hong Kong’s Whampoa Hutchison and the Essar Group of India. Whampoa Hutchison owns 67 percent of the stake and the Essar Group ...

Very recently, QUALCOMM India, a leading developer and innovator of advanced wireless technologies and mobile data solutions, hosted the second annual BREW Developers Conference in Mumbai.

In this episode, I speak with Vishal Gupta, senior director of Qualcomm India about Brew and what it means to the mobile ...

Rishi Navani is the founding managing director of Matrix Partners, India. Rishi has been involved in the Indian investment space for about 10 years and has seen the investment landscape in India undergo a dramatic change in the last few quarters.

Matrix Partners has a $150 million fund and it ...